“ Bells are sentient things. They are alike full of humour and pathos, of laughter and tears, of mirth and sadness, of gaiety and grief. One may pardon Toby Veck, in Charles Dickens’ goblin story, for investing the bells in the church near his station with a strange and solemn character, and peopling the tower with dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the bells, of all aspects, shapes, characters, and occupations. ”

“ The usual form of the old church door is familiar enough to all of us; the massive time-stained oak, the heavy iron nails that stud it, and the long broad hinges that reach almost across its full breadth. There is dignity in the very simplicity of all this; but not seldom far more ornate examples may be found.
The most elementary form of decoration consists in merely panelling the door, as is the case in numberless instances; occasionally the panels themselves are carved, as on the “Thoresby Door,” at Lynn, or the door of S. Mary’s, Bath ”

“ In the ecclesiastical maze, it is always the patience, not the ingenuity, which is tested; there is but one road to follow, and though that one wanders in and out with tantalizing curves and coils, yet it leads him who follows it unerringly to the centre. ”

“ They all date from the last century.
Church bells have the subtle charm of sentiment. When they swing in the hoary village tower, and send their mellifluous message across the country side and down the deep and devious valley, or when they make musical with mellow carillon the dreamy atmosphere of moss grown cathedral closes, they have a poetical influence. How pleasant it is to listen to the chimes which ring out from time to time from the towers of [p 131] Notre Dame, in the city of Rubens, and from the Campanile at Venice!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight! ”

“ Partly with the notion of offering a propitiatory sacrifice to mother earth, and partly also with the idea of securing for ever a portion of soil by some sacrificial act, the old pagan laid the foundation of his house in blood.
The art of building in early ages was not well understood, and the true principles of architecture and construction were but little appreciated. If the walls of a building showed any signs of settlement the reason was supposed to be that the earth had not been sufficiently propitiated, and that as a consequence she refused to carry the burden imposed upon her. ”

“ A shabby and undignified entrance raises no expectations of a lofty and solemn interior; and that interior must be emphatically fine, if we are not to read into it some of the meanness of its portal. On the other hand, though the church be but plain [p 2] and simple—so that it lack not a measure of the dignity which may well accompany simplicity—our thoughts will be raised and fitted to find in it something worthy of its high purpose, if we have been prepared by passing through a noble porch, and beneath a doorway that speaks itself the entrance to no ordinary dwelling. ”

“ On the removal of the plaster from the east wall during the restoration in 1875, the remains of a fresco of “the Doom” were discovered, and here are depicted the Judge of all mankind in the scarlet robes of majesty, the Virgin as intercessor, S. Michael the Archangel, presiding over the balances in which souls are weighed, the Apostles as assessors, bishops and abbots with the keys of S. Peter, admitting the faithful into the Holy Catholic Church, human forms emerging from the grave, the path of life, the chains of everlasting darkness, demons clothed in flames, and the jaws of hell. ”

“ When I ventured to [p 214] inquire if he knew why such a strong objection was held to burial on the north side of the church. He started suddenly, and I shall never forget his reproachful, sad look as he more readily than usual gave the answer:—“The left side of Christ, sir: we don’t like to be counted among the goats.”
As a flash of lightning illuminates the whole darkness of the country side, and reveals for the moment every object in clear outline, so this quaint saying of my dying friend dispelled in a moment the mists of the past which clouded the truth of my strange superstition. ”

“ At York, for example, the chapter-house, which proudly asserts in an inscription near the entrance that, “as the rose is among the flowers, so is it among buildings,” has a doorway not unworthy of the beautiful interior.
The gateway which gave admittance to the sacred enclosure of the abbey—the garth or close round which were ranged the monastic buildings—is in many cases an imposing and elaborate piece of architecture. Bristol has an interesting Norman gateway, and that at Durham is massive and impressive, as are all the conventual remains there. ”

“ It now stands once more in all its glory, as a perfect gem of architecture and one of the most elegant Lady Chapels in Christendom.
“Ye Chappell of oure Ladye” at Waltham Abbey is said to be one of the richest specimens of mediæval architecture in Essex. The building has been greatly defaced since the suppression of chantries, but still bears traces of its original glory. “The Lady Chapel,” says the late Professor Freeman, “must have been a most beautiful specimen of its style, but few ancient structures have been more sedulously disfigured.” ”

“ However this may be, it is certain that for centuries, through times of heathenism, and well into even advanced Christianity, the people so thoroughly associated the foundation of buildings with a sacrifice that in some form or other it has lingered on to the present century. Now in our own day the laying the foundation of any important building is always attended with a ceremony—the form remains, the sacrifice is no longer offered. ”

“ Grimm, in his German Mythology, tells us: “It was often considered necessary to build living animals, even human beings, into the foundations on which any edifice was reared, as an oblation to the earth to induce her to bear the superincumbent weight it was proposed to lay upon her. By this horrible practice it was supposed that the stability of the structure was assured as well as other advantages gained.” Of course the animal is merely the more modern substitute for the human being, just in the same manner as at the present day the bottle and coins are the substitute for the living animal. ”

“ The cathedrals of the north felt more than once the shock of the Border wars; and civil strife, or religious fanaticism, wrought mischief in many others. Thus it has come to pass that the centuries have seen four cathedrals in succession at Hereford, at Gloucester, and at Bangor; and three at a multitude of places, Canterbury, London, Winchester, Peterborough, Lichfield, Oxford, and half-a-dozen more. ”

“ For elaborateness of detail, the spire of S. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, surpasses all others in this country. Its apex is some 90 feet from the ground, and around the base of the spire clusters a mass of richly decorated pinnacles, small spirelets, and canopies containing statues. The effect is picturesque in the extreme, and lends to the town of Oxford a unique charm. Its conception dates from the fourteenth century, but it has been much restored and added to since. ”

“ WEST DOOR, HIGHAM FERRERS CHURCH.
Although in England we cannot match the gorgeousness of detail exhibited by the flamboyant architecture of some of the examples above noticed, yet we too have instances of which we may well be proud. The western front of Peterborough cathedral, over the partial renovation of which there has recently been so much controversy between architects and antiquaries, has been pronounced to be “the grandest portico in Europe;” but this has reference to the whole [p 13] façade rather than to the door-way in itself. ”

“ In early ages a sacrifice of some sort or other was offered on the foundation of nearly every building. In heathen times a sacrifice was offered to the god under whose protection the building was placed; in Christian times, while many old pagan customs lingered on, the sacrifice was continued, but was given another meaning. The foundation of a castle, a church, or a house was frequently laid in blood; indeed it was said, and commonly believed, that no edifice would stand firmly for long unless the foundation was laid in blood. ”

“ We cannot bring ourselves to pass over without notice the foundation laying of our great buildings, and who shall venture to say that superstition is altogether dead, and that we are free from the lingering remains of what was once the pagan belief? ”

“ In primitive times the approach to a church must have been full of dignity, the worshippers being warned, by successive gates and doors, of the sacredness of the building which they were about to enter. ”

“ They belong to the Gothic style, and like the pointed arch were evolved rather than created. The low pointed roof of the tower gradually gave place to a more tapering finish, but the transition was by no means progressive, and cannot be clearly traced. Some of the earliest attempts at spire-building were uncouth and ungraceful, and even in these days the addition of a spire to a modern church does not necessarily add to its beauty. This is nearly always the case where an undue regard is paid to ornamentation, either at the base, or on the surface of the spire itself. ”

“ There is an interesting custom prevailing in Roumania to the present day which is clearly a [p 41] remnant of the old idea of a sacrificial foundation. When masons are engaged building a house they try to catch the shadow of a stranger passing by and wall it in, and throw in stones and mortar whilst his shadow rests on the walls. If no one passes by to throw a shadow the masons go in search of a woman or child who does not belong to the place, and, unperceived by the person, apply a reed to the shadow and this reed is then immured. ”

“ The grand old labourer, or faithful shepherd, as he was laid helpless on his bed, with his life work symbol—the shepherd’s crook, standing idle in the corner, and his trusty dog, restless and perplexed, roaming from room to room, was a wonderful picture of a Christian death-bed. ”

“ In the decoration of the church door the mediæval blacksmith proves himself in a thousand instances, at home and abroad, to have been an artist. Free from the hurry of the present age, he could work according to that canon of Chaucer’s,
“There is no workman
That can both worken well and hastilie,
This must be done at leisure, perfectlie.” [p 20]
With him it was not the hand only that wrought, nor even the hand and head; but the soul within him gave life to both. Of the contrast between old ways and new, few examples are more striking than the hinges of the door at S. Mary Key, Ipswich ”

“ Ecclesiastical Courts were frequently held in church porches, as at the south door of Canterbury Cathedral; schools were occasionally established in them; and here the dower of the bride was formally presented to the bridegroom. This last-named use of the porch is illustrated by a deed of the time of Edward I., by which Robert Fitz Roger, a gentleman of Northamptonshire, bound himself to marry his son within a given time to Hawisia, daughter of Robert de Tybetot, and “to endow her at the church door” with property equal to a hundred pounds per annum. ”

“ The defence of the true doctrine brought clearly into view the high dignity which God had conferred on the humble maiden of Nazareth, and so reverence for her memory, as the most blessed among women, grew into veneration for her person as the Mother of God. The faithful of the Middle Ages were, therefore, not content with simply retaining her name at the head of the list of saints, but raised the human mother to a position which was almost, if not quite, equal to that of her Divine Son. ”

“ The reformation of the person punished was a far more remote object of retribution than it is with us, and even with us reform is very much a matter of sentiment. Punishment was intended to be punishment to the individual in the first place, and in the second a warning to the rest. It is a gruesome study, but Mr Andrews nowhere writes for mere effect. As an antiquary ought to do, he has made the collection of facts and their preservation for modern students of history in a clear, straightforward narrative his main object, and in this volume he keeps to it consistently. ”