does not seem to have been set by his reason so far above them in life, as to deserve not to be mingled with them in death. Such is the consolation his philosophy gives us, and such the hope on which his tranquillity was founded.

ESSAY ON NORMAN ARCHI-
TECTURE

I

THE characteristics of the old Norman or (as Sir Christopher Wren calls it) the Saxon Architecture, are great solidity, heaviness, and rude simplicity, better adapted to castles, walls of cities, and other places of defence, than to the purposes of habitation, magnificence, or religious worship. It seems indeed to be copied from the Roman style in that degenerate state to which it was reduced under the later emperors; for it seems but natural that the Franks in Gaul, the Saxons in England, and other barbarous nations in the several countries which had made a part of the Roman empire (when they were once settled there, and found leisure to apply themselves to the arts of peace) should imitate those many monuments which were every where before their eyes, and especially (as they themselves were now become Christians) such as had been long consecrated to the uses of religion, and were filled with the miraculous relics and representations of those saints who were the

I Including the Normans, who soon learned the language and customs of the Franks.

age,

principal objects of their worship. It may be asked, why then did they not rather imitate the beautiful remains of a better of which many were then in being, as some of them exist to this day? I answer, because taste had nothing to do in their choice; because the fabrics erected in the time and for the purposes of Christianity had a nearer connection with their own faith; and lastly, because the artizans employed in them were probably their subjects and natives of the country, who received these arts by tradition from their fathers, and were unaccustomed to any other style of building.

The particulars which distinguish this kind of architecture, which seems to have lasted in England from the time of the Conquest (if not earlier) to the beginning of Henry the Third's reign, that is, from A. D. 1066 to about 1216, are chiefly these.

First distinction. The semi-circular, or roundheaded,' arch, generally, if not always, used in the

1 I cannot absolutely affirm, that they never made use of the pointed arch, because the great western tower at Ely now rises upon four such arches; some of the ranges, too, which adorn the outside of this and of the Galilee adjoining, are of like form, and the grand arches in front under the middle tower of Peterborough are pointed: but yet I do suspect that all these were alterations and additions made in succeeding ages, which, I am persuaded, was a common practice with regard to windows, in order to let in more light, and

three orders which commonly compose the nave, namely, the lower great one that opens to the side aisles; the second, which runs in front of the two corridores over those aisles; and the uppermost, which forms a sort of arcade before the higher range of windows. The doors, the vault of the aisles, and even the windows, are in this form too, and the arch is usually wide beyond the just proportion of its height.

The same arching is frequently used to cover the long vacancy of a dead wall, and forms an arcade adhering to it with tall clumsy ' pillars and extraordinary narrow intercolumns; and for a like purpose they frequently employed a wider archwork rising on short columns and interlaced, so that the curve of one arch intersecting that of its neighbour, their pillars or legs stand at only half the distance from each other that they otherwise would do. This, though only an ornament, might perhaps suggest the idea of building on pointed arches, afterwards in use, as the intersection of two circular ones produces the same effect to the eye.

Second distinction. The massy piers, or pillars, also to take off from the plain and heavy appearance of those thick walls.

1 They have no swell, nor gradual diminution, which seems to be the cause of this clumsy appearance; besides this, they stand too close together.

either of an octagonal, round, or elliptical form, on which the arches rise. They are sometimes decagons, or duodecagons, or even a mixture of all these, without any correspondence or regularity at all, as in the choir at Peterborough: their height is generally far too short for their diameter, which gives them the appearance of great strength joined with heaviness. This latter fault seems to have struck even the eyes of that age itself, and, to conceal it, they added a flat pilaster on four sides of the pier, with a slender halfcolumn projecting from it, or (to lighten it still more) covered the pier almost entirely with clustered pillars of small diameter, adhering to its surface, which in reality bear little or nothing of the weight, and serve merely for ornament. This latter had so good an effect, that it was adopted by all architects of succeeding times, and continued till the revival of the Greek and Roman style. There are very ancient examples of these cluster-piers to be seen, sometimes intermixed alternately with the plainer kind, as at Durham; sometimes interspersed among them, as it were by chance, as at Peterborough; and sometimes alone and unmixed, as in the views of old St. Paul's, and at Ely. From the capital of the piers usually rises a half-column of but small diameter, which, passing between the arches of the two