this though the eye might, after the first burst of gratification was over, descend to the component objects, and examine their various forms and curious workmanship.

Modern sculptors too frequently overlook the spirit of their models; they labour to imitate the flowers of the field, as though they were preparing sculptures for a botanical exhibition. The bouquet is not so much regarded as the individual flowers and leaves which compose it, and the utmost care is devoted to make these "like nature." But when the sculptured foliage of architecture is so very like nature, it is not at all like art. Attention to exact portraiture is the error to be guarded against. It should ever be remembered that fruit and flowers and foliage are the subordinate ornaments of architecture, and as such do not require the labour of a botanist's experience.

The incidental mention of the injuries which have been inflicted, to a greater or less extent, on almost every ancient specimen of architecture in this county, must not prevent me from again referring to the subject, and naming some further instances of excessive violence; and an obstinate perseverance in an erroneous system of alteration which has reduced the number of the buildings of antiquity, and divested many of those which remain of a considerable portion of their former curiosity and interest. Architectural innovation has long reigned with uncontrolled power in the county of Devon. Elsewhere the hand of depredation and destruction only partially fixes its hateful impress on the works of ancient art and magnificence; but here every thing that is venerable for its antiquity, or beautiful for its material and workmanship, is subject to malicious injury. The spoliage which has been committed in some of the most extensive ecclesiastical buildings in various parts of the county, is unlimited. It is impossible to view without indignation so many of its once noble and highly adorned churches, savagely despoiled of every graceful and ornamental feature, under the plea perhaps of necessity or convenience: but what excuse can be proffered or accepted for mischief perpetrated for its

own sake; permitted by negligence ; encouraged by parsimony; or, for the reverse is sometimes alleged in extenuation of the offence, effected by prodigality?

The antiquary who enters this county, expecting or hoping to derive complete pleasure from the gratification of his curiosity, will surely be disappointed. He may here and there meet with a church so splendid and perfect in its enrichments, as almost to atone for the deficiencies he is sure to find in twenty other instances. He may fancy that the owners of houses would have evinced more regard for the remains of domestic architecture, than the guardians of churches have shown for those of the ecclesiastical order. But here too he must endure disappointment. Three mansions, possessed indeed of extraordinary interest, Weare Giffard, Bradley Hall, and Bradfield Hall, nearly complete the catalogue of examples. But how long the county may claim possession of even this number, is doubtful. The entire destruction of either of the three is not, at least for the present, to be apprehended. One, however, is neglected, and its ancient apartments are strangers to the garnish of appropriate furniture. Another has lost much of its ancient beauty since it has been honoured by the occasional residence of its owner. The third was deprived of what might have been viewed as the asperities of antiquity at a period remarkable for ostentation in architecture. Splendour, regardless of labour and expense, has been bestowed in this instance, in the room of more humble but infinitely more elegant ornaments. The interpolated work of James I.'s reign has been respected; it is still admired, and claims a prescriptive right to the care and protection it receives.

Before I quit the Domestic architecture of Devonshire, I will give one instance of the taste which unfortunately, while it denounces, has the power to destroy an ancient mansion, and to call into being a structure of marvellous character and deformity. I allude to the ancient seat of the

Bouchiers. Tawstock abounds in splendid scenery. The house stands on a considerable elevation, and is still approached by a fine old gateway

with octagonal towers on the exterior angles. It bears the date of 1574, and is a good specimen of coarse rubble work, in broad and narrow thicknesses, arranged alternately. The whole of the mansion which faces this gateway on the opposite side of a spacious court, has not been entirely destroyed or disfigured; but it has been blemished with a new front, where once appeared the most costly features of the ancient fabric which adorned the rich landscape in which it was situated.

The Cathedral furnishes a lamentable instance of sacrilege and impiety, in the conversion of the beautiful sepulchral chapel of Sir John Speke into a public thoroughfare. The founder lies in a recess in the north wall. The enrichments of the altar have been entirely removed, and a doorway now occupies the east end; and to complete the transformation of the chapel into a porch or passage, a considerable portion of the beautiful screen which separates the sepulchre from the church, has been destroyed, and a capacious doorway substituted. Some attempt to secure the recumbent effigy and tomb of the owner, would have disarmed severity of its keenest censures, and would have convinced those who cherish respect for the memory and monuments of men once eminent for virtues and abilities, that, if the alteration was unavoidable, their claims to security and regard were not altogether overlooked. But so obstinately indifferent in many instances are the guardians of churches, to propriety and decency towards the sacred memorials of founders and benefactors, that they can witness without regret the gradual extinction of sepulchral trophies, the antiquity of which, instead of lessening attachment to them, ought rather to strengthen our respect for memorials which have been reverenced and preserved through many ages. Except in the instance of the Cathedral, the system of innovation or rather destruction, when once admitted, is of a sweeping nature, and admits of no augmentation. The church at Barnstaple may be named in confirmation of this remark. It is an ancient and very extensive building, composed of three aisles of equal dimensions. The

arches and pillars which sustained the triple roof, have been entirely demolished, and with these every vestige of antiquity which the interior contained, save only the huge tower in the centre of the south aisle, which was left for want of means to destroy its massy walls. The exterior now assumes an aspect at once heavy, coarse, and ungracious. The church at Bideford, on the same plan, has been partly subjected to the same system; but the mnemoclasts of this place, more considerate for the clustered pillars which were designed to support the church, have removed them into the churchyard, where they serve as gate-posts before the porch of the temple to which in better days they belonged.

Tracery, that magnificent feature of pointed architecture, an ornament which at the same time adorns the exterior and interior of the building, and which often constitutes the chief embellishment of the design, is not generally admired in this county, and consequently the windows of very few of the churches exhibit any thing more than a row of yawning apertures. The sides of Torrington Church are sufficiently plain and simple in this respect; indeed, this building amply proves the ingenuity which is often exercised in Devonshire for the purpose of supplanting the ancient form and appearance by a novel character. It was one of the most admired in the county for the picturesque arrangement of its constituent features, of which the boldest and most prominent was the tower standing on the south side. Many of the churches are distinguished by the position of their towers on the side. The Cathedral takes the lead. Its two towers occupy the situation, and answer the purpose of transepts; and the church of St. Mary Ottery was built on precisely the same plan.

The tower of Torrington Church was a tall and rather plain structure, capped with a curious old pointed roof or rather stunted spire of lead. The broad gable of the chancel, and a small side chapel, with an enriched parapet, completed a group of architecture, which, with few claims to admiration on the score of detail, possessed so many on those of arrangement and effect, that the artist's pencil was often

exercised in its delineation. Such was the exterior of Torrington Church. Its figure, its time-worn aspect, and its antiquity, recommended it to the notice of every traveller sensible to good taste. But the more delicate touches of the picture were wanting. Battlements had been thrown down, and windows of ample breadth shorn of their tracery and mullions to save the cost and labour of repairs. The touch of time had done very little injury; the assaults of mischief appear in every direction: indeed, so complete is the metamorphosis, that those who knew the church as I have described it, will no longer recognize it. The ancient tower has been destroyed, and another with a spire of stone, attached to the west end of the building.

The Church at Weare Giffard, however, still preserves its ornaments of this kind. The pattern is very singular. It consists of intersected pointed arches springing from two mullions and corresponding mouldings in the jambs of the inclosing arch. One object of peculiar richness and beauty has been preserved in the church at Newton Bushel,—the altar window, which must be assigned to the latter end of the 15th century. It exhibits proportions of considerable elegance, and internal ornaments of unusual variety. The design of the tracery is handsome; but the form of the transom which divides the height of the mullions in the centre, is of an uncommon pattern. The recess of the window is lined all round with ornaments in two rows. The outer or principal line consists of niches with canopies and pedestals; the inner line is composed of a horse-shoe, a water bouget, and a rose in regular alternate succession. There are pillars or rather mouldings with capitals on the sides, and grotesque animals at the springing; and the outer edge of the arch is enriched with a pattern of scroll foliage.

Dawlish Church has been modernized in bad taste. It was an edifice of considerable interest, but now possesses really nothing to challenge attention. The churches in Teignmouth are also specimens of the debased style of modern architecture, so much admired and patronized in this county. Gothic, as it is called, is affected every

where, and in almost every thing, and the same hands which at one time are employed in squandering money and torturing materials into the ugliest forms, are at another perhaps not very distant period, engaged in the destruction of an ancient church, or a curious domestic building, thus exterminating the models of ancient architecture, which ought to be spared and protected as furnishing the standard of the Pointed style. Mary Church is full of barbarities, and houses in the Gothic fashion are springing up among the romantic scenery of Torquay. The craggy heights of this beautiful place are crested with pert things assuming the name of castles; and a situation which would have been adorned by a temple of Grecian magnificence, is disgraced by a building with sliced pilasters and a bell-turret.

The sculptors of grotesques were neither deficient in invention nor ingenuity, nor select in the application of their favourite ornaments. The very coarse or very fanciful productions of the chisel on the exterior of Kenton Church have, among others, suggested some observations which appeared on this subject in former letters. I shall still avoid particularizing the objects which supplied some of those remarks, and will pass on to notice with more attention and more satisfaction, several examples selected from various buildings in different parts of the county.

Norman sculptures are very rare, owing to the rarity of this style of architecture in Devonshire. The Church of Bishop's Teignton is, however, an interesting one. Its west doorway furnishes some of the most remarkably grotesque sculptures that are any where to be met with, very highly wrought in a material which time has not perceptibly impaired. The fancy which first produced the beaked heads so common in Norman architecture, must have been singularly gifted with the power of distortion, and the faculty of creating monsters with extraordinary ease and dexterity. These heads have tall plumes, long beaks, and capacious jaws, and are covered with ornaments. Such were some of the characteristic enrichments of Norman architecture. About four centuries later ap

the sculptures which attract attention in the very singular front of Bradley Hall. The human form and features could scarcely have entered the imagination of the being who in this instance reduced huge blocks of stone into heads and limbs so extravagantly disproportionate to each other as these, and so ludicrous in their union, expression, and position. The arch of the porch is upheld by two monsters more likely to repel than encourage approach to the threshold.

The more beautiful doorway of Weare Giffard presents figures of a less repulsive form; but these sculptures are very imperfect; one of them is distinguished by a long tail, which is incorporated with the torus moulding of the label, and the extremity, at an ample distance, is marked by a triple tuft. The exterior of this house presents an interesting variety of sculptures on the corbels of the windows, representing men and women, animals, and imaginary monsters, all in good sculpture, and many of them in excellent taste. A corbel of one of the windows on the east side, merits particular notice. It is the bust of a female, which, if portraiture was ever attempted in sculptures thus applied, may fairly be viewed as the resemblance of some distinguished personage. The attitude is graceful, and the attire elegant. The hair is concealed by a band with a rich jewel over the forehead, and the folds of the coif descend on one side to the waist.

Grotesques have not been extensively admitted among the sculptures of the Cathedral. I noticed in the Lady Chapel a carving of a man blowing a horn, accompanied by a dog in the most distorted position scratching his ear. An animal similarly engaged

forms the corbel of a mass of superbly sculptured foliage on the north side of the choir. A dog scratching his ear is not a scarce ornament in ancient architecture. Another specimen may be seen in the roof of the gateway of New College, Oxford.

I will conclude these remarks upon sculpture with observing, that a mermaid holding a fish in each hand is carved on the seat of one of the stalls. This also was a favourite subject, but ancient sculpture has not preserved a more singular specimen of it than that

which appears in wood in the roof of the north aisle of Dulverton Church, Somersetshire. The mermaid holds her tail in one hand, and a fish in the other. On the sides are two fishes, one in an ascending, the other in a descending position.

The Domestic architecture of Devonshire requires more attention than I have been able to devote to it in this miscellaneous letter. It shall form the subject of a future communication; and some ancient examples of cob or earth walls will be brought into notice, as valuable illustrations of this interesting subject.

AN ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUARY.

GREAT CHALFIeld, Wilts.

GREAT Chalfield is a small parish in the Hundred of Bradford, Wiltshire, situated between Melksham and Bath. The manor, which had belonged to Sir William Percy, was, by the marriage of his daughter Katherine with Sir Walter Tropenell, carried into that family, who had other considerable property in Wiltshire. Thomas Tropenell, their son, had livery of Great Chalfield from Henry the Sixth, and was probably the builder of this handsome mansion. He died in 1490, and by the marriage of his daughter and heir to Sir John Eyre, the estate passed to the Eyres. It was afterwards the property of the Duke of Kingston, and now of Sir Harry Barrard Neale, Bart.

There are few more interesting examples of ancient manor houses. It was placed, together with the Church, in a considerable area inclosed by a strong wall of stone, and further defended by a moat. Of these, however, no very perfect evidences remain except on the north side, where both

wall and moat are entire. The wall is distinguished by a semi-circular bastion near each extremity, and the Gateway, approached by a Bridge, is at the western angle. It had no immediate connexion with the fore-court of the house, but led in a direct line to the Grange, and some other buildings, which stood on the ground now occupied by modern barns and stables. The Court on this side (the west), was inclosed by an extensive and rather lofty line of buildings, partly for security, and partly with a view of screen

ing the numerous assemblage of inferior edifices on the outside from the view of the Court. The principal Gateway is included in these buildings. It exhibits no prominent feature, and is without ornament. The outer and inner archways are 9 feet and half wide. The depth of the buildings is 20 feet, and its width on the inside

12f. 6 in.

The opposite side of the Court is occupied by the Church, which stands in a consecrated area of small dimensions, and irregular figure. This elegant little building is about 50 feet long and 30 wide, including an aisle on the South side, as broad, but not so long as the main structure. It is worthy to be associated with a building of so superb'a design as the house. The bell-turret, with its crocketted spire of stone, and the west door, sheltered by an arch with a gable springing from brackets or corbels, are features of unusual elegance, and the interior is adorned by a highly ornamented stone screen between the body and chancel.

The principal front of the House faces the north. The hand of innovation has not presumed to violate any of its essential features; but the hand of time is permitted to proceed without a helper in its gradual work of dilapidation.

The hall appears recessed between two broad carvings, in one of which is the porch groined in stone. The terminations of all the gables are unusually bold and interesting. They consist of whole length figures of knights armed, and animals supporting shields of arms. The Hall chimney is a prominent and lofty feature in the centre, but the two distinguishing ornaments of the design are the bow windows belonging to the upper apartments in the principal gables. The eastern-most is of unrivalled elegance and beauty-it projects boldly from the wall in a semicircular form, and rests upon a pier, from the inner of which springs a groined bracket. There are eighteen compartments in three ranges; the bottom range was never perforated; its arches are handsomely enriched, but an ornament of exquisite beauty and richness crowns the summit of this window. It is one of the finest specimens of the strawberry-leaf ornament to be found in

ancient architecture. The window on the corresponding gable on the side of the porch is angular and very handsome; it springs from a panelled bracket, and is surmounted by an embattled cornice and a steep roof. The Hall is 40f. 6 in. long, and 20 f. 6 in. wide, and is distinguished by double bays with roofs richly groined in stone. The ceiling is panelled in wood and plaster, and the wooden screen at the lower end, with its double doors, is handsomely panelled. The eastern wing on the ground floor is divided into two apartments. The smaller which opens into the other, towards the north, is entered from the bay of the Hall, and is strongly groined in stone; but it is a low and gloomy apartment, and not well lighted; four loops, three towards the north, and one in the east wall, were not calculated to render this a very agreeable place of retreat.

The parlour contiguous to the porch is a handsome room. The kitchen is attached to the back or south end of this wing; it is an unornamented part of the building, and the plainness of this side of the house forms a striking contrast to the richness of the front. The architecture generally speaking is in very fine preservation; but the south side exhibits strong signs of injury, some of neglect, others of failure in the foundations.

The population of Great Chalfield at the census of 1831 was only 83 souls. It

was assessed to the Property Tax of 1815 at 2,920l. The living is a discharged Rectory, valued at 61. in the King's books; the Patron is Sir H. B. Neale, Bart., and the present Rector, the Rev. Richard Warner, F.S.A., the well-known author of a long list of works in divinity and topography.

ROMAN THERMÆ OR BATH, DISCOVERED IN SOUTH-ST., EXETER, SEPT. 1833.

IN pulling down some old houses in South-street, near the Conduit, and sinking the ground deeper at the back, an elegant pavement adorned with crosses, arabesques, fishes, escutcheons, &c. as the annexed representation, was discovered. It is supposed to have been that of an ancient bath.