BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE PALACE GARDENS AND GROUNDS IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. These cuts, taken from Felix Summerly's Handbook to Hampton Court, are intended to convey some idea of the various architectural phases in the buildings. ST INTRODUCTION. tion. IX centuries have passed since Henry the Third piously raised Introducthe many-clustered shafts and pointed arches of the present Abbey of Westminster. Rude has been the treatment of them during the last half of this period, yet they still point high to FACTURES. A.D. 1841-1849. ART MANU- heaven, in undiminished grace, and lightness, grandeur, and strength. Strange tales of the contrasts between their first and last days might the old grey walls tell and a glance at some of these seems to us to be not altogether an unsuitable preparation for contemplating the endless wonders of the Abbey, or an inappropriate means of reviving so much of its early history as comports with the scope of this work, which aims at avoiding the needless repetition of what may be found in all fulness of detail in Dart, Widmore, Keepe, and Brayley. In one of the quietest nooks of the whole building, in the corner sanctified to our poets, we pass the threshold of the Abbey. We may have crossed Westminster Bridge without toll; perchance in a public carriage, to which a shilling and a statute have given us right of use, hardly less absolute than our Queen has in her own state-coach; or we may have walked across Old Palace Yard, in perfect freedom, even without fear of pickpockets, thanks to the street police, having landed at the stairs from an iron steamer, which brought us swiftly against the tide from London Bridge. We now enter the Abbey in a cold spirit of dilettante-ism, rather to see than to pray,-thinking of past days-of the heroes in divinity, poetry, eloquence, and war, who rest here; of architectural splendour, of sculpturesque beauties and monstrosities, of the fine pictorial effects on the many-tinted stones, which flickering gleams of light and deep impenetrable shadows present at each of the thousand points of view. All these may, happily, lead us into a reverential tone of mind; yet who will deny that curiosity, rather than devotion, brings us hither? Among the tombs of the poets in the Abbey, as well as in the Nave and North Transept, we are free to wander at all times, thanks to the liberality of the Dean and Chapter; the tribute is sixpence to explore the gloomy and picturesque mysteries of the sacella or sepulchral chapels. Two centuries ago the Westminster ferry-boat-one solitary bridge then served all London-had brought no meditative amateur of art within the portals of the sacred edifice; but, iconoclast! you had found a greeting among the rollicking troopers of the Commonwealth, who, having pawned the organ pipes, were enjoying the profits in a carousal over the ashes of Edward the Confessor. The chapels of the saints were defiled as barracks, FACTURES. Part II. Westminster and it was good loyal service to the state to mutilate every orna- ART MANUment, no matter how beautiful, tainted with any fancied superstition. Yet another hundred years before, art was still more 1841-1849. sacrilegiously treated. We may excuse the blind fury of the Selections. Puritan, as the offspring of a diseased conscience; but at the dis- Abbey. solution of the monasteries, the ecclesiastical fabrics-which the church was unable to defend-were plundered and heaped in ruins, because Harry the Eighth was a spendthrift, and his courtiers hungry sycophants. Poor Oliver Cromwell (let us never forget that we owe the preservation of Raffaelle's cartoons to his rough gentleness) is blamed for much of the rapacity of the uxorious tyrant. Vulgar report attributes to the Protector the theft of the silver head from the monument of Henry the Fifth in the Abbey, though "Howes' Chronicle" relates that "about the latter ende of King Henry the Eyght, the head of the Kinges image, being of massie silver, was broken off and conveyed cleane awaie." In Harry the Eighth's time, the visitor to the Abbey was a huckstering broker, who came to barter for the metal chasings of the shrines, and the lead of the roof. The contrast between the scenes enacted in the Abbey in the first and last three centuries of its existence, is very striking. In the first period, no dilettante sight-seers, or fanatics, blinded with pious fury against pictures and images, or greedy spoilers, entered its walls. Men assembled beneath the "fretted roof" to behold and hear all with reverential awe;-gave the best of their worldly goods to the church ;-laid down their lives for it,-and were too ready to burn yours out of you, if you doubted its perfect infallibility. Faintly are we able to conceive the impressive pomps and ceremonies acted here. Censers smoked with fragrant perfumes! Universal decoration of pictures and tapestries! Not a superficial inch of wall left naked! Statues of "martyr, or king, or sainted eremite," resplendent with precious stones and enamels;-bosses, capitals, mouldings, every sculptured ornament "picked out" with gold, and ultramarine, vermilion, and all positive colours! Perpetual lights, like the fires of the vestal virgins, illumined the altars! The black vests of the Benedictine monks, enriched by contrast the snow-white robes of the incense-bearers, and the jewelled and gold-braided vests of the officiating priests! The swelling voices of the choir chaunted the |