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crimson, armour of gold, and a cushion or pillow enamelled with glass. The effigies, when first placed in the church, lay side by side in one broad row across the central avenue, their heads towards the east, as was proved by the interesting discovery of the coffins in the recent excavations. These were eight in number; six of them lead, the others stone of immense size. There was a beautiful carved cross on one of the latter. Other discoveries, not without interest, were made at the same time. In noticing the history of Geoffrey de Magnaville, in our former paper, we stated that, on account of his dying excommunicated, the Templars, who attended him on his death-bed, not daring to bury him in consecrated ground, hung his coffin on a tree in their garden till absolution was obtained, and then buried him in the porch before the western door; and there he was recently found; for there can be no doubt that one of the two broken sarcophagi discovered beneath the pavement of the porch was his. Fragments of a third sarcophagus were also discovered just within the doorway crossing beneath the walk of the aisle. The arrangement of the effigies was a matter of much consideration and experiment before their present position was decided on. They now lie four on each side the central avenue, and parallel with it, in a double line; those on the right being, first, William Marshall, the younger, sheathing his sword, one of the bold barons who made John alternately shiver with fear and burn with rage; then, by his side beyond him, his great father, the Protector Pembroke, his sword piercing the head of the animal at his feet. Passing on to the second pair, foremost is the exceedingly graceful but unknown figure before mentioned, on which the restoring process was first tried; and the second, another son of Pembroke's, Gilbert Marshall, in the act of drawing his sword. The probable feeling of the artist in this gesture is very beautiful. His father and his brother were men who had performed great things, and it is easy to see that their respective gestures are meant to signify as much; but Gilbert, when on the eve of going to the Holy Land, was killed by the accident of his being thrown by a runaway horse at a tournament in 1241, which he himself instituted in defiance of the mandates of Henry III. the sculptor, therefore, desired to show what he would have done but for his premature decease. Of the four corresponding figures on the left three are unknown, and the fourth is that of De Magnaville, the burly warrior in front of the western pair. The remaining effigy, an exquisitely beautiful work, is that of Lord de Ros, another of the barons to whom we owe Magna Charta : this lies on the extreme right against the wall of the aisle, but in the same central line of the church as the other figures, whilst in a corresponding position on the extreme left is the coped stone shown in the engraving before referred to.

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Let us now step from the central to the side walks, or, rather, from the Round into the lower-roofed aisle which surrounds it, and, having marked the stately marble pillars which rise at intervals to support the groined roof with its gilded bosses; the stone seat on which these pillars are based, and which runs along the bottom of the wall throughout the entire church (no doubt the only seat to be found here in olden times); having admired the low but richly-sculptured arcade also rising from the seat, and stamping lightness and beauty on the wall above, where the pointed arches, and pillars with Norman capitals to support them,

show once more the progress of the struggle between the styles, and the approaching victory of the former; then the heads which decorate this arcade :-but here, as the eye runs along the row, it is at once arrested by the startling countenances which meet its glance, and by the endless variety that they exhibit. Again and again do we perambulate the entire circle of the aisle, for they also accompany it the whole distance, to gaze upon those novel, expressive, and powerfully characteristic faces. Setting out from the doorway along the left aisle, we presently come to one (the seventh) that, once beheld, is never to be forgotten anything so intensely full of agony, so ghastly in its horror, we never beheld. Then, to notice only the more remarkable of those countenances which pass before our eyes, we have those of a pale student; a female of distorted beauty; a cynic full of suffering, but expressing at the same time his marvellous contempt for it; a head on which an animal has fastened and is tearing the ear; a jester; numerous serio-comic indescribables one after another; a fine placid philosopher, with a look, however, of earnest surprise; horned and demoniac grotesques; and against the wall of the archway leading into the left aisle of the chancel, a female with the most touching expression of grief and utter desolation conceivable; you feel the tears are falling, though you do not see them: it is evidently a mother enduring some more than mortal anguish. Such is the left half-circle of this wondrous sculpturesque phantasmagoria. Crossing to the right, and so back again along that half-circle to the door, we find a striking and unsatisfactory change. The heads have in numerous instances little of the peculiar qualities of those we have noticed; a circumstance partly explained by the modern interpolations visible at a glance among them, and still more by the answers given to our inquiries on the subjects of these heads. It appears that at the time of an earlier repair of the Round (1825-1827) many of the heads were greatly decayed, and here and there some entirely missing. It is worthy of notice how the restorers of that day acted in comparison with the restorers of this. First, an able mechanic, but without the slightest pretension to artistical · skill and knowledge, was set to work on the heads of the side last mentioned, and they were copied as we now see them. Some little attention had probably been called to the subject in the mean time, and the consequence was, that the restoration of those on the opposite or north side was conducted with greater care, but still it was thought quite unnecessary that a sculptor should touch them. That done, of course the old heads seemed to the parties of no further use, so they went off to the builder's yard, bad, good, and indifferent, and were there usedwill it be believed?—as cart-wheel crutches; that is, to put under the wheels occasionally to prevent their slipping backwards. Such was the result of the inquiries made after them during the recent restoration of the Church! And now as to the general idea of the sculptor in these heads. It is impossible to go carefully through those on the north side without perceiving that, with but few exceptions, they all express an idea of pain, varying from the lowest animal manifestations up to the highest and most intellectual. On the south side, on the contrary, the predominant expression is placid or serene; and those of a different character, which are of original design, were probably removed from the opposite side, and the very ones substituted from this side, which there form so marked and corresponding an excep

tion to their neighbours. But many of these are evidently not of original design, but copied, in ignorance not merely of the sculptor's object, which might have been excusable enough, but in opposition to the manifest rule that all the heads should be different. Thus, in the centre of the north side, are three heads-a queen, some merry personage, and then a king. The expression of the king's countenance is very fine, and in harmony with the gloomy character of his numerous companions; whilst his queen's, on the contrary, has almost a simper upon it. Crossing to exactly the opposite spot on the south side, we find a precisely similar group, only that both king and queen are here accordant and serene-evidently showing, apart from the similarity of the queenly faces, that the other queen has been copied from this, to fill up a vacant space, which the restorer knew not how else to fill. And what is the idea that we think these heads were intended to convey, and which, if perfect, and arranged as we believe them to have been, they would now convey to every one?—It is that of Purgatory on the one side, and the relief from it, by the prayers and intercessions of the Church, on the other. It may be thought some corroboration of this supposition to point out that the lofty corbel heads, one on each side the wall of the entrances into the aisles of the chancel, which are original, are so decidedly and carefully contrasted as to make it certain the sculptor had some idea of the kind indicated. The peace that passes all understanding is as unmistakably stamped on the head on one side of the arch, as the unendurable agony of eternal torture is on that on the other. In both arches the condemned faces are Saracenic: of course mere Purgatory was not enough for them. A curious, and, to artists at least, an interesting discovery, looked at in connection with the frequent custom of the Greeks even in the purest period of sculpture, was made during the restoration: some of the heads just mentioned had glass beads inserted for eyes. We may observe, in concluding our notice of the heads in the Rotunda, that the best of them are evidently bad copies of masterly originals-giving us the character and expression, which could not be well missed, though they have no doubt been sufficiently adulterated, and giving us no more. We may see how much we have lost in the exchange by a glance at the only other original head, of the beautiful little scraph with flowing hair, on the corner of the wall between the Rotunda and the south aisle. This was discovered but a week before the opening of the church. Traces of colour are still perceptible; and we learn from Mr. Richardson that the checks had been delicately tinged with the natural huc, the lips with vermilion, the pupil of the eye with blue, whilst the hair had been gilded. It was, as usual, thickly encrusted with layer upon layer of paint, dirt, and whitewash, so thickly indeed as to have escaped discovery till the period mentioned. But such was the state of the building generally only two short years ago. As we now turn from one beautiful and stately object to another, with a growing sense of delight, to see how the parts and the whole mutually harmonise with and enhance cach other, it is difficult to recall the medley scene they have displaced. The painted window above was not then in existence, and that exceedingly elegant sculptured wheel-window over the entrance was closed up; the roof was flat, and the groining of the aisles was concealed in whitewash; every marble pillar (then unknown to be marble) the same; monumental barbarisms of the worst. periods of English sculpture (now happily removed to the triforium above) were let

into the very body of the pillars, and also encumbered the arches; the noble threefold entrance, from the Round to the chancel, instead of enhancing-by the momentary interruption of the view, and by the new combinations at the same time formed the superior architectural beauty we are approaching, as at present, was most carefully hidden by a glass screen extending right across; and above, in the central archway, was the organ revelling in classical decorations; lastly, the very bases of the pillars in the chancel were entirely hidden by the great pews, and the pavement of the church throughout was considerably higher than the original

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level. On examination of the pillars in the Round, when they had been cleaned, it was found that they were so decayed that new ones were indispensable; and great as the expense necessarily was, the Benchers determined to make no unworthy shifts, but to replace them as they ought to be replaced. Accordingly a person was sent to Purbeck to make arrangements for the opening once more of its celebrated quarries. This little circumstance shows the spirit in which the

Benchers undertook and carried on their task. As to the pavement, it was found, on digging down to the original level, that it had been formerly tessellated; and, in consequence, we have got rid of the staple ornament for modern churches, when we wanted to make them very fine, as at St. Paul's-the black and white checquer and have obtained this warm and beautiful surface instead, formed of encaustic tiles. The ground is a dark-red or chocolate, but so elaborately covered with the amber or yellowish ornaments, as to make the latter the prevailing hue. The patterns form, first, divisions of various breadth (the widest in the centre of the central avenue), extending, side by side, from the entrance-door to the farthest end of the chancel: within each division there is no alteration of pattern, but the divisions themselves, as compared with each other, present considerable differences. The two most striking are those next to the broad central one, where, as we pace along, we have the lamb on one side of us, and the winged horse on the other-the emblems of the two Societies to which the church belongs. The former is founded on the device of St. John; the latter, it is supposed, on the interesting story related in a former paper, of the poverty of the Knight Templars at the outset of their career, when two knights rode one horse. Among the other ornaments of the pavement are a profusion of linked-tailed animals in heraldic postures: lions, cocks, and foxes; tigers, with something very like mail upon their shoulders; basilisks, and other grotesques. There are also copies of designs of Anglo-Saxon origin-as figures playing musical instruments; and one illustrative of the story of Edward the Confessor-the Evangelist John and the ring—a design which at once tells us from whence the materials for the pavement have been borrowed, namely, the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey. The pavement formed by the tiles is as strong and imperishable as it is beautiful. The tiles are perforated all over with small holes on the under side, consequently when they are laid on the cement prepared to receive them, and pressed down, the latter rises into these perforations, and, hardening there, binds the whole indissolubly together.

It is a remarkable and somewhat happy coincidence, although one that does not seem to have been yet noticed, that the revival of the art of decorating our public buildings should have been begun in that very church where it is highly probable the art may have been first witnessed in all its splendour in England, but which, at all events, was founded by men who were among the introducers of that art into this country. When the Crusaders returned from the Holy Land, we know that they brought with them a confirmed taste for Eastern magnifi"Barbaric pearl and gold" had not been showered before their eyes in vain; and among the Crusaders, the Knights Templars, rude as was the simplicity in which they delighted at the outset of their career, great as was their then contempt for luxury and wealth, very much altered their minds, to say the least of it, after a few visits to the Holy Land. To this circumstance doubtless may be attributed the Eastern character of the decorations of the period, as on the dome here above us, for instance.* Our ecclesiastics, being at perfect liberty to hang

cence.

* It may be observed here, once for all, that the decorations throughout the church are strictly in accordance with the period of the erection.

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