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only of his penance, and this was the mercy of the Romish church.

A scene more painful to humanity, and yet more consolatory, was exhibited at Salisbury in the same reign, but whether it were under the same bishop is uncertain, the year not having been specified. Laurence Ghest was burnt alive in that city, after two years imprisonment, during which neither persuasions nor endeavours had been omitted for inducing him to profess that he believed as the church taught concerning transubstantiation. He is described as a tall and comely personage, having a wife and seven children, and not unfriended. His wife and children were brought to him at the stake that they might urge him to abjure his opinions, and preserve his life. In that case he must have been branded in the cheek, and have worn a faggot worked in his coat, to be a mark of infamy and suspicion as long as he lived; but even this alternative, his poor miserable wife, having the immediate prospect of seeing him suffer such a death before her eyes, intreated him to accept. He, however, being firm in his purpose as in his faith, exhorted her to patience, and besought her not to be a block in his way, for he was in a good course, running toward the mark of his salvation;' and in that resolution he accomplished his sacrifice in the flames, bearing testimony to the truth. Well may our fine old church historian exhort us, when he winds up the story of our martyrs, that we glorify God who had given such power unto men, in and for their patience; that we praise God that true doctrine at this day may be professed at an easier rate than in their age; and that we defend that doctrine which they sealed with their lives, and as occasion may be offered, vindicate and assert their memories from such scandalous tongues and pens as shall traduce them.'

While this martyr was in the flames, one of the bishop's men, in that ferocious spirit which such spectacles were sure to produce or foster in those who thought the punishment not more than the crime of heresy demanded, threw a firebrand at his face. The brother of the sufferer was present, and with his dagger would have killed the ruffian upon the spot, if he had not been withheld by others of the spectators. There are no subjects which could be treated with surer or finer effect by a painter, than those which the history of our own martyrs may supply,-none which could affect the heart more deeply, without bringing forward any of those revolting horrors, which neither the painter nor the poet who understands the true principles and scope of their respective arts will ever present to the eye or offer to the imagination. All that ought to be expressed, all that the most ambitious genius could hope to express, might be found in the situation of the martyr

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himself at the scene of his suffering and his triumph; of the friends and relatives, some of whom are there to confirm, and some in the miserable hope of shaking his purpose,-the spectators who are assembled either to have their secret faith confirmed, or their inhuman spirit of bigotry gratified by the sight; the official attendants, some of whom unwillingly perform their office, while their hearts belie the composure which they must needs assume; and lastly those who, though bearing an inferior part in the day's tragedy, are yet deserving of most pity, the unhappy persons who are brought there to bear a faggot, to be branded on the cheek, and to witness the perseverance, the agony, and the triumph of their fellow believers, whose frame of mind they envy, though they have not strength enough of body and of spirit to encounter the same terrible fate.

The persecution in Henry the Seventh's reign, and during the first years of his son's, served only to extend the opinions which it was designed to extinguish, and to hold forth the martyrs of that age as burning and shining lights to the next generation during the fiery trial through which the fathers and founders of our church were called upon to pass. The diocese of Sarum appears not to have been the scene of any such tragedies after Ghest's martyrdom till the Marian persecution. During ten of the intermediate years the see was held by Cardinal Campeggio, one of those persons who, without acting any important part in history, hold a conspicuous place in it, by the accident of being employed in great and influential transactions. His reception, when he arrived in England for the first time as legate, is described by Wolsey in a letter, of which part only has been preserved. No visitor was ever received in a foreign country with greater honours. At Sandwich where he landed, he was met by the Bishop of Chichester and the nobles, knights, and gentlemen of Kent, and by them escorted to Canterbury miro ornatu, splendore incredibili, summâque cum celeritate et pompa. There the archbishop, the bishop of Rochester, and the abbot of St. Augustine's received him in the cathedral, and having sprinkled him with holy water, and fumigated him with incense, conducted him to the apartments prepared for him and his suite, where he remained two days, the chief persons of the country waiting on him, and bringing him presents. Some five hundred horse accompanied him to Sittingbourne, where they dined, after which they proceeded to the Abbey of the Holy Cross, and were there entertained for the night, the whole costs on the road being provided by Wolsey. The next day they found a splendid dinner ready for them at Rochester; after which the archbishop took them to one of his seats at a place called Hetford. There their train being increased to about a thousand horsemen, including many

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racter has been transmitted to posterity, that it was hard to say whether he was more dunce or dwarf, more unlearned or unhandsome. While he held the see, a mandate was obtained from Edward III. for taking down the walls of the former cathedral at Old Sarum, and of the houses there which had belonged to the bishop and the chapter, that their materials might be applied, as the king's gift, to the improvement of the church at Salisbury. Not only the spire but the two upper stories of the tower were added when these improvements were made. This was so bold an undertaking in the architect that nothing but success could justify it. Michael Angelo's conception of hanging in the air the dome of St. Peter's did not imply a stronger confidence in his own skill than was manifested in this ambitious design of raising one of the loftiest spires in the world upon a building where the foundations had already received the load which they were calculated to support. The old wall of the tower, though strong enough when it was the summit of the pile, was slight in relation to the weight which it was now to bear. Half its thickness was occupied by an open gallery, and moreover it was perforated by eight doors, eight windows, and a staircase at each of its four angles. For the purpose of strengthening it, the windows were filled up; an hundred and twelve additional supports were introduced into this part of the tower, exclusive of iron braces; and three hundred and eighty-seven superficial feet of new foundation were formed. It is presumed also that at this time the arches and counterarches were raised across the small transept. The difficulties were so evident and so great that it has been said they were enough to have frightened any man in his senses from pursuing so rash and dangerous an undertaking.' It has, however, withstood the storms and the sap of more than five centuries, and we are told that, if carefully inspected, it may remain twice five centuries to come. Two stories of the tower were evidently raised at the time when the spire was added. From the centre of the tower the spire rises; four of its sides (for it is octangular) resting on the walls of the tower, and four on arches raised at the angles. The wall of the tower is there five feet thick, two of which are occupied by the base of the spire, two by a passage round, and one by the parapet. The wall of the spire gradually diminishes. till, at the height of about twenty feet, it is reduced to nine inches, of which thickness it continues to the summit.

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It is a remark of Mr. Fosbroke's (we believe) that architects should be cautious how they raise ponderous additions to old buildings, for who can say that the original builders may not, in many places, have stopt short in despair of completing their designs with safety? The spire of Redcliff church was evidently left incomplete

incomplete because of such an apprehension. A steeple which Browne Willis had contributed to repair or to re-edify at Buckingham, fell down in little more than twenty years, and Pennant narrowly escaped being crushed in its ruins, having providentially gone out of the church just before it fell. The recent catastrophe at Fonthill is a nearer and more memorable example: there, as at Salisbury, there had been no intention of such a superstructure in the original design, and consequently no adequate foundation prepared for it; and, when that hasty elevation, which had been half hurried up by torchlight and midnight labour, as if to show what wonders could be performed by the wantonness of wealth, tottered to its fall, one might fancy that the Weathercock on the cathedral clapt his wings and crowed in honour of the old architect whose work, after the lapse of so many centuries, was standing in its beauty and its strength.

A settlement took place in this beautiful structure, it is believed, soon after its completion, at the western side, or rather in the piers, or clustered columns, under the north-western and southwestern angles of the tower. Such methods as were deemed best have been employed at different times to counteract the danger. At the top of the parapet of the tower, the tower declines nine inches to the south, and more than three to the west; but, at the capstone of the spire, the declination is twenty-four inches and a half to the south, and sixteen and a quarter to the west. In such an elevation this is not perceptible to the most practised eye, the height being 404 feet, according to the most approved measurement. That of Strasburg is 456; that of Vienna, which exceeds all others, 465: but Salisbury is the loftiest stone building that has ever been raised in this island. The spire of old St. Paul's, which was 520 feet in height, was constructed mostly, if not entirely, of timber and lead. But in such edifices, a wooden spire or a wooden roof (as at York) detracts much, and not without good reason, from the general impression which the structure would otherwise produce. The beholder has no longer the same sense of munificence in the undertaking, grandeur in the conception, difficulty in the execution, and durability in the work. His admiration is abated: the truth which is expressed in a homely proverb concerning silk purses is exemplified upon a great scale, and the reflecting mind is made to feel that, where the impression of richness or of grandeur is intended, the materials must be such as not to disparage the work. Salisbury spire is the great work of human power which it appears to be, and therefore excites even more admiration in an instructed than in an ignorant mind. Mr. Britton, looking at it with a severer eye, says of it that, although it is an object of popular and scientific curiosity, it cannot pro

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perly be regarded as beautiful or elegant, either in itself, or as a member of the edifice to which it belongs.' That the edifice might be complete without it is certain; but would Salisbury Cathedral be admired as it is; would it be so beautiful, so impressive an object, either in the near or in the distant view, if that silent finger pointing to the sky' were wanting? Whoever has seen it by moonlight, or in the silence of a clear morning, will not hesitate how to answer.

A small yearly sum, for the reparation of the spire, was bequeathed by Bishop Mitford in the succeeding reign. It was a weak reign, and, in proportion as the kings of England were weak, the papal authority exerted and strengthened itself: bishops whom their respective chapters had chosen, and the sovereign had approved, were set aside by the popes, and others by this foreign tyranny appointed in their stead. A case of this kind occurred at Salisbury under Richard II. Henry IV. was a prince whose pleasure carried with it more weight, and, in deference to his will, Robert Hallam, whom the Pope had named to the archbishopric of York, was placed at Salisbury instead. Of all the prelates who held that see before the Reformation, Hallam is the most distinguished. He was deputed to the Councils of Pisa and of Constance, and in both represented his country and maintained its character with ability and firmness in an occasion where both were called for. An odd dispute had arisen, whether the English were entitled to rank as a nation, and vote in the Council accordingly. An Aragonese ambassador started the objection, which was resented so warmly by the English prelates and ambassadors that the sitting became tumultuous, and the Spaniard found it prudent to withdraw. But the question was taken up by the Cardinal of Cambray, Pierre d'Aillai, who thought it for the honour and interest of France to disparage England. Upon an intimation that he meant to enter upon this subject in a sermon before the council, Hallam, through the Elector Palatine, required him to forbear from that topic in that place; of this Aillai complained as an insult upon the liberty of the council. The cardinal learnt also that some of the English suite, in case he persisted, were preparing to take part in the dispute with such sharp arguments as swords, daggers, arrows and bills. To avoid disturbance and danger, and yet maintain his objection, he was for referring it to the College of Cardinals; other members of the council, who had no concern in the issue, would have persuaded both parties to let the matter drop, as sure to interrupt and possibly to frustrate the object of the assembly; but the English properly insisted that the affair had been made too public now to be quietly past

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