The Poetry And Variety Of English Masonry.

and mementos of the traffic . Breasting the corn as a giant might breast the ripples of a lakelet , stands this fragment of the fabric raised by the Roman warriors after they had subdued Arviragus , the gallant British prince Avho endeavoured to prevent them from landing . The bronzed

Avarsmiths , how , they must have toiled ! Six acres and more of land they marked out in the form of a parallelogram , on a declivity facing the sea , and set to work " . We may see they raised the walls , lift , thick and 23 ft . high . At the angles they buiff round projecting towers , and between these they threw out others that were square . The latter Avere solid for the first 8 ft . above the ground , aud then hollow . How the bronzed battle-smiths

must have toiled , and stooped , aud lifted , and stretched , and climbed . Consider the labour of building a wall lift , thick and 23 ft . high , to enclose an area of nearly six acres , when the gates were barred , in a strange land , and surrounded by hostile people . We may see how they went to

work—how they used the materials of the district as far as they would go , or were procurable . The ashlar they formed of squared grit and Portland stone : they backed this up with rows and rows of boulders , or large flint pebbles , over which they strewed as they went on a layer of smaller

pebbles , fragments of flint and brick , and blocks of chalk , which fell into the interstices between the larger boulders ; and all this was grouted together at various stages with a cement , a large ingredient in which was the refuse of their tiles . When the wall had advanced 5 ft . in heiht they

g laid a double TOAV of large flat tiles upon it to bond it together . Upon this they raised seven more courses of the squared work , then placed another double row of the thick red tiles , and so carried the Avork up to its full height with double rows of tiles inserted at intervals of from 3 ft . to 4 ft . Thus

was formed this fragment of Roman masonry . It would have taken the bravest of Britons to have scaled that Avail while the work was neat and trim . But now you may catch at any of the tufts of scorching grass that are protruding from the clefts , and climb up to the top unchallenged . You Avill

see the cornfields spangled with poppies , and beyond the marshland , with its fluttering veil of blueivinged moths , the dazzling channel looking as like the road to fortune as it did to Julius Cassar , Vespasian , Hengist and Horsa , King Sweyn , William the Norman , and other adventurers . If you

look into the area , enclosed by the remains of the circumvallation , you will see a bare place in the midst of the standing crop , in the form of a huge cross , some 87 ft . long , that nothing will grow upon . Successive generations of antiquaries have examined this cross and probed itand found that

, it is a compact mass of masonry , and that is all that they can make out of it . Whether it is the foundation of a Roman sea-mark or of a Saxon memorial , to indicate the spot St . Augustine consecrated , or the platform upon Avhich some other

building Avas raised , may yet be ascertained . It is one of the curiosities of the castle-field that you will see as you shade your eyes and look round from your vantage-ground , raised by the mighty war-smiths of Rome .

You may tell . Norman from Roman masonry without looking at a scrap of ornament , as you would have told the Roman from the Norman in « A'asion , at a glance . The stones used by the Normans Avere but as handfuls compared to those used by the Romans , just as the men Avith which William

made his venture were but as a handful compared to the Roman legions . The first Norman work-Avas in reality Saxon work ; so the antiquaries of the last century , Sir Walter Scott among the rest , were nearly right when they called Norman buildings Saxonfor the A'ictors seized upon the A

an-, quished , and made them build the strongholds that were to make the conquest permanent . We may note the economy of labour enforced by scarcity of hands by the diminished thickness of walling with the substitution of flat buttresses at intervals

to give the necessary strength . The stones were reduced to a rough uniformity of size and squareness , or height and breadth , by no means considerable ,- suggesting , indeed , that the compulsory masons had no labourers , and that each could be lifted by one man . The rubble shows a certain

hurry , too , being but mere rubbish ; not boulders gathered from the shore by a legion of gatherers , but mud , chips—anything that AVUS at hand ; the whole being bonded together , so to speak , Avith sighs and regrets that time eventually hardened into indifference , and thence into content . There

is plenty of this Norman work wrought by Saxon workers in the land ; plenty in Kent , not far from the Roman legacy—at Dover , for instance ; and here and there fragments in every county , even to the northern extreme of the island , Avhere there are several examples Avithin the jurisdiction of the see of Durham . Cold and hard it looks in its

regularity , as though men had clenched their fists and ground their teeth as they built it up . There appears to be in the enriched Norman work that folloAved this a lavishment of secret , and even open , exultation , as though the workers Avere happy—as though the generation or so of

masons were content and charmed with theirtask —as though , as it was in truth , a calm had succeeded a storm . Out of this storm arose the exaltation that produced the best of Avorkmanship , that of the Early English period . The same intensity of devotion that produced the greater number of our cathedrals at this time insured that

every stone should be wrought " and laid to the honour and advancement of the Avork . Every mason seems to have regarded the fabric , in its entirety , as a re-edification of the temple heathens had overthrown ; and each particular stone upon which he Avas employed , one after one , as so many offerings to be laid before the altar . Thus the masonry of this Plantagenet period may be read