402 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



known by the name of Holy Ghost Chapel. Very providentially 

 the vast fragment, which these thoughtless little engineers en- 

 deavoured 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 inhabitants 

 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 enterprize. 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 

 foundations, 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, seem 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 quar- 

 ters. 



Two years ago some labourers digging again among the ruins, 

 found 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 very 

 spot which tradition has always pointed out as having been the 

 site of the convent kitchen. This clumsy utensil,* whether in- 



* A iudicious antiquary ho saw this vase observed that it possibly might have been 



