376 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



providentially the vast fragment, which these thoughtless little 

 engineers endeavoured to sap, did not give way so soon as might 

 have been expected ; but it fell the night following, and with such 

 violence that it shook the very ground, and, awakening the inha- 

 bitants of the neighbouring cottages, made them start up in their 

 beds as if they had felt an earthquake. The motive for this 

 dangerous attempt does not so readily appear ; perhaps the more 

 danger the more honour thought the boys, and the notion of 

 doing some mischief gave a zest to the enterprise. As Dryden 

 says upon another occasion 



" It look'd so like a sin it pleas'd the more." 



Had the Priory been only levelled to the surface of the ground, 

 the discerning eye of an antiquary might have ascertained its 

 ichnography, and some judicious hand might have developed its 

 dimensions. But besides other ravages, the very foundations 

 have been torn up for the repair of the highways ; so that the site 

 of this convent is now become a rough, rugged pasture-field, full 

 of hillocks and pits, choked with nettles and dwarf-elder, and 

 trampled by the feet of the ox and the heifer. 



As the tenant at the priory was lately digging among the founda- 

 tions for materials to mend the highways, his labourers discovered 

 two large stones, with which the farmer was so pleased that he 

 ordered them to be taken out whole. One of these proved to be 

 a large Doric capital, worked in good taste ; and the other a base 

 of a pillar, both formed out of the soft freestone of this district. 

 These ornaments, from their dimensions, seemed to have belonged 

 to massive columns, and show that the church of this convent was 

 a large and costly edifice. They were found in the space which 

 has always been supposed to have contained the south transept of 

 the priory church. Some fragments of large pilasters were also 

 found at the same time. The diameter of the capital was two feet 

 three inches and a half; and of the column, where it had stood 

 on the base, eighteen inches and three-quarters. 



Two years ago, some labourers, digging again among the ruins 

 sounded a sort of rude thick vase or urn of soft stone, containing 

 about two gallons in measure, on the verge of the brook, in the 



