158 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



bility, then is the time when the lowering plan should be abandoned, 

 and a course of tonics with a generous diet substituted. 



Thus, have we endeavoured to popularize some of the practical 

 precepts propounded in Mr. Parker's volume ; but we have not en- 

 gaged in this attempt, with any view to encourage their popular ap- 

 plications ; we desired exclusively to shew that he has completed a 

 sensible and instructive work, in all respects deserving to be highly 

 appreciated and patronized by the medical profession. 



The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, elucidated by 

 question and answer; by Matthew Holbeche Bloxam ; the third 

 edition, with one hundred graphic illustrations ; 12mo, Combe, 

 Leicester; Tilt, London; Parker, Oxford; 1838; pp. 130. 



Mr. Bloxam's Principles are beautifully and faithfully eluci- 

 dated by the combined effect of his figures and clear though concise 

 descriptions. In his Introduction, he traces the Gothic or English 

 Architecture from its origin in the age of our Celtic ancestors the 

 first possessors of the British soil, through its varied progress, down 

 to its decline at the reformation. This preliminary sketch abounds 

 with observations well fitted to engage the attention of students and 

 others whose peculiar taste inclines them to the investigation of his- 

 torical and ecclesiastical archaeology. It is admirably completed in 

 his concluding chapter on the internal arrangement and decorations 

 of a church : his closing statements constitute a very melancholy but 

 instructive picture. " Our churches," he says, " were fated in 

 1643 to undergo no slight scenes of spoliation and desecration. By 

 an order of the House of Commons, the churchwardens of every 

 parish were required to take away and demolish every altar or table 

 of stone within their respective churches, and to remove the Com- 

 munion-table from the east end of the church, and place the same 

 in some other part of the body of the church, the rails of the Com- 

 munion-table having been previously ordered to be taken away, and 

 the chancels levelled. Under colour of these ordinances," Mr. B. 

 adds, " the beauty of the cathedrals and churches was injured to an 

 extent hardly credible ; the monuments of the dead were defaced in 

 the iconoclastic fury which then raged ; and the havoc made of 

 church ornaments, and the destruction of the fine painted glass with 

 which most church windows then abounded, may in some degree be 

 estimated from the account given by the Parliamentary Commis- 

 sioner for demolishing the superstitious pictures and ornaments of 

 churches within the county of Suffolk, who kept a journal of the 

 particulars of his transactions. This was not enough : our sacred 

 edifices were polluted and profaned in the most irreverent and dis- 

 graceful manner ; and, with the exception of the destruction which 

 took place on the dissolution of the monastic establishments in the 

 previous century, more devastation was occasioned at this time, 



