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laboured at it day after day, till it became to him an object of 

 affection ; he worked hard at getting the money to pay for the 

 expense of clearing it, and it has added a very great ornament 

 to this whole district. To persons that have a taste for historical 

 knowledge it is an object that is worth going a very long distance 

 to see. When we compare it with our historical records — the 

 only historical records which we can bring to bear upon it — 

 we are led to think not only that it belongs to the Saxon peiiod 

 — that is quite certain, a look at it for anyone with a practised 

 eye is enough for that — but when we go into the records we 

 find it probable that it belongs not only to the Saxon period, but 

 hundreds of year^ back in the Saxon period. It is quite probable 

 that it is the very little church — the " Ecclesiola " — stated by 

 William of Malmesbury, to have been built by Bishop Aldhelm 

 at Bradford. Xow Bishop Aldhelm died ia the year 709 ; 

 and while on the one hand the pushing it back to so high an 

 antiquity seems to render it more difficult to accept, on the other 

 hand there are evidences of very high probability. In the first two 

 centuries of our English Christianity there was a nobility about their 

 architecture it did not afterwards exceed. "We do not realise to 

 how great an extent the fortunes and the improvements, and 

 even the minds of the people were crippled in the years of the 

 Danish visitations. The people were impoverished. They were 

 driven back into ruined barbarism, so that to say that a Saxon 

 church was built in the year 700 is not really harder to believe 

 than to say it was built in the year 900, or even so hai'd. It is 

 certainly harder to strain our convictions to the point of believing 

 that it should have existed so long, but that it was built in 700 is in 

 itself more likely than that it was built in 900 or 950. Now for the 

 chancel arch of that church, there is in the wall above, high up, what 

 I suppose is the most perfect example of sculpture of the Saxon 

 period existing. The Saxons never, at their best, arrived at a 

 perfection of sculpture to be compared to that of the 

 Greeks ; that we understand perfectly well. It is sometliing 



