The Poetry And Variety Of English Masonry.

as an expression of a devotion that felt labour Avas prayer and praise . The transitional period that ushered in this perfection of workmanship partakes , to a great extent , of this disencumbrance of the mind from remunerative considerations , as . represented in the use of attractive ornaments to

'the . neglect of less showy details . . Come a few miles out of your way , and look at "the gateway of a border town not A'ery far south of the Tweed . First look at the tint there is upon it , as deep , sombre , threatening , as that of a . thunder-cloud ; so imminentlthreateningindeed

y , , that as you gaze , yon Avould not be surprised to hear a peal burst from it . Then look at the stones . Huge blocks they are , Avith the jointings deeply recessed , leaving the edges standing out in rough lines of li ght . The rains of four hundred summers , ancl the frosts of four hundred winters ,

have smoothed and worn away everything in the likeness of an angle , and the mass remains a silent , solemn , rugged remembrance .

"And dark and true aud tender is tho [ North , " you will think . There is no ivy , no blade of grass , nor a leaf of any kind in sight . The gateway pointed out spans a thoroughfare that is the entrance to a town . A hay-cart , piled up with hay ,

has just tried to pass through the archway , and failed . The carter is busy taking off the topmost bundles of his fragrant load to reduce its height , and the approach is littered with scented shreds . Looking through the shadowy archway , you will see a broad street of stone houses of irregular

heights ( with a shop or two among them , to add to their irregularity ) , that Avidens as it leaves the gateAvay , till it divides into two roads , and leaves a triangular group of houses standing in the midst at the point of severance ; and , if you stand a little to the right , you will see that one of these

roads opens into a market-place . You would never guess that the other road , narrowed to a mere neck just there , Avas a iDortion of the great north

road between London and Edinburgh . Yet princes haA e passed that way full many a time . It leads to the barbican of Alnwick Castle , and away hundreds of miles past it into the dark and true and tender north . This storm-cloud of a gateway Avas built by the son of Hotspur . Eleven

years after the death of that gallant kni ght his son Avas restored to the family honours by the successor of the offended monarch ; and , in good time , - the young Percy , Avith all his father ' s energy of character , began to build on his possessions in -this massive manner . Over the gateAvay , in a

recessed panel is sculptured the Percy lionjjlaced there , it would seem , as men place their seals to documents , to say " this is my act and deed . " Over the lion protrudes three corbels , to hold some extra defence should temporary need require it : and the Avings of the gateway are thrown forward in the form of three sides of an octagon , to give additional protection to the

passage through the centre . The stout toAAm wall left the gateway on either side composed of masonry as massive , as profuse : no stint here , of either workers or material . The Scots were , of course , the common enemy all this was supposed to defy ; but it is impossible not to think that the great

fight near Shrewsbury , the quartering and dispersion of Hotspur's remains , the subsequent alienation of his inheritance , find some expression in it—some precautionary expression that the chances of any further civil Avar should have a different ending . Butone-and-twenty years after

, leave to embattle the town had been obtained , this knight AA'as lying with his face turned up to the sky , cold ancl stiff , upon the battlefield of St . Alban's . The moaning- of the Avind as it sweeps through the darkened archway brings to mind the sound of muffled drums , the great stones seem so

many sighs , the great- interstices so many shudders as we think of this . Very different from this grave and sad kind of masonry , reared Avithin a ride of Chevy Chase , is that the fifteenth and sixteenth century men Avrous-lit . There are no such ledges to catch rain and snoAA and cast shadows—no such stern

resistance , sullen reliance , implied in it . The stones are neater , smaller , arranged with a flatter surface ¦ —the interstices mere chinks . Somehow this masonry appears to have absorbed all the sunshine that has ever fallen upon it . It appears to be mellow ; almost melliferous , if one might say

so . If it be less like the temper that dictated chivalrous exploits , it is more like the sweetness that devised " Arcadia , " the " Faery Queen , " and a " Midsummer Night ' s Dream . " Kemiworth . Castle comes , a-glow Avith noon-day heat , to view . Haddon Hall , on the Wye , too , amidst a crowd of

other examples , comes , pictorially , to mind as a specimen that half a dozen generations of artists have made familiar to niany . Wandering about the untenanted hall , AA'ho does not feel as some Avight of old arriving at an enchanted castle , and move on and on , through the courts , chambers ,

hall , and gallery , expecting at every step to be met by something not of this world ; expecting in every oriel to come upon a group belonging to other days ? The footsteps of Sir Philip Sydney , Spencer , or Shakspeare might have been the last that trod the glorious terrace so mysteriously deserted , and yet so mysteriously kept in an elvish kind of order .

There is a later Tudor masonry that is not so poetical . It is stiffer in manner , less ripe in appearance , laid more by rule ; as though a knowledge of machine-executed labour was dawning in men's minds , and they aimed at rivalling any such process applied to stonework . Some of this

effect is doubtless due to the comparative newness of the ashlar ; but more to a sentiment of progress which at that age had begun to show itself in the study of antiquities as curiosities , and in the reproduction of Roman and Norman forms in