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 twd 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 judicious antiquary who saw this vase observed that it possibly might have been 
