IONA. ANTIQUITIES. 9 



built of wattles; a species of structure equally used in 

 South Britain in the common dwellings, as in the earliest 

 religious edifices after the introduction of Christianity, and 

 recorded in the history of the foundation of Glastonbury : 

 a practice from which some antiquaries, following the 

 hints thrown out by Warburton, have attempted to deduce 

 a visionary theory of the origin of Gothic architecture. 

 An imaginary high antiquity has been assigned to the 

 present buildings; no record of the real times of their 

 erection having survived the decree of the Synod of Argyll, 

 which overturned all that a mob of reformers was capable 

 of destroying, and dispersed, together with the library 

 of the monastery, (the object of regrets perhaps much 

 misplaced,) all the writings which could have thrown 

 light on the subject. It is futile to quote the testimony 

 of Boethius, or of any early writer, in competition with 

 the internal evidence derived from the buildings them-, 

 selves ; while Pennant, although aware of the fabulous 

 nature of that testimony, has left the question unexamined, 

 the history of our ecclesiastical architecture not having 

 been an object of general attention at the time his 

 account was written. 



If it were possible to draw a permanent and effectual 

 distinction between the earliest specimens of this style 

 of architecture and those which followed the Norman 

 invasion, we should be perhaps justified in referring St. 

 Oran's Chapel, which bears marks of the highest antiquity, 

 to the Saxon age. The smallness of its scale, which is 

 sixty feet by twenty, its general rudeness, and the per- 

 petual repetition of the chevron moulding in the low 

 circular arch that forms the doorway, assimilate it to 

 those buildings in England which have been supposed 

 prior to the eleventh century. But architects are too 

 little satisfied with respect to Saxon buildings, to admit 

 of such a decision: it can only be presumed from 

 the poverty of the style and execution; circumstances 

 which might easily have arisen from the poverty of the 



