and measure, a family or a village. Time only make them, and time only can make an ancient village church.

Mr. Hamilton's Anglo-Norman design is by far his best, and tempts us to wish that something of the sort may be attempted before long. In many cases it would perhaps appear affectation to adopt this style, but there seems the greatest propriety in retaining it, where the style of the old church on the site of which the new one is built, or of a single door-way in it, or of some neighbouring build

ing, affords an obvious precedent. A relic of this sort is a local tradition which it seems wise and pious to keep up. After Mr. Hamilton's disclaimer of scientific accuracy, it is perhaps almost superfluous to observe, that his windows and doors are far too large; that the ornamental work, with which he has surrounded them, are those usually confined to the interior; that the arches of his door-ways spring too high; that the slender buttresses and octangular corner turret of the tower belong to a much later style than Anglo-Norman, and that the pointed window in the chancel, which just makes its appearance, is equally unsuitable. For various other imperfections which an eye of taste will detect, our copy must be held responsible; an apology we here make once for all to our reader, and to the authors whom we have undertaken to introduce to him.

As a specimen of a modern church in this style, we give a rough copy from a very beautiful engraving of the new church at Colchester. It is built close to the well-known ruins of St. Botolph's Priory Church; a most picturesque pile of Roman brick, which seemed to dictate the style of any sacred building in its proximity. This church was demolished at the Reformation, and the site and possessions, together with other church property, given by Henry VIII. to Lord Chancellor Audley. For three centuries there has been no church in this populous parish. The church before us, which is designed to be in some sort "a second temple," though it could hardly aim at

"the glory of the first," must yet be a very magnificent structure, if the drawing sent to us is to be trusted. There appear however to be some decided modernisms in the plan and proportions.

To return to Mr. Hamilton. We have seldom seen a more grotesque disposition of parts than the design, in which a sort of chancel is placed across a stunted nave, and the door is in the side of the tower. Surely it is possible to be original without departing so far from ancient usage and

new ideas, as find what have escaped the mind of others. It conceives ideas which strike us at once as having a sort of self-evident propriety and beauty. Its creations are at the same time like and unlike what we know already-like, in that they accord with our existent tastes and notions;-unlike, in that they seem each to have

an individual essence.

Thus the structure before us cannot be

called original though preposterous. Can Mr. Hamilton really bat imagine that there is a special suitableness to rural scenery in loading a small nave with two spires? The idea possibly is taken from the towers of Exeter Cathedral, which are its great defect. The windows of this design, considered in their connection with spires, are as new as the plan, and as unpicturesque.

But this is the general character of Mr. Hamilton's drawings. When they are novel they are not graceful; whatever grace or propriety they may have, it is only when they are not new. One is a chapel with its west front flanked by two porches, whose pent-house roofs, contrary to custom and every rule of taste, lean on the side walls of the chapel. Another is a cruciform church full of large windows, with a lofty spire at the intersection, rising out of the very roof. Another of similar form has a Tudor door, lancet windows, and a complicated structure in the midst, which cannot be described, except by saying that it is neither a tower nor a spire. It is only by such artifices as these that he escapes the common forms of dulness and inelegance, which otherwise abound in his drawings: broad roofs and light pinnacles, stunted chancels quite contradicting his own theory of bold projections, large windows without mullions, and with curves which no compass or any discoverable formula could ever describe. His ground plans are as objectionable; two passages being substituted for one main aisle whenever possible, and the altar almost surrounded with sittings. We only hope that the irregularities and eccentricities of these designs will not throw any discredit on the leading ideas of the work, viz. that there is a certain style of churches proper to rural districts, that this style is not, as some suppose, mere cheapness and baldness; and that it is generally best attained by a bold division into distinct and characteristic parts.

Yet within certain bounds, for a congregation of less than three hundred, we think it desirable, and very consistent with our ancient models, to retain the simplest form of a church. The simplest form and most primitive type of the classic or pagan style is a barn, which was the original of the temple. Whether this derivation be historically true, or merely an architectural theory, does not matter. The purer cultivation of that style in our days is entirely owing to the more frequent recurrence to its primitive type; which, till a few years back, had been almost lost sight of. The details of the style, that is its pillars and cornices, had been in universal use, without any reference to the original scheme or rationale of building in which they had first been used, and which alone gave them their propriety-we mean their poetical or ideal

propriety, for we are putting bare utility out of the question. But these details thus employed, i. e. used merely as ornaments, and in edifices constructed on a different scheme, were altered and corrupted. Nothing has conduced so much to the greater accuracy with which they are now used, as our greater familiarity with Grecian temples, even though we still use them in edifices of a very complicated and un-Grecian character.

Now we are inclined to hope that the same improvement will accrue to the Gothic or Catholic style, from a more frequent recurrence to its primitive or elementary type, which, like the type of the Grecian temple, is a barn, though with some important differences. The Grecian temple was constructed of large stones; its principle of strength was the perpendicular pressure; its roof and its general effect were flat and low. On the other hand, the Gothic oratory was composed of mere handfuls of stone; it stood by a balance of counteracting pressures; its roof and its general effect was high and pointed. They were both children of nature, but in different climates.

It is very probable that a simple oblong building was the nucleous of most of our churches, at least in rural districts. To this was afterwards added a tower and a chancel; but frequently the old church remains as the chancel, the nave being of later date. The side aisles were generally chantries, each with its own altar, added long after the nave. This addition of course required that the walls of the nave should give way to pillars and arches. The clerestory is generally of a still later date, and rendered necessary by the side aisles, being in fact the substitution of a row of windows with a flat roof, in place of the dark high-pitched roof of the old nave, whose traces are visible on the east wall of the tower in many churches. The porches are generally the latest part of the building, many having been added even after the Reformation, with a view of course to comfort.

It is true that our churches have generally been enlarged on a certain plan, it is true also that the main features of the plan existed before the foundation of a single extant English church; viz. in the nave, aisles, pillars, arches, and clerestory windows of the Basilicas, yet this does not alter the fact of the growth of our churches having been gradual and accidental, and does not render it improbable that if the first builders had had the means at their command, they would generally have made their barn-shaped structures large enough to supersede any addition for many ages. We do not therefore think it a real innovation on antiquity, to design a church by merely copying on a somewhat larger scale, the small churches and chancels of the early styles. In other

words, we do not think their straitened dimensions absolutely essential to their plan. Perhaps a slight alteration in the proportions will enable us to increase the size of a small AngloNorman or early English chancel enough to accommodate several hundreds. At least we think this better than attempting tower, aisles, clerestory, or chancel, and only doing it by halves, on a kind of shadowy make-believe scale.

By way of a rough model for imitation, we have taken from the British Magazine, vol. vii. p. 14, the drawing of a very simple and picturesque chapel, of which the following interesting and characteristic account is there given.

"Blackfordby has immemorially been a hamlet of Ashby; and its ecclesiastical endowments, with those of the latter, were given in a.d. 1145, to the abbey of Lilleshul, which retained them until the dissolution of religious establishments. Under the year 1220, it is recorded that the abbot of Lilleshul, who held the patronage of Ashby to his own use 'ab antiquo,' bad also the chapel of Blackfordby, where divine service was performed three times in the week, from the mother church.

"The Marquis of Hastings is lord of the manor of Blackfordby, and patron of the living. On alternate Sundays, the vicar of Ashby does duty in the chapel, which is a very ancient structure, consisting of a nave and a chancel. The lancet windows, the old round font of stone, and the stand for an hour glass near the pulpit, are objects of interest. Originally its site must have been chosen on account of its secluded beauties and salubrity. It overlooks an extensive and luxuriant landscape, and rests upon a rock which pours forth a copious spring, whose waters were never known to freeze.'

As another rough model to work upon, we offer a hasty sketch of the chapel of Adston, in Northamptonshire. It is of much later date than the last. Its interior dimensions are 33 by 17, with a very small aisle 6 feet 6 inches wide, opening to the nave with low but graceful arches. On the other side are two pointed windows with handsome tracery. The structure, simple and small as it is, possesses considerable dignity, from the height of the walls compared with the other proportions, from the high pitch of the roof, from several bold buttresses, and a few elegant curves and mouldings, and lastly, from the picturesqueness of its situation.