Will any one, from this kind of procedure, ensure the safety of the whole pile, kept thus in a continual state of tremulation? Remember the "angel-knit" groins of the interior of the Chapel, "hanging, as it were, by a thread." I confess I tremble for my second visit; and perhaps my next communication may be of that awful interest, when all warning" may be too late.

Last year, the Restorers exerted their skill on the two buttresses (Westward) on the South side of the Nave of the Abbey Church, imitating, in some respects, the original particulars on the adjoining buttresses, not touched upon by Sir Christopher Wren; but, neglecting to follow the characters in their finials, substituting the cap of a modern vase for a foliaged finial, as is apparent on the old work. Sir C. Wren left much of his repairs on this side of the building incomplete: for instance, in the coin-stones of those buttresses he had

begin upon. These negected par

ticulars our Restorers have most scrupulously copied with this improvement, however: Sir Christopher's coin-stones were necessarily cut irregular, for future completion; but our new coins are run into a regular sort of rusticated courses, proper only for modern basement stories.

The manner of executing the inclined courses or splays to the several stories of the two restored buttresses is incorrect in my eye; but this is but a preparatory stroke to those workings of the mind I must endure, as they go on-to Fame, as it may be!

Addison's Monument is set (as previously hinted) nearly at the feet of that of Handel. What has a perverse determination brought about, to put contemplative people upon their duty! Handel raised mortal sensations to taste of immortal joys by his enchanting art. Roubilliac, by his chissel, has expressed the character of the divine Harmonist. The Addison trophy then is perhaps, after all, in its appropriate station; he was a humble man-his Sculptor is no less so! J. C.

MR. URBAN, Newgate-st. July 5.

M Yeovil in Somersetshire, my

ANY years ago, while I lived at

advice as a surgeon was desired for a poor man's child, a boy about nine years old, one of whose legs was contracted more than when a person is sitting in a chair; he could neither stretch it out, nor move it. I prescribed a relaxing liniment, of which carrier's oil was one chief ingredient; and ordered the parts affected to be gently rubbed; but it was of no great service. I then considered what farther might be done for his relief; and it came into my mind that the glovers of the town brought their kid-skins, which were dry, stiff, and hard, to be soft and supple as gloves, by rubbing them with a liquor made of the yolks of eggs and water; hereupon I ordered the contracted parts of his leg to be gently rabbed two or three times a day with the egg liquor, and by this means he soon recovered the perfect use of his leg. The liquor I advise to be thus made: Take the yolk of a new laid egg, let it be beaten with a spoon to the greatest thinness, then by a spoonful at a time add three ounces of pure water, agitating the mixture that the egg and water may be well incorporated, and let it be applied by gentle friction.

This remedy, Mr. Urban, I have since advised in like cases with the like happy success and others to whom I have communicated it have found the same advantage in similar cases. I therefore, for the good of those afflicted with lameness by contraction, transmit the above.

MR. URBAN,

S. L.

Great Russel-street,
July 18.

IT will probably interest some of your curious Readers, as well as Naturalists in general, to be informed that there is at this time a vigorous Bull-calf, about a fortnight old, having three jaws, to be seen at Mr. Tierner's, a milkman in Penton-street, Pentonville. The animal is in perfect health, with its limbs and proportions quite natural; except, that there is hanging to the under-lip an extra-lower jaw, with a second set of teeth, another tongue, the posterior part of the palate, including the uvula, reversed and moveable, covered underneath with hair, and suspended by a piece of skin at the extremity of the mouth! This supernumerary appendix seems not to be so sensible as the other jaw, and the additional tongue is defective

at

at its root, nor does it appear to be possessed of voluntary motion. The owner is willing to sell the Calf to any Naturalist, or other high bidder. Yours, &c. W. BLAIR.

CLERI

Northall, near SouthMr. URBAN, all, Middles. July 21. LERICUS, p. 548, professes to have some Letters written by Mr. Robert Cruttendeu to Dr. Doddridge, which he is willing to communicate to any survivors of Mr. Cruttenden's family. It would very much satisfy me to see these Letters of my grandfather: my mother, the only surviving daughter of Mr. Cruttenden, unites with me in requesting your kind offices on this occasion with your Correspondent. Mr. Cruttenden possessed considerable talents as a Writer, and was connected with many distinguished persons in the Literary world. My mother is now in her 86th year, and has survived all the children of Mr. Cruttenden.

JOSEPH HOLDEN POTT.

Mr. URBAN, Bedford, July 25.
IN the third volume of Lord Valen-

It's Travels, lately published, is an Inscription, copied from a column in a Mosque at Damietta. His Lordship informs us (p. 420), that to him "it is quite unintelligible: that il is certainly not entirely in Greek, nor any other characters, but seems to be Cabalistic."

To me it appears to be pure Greek. Above it is a Cross, flourished and ornamented, rather defaced at the summit. The form of the letters (which are all capitals) is the same as is now used by the modern Greeks in their books printed at Venice and the lönian Islands. In the characters employed by our Printers, it would be as follows:

ΜΝΗΣΘΗΤΙ ΜΟΥ

ΚΕ ΕΝ ΤΗ ΒΑΣ[ΙΛΕΙΑ ΣΟΥ, ΔΙΑ ΤΟΝ ΣΟΝ ΔΟΥΛΟΝ [ΤΟΝ ΑΓΙΟΝ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΝ.

i. ε. Μνήσθητί μου, Κύριε, εν τη βασιλεία δια τον σον δέλον, τον Άγιον Γεώργιον.

σου

I have restored the letters which appear to me to have been defaced, at the end of the first, second, and third lines.

St. George is the Patron Saint of the Greek Church. The Inscription, therefore, may be thus translated: "Lord! remember me in thy kingdom, for the sake of (or through the intercession of) thy servant St. George."

You will readily perceive, that this Epitaph is expressed nearly in the words of the peniten Malefactor to Our Saviour on the Cross; Luke xxiii. 42.

Μνησθητί με, Κύριε, όταν έλθης εν τη Baohua 08.

"Lord, remember me, when thou comest in thy Kingdom." PHILIP HUNT.

Mr. URBAN, Hackney, July 9.

War. Hall's set of Proverbial

E are much obliged to you for

Sayings from the Greeks, p. 428. Erasmus, who has mentioned some of them, tells us, that when the Greeks meant to say that a man was uselessly, foolishly, or improperly employed, they used to say,

He is teaching a dog to bark;
He is teaching a bull to roar;
He is teaching a cock to crow;
He is teaching a serpent to hiss;
He is teaching a hen to chuck;
He is teaching a fish to bite;
He is writing on the surface of the sea;
He is boiling a bone;

He is shaving an ass;
He is glueing chalk;

He is sounding the trumpet before the victory;

He is putting meat in a chamber-pot; He is taking a post to kill a bee; He is selling an ox to catch a hare; He is doing what is done; He is promising golden mountains; He is taking a hammer to spread a plaster;

He is seeking figs where only brambles grow;

He is taking a hair to draw a waggon..
A NEW CORRESPONDENT.

ARCHITECTURAL INNOVATION. No. CXXXVI. (Remarks, &c.continued from p. 526.). DOR Whittingham, read Whitting

ton, p. 523 b. 1. 29.- The Architecture of France underwent a

total change in the Twelfth Century, p. 525 b. l. 35; read this as a quotation.

most

most splendid design! "Marble columns, cieling gilt, walls painted on a goal ground, pavement composed of rich mosaic, roof externally covered with gold, &c." ibid. After this description our Author seems to discredit his authority. He then continues: "it was probably of no great extent; but, though rude and barbarous in taste, it might still be gaudy and brilliant, &c." p. 72. "The altars of the Chapels, which, according to the antient custom, stood insulated, and were open behind for the reception of relicks, were placed close to the walls, &c. about the year 1528," p. 79. With us, the Altars of all descriptions appear (in innumerable instances), either from part of the tabies being still in existence, or the morticed recesses and brackets for supporting of them, never to have been insulated. In small Chapels, they were let into the Eastern wall; and in Choirs they were let into the basement of the 'altar-screens themselves. Consult the Cathedrals of Durham, Gloucester, &c.; Abbey Churches of Glastonbury, St. Alban's, &c. With us, the place for containing the relicks and shrines of Saints was immediately behind the altar-screens, called Chapels or Feretories, as at Durham, Westminster, Winchester, York, &c. Perhaps our Author's inexperience in these sort of arrangements made him misconceive the meaning of the historical account he has quoted.-"Interior of the Church is low and gloomy; being principally lighted by small windows, resembling those of our Saxou buildings," p. 86. To say that the windows of our Saxon buildings are small, &c. is an assertion as fa se, as that his knowledge in our Antiquities was futile and trifing. Behold the magnitude of the West window of Durham Cathedral, Tewkesbury Abbey Church, &c. though now filled in with pointed windows, and their tracery of subsequent dates. Examine the Saxon windows of the Cathedral of Gloucester, St. Alban's, southwell Minster, &c. &c. wherein every due proportion, according with the uprights, is to be met with. Proofs without end might be adduced to shew our Saxon windows were never constructed of a small size, except in Crypts, Towers to the exterior, walls of Castles, and other places of defence..

Our Author then proceeds to give, in general terms, some faint idea of the elevations, particularly of the Choir, where, he tells us, that some of the arches are round (which he calls "the round point" but does not explain what the round point can possibly mean); and others "Pointed, in consequence of the arrangement of the pillars, &c.; and this among a number of instances where the POINTED ARCH was used from accident and necessity, before it became an object of taste,” p. 87. After this confession, that the Pointed Arch was an "accidental introduction," what becomes of the high-sounding and confident assertion in the Preface, p. viii. that the Gothic (Pointed, rationally spoken of) Style appeared at once throughout Christendom?"

66

In this "Survey" of St. Germain, we are left almost in a state of utter darkness, or gloomy" uncertainty, as to the arrangement, decorations, and detail of parts; and what little light has been diffused, most evidently shews our Author's incapacity to go into that necessary professional description, which, from the title of the work, we were led to expect; and farther, that his exploration was but a momentary gaze. This, indeed, only could be allowed to those who were, in the short space of two years, to "survey" the extensive country of France (to say nothing of the glimpse bestowed in the stride over Italy, &c.) to find materials for a publication that was to glorify a foreign nation at the expence of our own.

Chapter I. "The Abbey of St. Genevieve ;" the description of which is but superficially gone into, and its " Façade" (West Front) and Interior, in regard to the detail, barely noticed; and concludes with these lines: "It is too mixed and mean a structure to afford a fair specimen of the early Gothic of that country," p. 94. Why then bring it into notice at all? In fact, its West Front is unworthy to stand in competition with most of our Parochial Churches, much less our Abbeys or Cathedrals. I have before me a print of the West view of St. Guevieve's Church, drawn in the seventeenth century by Silvester, from which take this description:

Three pointed Door-ways, with columns and architraves: these Door-. ways are divided by plain buttresses without

without splays, ascending to the top of the elevation, which is in four stories. First Story. The three Doorways as above.--Second Story. Small circular Window, with tracery, and, right and left, a small pl in pointed Window.-Third Story. Four small plain Windows, with circular heads. -Fourth Story. One small circular Window (lighting the roof). These several Windows are without mullions, &c. The pediment I pitch of the roof gives the finish to the elevation. I leave it to my Reader's decision, whether such a building as this deserved a place in a general exemplification, to prove the superiority of the architectural skill of France over that of England.

Chapter III. "St. Denys" (date, 1281). The arch (or dying) buttresses (of the East Front) produce an effect of confused richness, nd varied light and shade, which forms one of the grealest triumphs of this Style of Architexture," p. 107. Our Abbey Church, Westminster (having been shewn drawings of St. Denys made in the years. 1802 and 1803, in the possession of Major Anderson), I am inclined to believe, gave the idea to France, for the construction of these kind of buttresses at St. Denys, which very much resemble those of our Abbey, erected by Henry III. 1245, thirty-six years prior to the completion of St. Denys. "The interior presents a more regular and magnificent prospect a prospect which cannot fail to remind the English Traveller of our grand national recepiacle of monuments, though it certainly surpasses it, both in the richness and lightness of its Architecture," ibid. This assertion is what no Englishman, whose mind is not contaminated with the mania of travelled prejudice, cân submit to read with indifference. The above-mentioned Drawings plainly shew, tha the interior of St. Denys is much inferior to our " grand national receptacle ;" and as for "richness and lightness of Architecture," what can possibly surpass its Eastern interior end or Choir, and the two Transepts? "But it is, certain that the earliest arches of that shape (Pointed) which occur in the Architecture of the middle ages (beginning of the eleventh century), &c." p. 108. This assertion must be corrected; see again a general display of Pointed

Arches, jointly with semi-circular ones, in our Abbey Church at Malmesbury, dite 675, three centuries prior to such display in rance. "Our belief that the English Artists (1144) were prior to those of other nations in the use of the Pointed Arch, must be couserably shaken," p. 109. Let Malmesbury once more vindicate the priority of design in my countrymen. A number of instances are here introduced, with a view to prove the backwardness of our ancestors in using the Pointed Arch; that is, we were the humble copyists of france, the great exemplifier of the Pointed Style; and his list of our Ecclesiastical Imitations is run out in the two Western Towers of Durham Ca hedral, with this date 1233 (p. 111.) In Moore's correct "List of Monasteries, &c. in Great Britain," the d te stands 995. Here then our Author has shewn his incorrectness, not alone in dates, but in description, as the Tower is in itself a complete Saxon work. It may, however, be observed, that a few Poited Windows, of a very recent period, have been stuck about the Tower. This will also co..firm how hasty the young man was in his comparison.

The bold and striking elevation which distinguishes the works of the French Architects, is very remarkable in this Church (St. Denys), where the Nave is 90 feet high,' ibid. Oh, the fatality of French prepossession! Our Abbey Church, Westrainster, in the Nave, 101 feet high. "The works at St. Dennis afford a further illustration of the superior advances of the French in Gothic Architecture,” ibid.--“The upper range (of windows) at St. Dennis are eminently magnificent, that none at alt similar or comparable can be adduced from the contemporary buildings of this Country," p. 112. An unprofessional or unsatisfactory explanation of these windows is given; which, notwithstanding their boasted superiority, seem to fall far short in their dimensions and "flowery" tracery, to those in the Transepts of Lincoln; which are certainly of a much earlier date than those of St. Dennis; its date, 1281; Lincoln, 1211. A triumph is excited, thạt those " eminently magnificent" windows, "if compared with the more simple combinations of Westminster Abbey, and other contemporary build

ings of England, the superior advances of the French Architects will be immediately manifest," p. 113. The turn of the finishings of the Westminster windows are a chaste appropriation of parts to the general fabrick; and I more than suspect, that our Author suffered his judgment to be led astray; he, no doubt, was unacquainted that, at various periods with us, and of course in France, the mullions and tracery of the original windows of fabricks had undergone one, two, three, or four renewals, with regard to their fillingsin; and it is very common to see one range of windows with us, say Saxon, containing the varied tracery of the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; and executed at those times when any of the windows in their work wanted repair or renewal. Hence, may not the famed windows of St. Dennis stand with the fillings-in of subsequent periods? Answer me this, my masters! Let us have a regular drawing of one of the windows, and then for victory!

"It would be impossible, perhaps, to select two more striking instances of the superiority of the French in the thirteenth century, in the arts of Sculpture and Decoration, than the tomb of Dagobert, the principal founder of the Church," p. 113. In looking over the plate of this Monument in Montfaucon, I find that it consists of an arch, with small statues of angels in the architrave, supported by nich s right and left, containing the statue of a king and a queen. Within the arch, at the basement, is a very ordinary tomb, bearing the recumbent statue of Dagobert. On the back-ground above, a series of basso-relievos. Over the

columns, rich compartmented buttresses, in four stories, with small and delicate pinnacles. From the buttresses rises the pediment; its mouldings enriched, and its crockets turved with the most beautiful foliage. On a bracket, over the point of the arch, is a statue of Our Lord, seated; and the finial to the pediment composes a canopy over the statue. From the sides of the pediment rise two angels on brackets. The whole of this work is repeated on the South side of the Monument. The intent of the statues, however, are different, giving other noble personages; the seated statue on this side is that of God the Father receiving the soul of he deceased, supported by two angels. The interior finishings of the Monument are full of sculptures, both of statues and ornament. The tomb part of this' work, and its asis, are despoiled of their enricuments. On the top of the stab of the tomb are the indents, once containing a brass of the effigies of the deceased *.

If praises were wanting to evince ! the vast superiority of this design over that of Dagobert, the task would far exceed my humble ability; but the detail of each here introduced, I trust, will decidedly award the wreath "to that Nation which best deserves it." In regard to the real purposes of an Architectural "Survey," we are with this Church, as at St. Germain's, again plunged in doubt and uncertainty.

As these Remarks have necessarily exceeded the limits I proposed, they will be concluded in the next Miscellany; at which time, an Engraving of the West Front of York Cathedral will be submitted to the Readers, as a comparative example with that of the Cathedral of Rheims, given for the Frontispiece to the work under AN ARCHITECT.

Mr. URBAN, July 12. BOUT the year 1390 Cards were invented to divert Charles VI. then King of France, who was fallen into a melancholy disposition. That ·` they were not in use before appears probable, 1st, because ho Cards are to be seen in any painting, sculpture, tapestry, &c. more antient than the

* Engraved in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments. preceding