by the description which Mr. Hope gives of the magnificent effect produced in the first Christian Basilicas, partly arising from the exposure of their roofs. In his Essay, chap. ix. p. 93, he says, that the body of these Christian Basilicas, which from their floor to their ceiling possessed not, except in their antique columns, a single moulding or member projecting from their flat perpendicular surface, and over their naked walls only presented the bare transverse timbers of their ceiling and roof, resembled huge barns of the most splendid materials, but huge barns which from the simplicity, the distinctness, the magnificence, the harmony of their component parts, had a grandeur which we in vain seek in the complicated architecture of modern churches.' The inclined sides of the roof being boarded, it is capable of demonstration that a better surface for the conduction of sound would be obtained than with the flat plaster ceiling hitherto so frequently adopted. While on this subject I may also remark on another very important element in the effect of all works of architectural art-I allude to colour. By using the red pine, well varnished, for the roofs and pewing, the beautiful appearance of cedar is given; by this means some little expense in painting would be saved, and the work would be equally well preserved; this plan has been adopted with success in private buildings which have come under my observation."

The recent appearance of personal discomfort has made Mr. Shaw speak with considerable feeling and strength of " the want of a sufficient number and capacity of outlets" in the churches of populous neighbourhoods. When the retiring tide of an abundant congregation has to debouche through a narrow mouth, it is sometimes driven back by stress of weather, and stagnates in its bed, i.e. in the aisles and passages; a situation of great suspense and annoyance to those who happen to be far back in the tail of the ebbing stream, especially at the critical hour of dinner. Now we

cannot answer for our own feelings, if, after sitting out a long sermon, we had found ourselves in for another three-quarters of quiet suffering, but are certainly disposed to meet the difficulty in a different way from Mr. Shaw. It will be seen, in the accompanying drawing, he gives his church as much door-way as the width of the front will allow. This impairs the simplicity and the unity of an otherwise graceful elevation, and reminds us of the boxes, pit and gallery entrances of a theatre.

But this complaint, for which there really is some ground, reminds us of one or two more serious inconveniences in the construction of modern churches than an occasional stoppage at the doors. It is desirable that a church

in a city should not be entered too abruptly; that there should be not a mere lobby, not merely an interval with two or three doors to keep out the wind, not merely a sort of dry-dock to divest ourselves of one's foul weather equipment, but a deep portico, or still better a vestibule or pronaos. There should be something to create the idea of retirement and distance from the public thoroughfare, like the ante-chapels at our colleges. A few yards length of cloister would answer this purpose, be easily obtained, and be very convenient. The naves of our cathedrals and collegiate churches were designed, amongst other uses, for a moral interval, and also for an intervening state of mental employment between divine worship and more secular affairs. Gradations are the outworks of sanctity. Religious meditation and even a certain tone and certain topics of conversation are sacred employments, and it would be well if the plan and arrangement of our churches allowed and encouraged them without directly interfering with their most sacred uses. The circular part of the Temple Church is an example of what we mean, though many other kinds of edifice, even a mere open arcade, would answer the same purpose at less cost and with more convenience. It might be always open during the day, as Guildhall is, without inconvenience; it might be the place for sepulchral monuments and for other memorials and inscriptions of a not entirely secular character. Such a plan would both facilitate the egress of a crowd anxious to make the best of its way out of church; and, if by unfortunate accident any persons should still be compelled to stay a few minutes longer on sacred ground than they had previously resigned their minds to, they might, without impropriety, beguile the time by pacing up and down, and even conversing, in a place of qualified sanctity, and they might perhaps find topics of serious reflection in its storied windows and historic walls.

Such an appendage to our churches would also be a proper place for public business of a mixed character, and for those legal notices which ought not to be obtruded on the eyes of the Christian on the point of falling down before the presence of his Maker, and yet have so much ecclesiastical bearing that they ought not to be entirely excluded from the sacred precincts and utterly profaned. As our duty to God does not constitute the whole of religion, so we do not object to seeing our duty to our neighbour, even in the forbidding dress of a tax-gatherer's notice, being allowed a certain place about our churches. Surely the way in which these things are spoken of in Scripture, and some of the incidents in the Gospels, are of themselves enough to give a degree of sanctity to these matters, according to which degree we would have them recognized in sacred ground.

If, as some appear to doubt, the spirit of this age allowed it, all our churches were so arranged and so left open that Christians might be there at other times and for other purposes than public worship, what a delightful retirement, what a needful rest of body and mind it would be to many a wearied and distracted soul. How beneficial to many the merely passing along the sacred aisle might prove! Nor probably are they few whom this world's shame and their own irresolution of purpose keep from entering the sacred threshold, when the act would stamp them at once for devotees; but who yet would gladly seek and linger in a place which, while it encouraged prayer and holy meditation, still left it inward and unseen; and who perhaps from such beginnings, humble though they be, might afterwards be won to bolder and more methodic piety.

How few places have we for religious converse and meditation like the walks and porticos which the school of Greek philosophy so frequented, as even thence to derive their names. They still show at the beautiful church of Brant Broughton in Lincolnshire the aisle along which Warburton used to pace in rainy weather while composing his Divine Legation; but few of our largest churches, as now fitted up, will permit or at least encou rage such a practice. In point of fact they are hermetically sealed, till wanted, that is, from one act of public worship to another, as if the Deity whom therein we worshipped were all that time asleep. They usually seem but the graves of the Church. They are made only for one act and hour of service. The churchman passes from the outer door to his seat just as he does on entering a stage-coach, without interval, without preamble, without alternative. The two hours journey over, he leaves his pew and the church at once. His movements are in a grove. He cannot even look about him; not during service, for theu his duty otherwise engages him-not after, for then he is hurried out down the narrow aisle in the dense retreating column; and if he should voluntarily stay ten minutes after, he would provoke the curiosity, perhaps the interference of the beadle. Many have frequented churches for years, and never seen more of them than came within the prospect from their own pews.

But we have wandered far from Mr. Shaw, to whom we will return just to repeat, that his suggestions are, as a whole, very valuable, and are given in an interesting form; but, that we hope, either he or some one else will give them a little further consideration, before he adds to the many nondescript structures starting around us, a church pretending to be in the Lombard style. Our jealousy for the indigenous English orders tempts us to predict that no style of foreign growth will ever answer here.

Mr. Alfred Smith's work is a very interesting collection of views of churches in the new parliamentary borough of Stroud, so ingeniously manipulated a few years ago out of some score villages, townships, hamlets, &c. &c. But it is our business to consider this miserably over-populous district of clothiers, in its relation to another kind of Reform; which it certainly did need, and we fear needs still. Mr. Smith ohserves in his preface, "that nearly two-thirds of the present churches in this district were erected, when the population of the whole county did not exceed the numbers now contained in the borough of Stroud." The amounts of population and church accommodation, appended by Mr. Smith to his account of each parish, sufficiently proves, as he says, "the great want of church room, notwithstanding the great efforts lately made and still making throughout this district by the friends of the Church to obviate this deficiency." It appears from the views before us, that at least six new churches have been built within a few years, and the profits of this publication are to be applied to the funds of another proposed at Stroud. This is very creditable, when we consider the other immense, and even more peremptory, demands on charity which this district has witnessed for some time past, owing to the failure of its branch of manufacture, whole parishes of the poor having been supported for months together, as we are informed, by the voluntary assistance of clergymen and their friends. Mr. Smith is an artist, and has for his subject a country of which he says, with an artist's enthusiasm, "he believes no part of England has more picturesque variety of landscape within a given number of square miles." His very interesting drawings certainly go some way to bear him out in this assertion: but as it does not come within our scope to notice his woods and hills, we have therefore taken the liberty of detaching the churches from the circumjacent scenery. We are perhaps committing a double injustice, viz. both to the artist and the architect, when we criticize architecture in a disguise of picturesque; but having thus explained the source whence we have gained the following six views of churches, we leave our readers to receive them and our remarks, for as much as, under these circumstances, they are worth. "The new church on Amberley

Common, in the parish of Minchinhampton, was erected at the sole cost of David Ricardo, Esq., lord of the manor and patron of the advowson; and consecrated Sept. 1836. It is built,, continues Mr. Smith, with some naïveté, in the modern Gothic style, with school-rooms under its entire basement,

wherein a large number of children are taught on week days, and a still larger on Sundays; the interior of the church, to which an entrance is gained by an ascent of steps, is divided into three aisles by two rows of cast iron pillars; and in a recess is placed a marble altar, and stone altar-piece. The church measures 84 feet by 42, is without galleries, and will contain 800 persons. The adjoining parsonage was also buik by the same munificent patron.'

As we are not concerned with the builder, but the building, we hope to be excused our seeming ungraciousness, in objecting to the general flatness of the structure, to the vast continuous surface of roof, to the difference of pitch in the roofs of the nave and the aisles, the church itself being made a second floor over a room of a less sacred character,* and so not having entire possession of the site, to the triple lancet window, proper to an east end, being put over the west door, to the windows generally being those of the lancet kind exaggerated till they have lost all their peculiar grace.

"Oakridge or Oaklynch.

It is

This chapel of ease to Bisley was erected chiefly by the liberality and exertions of the present incumbent, the Rev. Thomas Keble, assisted by voluntary gifts; it was consecrated on the festival of St. Bartholomew, in 1837, and is dedicated to that saint. built on the skirts of Bisley Common, surrounded by a large and impoverished population, at a distance of several miles from their parish church. This chapel is built after the architecture of the 13th century, with lancet windows, and intervening buttresses; it has a small chancel, tower and porch. Adjacent, is a parsonage and commodious school."

This is on the whole a very successful attempt to retain the ancient outlines and features of a rural church, tower, chancel and porch, all developed to their full proportions, without sacrifice of convenience and accommodation. Its simplicity, so well suited to the locality, is an agreeable contrast to the town-like affectation of many new country churches. Yet at the risk of seeming fastidious, we must confess that nothing can reconcile us to the squareness and lowness of the nave, as distinct from the chancel, and the modern Gothic windows, i. e. exaggerated lancet. The mullioned window in the west front of the tower, while it is an ornament to that part of the building, exposes still more

Somewhat better, however, than the wine and spirit vaults under the proprietary chapels in London.