Another old method adect ;rating. the walls, the appropriate. ness of which cannot be questioned, is by covering them with texts of Scripture, on which our previous author. Mr. Poole, remarks as follows :—"The most simple occupant of the walls of churches is a series of pas-ages from the Sacred Scriptures, or of moral sentences of tried w isdom and appropriate ten. dency. The introduction of the inseript ions is very ancient. Bingham gives us several instances, and. among others, two distiehs written over the doors of the church, one on tile outside, exhorting men to enter the Church with a }MFG and peaceable heart :— ' Pax tibi it goicunque Dei penetralia Christi Pectore pacitico candidus ingred•ris; and the other within, requiring those who go out of the church to leave at least their heart behind them :— Quisqois ab rode Dei perfect is online votis Egrederis, reinca corpore, matte: " St. Ambrose tells us of an appropriate passage of Scrip ture, written on the walls of that p no of the church which was allotted to the virgins. And besides these moral lessons and texts of Seript ure. reel trds of t he dedicati..n of the church were sometimes inscribed on the wills: Snell was that written by the altar of Sancta Sophia, by instinian.
"To (-wivey stone notion hiw appropriately such passages may be selected and arranged, and how essive may he their general effect. we will adduce the whole •eries of inscriptions fr(mt a small chapel at Luton. in Bedfordshire. This dupe), which is now the property of the ..Martin's of Bute, was !milt by one of the Napier fancily. in the reign Of dames 1., and the beautiful wainscoting with which it is fitted up, was brought from Tittenhanger, where it had been fixed by Sir Thomas Pope. in 151s, the principal doorway are the wools, Donms Dei porta Coeli : • Thi. I louse of Goal is the Gate of heaven ;' and on the north and south side of the entrance : Laudate cum juvenes, laudate cum vii:zines, • Praise Dim. ye young men ; praise hint, ye maidens.' from Psalm cxlviii. 12. On the. two transverses of a beautifully carved door, is an insult, tit tn from Psalm •xviii. ;20, Porta Domini, dusti intrabunt. • This is the gate of the Lord, the just shall enter in.' With refe•ence in a nearer approach to the altar, we have the inter innocentes manns Incas, et :Ware WWII DOIllille : will wash Inv hands among innocent. and I will compass thine altar, 0 Lord: and on the altar itself not only are the names of our blessed Lord, tau td in Ilebrew, Greek, and Latin, as they were inscribed by Pilate on his cross, but also the following passages from Deb. xiii. 10 ; Mutt. xxvi. ; 1 Peter i. 1•2 ; and 1 Cur. xi. 2-1, •25 : 1 labeinus altare—Ex hoc onmes—in tithe desid erata Angell prospieere-1-1()C in memoriam mei : We have an altar—Eat ye all of this—Into w Inch the angels desire to look—Do this in remembrance of mc.' Even the singular addition of a chinuley-piece in this chapel. has its appropriate inscription Ecee ignis et ligtmm, obi est vietima holocansti ? the fire and the wo,td, but where is the victim of the whole burnt offering l'—Gen, xxii. 7." Such was the decoration of the walls of our old churches, nor were the details or furniture neglt.cted. but all enriched with colour, and the smaller pat•ts with gilding. The rich ness produced by this treatment, which might otherwise have appeared too glaring, was chastened and softened down by the dim religious light shed through the storied panes of the stained windows, which, while th •y added to the general effect, imparted a chasteness throughout the whole structure. An old in all its glory, must have been truly beautiffil.
Of the taterials.—Our old churches were most generally built of stone, and the majority of them of rou:th rag or rubble, built up into the fabric in the same state as brought from the quarry ; the individual stones were small, and not all of the same size ; they varied likewise in shape, not being built up in regular courses, but fitted together as neatly as ch•ctunstances would permit ; the longer spaces being tilled up with smaller stones, and the lesser ones with cement. This nutsom•y was bonded at intervals by longer
stones running through the work, and at the angles by coins of' more regalial. workmanship. The dressings of the building, such as the jamb,: and finishings of windows, doorways, and other apertures, as well as the pinnacles, water-tables, string courses, mouldings. and all other portions of the edifice which required much labour, were of some more manageable stone. such as Caen ; and in some of the more highly embellished structures, of Purbeck marble. In some localities, flint is employed instead of rubble, more especially in Norffilk and Suffidk, not infrequently in Essex and other counties ; in many cases of this kind, the walls are made up of flints, inserted in a kind of framework of freestone, which method, with the aid of good cement. produces a very durable and nut unpleasing structure. Nor are these the only materials employed in the construction of churches ; we occasionally meet with brick and wool as substitutes for stone, more frequently than elsewhere, in the county of Essex. Brick, however. was not used during the best periods of ecclesiastical architecture, nor does it produce an effect so pleasing to the eye, as either of the befttre-mentioneti materials; their colour, red, is not nearly so agreeable as the more subdued tones of flint or rubble. The walls, in all the above cases, were of great thickness, which tended not only to the greater stability of the structure, but also to maintain an equability of temperature in the interior. A good specimen of a wooden church is that or Greoiistead. Essex, w hid' has recently heel] restored, and of which al f 'flowing description, previous to its restoration, is given in one IX Weale's Quarterly Papers : The timber walls, says the writer, take to be of oak, though some imagine t hem 10 he of ehestnut-w ood, are but six feet in height on the outside. including the sill ; they are not, as usually described, 'half-trees.' hut have had a portion of the centre or heart ent out, probably to furnish beams for the construction of the roof and sills : the outside or slabs thus left, were placed on the sill, Ina by what kind of tenon they are there retained. does not appear ; while the upper ends, being roughly adzed oll' to a thin edge, are let into a groove, and which, with the piece of timber in it is cut, runs the NN hole length of the building itself; the dimly-posts are of square timber, and these are secured in the ahove-mentitmed groove by small wooden pins, still firm and strong—a truly wonderful example of the durability of British oak. At the west end I had an opportunity of examining the 'cry heart of the thnher ; to the edge of au exceedingly goq pocket-knife, it appeared like iron, and has acquired hoof age a colour approaching to ebony, but of a more beautiful brown ; and if any conclusion may be drawn from the appearance of the building, I see no reason why it should not endure as long as it has already existed. The outsides of all the trees are furrowed to the depth of about an inch into long stringy ridges by the dee:1N• of the softer parts of the timber, but these ridges seem equally hard as the heart of the wood itself; tit: north doorway, which measures only !hur feet five inches in height by two feet five inches in width, is at present closed with mas(tnry ; but the aperture must have been original. It is generally thought that the woodwork of the roof is coeval with the walls, and it was most likely formerly covered with thatch, as 13ede, describes, and as may still be seen on many village churches in the county of Norltdk.