times till now. Where churches had been destroyed by the pagans, Christian missionaries occupied the sites again when they could; but no existing Saxon church possesses any identifiable fragments of a Romano-British predecessor, unless it be that at Stone. Such a claim has been made for St Martin's, but must be rejected. St Augustine, indeed, found St Martin's in use by Queen Bertha and her family. No part of the existing fabric is of earlier date. A fragment of masonry of Roman character has been sketched by our author among the ruins of a church at Stone-by-Faversham, but he does not draw any conclusion from this feature, though it is evidently suggestive. St Martin's and St Pancras' were both small churches; they consisted of a rectangular nave and an apse of almost equal width, but St Pancras' had also a western porch and a small square chapel added at the middle of the north and south walls of the nave. A pair of columns supported an arcade dividing the apse from the nave ; and a similar feature existed in the small-aisled basilica at Reculver. A stone screen of this kind still exists in the Visigothic church of Santa Cristina de Lena at Oviedo in Spain. Lyminge and Rochester may have been similarly equipped. They resembled St Martin's in their simple plan, though the latter was the principal church of a diocese which started its activities thus humbly. Its nave was only 42 feet long and the apse was 19 feet in depth. The cathedral erected by St Augustine at Canterbury existed till the fire in 1067. It is known to us by Edmer's description. It had an apse at each end, and may have actually included some remains of Roman work. Bede says that Augustine recovered there a church which was there of old built by the Romans, which were Christians, and did dedicate it to the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and there made a house for him and his successors.' Augustine's royal patron also built within the monastery, which still bears the missionary's name, another church, dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul. Within its famous porticus, the early archbishops were buried for a time. The place of their burial has been unearthed and displayed by the authorities of the Missionary College, which now occupies the site. Passing northward to Brixworth, we come to the most complete seventh-century church in England. In design it followed the lines of a Roman basilica. Its nave measures about 60 by 30 feet. Moreover, a space about 30 feet square intervenes between the apse and the arcaded screen at the east end of the nave. There was a sunk passage for important burials round the exterior of the apse; and there was a porch at the west end and perhaps an atrium before it. The aisles which originally existed have been shorn away and the apse has been disfigured, but what remains is enough to indicate what is gone. Though very plain and heavy, it was a more ambitious church than those remaining in the south. The crypts at Ripon and Hexham were both built by St Wilfrid before 678, and are well preserved, but they give little indication of the style of the churches to which they belonged. We possess written accounts of the church at Hexham, which was so notable a building that it was asserted not to have an equal north of the Alps. It was of Italian type, a long and lofty basilica with aisles. and many columns. The capitals were sculptured, and so were other parts. There were many altars and chapels. There is little reason to doubt the statement that the fiery and much-travelled Wilfrid, who was very rich, brought stonemasons from Rome to help in his works. He is described as travelling about with builders and craftsmen skilled in almost every art.' He had seen the best building that was being done in Europe in his day, and he desired that what he built should rival the best. His Anglian friend the learned Benedict Biscop was like-minded. To him was due the foundation of Abbeys at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow about the years 675-80. Bede relates how Benedict went to Gaul and brought masons home to build for him a stone church after the manner of the Romans, in which he ever took delight.' Prof. Baldwin Brown appears to decide that the lower portion of the tower and the west end of the nave of St Peter's at Monkwearmouth, which are built with 'extreme care and elaboration in detail,' may be surviving parts of one of Benedict's churches. 'The baluster shafts, the interlaced serpents, the roll mouldings, the cable mouldings, the carved frieze of animals, 6 the big statue in the gable, the balusters in the windowjambs' form the most extensive collection of carefully wrought details to be found in the whole range of extant Saxon buildings.' If they were the work of Benedict's Gauls, those masons must have been content to follow local designs. No one would be reminded of the manner of the Romans' by what remains visible at Monkwearmouth. 6 If the existing choir at Jarrow is the nave of Benedict's church, it must have been a very small building, about the same size as the little church at Escomb and of approximately the same date. The latter is on the whole very well preserved. The Professor's illustrations, reproduced from his own pen-and-ink drawings of exterior, interior, and details, may be mentioned as examples of his lucid accuracy as a draughtsman. The nave is narrow, long and high in proportion to its width, and has a massive appearance consistent with its plain simplicity. Ornament is lacking. There is little conscious art in all this, and even at Monkwearmouth there is not much; of Roman influence no trace. These edifices, in fact, are more Celtic than Roman. They did not contemplate the presence of large congregations. Preachers seem to have exercised their functions mainly out of doors. Preaching-places were probably oftenest marked by stone crosses, of which many were erected during this period. Notable among them were the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses already mentioned. These remarkable sculptured stones have been a good deal discussed in recent years. Writers insufficiently acquainted with the broad movements in art-history have supposed that there was some inherent improbability of the appearance of such works in the seventh century near the Scottish border, whereas it is only there that they could be expected. Prof. Albert S. Cook of Yale and Dr J. K. Hewison of Rothesay have recently published works assigning a late date to the crosses. Their earlier date has been contended for by various writers in the 'Burlington Magazine,' and by Sir Henry Howorth in a comprehensive paper in a recent number of the Archæological Journal. Finally, Dr G. F. Browne, late Bishop of Bristol and formerly Disney Professor of Archæology at Cambridge, in his Rede Vol. 228.-No. 452. I lecture for 1916 and in a much-enlarged and wellillustrated publication of it, has thoroughly examined the question of date from every side, and shown ample grounds for the belief that these crosses belong to the seventh century. Prof. Baldwin Brown's opinion is not doubtful, but only in a future volume will his discussion of the whole question appear. Then he will be able to depict these two crosses, not as isolated phenomena, but merely as the best-preserved examples of a considerable body of similar sculpture, otherwise mainly represented by mutilated fragments. He will also, as his present text indicates, be able to cite novel and important parallels for various characteristic features from minor objects of the decorative arts which previous writers had not observed. There is, in fact, hardly a feature on either of the crosses which cannot be found on some other English work of the seventh century, and in their totality there only. The inroads of the Norsemen put an end to the promising art-revival of the seventh and eighth centuries. There followed of necessity an architecturally barren period. Destroyed churches may have been now and again patched up for present needs, but multitudes of them were abandoned. The commoner wooden buildings were burnt down, the stone churches disroofed, disfigured, and often utterly destroyed. Of buildings of the ninth and first half of the tenth centuries our author can only cite fifteen examples, more than half of them being possibly later. None of them is important. It was not till after the middle of the tenth century that settled conditions began to return and building of a permanent character could be generally resumed. A great number of the churches built in the century immediately preceding the Norman Conquest were afterwards replaced by Norman or Gothic edifices; but our author is able to cite as remaining in whole or in part (generally in part) no less than one hundred and thirty examples of this date. The style of architecture which they express is Romanesque. They are identified by such features as doublesplayed windows, pilaster strips, mid-wall shafts, and the general character of their ground-plans. Not Gaul but the Rhineland was now the region from Saxon archi- which English builders drew their ideas. tecture became a branch of Austrasian. author's contention, and he buttresses it with solid arguments. In Carlovingian days the west of Europe owed no small debt to the culture that had survived in Britain. Alcuin of York carried Northumbrian learning to the important school he founded at Tours. Willebrord and Boniface were the first missionaries to Frisia and Central Germany. The connexion with the eastern half of the Empire founded by Charlemagne became closer as years went by. Intermarriages took place between members of royal families on the two sides of the North Sea; but, after the period of chaos due to Viking invasions, England was no longer the giving but culturally the receiving region; and this became markedly the case when the Ottos reigned in Saxony. How rapidly that country, on which Charlemagne had imposed Christianity with the sword, attained, so far as its governing classes were concerned, to as high a level of civilisation as was then possible in Northern Europe is one of the surprising facts of medieval history. The art which might have been expected to blossom in England, driven thence, flourished at the court of Henry the Fowler and his immediate successors, met there an important stream of Byzantine influence, and thus founded the eastern branch of the Romanesque school. The first existing Romanesque building of developed form is the convent church of Gernrode in Saxony. It dates substantially from the last half of the tenth century, and is a characteristic example of the style which was then supreme throughout the district now covered by Thuringia, Saxony, Westphalia, Rhenish Prussia, and the provinces of the Lower Rhine. We may agree with our author to call it Austrasian Romanesque. It owed something to Lombardy, as the proved presence of Comasque sculptors at Quedlinburg and elsewhere suffices to prove; but it differed broadly from the Romanesque of France and particularly of Normandy. When the Norman style came over to England at and shortly before the Norman Conquest, it found a totally different and, in fact, an inferior style in possession. This it deposed, substituting an influence from the south for an influence from the east; and we may be very |