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Of the degree of Mr. Horner's moral feeling on subjects which he deemed essentially important, Mr. Smith has given a curious instance.

"He loved truth so much, that he never could bear any jesting upon important subjects. I remember one evening the late Lord Dudley and myself pretended to justify the conduct of the Government in stealing the Danish fleet; we carried on the argument with some wickedness against our graver friend; he could not stand it, but bolted indignantly out of the

room; we flung up the sash, and, with loud peals of laughter, professed ourselves decided Scandinavians; we offered him not only the ships, but all the shot, powder, cordage, and even the biscuit, if he would come back but nothing could turn him; and it took us a fortnight of serious behaviour before we were forgiven."

It will be seen that amid the warm and attractive eulogy of his departed friend, Mr. Smith has interposed a judicious episode upon the errors of academical education, and on the valuable time wasted on the needless refinements of classical learning, especially as regards the labour expended ou polishing, scrubbing, filing, and grinding sundry stubborn metres of the Greek tragedians, and on the arts of curiously inlaying and dovetailing the delicate material of the ancient choruses, to which employment many ingenious and learned gentlemen have bound themselves, as they consider for the benefit of the community. Whether to be great in longs and shorts, is an atchievement worthy of an enlarged mind we do not say. There are illustrious men now living who have expended all the strength their understandings in the regulation of iambic dipods, of ithyphallics, and anapæstic dimeters; and who would be surprised and shocked to hear that there was any subject more worthy of their investigation than adjusting the dislocated members of a trochaic catalexis, or putting an iambic and ischiorrhagic penthimemer safely on his legs. But so earnest and energetic are Mr. Smith's effusions on this subject, that we are assured he has some proper and peculiar cause for complaint; that his hatred of pæons and choriambics exceed the natural measure of offence which they might reasonably give to gentlemen, educated upon systems in which they are excluded. To be sure we do not exactly see why making Latin verses and correcting errors in Greek manuscripts incapacitates a man for the philosophy of legislation, or prevents his acquiring the knowledge of the history of modern Europe. We believe that Mr. Fox and Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning and Lord Holland and Mr. H. Frere, cum multis aliis, occasionally employed their leisure hours in such learned recreations, much to the delight of their friends, which they could not successfully have done, unless the principles and laws which regulate metrical composition in the classical languages had been familiar to them from their youth; and the Muse Etonenses have made known the early success of their acquirements. But in sober truth we are fully persuaded that there is in Mr Smith's mind a distinct, particular, and unequivocal dislike to this branch of study, how generated we do not know: an idiosyncrasy that cannot be altered, or, as the member for Marylebone would call it, a monomania that cannot be relieved. It has existed, we recollect, for many years. It broke out with great violence about thirty years ago: and, though it seemed to give way under some very severe remedies that were then applied, it has now re-appeared, and will probably continue during the remainder of his life. Under these circumstances we must regret Mr. Smith should be so unhappily situated as he is now, even in the very centre of the enemy's camp. Why Christ-church itself, all rough and horrid with Greek, where every "canon" is a "canon of criticism," would be

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at St. Pauls the "Prolusiones Poeticæ of the learned Dean on one side of him, and Mr. Canon Tate with the " Leges Metricæ Horatianæ on the other. Right or left he must still meet the "accursed thing. he flies to the West End, to the more genial influences of May Fair, there is Lord Brougham ready with his Greek hexameters, and Sir Henry Halford's pocket filled with his Latin epigrams, we do not know what to advise, but in this case, as in many others, we may presume that gentlemen in their desire to attain ecclesiastical honours, have forgotten their early progress on the Aonian Mount, and in their study of the "Liber Regis," have ceased to recollect the Gradus ad Parnassum.

· SWINDON CHURCH, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

(With a Plate.)

HAVING learnt that the old church of St. Lawrence at Swindon, near Cheltenham, is about to be considerably altered, I beg to put upon record in your Magazine the following account of it as it existed a few years ago.

This interesting church consists of a chancel, a nave, with north and south nave aisles, a flat-roofed hexagonal tower at its west end, and a quadrangular northern porch. The width of the chancel and the nave is equal, viz. 12ft. 6in. but that of the aisles is unequal. The tower is irregular, both as to its sides and angles, and the porch is also irregular, abutting due northward from the north-east side of the tower. The extreme length of this church, internally, is about 60 feet, and its present extreme breadth 36.

It would seem, however, that this edifice originally consisted only of the chancel, nave, and tower, and that the south aisle, the porch, and the north aisle, were added at different periods, between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the order just enumerated-its piers being, apparently, portions of the old nave walls, through which their present arches were opened when the aisles were severally built.

The south-aisle pier has, against its northern face, a pilaster whose capital, or rather impost, is a square abacus with chamfered under edge, from which, conjointly with a tablet-like continuation of it around this pier, and from similar tablets on each of the wall piers arise two semicircular archivolts with a retiring fascia-like sub-arch; but

on its southern face these arches are single, there being no pilaster. The arch into the north aisle was certainly made, as I have above supposed, by breaking through the old nave wall, and is a wide obtusely pointed archway with chamfered angles.

The archway between the nave and tower was, however, formed at the first building of this church. Its archivolt, westward, has the fascial subarches represented in the accompanying Plate; but, eastward, it is a simple semicircle springing from wall piers with imposts, like that of the south aisle pier, which are continued around them, and along the nave walls, as a string course.

From the existence of some corbels at the conjunction of the nave and chancel walls, it would seem that there was once a rood loft, approached by stairs in a regular rood turret, of which a ruinous mass of masonry outside was probably the foundation.

The most interesting feature of this Church is its tower, which is, as aforesaid, not a regular hexagon; having its western side longer than the others, and its N.W. and S.W. angles of 65 degrees, while the southern angle is only of 50, as I presume the northern angle also to be. But it is difficult to speak on this point accurately, some of its angles and sides being enveloped in the more modern parts of this church, and the tower walls now varying in thickness from 2 feet 2 inches, to nearly 3 feet. Interiorly, at each corner is a slender half-engaged column, but their capitals are hidden by a gallery, above which are three cor

bels, once the support of the belfry or of a chamber, and which, from the absence of any interior staircase, and certain traces of a stair and doorway on its outside, could have been only thereby entered.

The pavement of this tower is lower than that of the nave, and, if originally so, such disparity is perhaps indicative of its having been a galilee or narthex for penitents, in contradistinction to the higher nave for less unholy persons, and to the still more elevated floors of the chancel and sanctuary for the priesthood.

Another peculiarity of Swindon Church is the position of its ancient entrance, which is not, (as one would expect from the shape of the tower,) through its west end, but through its north-east side. This entrance is a semicircularly-headed archway adorned with two round mouldings springing from nooked columns, the capitals of which consist of a cleft cushion under an abacus similar to that of the other parts of this building. The exterior doorway of the porch, and a doorway into the south aisle, are of Tudor form, but without the characteristic square head.

But

The upper windows of the tower have two semicircularly-headed openings divided by a balustre-like shaft with an early Norman capital. Below, in the western face, has been introduced a pointed window under a flowered dripstone on corbels. otherwise this tower is unadorned except by a string course under its present eaves. The only other windows of this church deserving notice are two trefoliated lancets in the north wall of the chancel; the east window, and a window of the south aisle containing stained glass figures of the Virgin and an ecclesiastic.

The piscina has a trefoiled head, an ornamented sink, a lipped bottom, and a shelf. The font, improperly placed in the chancel, is a quatrefoiled octagon upon a panelled shaft, with a square base. The pulpit (also misplaced in the chancel,) is neat, as are the altar and sanctuary rails. In the north aisle the manorial burial place—is an antique chest; and against its walls are memorials of Sturmy A.D. 1650, and of Shalford 1776 and 1787; in the nave of Surman 1772, and Long 1794, and in the chancel of Stopford 1837.

I cannot conclude this account without deprecating the alterations proposed to be made in this church according to a plan designed by Mr. Fulljames, architect and county surveyor, and of which prints have been circulated under the sanction of its reverend Rector.

This plan chiefly consists in the removal of the internal massive walls and piers of the nave, together with the south and west walls of the south aisle; retaining the present chancel, the north aisle, and the east wall of the south aisle. But the tower it is proposed to disfigure by making an opening through its south-eastern wall into a vestry, whereby its character would be at once obliterated, and its stability materially impaired ! and instead of the piers in the nave, pillars of light and meagre character are to be substituted;-these alterations, which will cost not less than 1,100%. or 1,200l. providing only an accession of fifty-seven sittings. We must further remark that the towercornice, as represented in Mr. Fulljames's design, is clumsy and unsightly; and that a short conical spire would be the termination most appropriate to the style. But why not leave the tower in its present singular semi-ecclesiastical and semi-castellated character? We have no doubt that the exclusion of the weather, and a few iron ties, judiciously applied, are all that it requires; and, should a larger church be necessary for the increasing population of Swindon parish, let a new one be built, retaining the interesting old tower, as its western end, and in accordance with its Norman character.

Yours, &c. PLANTAGENET.

MR. URBAN,

AS the subject of the horse's head or Merry Llwyd has lately been discussed in your pages,* I beg to furnish an instance of it, which none of your correspondents have yet adduced. In the "Personal Recollections" of Charlotte Elizabeth (an interesting volume on many accounts) there is a description of the great festival of the Irish peasantry, St. John's Eve, which the authoress witnessed in King's County.

*See vol. XVII, pp. 40, 122, 388.

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