Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/467

A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND. 345 which the author appears not to be acquainted. "The chancel of the church of the Holy Trinity at Hull, which is of the fourteenth century," is certainly not the most ancient specimen of brick building remaining in England. The ruins of the priory at Colchester and many other churches or parts of churches in that place and the neighbourhood are built of brick, some of which is Roman, but a great deal is not; and Little Wenham Hall, Suffolk, is entirely built of bricks of the Flemish shape, and is of the time of Henry III. Mr. Hussey has pointed out some excellent examples of early moulded brick-work in a former number of this Journal. Mr. Poole has here fallen too much into the popular error on this subject, that the art of making bricks was lost for a long period: there is pretty good evidence that this was never the case.

The assertion that "still crypts may be considered distinctively Saxon and Norman appendages of our great churches," to the exclusion of the later styles, appears to rest on doubtful evidence. It was seldom necessary to rebuild so massive a structure as the crypt, even when the superstructure was almost entirely rebuilt, and therefore many early crypts remain; but there are so many crypts of the later styles also, that it is evident the use of them was not discontinued, and they were built wherever they were wanted throughout the medieval period.

In treating of "the symbolism of Ecclesiastical Architecture," chapter ix., Mr. Poole is more temperate than most writers on this subject; that there is a certain degree of truth in this symbolism there can be no doubt, it is the exaggeration and the extent to which it has been carried into minutiae that has often made it appear absurd. Mr. Poole has very justly drawn this distinction; we cannot do better than quote his words.

"In short we must not take Durandus to have accomplished more than he professes to have aimed at, or we shall assuredly either pervert his authority, or set him down as having treated fancifully, at best, a subject which will bear a far more rigid method. For instance, in his chapter on bells, he says that 'the rope by which the tongue is moved against the bell is humility, or the life of the preacher, and that the same rope also sheweth the measure of our own life;' and a great deal more of the same kind: now if Durandus is here taken to imply, that the bell-rope is intended to convey such lessons, or that it was so arranged, and left dependent, that it might convey them, we should accuse him of trifling; but if we read his words as those of a very pious man, accustomed to moralize all the offices and instruments of the Church, with which he was daily conversant, we shall find few more interesting and instructive chapters than that on bells. If we learn with him to find 'Sermons in stones and good in every thing,' we shall not quarrel with him because he does not either prove, or desire to prove, that every thing from which he draws a lesson was really intended to convey that lesson, or was, in the sense in which the term must be used in treating of ecclesiastical art, symbolic, or significant of Christian doctrine." p. 176.

Chapter xii., " The Early English Period," is satisfactory, but the entire