112 PR CLARKE ON' HOLY ISLAND PRIORY. 



by the execrable tyrant who then wielded the sceptre of England, and 

 the Priory of Holy Island was included in the general wreck. 



From that hour it dates its gradual decay and present state of irre- 

 trievable ruin. Sir Walter Scott has thus described it in " Marmion." 



" In Saxon strength that abbey frown'd, 

 With massive arches broad and round, 

 That rose alternate row on row, 

 On ponderous columns short and low, 



Built ere the art was known, 

 By pointed aisle and shafted stalk, 

 The aicadc-s of an alley'd walk, 



To emulate in stone." 



The latter part of the stanza is a complimentary allusion to the fanci- 

 ful theory of Sir James Hall concerning the origin of the pointed arch. 

 The application of the term Saxon, it would be impossible to verify or 

 substantiate. 



There are no buildings in this country with the characteristic forms 

 of this church, or the distribution into nave and aisles, that belong to so 

 early a period. A few rude structures there certainly are which may 

 have been erected by Saxon architects, one of which occurs in our own 

 district the tower of Whittingham Church, Northumberland charac- 

 terised by a peculiar sort of quoining consisting of long and short 

 stones, placed alternately over each other small round-headed apertures 

 divided by a rude balustre, and the absence of buttresses. The term 

 Norman may be safely used, if it be understood simply to designate a 

 style which appeared in this country at the conquest, and prevailed for 

 125 years, during the Norman rule; but it is in reality Roman, and was 

 derived from the Imperial city by the architects who diffused it over 

 Europe, with the religion to which these structures were consecrated. 

 It flourished during the first thousand years of the Christian era, with 

 long interruptions during the dark ages, but its rudiments may be dis- 

 cerned at this day in the Temple of Peace at Rome, erected during the 

 first century, and in the Halls of the Baths those colossal structures in 

 which the grandeur of thought and magnificent aims of the Roman 

 people are most conspicuously combined. In these edifices we perceive 

 the general arrangement of our Norman and Gothic churches a wide 

 central space arched over at top, with the vaults resting on pillars cor- 

 responding to our nave ; between these pillars lofty arches open into as 

 many vaulted apartments on either side intercommunicating by similar 

 archways and constituting side-aisles. The roof of the side -aisles being 

 considerably lower than that of the central vault, admits the insertion of 

 lights in the main wall looking into the nave, which correspond with our 

 clerestory windows. 



The general character of Holy Island Priory is Norman, or to speak 

 more correctly, Romanesque. The west front is almost perfect re- 

 markably so when we consider, that, in buildings of that period, this part 



