evasion, and it is the usual misfortune of frequent alteration in a plan, once in the main well adjusted, that while it improves some part, it is attended with unforeseen inconvenience in others, perhaps, of greater consequence. Something of this kind, I think, may be observed in one of the last revisions which Wykeham made of his statutes, and that in a point of considerable importance, the manner of election into his college at Oxford, which seems then to have been unhappily altered for the worse. The method which he had established at first, was to fill up the vacancies of the preceding year by an annual election, and that in case, before nine or ten months of the current year were past, there should happen six or more vacancies, they were to be filled up by an interelection. The only inconvenience of this method, which continued till 1393, was, that the society would very often want of its full complement of members; and Wykeham was unwilling that any part of his bounty should ever be dormant and inactive. By making it a free election to supply the vacancies immediately, he effectually prevented this inconvenience, but at the same time opened the door to much greater inconveniences, to which the new method has been found liable, to the greatest possible perversion of his charity, a shameful traffic between the Fellow of the college that begins to sit loose to the society and the presumptive successor, an abuse of which he was not aware, the simplicity and probity of that age, perhaps, affording no example of the like. The laws of the land have interposed in vain; but it behoves all who are interested in the college to exert themselves in

putting a stop to so scandalous a practice, if they have any regard for the honour of their society or for their own reputation."

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Not satisfied with this magnificent benefaction to his country, Wykeham had already determined on connecting his college at Oxford with a preparatory one at the capital of his bishopric. Much time and a princely treasure were now devoted by the generous prelate to planning and founding the Saint Mary College of Winchester, and endowing it so as to maintain a warden, seventy poor scholars, ten secular priests perpetual fellows, three priests chaplains, three clerks, and sixteen choristers; and for the instruction of the scholars, a schoolmaster and an under-master or usher. natural affection and prejudice for the very place," says Lowth," which he frequented in his early days, seems to have had its weight in determining the situation of it; the school which Wykeham went to when a boy, stood where his college now stands." It took up six years in building before the warden and society made their solemn entrance into it, chanting in procession; but the school itself had been established so as to fulfil all the purposes of learning as far back as Michaelmas, 1373. Wykeham did not therefore become charitable when old age pressed on him, and the terrors of death and judgment rose on his fancy: amid the splendour of a court, and distraction of business, scientific, clerical, and political, he remembered the scene of his own youthful days, and opened his heart and his purse to its children. "He enjoyed," observes Lowth, " for many years the pleasure-the greatest to a good and generous

heart that can be enjoyed-of seeing the good effects of his own beneficence, and receiving in them the proper reward of his pious labours-of observing his colleges growing up under his eye, and continually bringing forth those fruits of virtue, piety and learning which he had reason to expect from them. They continued still to rise in reputation, and furnished the church and state with many eminent and able men."

Having seen the college at Winchester completed, the indefatigable Bishop, now in his seventieth year, began the greatest of his architectural labours, the restoration of his cathedral.

Many are the theories of ingenious men concerning the origin of the architecture of our churches and abbeys; but though some of these are marked by much research, and others by no little sagacity, and all are in parts plausible, they must be considered chiefly as pleasing visions, rather than established realities. Men began to inquire when it was too late; the older luminaries have recorded their disputations with their brethren; the miracles, real or imaginary, which perplexed or adified the nations; and the woes and temptations which they themselves endured from foes of this world and the next; but they have not removed the veil from the face of their architecture. An Augustine monk indeed affirms, that the church of Glastonbury was not built by human skill, but prepared by God for the salvation of man; but then from a soberer authority we learn that this divine edifice, sixty feet long and twenty-six feet wide, was made of rods, wattled and interwoven, much like the palace of Howel, prince

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of Wales. Such a structure could belong to no order, nor are we much better informed as to the character of those wooden edifices which the early Saxon churchmen raised, and which are mentioned in our histories. They were as rude, no question, as the people who reared them; the wooden church which Bishop Finan built in Holy Isle was composed of oak planks and thatched with reeds; and King Edgar, in his charter to the monks of Malmesbury in 974, complained that the churches of his kingdom were so many structures of worm-eaten wood, and decayed even to the exposure of the beams! The Saxons, in fact, had no word for building but to timber; and the cathedral of Winchester, when Wykeham undertook its embellishment, still exhibited marks of the chisel and the axe of that fierce and unpolished genera

tion.

To those who have no leisure for research, who have perplexed their heads with none of the dozen and odd theories on the origin of Gothic architecture, and who even look at it without inquiry and without wonder, it must, nevertheless, appear of an original and peculiar nature, and distinct in its forms, combinations, and effect from all other styles of building. Such I confess it has ever appeared to me. When I have wandered among the majestic ruins of the abbeys of Scotland-not unacquainted with the classic works of GreeceI never for one moment could imagine that in the ribbed aisles, the pointed arches, the clustered columns, and intelligible yet grotesque carvings of the mouldering edifice before me, I beheld but the barbarous perversion of what was once grand

and classic; I could as soon have believed that a battering ram had degenerated into a cannon, or a cross bow into a carabine. The building on which I looked seemed the offspring of the soil,it corresponded in every thing with the character of the surrounding landscape. The stone of which it was built came from the nearest quarry, the wood which composed its screens and carvings was cut in the neighbouring forest, and the stories and legends chiselled on every band and cornice were to be found in the history of the particular church or in that of the Christian religion. The statues of saints, kings, angels, and virgins belonged to modern belief; and in their looks, and in their draperies, they aspired to nothing beyond a copy of the faces and dresses to be found in the district; whilst the foliages, flowers, and fruits which so profusely enriched band, and cornice, and corbel, were such, and no other, as grew in the woods and fields around. The form of the building was that of the common symbol of religion, the and with its external buttresses, its side aisles and nave, formed, on looking at its section, a complete triangle, the first of all shapes for strength and endurance. The centre of the nave fitted into the peak; the side aisles, surmounted with open buttresses, fell within the sloping lines; while beyond these again, the solid buttresses, projecting far from the line of wall, completed the sides of the triangle. Externally the structure was every way contrived to withstand the rigour of the climate. The sharp peaked roofs threw off the rain and carried little snow-every projection was furnished with a drip, generally in the shape

cross;