forty feet, the breadth sixty feet, and the length one hundred and thirty-eight feet; to which if we add eighty-seven feet for the length of the nave, we have two hundred and twenty-five feet as the entire length of the Priory church within the walls. Osborne, in his English Architecture,' gives the height as forty-seven feet, the breadth fifty-seven feet, and the length of the present church one hundred and thirty-two feet. We may here observe that when a fire broke out in 1830 the interior of the church was much injured, and the entire pile had a narrow escape from destruction. A portion of the roof of the south aisle fell on that occasion, and showed it to be composed of rubble-work. The church has undergone numerous reparations and alterations-we wish we could add improvements. But, on the contrary, many parts appear to have been injured, if not wantonly, certainly from unworthy or insufficient reasons. Thus, in Henry VIII.'s time, the sacred edifice had well nigh been entirely pulled down for the value of the materials. The erection of the brick tower in 1628 was little better than an architectural insult to the pride of the fine old Norman choir. And, as if the very sight of its magnificent arch-piers had become irksome, they have been cased round with wood, for no better reason, we presume, than that they were apt to leave undesirable marks on the coats of the congregation. But is that their fault? They are not plaster; nor, if they could speak, do we believe we should find them at all ambitious of whitewash.

There are some interesting monuments in the Choir. We find the monument of the founder in the north-eastern corner. This is a work in every way worthy of the man whom it enshrines. It is one of the most elegant specimens of the pointed style of architecture, consisting mainly of a very highly-wrought stone-work screen, enclosing a tomb on which Rahere's effigy extends at full length. The roof of the little chamber, as we may call it, is most exquisitely groined. At what period the monument was erected is uncertain; but the style marks it as of a later date than that of the founder's decease. But it was most carefully restored by Prior Bolton; and the fact is significant of its antiquity. As the latter found, no doubt, a labour of love in making these reparations, so Time itself seems to have seconded his efforts, and to have shared in the hopes of its builders that a long period of prosperity should be granted to it, by touching it very gently. Here and there the pinnacles have been somewhat diminished of their fair proportions, and that is pretty well the entire extent of the injury the work has experienced. The monument, it must be added, is richly painted as well as sculptured, and shows us the black robes of Rahere and of the monks who are kneeling at his side-the ruddy features of the former, and the splendid coats of arms on the front of the tomb below. Each of the monks has a Bible before him, open at the fifty-first chapter of Isaiah.

We conclude this paper with a notice of an appendage of St. Bartholomew, scarcely less interesting than itself::-we refer to Canonbury, the place so well known as the residence of Goldsmith, in one of the rooms of the tower of which was written, under a pressing pecuniary necessity, that most admirable of fictions, the Vicar of Wakefield.' These pressing necessities unfortunately occurred very often; and another and less agreeable memory of Canonbury House than that of the composition of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' is that Goldsmith here frequently hid himself for fear of arrest. The warm-hearted bookseller, Newberry, for whom Goldsmith wrote so much, then rented the house. From hence the poet was frequently accustomed to set out, with some or other of his numerous and distinguished list of friends, on excursions through the surrounding country. The beauties of Highgate and Hampstead, distinctly visible from his windows, no doubt were often a temptation to him to throw aside his books. Various other literary men have lived at Canonbury; amongst whom we may

mention Chambers, the author of the Cyclopædia known by his name. Nor are interesting names belonging to men of a different class wanting. Here the "Rich Spencer," for instance, lived, and has bequeathed to Canonbury some noticeable recollections. In a curious pamphlet, entitled 'The Vanity of the Lives and Passions of Men, by D. Papillon, Gent., 1651,' occurs the following remarkable passage, in connection with this great millionaire of the sixteenth century:-" In Queen Elizabeth's days a pirate of Dunkirk laid a plot, with twelve of his mates, to carry away Sir John Spencer; which if he had done, fifty thousand pounds had not redeemed him. He came over the seas on a shallop with twelve musketeers, and in the night came into Barking Creek, and left the shallop in the custody of six of his men, and with the other six came as far as Islington, and there hid themselves in ditches near the path in which Sir John always came to his house; but, by the providence of God, Sir John, upon some extraordinary occasion, was forced to stay in London that night, otherwise they had taken him away; and they, fearing they should be discovered in the nighttime, came to their shallop, and so came safe to Dunkirk again." The author adds that he obtained this story from a private record. At Sir John's death in 1609 some thousand men were present, in mourning cloaks and gowns, amongst whom were three hundred and twenty-four persons who had each a basket given to him containing a black gown, four pounds of beef, two loaves of bread, a little bottle of wine, a candlestick, a pound of candles, two saucers, two spoons, a black pudding, a pair of gloves, a dozen of points to tie his garments with, two red herrings, four white herrings, six sprats, and two eggs. We must add to these reminiscences of the family, that his daughter is said to have been carried off from Canonbury in a baker's basket by Lord Compton, who became her husband, and who at her father's death was unable to bear with equanimity the immense fortune that devolved to him: he was distracted for some time afterwards. His death happened under strange circumstances:-" Yesterday se'nnight the Earl of Northampton (he had now succeeded to this earldom), Lord President of Wales, after he had waited on the King at supper, and he had also supped, went in a boat with others to wash himself in the Thames, and so soon as his legs were in the water but to the knees, he had the colic, and cried out, 'Have me into the boat again, or I am a dead man!' and died in a few hours afterwards, June 24, 1630."

The manor appears to have been originally presented to the priory by Ralph de Berners, in the time of Edward I., and most probably obtained its present name on the erection (about 1362, that date having long existed on one of the walls) of a place of residence for the first Canon or Prior,-bury signifying mansion or dwelling-house. There seems to exist a kind of tradition that at some period a fortified mansion stood on the spot, of which a moat that existed in front of the house until a recent period was a remain. All the ancient parts, however, that now meet our gaze are attributed to Prior Bolton, the predecessor of Fuller, who surrendered the possessions of the canons to the king. This is the man of whom Hall writes in the following curious passage::- "The people" (saith he), "being feared by prognostications which declared that in the year of Christ 1524 there should be such eclipses in watery signs, and such conjunctions, that by waters and floods many people should perish, people victualled themselves, and went to high grounds for fear of drowning, and especially one Bolton, which was prior of St. Bartholomew's in Smithfield, builded him a house upon Harrow on the Hill, only for fear of this flood: thither he went and made provision of all things necessary within him, for the space of two months." Stow says that "this was not so indeed," as he had been credibly informed, "and that his predecessor was following a fable then on foot." Bolton was the parson of Harrow

as well as Prior of St. Bartholomew, and therefore repaired the parsonage-house; but he builded there nothing "more than a dovehouse, to serve him when he had foregone his Priory." This is he also to whom Ben Jonson alludes when he speaks "Of prior Bolton, with his bolt and ton;"

referring to the rebus on his name, of which the Prior is said to have been the inventor, and for which he certainly had an inventor's love, for we find it everywhere-in the church, in some of the houses of Bartholomew Close, and here again at Canonbury. Immediately behind the tower is a house now used as a boarding-school, which is supposed to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth, and to have even been occasionally inhabited by her; and the internal evidence is certainly of a formidable character. The staircase alone would show that it has been a very splendid mansion : but there are more important parts. The drawing-room, now divided into three apartments, has evidently originally formed but one, with a circular end, and a richly-ornamented ceiling, bearing representations of ships of war, medallion heads. of ancient heroes, as Alexander and Julius Cæsar; and in combination with these decorations are a variety of scroll-work ornaments, with the thistle strikingly predominant. In the centre are the initials E. R. The material is a most delicatelywrought stucco. The mantelpiece is also well worthy of attention; it contains figures, arms, caryatides, and an endless variety of other ornament. The whole forms one of the most superb pieces of workmanship conceivable. In the same house a room, called the Stone Parlour, on the ground-floor, has also a stuccoed ceiling, embossed and with pendants, and a decorated mantelpiece, with figures of the Cardinal Virtues. Adjoining this house is that which was Prior Bolton's, now occupied also as a boarding-school. It stands on a beautiful lawn, somewhat elevated, and must have originally commanded a beautiful prospect; as a part of which, and not the least interesting part, was the splendid establishment of which the resident here was master: the peculiarly dense smoke of cloud was as yet a thing unknown, and but few buildings intervened, so that the Prior could see it at all times. The most interesting feature of this mansion is a stone passage or corridor leading to the kitchen and other offices, in which is a Tudor door of a peculiarly elegant shape, containing Bolton's rebus. Among the other noticeable matters are a mantelpiece of the period of Elizabeth, and a curious coat of arms with some uncouth supporters, apparently goats, painted, and with an inscription of a later period, stating them to belong to "Sir Walter Dennys, of Gloucestershire, who was made a knight by bathing at the creation of Arthur Prince of Wales, in November, 1489," &c. From the house we pass to the lawn, which is terminated by a wall with a raised and embowered terrace, from which we look over on the other side to the kitchen-garden, the New River, and thence onwards towards London. At each extremity of this wall is an octagonal garden-house, built by Prior Bolton-the one to the left having a small gothic window in the basement story. Proceeding along the wall towards the other, we find it in the grounds of another mansion; this also contains the Prior's rebus. The spot here is at the same time so beautiful and yet so antique in its character, that we have only to forget the lapse of three centuries, and expect to see the stately abbot himself coming forth into his pleasance, book in hand perhaps, to enable him to forget the little vexations of his government, or the darker shadows of the coming Reformation, which, fortunately for him, he did not live to see his death took place in 1532. The fig and mulberry trees, probably planted by him,-certainly no recent denizens of the soil,-appear here in all their perfection. On the wall which runs up to the house occurs another rebus, near to a stone basin called the fish-pond, where

the Prior probably kept some of the choicest of the finny tribe for the supply of his table. We cannot quit this very interesting place without a tribute of admiration to the taste and munificence of its principal founder. Next to Rahere, his is the great memory of the Priory-we mect with him everywhere. The church, the beautiful oriel window which overlooks it, Rahere's tomb, which he carefully and admirably restored, the gardens and buildings of Canonbury, all speak of an enlightened and generous mind; and we do not see that it is at all necessary to quarrel with him because he took care to refer their merit to its right owner by the everlasting bolt in ton.