seription, so as to give the reader a very satisfactory idea of the building which is the subject of it.

The archbishop of Canterbury, though on so serious a mission, was not averse from innocent mirth. On his way to Bangor, he dismounted with his party, in order to pass with greater security through a steep and rugged valley; on reaching

The opposite side after considerable fatigue, the archbishop, to rest himself and recover his breath, sat down on an oak which had been torn up by the violence of the winds and relaxing into a pleasantry highly laudable in a person of his approved gravity, thus addressed his attendents: who amongst you in this company, can now delight our wearied ears by whistling? which is not easily done by people out of breath,' &c. P. 84.

A view of Bangor obtrudes itself on our sight, taken ap parently from a considerable elevation; but so ill managed in every respect, that we wonder how it was admitted into this elegant and expensive work.

Having as we hope given the reader a tolerable insight into the plan and execution of this part of the work, we will only detain him to say, that it concludes with a very favou rable character of the zealous prelate who presided over this party of errant divines.

The defects which occur in the style of the translator, are generally to be attributed to negligence. He discovers much reading on the subject of his undertaking, and quotes largely from the works of earlier historians and antiquaries; we do not mean to insinuate that he does this to too great an extent.

Whether Sir Richard Hoare despise the brilliant effect produced by a judicious management of light and shade, we will not take upon us to decide; but we think that a littlemore attention to that kind of beauty would have taken away the monotony and flatness which characterize a great number of his views. Carelessness of drawing is sometimes observable in his buildings, especially in the summits of his towers, of which the converging lines are described without any attention to the rules of perspective.

Though these inaccuracies detract something from the merit of the work before us, we are ready to acknowledge that the translator has conferred a great obligation on the lovers of antiquarian research, and we have no doubt that his book will find a place in the libraries of the opulent, and be read with great pleasure (when they can get it) by those

who are not so.

The next in order are two poems translated from the Welsh of Owain Cyveilioc, the first the Hirlas, or drinking horn,by a friend of Sir Richard Hoare, whose mistaken good-nature has afforded Richard Fenton, Esq. an opportunity of con vincing the world that he is not born to be immortalised as a poet. We cannot well tolerate such verses as these:

• Pour out the horn; 'tis my delight

A social converse to excite,

Till by each inspired guest

The powerful influence be confest.' P. 222.

To these poems succeeds a Description of Wales,' translated from Giraldus by Sr R. Hoare, and elucidated by his annotations, which, as usual, shew great marks of industrious research, and a judicious application of the remarks of his predecessors. The task which we have imposed upon ourselves of paying great attention to the concluding part of this volume, precludes us from noticing the many interesting subjects which this description' presents to us. The translator adds a useful supplement to it, and concludes this division in these words:

That the rise and progress of our national architecture may be more distinctly marked and known, I shall endeavour by the means of examples that have occurred during my itinerary through South Wales, to follow its course, tracing its varieties, and demonstrating the gradual advancement it made towards perfection, and proving that system, not chance, directed the hands of our ancient workmen.' P. 410.

It seems strange to us that after this declaration, the wri ter of it should derive the pointed arch from the intersections of the Saxon arcade, the observation of which must have been merely accidental. He entitles this part of his work, 'Progress of Architecture, from a period nearly coeval with the Conqueror, to the sixteenth century, illustrated by a series of designs taken from existing remains in South Wales, and arranged systematically.

In this illustration,the author has been assisted by the experience and drawings of Mr. Carter; the designs are indeed excellent, and beautifully engraved; but we cannot help questioning the soundness of that judgment, which induced Sir R. Hoare to illustrate the changes which have taken place in our ecclesiastical and monastic architecture, by examples drawn from a comparatively small portion of the island. There are many chasms in this series; this was to

be expected, but we particularly lament that he has given us no considerable documents of that style, in which the arch fluctuates between the round and pointed form, and which we think removes from our ancestors the disgrace of being indebted to foreign nations, or to accident, for the introduction of that distinguishing ornament of our national architecture, the pointed arch. A naturalist whose object was to illustrate the chain which almost imperceptibly unites animal and vegetable existence, would not contine his search of examples, to one particular spot on the surface of the globe. We should say, that it were better to have omitted the whole of this part of the work, than to have given it thus imperfect to the world: did we not with pleasure allow Mr. Carter any opportunity of adding his most beautiful drawings to the public stock.

When a man has the misfortune to be tied to an hypothesis, he is led away wherever it chuses to carry him. It interposes itself between him and every object he contemnplates, and leaves its own form most strongly impressed on his memory. Whilst he declares that he is in search of truth and conviction, he is determined not to see any thing but what favours his preconceived opinion. One antiquary can see nothing in British architecture which indicates our invention of the pointed arch: Sir, I have searched every corner of the Continent for it: and I am enabled to say that it is certainly of Saracenic origin.' Another tells you the idea is taken from a grove, but is uncertain what part of Europe had the honour of its first introduction. Some declare it has existed thousands of years on the banks of the Ganges, and many, of which number is the author of this Progress,' derive it from the accidental observation of an arcade, which is found in some Saxon edifices, in which each arch taking its rise from the centre of the preceding one, produces a succession of pointed arches of the most regular and beautiful kind (vide fig. 8.)* We are unwilling to admit the justness of any of these theories, for we see no rea son why our forefathers should not out of the numberless modifications to which matter is subject, have produced varieties much more extraordinary than the transition from the circular to the pointed arch; and we think that we have observed an interrupted series connecting the two forms in question.

* From inadvertency the figures have not been numbered in the cuts, but we refer to their successive situations from left to right,

These small and repeated deviations from the circular forms, have originated from that search after variety, which with so many fine examples before them, influenced Jones and Wren in the designs of their Gothic structures; or which still misguides our modern pretenders to excellence,in this species of architecture.

Fig. 1, (we do not at present advert to the dotted lines in this figure) is a plain semicircular arch,common alike to the Romans, Saxons and Normans; 2 and 3 are only multipli cations of the same simple form; these are found in the Norman part of our cathedrals, and generally in the galleries. If an architect wished to apply Fig. 3 to a door-way, the pillars supporting the central division would be incommodious; in order to appropriate it to this purpose its form must undergo an alteration, the pillars must be removed and the sweep of the lower arches curtailed and brought into contact with the springing of the central one: this will produce an arch nearly resembling No. 4, the interior arch of a church porch; and the church to which it is attached, is remarkable for its plain semicircular arches, supported by circular columns with capitals composed of very large and projecting scrolls. As the door cases. are frequently the most ancient part of the edifice, and as this building may be dated at latest very soon after the conquest, we may conclude this arch to be of that antiquity. Its two lower segments are each one fourth of a circle, and the upper one a semicircle, the diameters of all of which are equal to half the diameter of the circumscribing semicircle, by which they are exactly included. If the upper division of this trefoil be enlarged to more than a semicircle, its altitude will be so much increased that the outer semicircle will

.

not contain it; some other means must therefore be adopted of furnishing it with an interior moulding which may be in contact with, or equidistant from, its base and summit: the only way of effecting this is by describing two lines from different centres which necessarily form the pointed arch as in Fig. 5. In proportion as the altitude of the trefoil exceeds half its horizontal diameter, the including pointed arch will become more acute. We have seen an arch of this description so little removed from a semicircle, that we left it after a Jong observation, without perceiving that it was pointed: But if we were to omit the step gained by fig. 5, it would not appear an extraordinary event that an architect with his compasses in his hand pondering over fig. 4, should ask himself what effect would be produced by adding to this arch a greater degree of complexity. The abrupt termination of the two lower branches of the trefoil, would suggest to him a continuation of this angular character to the rest of the figure; and nothing can be more easily imagined than his placing the fixed,and tracing, points of his instrument, alternately on these corresponding angles, and producing the upper part of the internal arch of fig.6, and as the angle of this pointed arch would rise above the including semicircle of fig. 4, it would occur to the architect to unite each lower extremity of the inferior segments, to the apex of the arch, by two equal curve lines described from different centres; and thus he would complete the 6th figure. We must,however, acknowledge that one objection applies to this last method of producing the pointed arch: the arch thus formed would be of the perfect kind, i. e. it would include an equilateral triangle, which we are of opinion is not the most ancient form; for a very obtuse pointed arch was the immediate successor of the semicircular one. The system of intersecting arches, on which Sir R. Hoare founds his hypothesis, is liable to the same objection.

But if we must have recourse to accident for the origin of this peculiar style, an imputation degrading to the character of the architects of the 2th century, we could propose circumstances which may have given rise to it, as feasible, if not more so, than the boasted intersections of fig.8; which besides the objection above stated, that the pointed figure ft describes is not of the oldest form, is liable to another; that being imperforate, (the figure never being described

This arch is very frequent in our architecture of the 12th and 13th centuries.