i88o-i88i.] ly 



province. There was a very lively interest exhibited as to the 

 object and uses of the various buildings which compose the 

 group, and sundry minor discussions on matters of detail were 

 raised. », 



A gathering having been made in and around the stone- 

 roofed chapels off the transept, a Chairman was elected in the 

 person of Dr. Moore, Hon. R.H.A., when a short paper was read 

 by Mr. J. J. Phillips on " The Architectural Remains of the Cis- 

 tercians in County Down," which we summarise. It was taken 

 for granted that the members were acquainted with the Puri- 

 tanical aims which prompted the Cistercian reformation at the 

 close of the eleventh century, which governed this religious 

 order in the first centuries of its existence, and of the gradual 

 relaxation which subsequently took place in its rules and prac- 

 tices. Traces of "early work" and Romanesque detail are 

 found here, as well as the work found in the latter part of the 

 twelfth and early portion of the thirteenth centuries, called 

 " early English." There were deviations, though not many, 

 from the now well-known monastic ideal of the order of men 

 who erected the abbey. It must be stated that they, unlike the 

 Carthusians, did not live in cells or solitary hermitages. Fur- 

 thermore, it interests us to know that they were the greatest 

 farmers and market gardeners of the age ; that side by side with 

 their religious avocations they very vigorously and successfully 

 prosecuted many others of a secular nature. In Tintern 

 Abbey, Fountains, Rievaulx, Furness, and in scores of other 

 abbeys, we have a remarkable series containing some of the 

 finest architectural erections in the empire, rivalling in vigour 

 of conception and purity of execution the noblest and most 

 intellectual period of Grecian art. The fact which chiefly 

 interests the archaeologist is, that of the many hundred abbeys 

 which were erected in the early years of the existence of this 

 order (ere the sunshine of prosperity had relaxed its severe rules 

 and Puritan simplicity), there is such an astonishing uniformity 

 in plan and arrangement, and the distinctive character of their 

 architectural details. This abbey, De Jugo Dei, as it was ori- 



B 



