furnished jewell-house, and a rich wardrobe of more than 2000 gowns, with all things else answerable.

"The nobility and council came from Richmond that morning; and before ten o'clock had proclaimed king James at Whitehall, Temple Bar, and so forward in Cheapside and other places. The council went on Saturday to Richmond; and that night brought the corpse with an honourable attendance to Whitehall, where the household remains. The body was not opened, but wrapt up in sear cloths, and other preservatives.

66

April 12th. The queen's funeral is appointed the 28th of this present, with as much solemnity as hath been used to any former prince, and that by the king's own direction. It shall be kept at Westminster; and the lady Arabella is the chief mourner, accompanied with two marquesses, sixteen countesses, and thirty baronesses, with all their train; besides the greatest part of the nobility, all the council and officers of the household.

"Dec. 6th, 1608. I come now from reading a short discourse of queen Elizabeth's life, written in Latin by sir Francis Bacon.+ If you have not seen or heard of it, it is worth inquiry; yet methinks he does languescere toward the end, and falls from his first part; neither do I warrant that this Latin will abide test or touch."

Though we have only gone over about one third of the volume be

fore us, our selections have beer so copious that we must refer all the rest to the original, which we again recommend to the attention of the public, as rendered valuable by antiquarian and historical facts, and pleasant by miscellaneous intelligence."

4.--Lectures on Architecture, comprising the History of the Arts from the earliest times to the present day. By James Elmes, Architect.

These lectures were delivered at the Surrey and Russell Institutions, London, and at the Philosophical Institution, Birmingham. Mr. Elmes, writes with the fondness and zeal of a man in earnest with his profession, and, with a degree of ability calculated to excite interest.

The various styles of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, their faults, their beauties, together with the Roman schools, and the decline and revival of architecture, are all accurately detailed and aptly contrasted and illustrated. Speaking of the antiquities of Ireland, Mr. E., in his 7th lecture, says,

"From tours which I have recently made through some of the most interesting parts of Ireland for architectural antiquities, and from considerable investigation into its history, I conceive that country to have been peopled originally from the East; the ancient architecture, the ancient religion, the ancient language of

Ireland,

Ireland, and those of the inhabitants of Hindustan, and other Oriental countries, coinciding in a wonderful manner."

He endeavours to confirm this statement by a comparison of the language with eastern dialects, and proceeds:

"The round towers of Ireland, of which I have a list of nearly seventy now remaining, are among the most singular and disputed buildings of antiquity. They resemble one another in general appearance, and vary from thirty to one hundred and thirty feet in height, and from thirteen to nineteen or twenty feet in diameter. Their resemblance to the pillars

or round towers of the East cannot but be remarked. These structures have opened to men of leisure and erudition a spacious field for conjecture. Giraldus Cambrensis mentions them as early as 1185; John Lynch alJudes to them in 1662, and says, the Danes who entered Ireland, according to Giraldus, in 838, are reported to be the authors of Our orbicular narrow towers. They were called clock theach, or the house of the bell. Peter Walsh wrote of them in 1684, and Dr. Molyneux in 1727. Since these, Dr. Ledwich and Mr. Grose are the most satisfactory. Some writers think that they were watch-towers, or beacons, to observe the approach of an enemy, and others that they were merely belfries to warn the country round of danger, or to call the people to worship, because they are mostly found near their ancient churches. To me this hypothesis appears quite unsatisfactory: the tower at Kilkenny, which I measured and investigated last spring, is,

indeed, evidently older than the cathedral, the south transept of which appears to have been shortened in its original building on account of the round tower, which is within a very few feet of it. Other antiquarian writers suppose them to have been the residences of anchorite monks, in imitation of eastern pillars, similar to that of Allahabad. Some few imagine them to have been places of penance, or purgatorial pillars, in which the penitent was elevated according to his crime, and descended as his offences were expiated.

"A description of one may serve for the whole; and I will take that at Monasterboice, three miles from Drogheda. This fine tower is one hundred and ten feet high, and fifty-one feet in circumference, beautifully diminishing like the shaft of an antique Doric column. Its diameter is seventeen feet, and the thickness of the walls, which are built of a blue stone found in the neighbourhood, three feet six inches; the door is five feet six inches high, twentytwo inches wide, and six feet above the present level of the ground. The ancient church, which is close to it, is now in ruins. In the church-yard are two very old and curious crosses; one, about eighteen feet high, covered with sculpture, is called St. Boyne's cross, and is esteemed the most ancient religious relic now in Ireland. It is of one stone, and is said to have been sent from Rome, and erected by order of the Pope. Among the sculptures on it, there is an inscription in Irish characters, in which is plainly legible the name of Muredach, who was for some time king

of

of Ireland, and died in 534, about a hundred years before the arrival of St. Patrick in that kingdom.

This, however, is by no means the loftiest round tower; that of Drumiskin, in the county of Louth, being one hundred and thirty feet high, and that of Kildare, or Chilledaire, being one hundred and thirty-three feet high, and only eighteen feet in diameter. The latter extraordinary building, the walls of which are but three feet six inches in thickness, is built of fine white granite to about twelve feet from the ground, and the rest of the blue stone of the country; the door is fourteen feet from the ground. Chilledaire signifies the wood of oaks, and was a large ancient forest, comprehending the middle part of the present county of Kildare. In the centre of this wood was a large plain sacred to druidical worship, and now called the Curragh of Kildare, celebrated

as a race-course.

My next subject will be those very ancient and rude structures in both kingdoms, commonly understood to be druidical remains; and first, though briefly, of cromlechs. These monuments are called by the Welch crum lechew, or bowing-stones, because they bowed before them in their ceremonials of religious worship. Both the northern and eastern ancient superstitions ascribed divine qualities to monstrous unhewn stones, which they adored as gods. A circle of twelve, with one in the centre representing the prime deity, became a temple, within which they performed sacrifices and other religious ceremonies,

* Grose, vol, i. p. 6.

elected and inaugurated their kings, and held their courts of justice.

"Cairns, or immense conical heaps of stones raised as a rude monument, are numerous in Ireland, and one can travel but little in the interior without frequently meeting them.

"Dr. Macpherson is doubtful whether the Cairns in the Scottish isles were reared by the Norwegians or Old Britons of Caledonia: adding, that there are Cairns in Aberdeen and Inverness, and in Caernarvonshire, where the northerns never penetrated.

This

"Near the town of Naas, in the county of Kildare, I saw, last spring, among some ancient ruins of a round tower and other relics, several under-ground caves beneath the circles, such as are alluded to in Ossian. 'Go, Ferchios,' says the poet, in his Fingal,t go to Allad, the grey-haired son of the rock; his dwelling is in the circle of stones.' Allad was a druid, and is called the son of the rock, evidently from his dwelling in a cave; and the circle of stones is the pale of a druidical temple. The hero then visits the druid, and Allad gives him his answer; the hero's reply to the priest proves the druid's dwelling-place to be in the cave. Allad,' said the chief of Cromla, peace to thy dreams in thy cave.' The holiness of caves was as firmly believed in as that of groves, and therein the druids performed di vine offices, and taught their disciples.

6

"The architectural antiquities of Ireland present a fine unexplored field, to which I trust I

+ Book v. p. 43.

may

may have leisure to turn more of my attention. There are ruins of between thirty and forty abbeys of splendid architecture. Those of Jerpoint and of the Black Abbey, in the county of Kilkenny, are finer than any I ever witnessed in England, not even excepting the far-famed Netley-Abbey, in Hampshire. Then there are their mounts, their cairns, and their caves; their round towers, their ancient cathedrals, and the modern Baalback, the deserted city of Killmalloch, in the county of Limerick; likewise the remains of the seven churches at Glendaloch, in the county of Wicklow, and the bed of St. Keiven, immortalized by the muse of the Irish melodist; together with their cromlechs, which rival any in England. **

"A very singular specimen of ancient Irish architecture, which is certainly one of the most curious fabrics in these kingdoms, must be noticed, the stone-roofed chapel of the ancient king Cormac, at Cashel, who was, after the patriarchal mode, both king and bishop, and flourished about the year 908. It is supposed to have been erected about the year 1134, and dedicated to that celebrated royal priest; and yet Ware, in his Antiquities says, that when Roderick O'Connor, king of Connaught, in the year 1161, built a stone castle at Tuam, it was considered such an extraordinary work that the natives called it the Wonderful Castle. The aforesaid chapel of St. Cormac, at Cashel, is a regular ecclesiastical edifice, divided into a nave and choir, the latter narrowing in breadth, and separated from the nave by a wide arch. Under the altar tradition reports the remains of St. Cormac

to be deposited. There is a striking resemblance between this chapel and the church of St. Peter, at Oxford, with Grimbauld's crypt beneath it."

Mr. E. gives his opinion of several English modern buildings.

"Roman or Italian architecture was brought into England under Inigo Jones, who was born in 1572, and whose distinguished works at Greenwich, Whitehall, and Covent Garden, will ever secure him a place among names of the highest reputation.

"Sir Christopher Wren, an eminent mathematician and philosopher, as well as architect, executed many of the finest buildings in London and other parts of England, in the modern style. St. Paul's Cathedral, inferior to none but St. Peter's in point of magnitude, and undoubtedly su perior even to that both in skilful construction and design, will perpetuate his name to the latest posterity. The exterior cupola of St. Paul's is constructed of oak timber, and is sustained by a cone of eighteen-inch brick-work, which has a course of stone, the whole thickness, every five feet; and the intermediate parts are two bricks in length and in thickness. This cupola was turned upon a centre, which supported itself without any standard from below. From the inclined position of its supporting walls, it has little or no transverse pressure; yet, for greater security, it is hooped with iron at the bottom.

"Of the great English masters who flourished about this period, Jones was grand but unequal, as may be seen in his celebrated work, the chapel at Whitehall, the conception of which, as a part,

and

and but a small part, of an immense palace, is certainly noble; its primary divisions few and simple, its openings large and handsome, but it is unequal in composition and in style. The play of light and shade produced by the breaks over each column is in a minute taste, the very opposite to grand. The Ionic specimen is one of the worst and most impure he could have chosen; the modillions do not belong to the order, and approach too nearly to those of the Corinthian. If one order upon another be admissible, at all events the Corinthian should not have been excluded for the purpose of introducing the Composite.

"Wren was more equal and consistent than Jones; was possessed of more mathematical and general knowledge; was a man of a more expanded mind; but less of an architect by education, and had, generally speaking, less taste. Perhaps nothing of Wren's is equal in taste to Jones's watergate at York-buildings, and nothing of Jones's equals in scientific construction any thing of Wren's. Jones's Gothic, as shewn in Lincoln's Inn Hall and Chapel, is decidedly bad; Wren's in St. Mary Aldermary, Bow-lane, is bold, if not quite pure; in the tower and pinnacles of St. Michael's, Cornhill, still better; and in the spire of St. Dunstan's in