Mr. Acres and his family had now learnt, from their many conversations with the Vicar on the subject, to take a deep interest in church architecture, and were ever seeking and finding some new beauties either in the solid building or the ornaments of their own ancient church, which now they looked upon with quite a new feeling of pride and admiration. When, therefore, Mr. Ambrose was a visitor at the Hall, he was not unfrequently called upon to deliver a short drawing-room lecture on some portion of the church or its furniture. "Now, Mr. Ambrose," said the Squire, on one of these occasions, "as we are only a family party this evening, will you kindly give us some more information on our favourite topic of conversation lately? I see the same request is on the lips of all these little people, but they are not so impudent, I suppose, as I am. You will, I hope, find us more profitable pupils than Mr. Dole, to whom you specially addressed your lecture in the church the other day." "I am not so sure of that; for what I said to him, if it did no more, at least set him thinking; and that is a great point, you know. You see, those kind of people, as a rule, never read and never hear any thing really worth reading or hearing about matters of this sort. They are simply taught to believe that all outward form and ceremony in the Services, and all outward meaning and beauty in the fabric of the church, are idolatrous and superstitious, and they care to inquire no further than that. Their prejudice is fostered by ignorance, and to lead them to inquire is the first step to wards inducing conviction. Then, how very little our own people generally know about these things, and how seldom comparatively they are prepared with a ready answer with which to meet the objections of persons who are even more ignorant than themselves! This surely ought not to be. If we place beautiful and costly ornaments and furniture in our churches, the poorest person in the parish should be "Oh, I think the windows should come next, Mr. Ambrose; but there are so many different kinds of windows, that, of course, you cannot tell us all that might be said about them." "No, indeed, my dear; I can only tell you a very small part of their history, but still enough, perhaps, to increase the interest you already feel on the subject. First, then, I shall say something about the stone-work of the windows; and what I say about windows applies very much also to the doors of a church, only the doors are generally much more richly ornamented. Now there are some very simple rules by which we may commonly know from the windows pretty nearly at what period that particular part of the church was built. You cannot, of course, always tell from any thing still existing at what time the church was first built, because often no part whatever of the first church is remaining. The font, from its sheltered position, is the most frequently preserved relic of the original church; sometimes one doorway alone remains, and sometimes but a single window to mark the earliest date of the church. "As I must not puzzle your brains with the hard words employed by persons learned in church building, I do not profess to give you the nice distinctions by which they arrive almost at exact dates. Ours must be a very rapid glance at the whole subject. The two great distinct characters, then, in church windows, as also in other parts of the building, are the semi-circular arch and the pointed arch. The former is to be found in churches erected before the year 1150, and the latter since that year; but of course there are exceptions. The earliest round-headed windows (that the few buildings in which they are found were originally intended as Christian temples, I do not of course affirm) are the Roman, and these are easily known, for they are nearly always partly composed of red bricks "The reason why the windows were in some instances so small, we may imagine was because they were sometimes not Arches diagram "Now we come to the pointed-headed arches. From about A.D. 1150 to A.D. 1200, which is called the Transition period the two styles were a good deal mixed. People have different, opinions as to the origin of these pointed arches. A learned friend of mine has an idea of his own about it, which he calls the finger theory. He supposes that all church arches and tracery may be derived from different positions in which the fingers may be placed when the hands are clasped as in prayer, and that from these, first the round, and then the pointed arch was suggested as a fit design to be adopted for a House of Prayer. It is at least an ingenious and a pleasing conception. Some have imagined that the meeting of branches in a grove of trees first gave the idea of the pointed arch. Often, as I have looked down the avenue by old Wood's cottage, has the opening at the opposite end reminded me of the eastern window of some splendid cathedral, whilst the long intervening rows of trees, with their branches uniting overhead, has suggested to my mind the pillars and groined roof of the building. Our old heathen forefathers knew well the grand effect of these magnificent temples of nature's building, when they selected them as the places best adapted for their awful sacrifices, and the worship of their 'Unknown God "The first pure style of pointed windows is called the Early English "You have not told us any thing about the round windows, Mr. Ambrose," said Constance; "you know we have a very pretty one in our church." "Yes, I ought to have told you that these circular windows are to be found in all styles of architecture, usually at the west end of the church. They are called rose windows and marigold windows, from their supposed likeness to those flowers; and St. Catherine's windows, from their resemblance to the wheel on which she suffered martyrdom. It is likely that this window was placed in our church because it is dedicated to St. Catherine." "That leads me to ask," said Mr. Acres, "what symbolism there may be in the windows of a church; for in your sermon last Sunday you said that there was a lesson to be learnt from all the speechless stones of the sanctuary." "Yes; and every window in the church should remind us of certain Christian truths. The light which they admit should make us think of Him who is the 'Light of the world,' 'a Light to lighten the Gentiles,' 'the Day-spring from on high,' 'the Sun of Righteousness,' 'that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' The window with its double compartments reminds us of the two natures of Christ; the triple window, and the many triple forms in it, of the Trinity "Certainly; I see that: and, by-the-by, as I am as ignorant as my children about the history of stained glass, please tell us something about that before we part." "I will, gladly. As far as we know, stained glass was never used before about the year 850; but when it once came into general use, it would appear that no church was considered complete unless every window was furnished with it. At first, it probably consisted of rude imitations of old mosaic patterns "At this period glass painters fell into a great error by studying more to paint pictures, correct in all the lesser and unimportant parts of the drawing, than to produce a pleasing and solemn distant effect; they often lost the effect of a grand accessory to the beauty and harmony of a Gothic temple, in order to gain that of a piece of painted calico. From about A.D. 1600 this art gradually declined, and, with some exceptions, the glass painting and architecture of our churches fell together, the inferior artist of the former being often employed in depicting the debased style of the latter. Immense quantities of stained glass were destroyed by the sacrilegious hands of the Puritans in the seventeenth century "There is just one other point to which I must briefly allude—the value of stained glass windows as historical records. There can be no objection to windows in some parts of the church (specially those placed over the arches of the nave which are called clerestory windows) being thus employed, though the presence of these subjects in some parts would be most objectionable. There are some most interesting windows of this character still remaining. I have only time to notice some of those in Great Malvern Church. I have brought you some drawings of these windows; they represent some events in the life of St. Werstan, who was martyred in a small chapel
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