Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/233

Rh From this period we may date the extinction of medieval Art; the taste which followed, adopted simultaneously in every country in Europe, was of a mixed character, ingrafting the Italian and German manner with the old, and it left nothing either in architecture or sculpture to compensate for the innovation. Henry VIII., although without the genius to improve, had the judgment to select the best, offered at that period to his choice. He was a distinguished patron of merit in all classes of artistic productions, and Vertue, in his catalogue of artists of the period, enumerates fifty, the greater part of whom were in the employment of that prince.

As choice examples of the union of Italian with English feeling, towards the early part of the sixteenth century, I would notice, in conclusion, four statues, representing Discipline, or Religion, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance, formerly preserved at Devereux House, in the Strand, and removed a few years since from the Guildhall of the city of London. They were presented to Thomas Banks, the sculptor, and were included by Carter amongst the most valuable specimens of sculpture in England.



no part of the ceremonial requisite for the due celebration of Divine Service has given rise to so much ingenuity and so great variety of design as the hanging of the bells. It is hardly necessary to observe that this is the primary purpose for which church towers were built, though they were often applied to other purposes also; in hundreds of instances in most parts of the country, but especially in Kent, the lower part of the tower is vaulted, and used as a porch, and evidently built with that intention. The various forms, positions, and materials employed for bell-towers, open a wide field for investigation; but this is no part of the purpose of the present paper, which is chiefly to call attention to some of the modes adopted in small and poor country churches to save the expense of a tower, and for this purpose to refer to a few out of the very numerous examples that have been observed in different parts of England. One class, which are properly called bell-turrets, in which the bell is enclosed in a small