thankful that such a substitution was made. For, if it is best to face bald facts squarely, we may as well frankly admit that Saxon architecture in England in the century preceding the Conquest was poor stuff. Some of its surviving monuments are indeed picturesque in their present venerableness, but they owe their charm not to the ability of their designers, but to the kindly decorative hand of time.

A single characteristic feature of Austrasian Romanesque churches, which may be mentioned, is the common employment in them of a western tower or towers. Deerhurst and perhaps Brixworth are claimed by our author as introducing this feature into our architecture. Earlier Anglo-Saxon churches often had a western porch ; now towers were in several cases raised on those porches, and formed an integral part of churches newly built. The same nave and chancel plan found in the earlier group was continued, and was, in fact, at a later day handed on to Norman and medieval builders. Hence the square east ends of most English churches down to the present day and the frequent western towers. It was only in these late Saxon days that the cruciform plan was fully developed.

To the latter part of the tenth century our author refers such well-known churches as Barton-on-theHumber, Bradford-on-Avon, Britford (Wilts), Deerhurst, Earl's Barton, Repton, Stow in Lincolnshire, Wing in Bucks, and Worth in Sussex. To the middle of the eleventh century he ascribes, for example, Sompting. Barton, in its original form, of which he gives a restored perspective, was a very German-looking building, with openings like Lorsch and the marked pilaster-strips which people have wrongly thought to be an imitation of half-timber structure. The same feature is even more prominent on the massive tower of Earl's Barton in Northamptonshire-an ugly pile if ever there was one. The interesting and not unpicturesque crypt at Repton may be somewhat earlier. Worth is exceptionally good. It possesses the finest of all the chancel arches of the period, and is remarkable for its eastern apse and its pleasing proportions. The church of Wing is basilican in plan, with a crypt. From its resemblance to Brixworth and Reculver, it has been commonly ascribed to the

seventh century; but our author finds himself compelled to depress it in the chronological scale. Nor will he accept Bradford-on-Avon as built in the eighth century by St Aldhelm, William of Malmesbury to the contrary notwithstanding. Freeman called it 'probably the most ancient unaltered church in England'; but our author points to its double-splayed windows, its pilaster strips, its external arcading-he might also have cited its sculpture in the style of the Winchester school-as features absent from the early group of churches.

The German influence is most visible, perhaps strongest, at Sompting, the latest church we can here refer to. If, however, other towers had preserved their original roofing as it was built, the finger pointing to Germany might have been more generally perceived. Sompting tower is still topped with the German helm. St Benet's at Cambridge must originally have been thus finished. At Sompting, too, is a corbel-capital which finds its almost exact parallel at Trèves. The tower in its bold simplicity is certainly one of the finest that has come down to us from the hands of Anglo-Saxon builders.

The foregoing brief abstract gives but a slight idea of the detailed study upon which Prof. Baldwin Brown bases his conclusions. They may not all be accepted without demur by every critic capable of forming an opinion, but they will be received with respect. Our author's judgments are in no case founded upon general impressions but always upon comparison of actual details of ornament, structure, plan or the like, with others of known or deducible date. His chronology at the end remains tentative. Such ancient buildings have passed through the hands of many, not always pious, generations. They have been patched, reconstructed, added to, and repaired piecemeal. Their original form is not always discoverable. In many cases there remains plenty of room for difference of opinion. Still, the broad lines laid down by our author will not be displaced. In laying them down he has been guided by a multitude of carefully ascertained facts, gathered together not from books but by his own first-hand investigations.

Though he devotes little space to æsthetic considerations, it is evident that the interest of his study has not

imposed any false standard upon his judgment. Students are liable to confuse what has interested them with what is beautiful. The interest of discovery is accompanied by a pleasurable emotion, which does not come directly from the object investigated but from the process of research. The discoverer, however, is liable to mistake the source of his pleasure. Our author avoids that trap. 'The architecture thus produced,' he writes, had not consistency and method enough to constitute in the technical sense a style, but there were in it qualities which might have been worked out, under favourable conditions, into a style.' The work of the seventh-century builders had much promise, but it was cut short by the Viking invasions. 'This,' he says, 'is in accordance with the phenomena of Saxon history in general, in which seasons of brilliant promise are succeeded by long eras of national eclipse.'

The work of the Saxon mason is marked by a mingling of originality and force with clumsiness. He constantly betrays his amateurishness and want of discipline in the orthodox traditions of his craft.' Yet 'he could put his materials together in workmanlike fashion, for the very thin walls which he inherited from the Roman builders have lasted well through the centuries and can bear a considerable superstructure.' Such moderate praise is the highest that Saxon architecture deserves. Its interest is local. It was no factor in the general development of the art in Europe. As soon as the Norman style was introduced, the Saxon disappeared. In remote parts of the country it may have lingered on for a decade or two, but that was only because its rival had not penetrated there. No patron would have employed a Saxon architect when a Norman was available. We prize the surviving remains of Saxon buildings not for their beauty but for their antiquity. They are venerable, not fine.

MARTIN CONWAY.

Art. 7.—THE MINOR ELEMENTS OF SEA POWER. In an article published in the January number of this Review the hope was expressed that at a later date it might be possible to speak of the lesser known elements of the Navy, whose greater work in the war was then explained. The subject is one that requires a certain reticence of statement, where we deal with the practical work which the Navy is conducting. It possesses real importance, because knowledge of the multifarious activities of the Fleet is not sufficiently widespread, and it is therefore well to direct attention to the services of the Mercantile Marine, which, in a practical sense, has been embodied with it for the period of the war, and must not hereafter be regarded as a service apart. Without its lesser and auxiliary elements the Fleet would be destitute of essential means for its action; and without the services of the Merchant Navy the country could look forward to nothing but defeat.

These lesser factors of Sea Power may be taken to comprise the fleet and patrolling destroyers, torpedo-boats, submarines, mother-ships, airships, seaplanes, aeroplane and aircraft carriers, mining vessels, special service vessels, colliers, oilers, tanks, distilling vessels, workshop and repair ships, store ships, ordnance vessels, hospital ships, tugs, lighters, and a crowd of other craft. For a great deal of its special work the Navy also requires the aid of armed auxiliaries, boarding steamers, transports, patrolling vessels of many classes, motor launches, minetrawlers and net-drifters, to name no others. The subject must also lead to some consideration of certain special features of the work of the cargo vessels under the Red Ensign, performing their ordinary duties in situations of hazard and peril created by the new agencies employed by the enemy.

The Navy is a great and complicated organisation. Large numbers of smaller craft belonged to it before the war, and the number has been multiplied many times over during the hostilities. Hundreds of these vessels are to be seen in the naval and commercial ports, or patrolling certain areas or lines, or moving in estuaries or internal waterways. Many of them scarcely betray, in their external appearance, their relationship to the

great service to which they belong. One of the most remarkable features of the war has been the extraordinary adaptability which the Navy has displayed in rapidly breaking down barriers of recent tradition and modern prejudice, and absorbing into itself all the best elements of the Mercantile Marine and the Fisheries; in training men, providing them with a nucleus of officers and specialist ratings, and thus creating such a force as the world has not before seen.

Practically through many centuries, and theoretically in all later times, the Mercantile Marine has been the reserve of the Navy, which really grew out of it as the trunk from the root. In early seafaring there was no distinction between merchantmen and ships of war. The former became warships when war service was demanded, being fitted with 'castles' forward and abaft, and provided with armed men. For centuries seamen sailed the ships, and gentlemen fighters fought them. When the warship became more specialised, it was still largely from the Mercantile Marine that the men were obtained. The sea labourers in the King's ships might have been ragged serving men or sturdy beggars, or even, as sometimes happened, the offscourings of gaols, before they cam aboard; but the men obtained, usually by impressment, who had been bred to the sea from boyhood—the real sailormen, the 'prime seamen' as they were called, who could hand, reef, steer, set up and repair masts, spars and rigging, and handle boats-were indispensable, and were seized from merchant ships and fishing vessels, and more often from their homes in the ports. The Mercantile Marine gave skilled masters or navigators and trained pilots to the Fleet, and many officers came into the service through the hawsehole.'

But, as the Navy became highly specialised in modern times, this state of things came to an end, and the old and intimate relationship of the Naval Service to the Merchant Marine weakened and almost disappeared. That the Merchant Marine would become an essential auxiliary to the Navy in time of war, every one recognised; and its return to intimate relationship with the fighting service, though unforeseen, was natural and inevitable. The Royal Naval Reserve had come into being, and there were subsidised liners and merchant vessels on the lists.