HEDON CHURCH. The plan of St. Augustin's is a Latin cross, having north and south transepts, a chancel, and a nave. In the latter, which is enclosed from the rest of the church by an unhappy screen of lath and plaster, divine service is read; the chancel being only used for the celebration of the holy sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and for a weekly lecture. upper tier, is continued round the transepts and chancel. There has once been a third tier of triplets, which has been destroyed by the change of roof. The south door is round-headed; but its mouldings are of early English character, though different and probably earlier than the north door. The ravages of time are painfully manifest upon the beautiful foliage which adorns the capitals on each side of the doorway: the shafts are mostly gone; but a portion remaining shews that they have been banded: the bases are entirely destroyed. Good heads of a king and queen form the terminations to the label over the doorway: above this is a singular row of stones, sculptured with heads and other devices, much defaced by the weather: these are evidently an insertion from some other part, as the string course is abruptly broken by them. Probably they have formed part of the corbel heads under the old roof of the chancel or aisles. Above these is a perpendicular window, which has evidently replaced a former one of decorated character, which had supplied the place of the early English windows at this end of the transept. This perpendicular window, which has once been a handsome one, now presents a sad specimen of economical repairing. Those mullions and transoms which decay had injured have been taken out and not replaced, and so the window has assumed a nondescript character, and remains as a monument of bad taste and illtimed parsimony. There could not be found a better study for teaching the rudiments of gothic architecture than this exceedingly fine church. It cannot indeed boast any instances of the Norinan, but the early English, decorated and perpendicular, may there be seen; not mixed indiscriminately, a window of one style here and another there, without any order or regularity, but exhibiting such a breadth of each style as to keep them perfectly distinct. For instance, the chancel and transepts are purely early English, with the exception of the south and east windows, which are perpendicular insertions. The nave is altogether an instance of the decorated, and the greater part of it very early in that style. The tower is a very beautiful example of the perpendicular. There have originally been side aisles or perhaps chantries on the east to the transepts, and on the south to the chancel. These are entirely destroyed; the only vestige remaining being the west wall of the vestry; but from this remnant enough may be made out to shew that the destroyed chancel aisle has been amongst the richest and most elaborate parts of the early English portion of the building. It presents the There is none of the old stained glass now reremains of an arcade of five arches, the capitals maining in the church: some small traces of it of which are remarkably light and elegant. The were found below the east window in clearing mouldings are profusely adorned with the grace- for the present improvements. Within the meful dog's-tooth ornament; which, indeed, every-mory of man there was much stained glass scatwhere abounds in the early English of this church. The aisles have had groined roofs; and there is now a boss in the possession of Mr. Iveson, of Hedon, representing two dragons | entwined amongst ivy leaves, which has no doubt formed a part of the groined work. When these aisles were standing, and the church undivided by the screen which now blocks up the This church has undergone repairs, but not arch of the nave, a more beautiful church could in the best taste. The present incumbent, howscarcely be found. Others might be more elabo-ever, is doing his utmost to restore the venerable rately ornamented; but for that beauty which building to its integrity; and it is to be hoped consists in symmetrical proportion and chaste his exertions will be crowned with complete simplicity, St. Augustin's could not well be surpassed. The north end of the transepts, whether the exterior or interior be taken (though sadly shorn of its proper proportion by the lowering of the roof), would repay the ecclesiologist for a visit from some distance. The north door is deeply splayed, and has the dog'stooth ornament abundantly enriching its deeply hollowed mouldings. Two tiers of early English triplets rise above the doorway, a gallery or triforium running behind them; which, in the tered in the different windows; and an old inhabitant remembers that when he was young it became the fashion to glaze the windows with square panes instead of quarries, and that the two glaziers then employed in the church used to take out the stained glass, and destroy it for the sake of the lead in which it was fixed. success. The dimensions are: Square of tower (external) ft. inch. 04 129 47 164 6 103 2 81 8 48 S Extreme length of transepts THE NEW MONTHLY BELLE ASSEMBLÉE. JUNE, 1848. MY DEAR FRIEND, THE FLORENTINES.* LETTER II. There is one part of Florence that I often associated with your memory, because, like your mind, it not so much recalls the past as looks forward to the future. And this spot was the narrow piazza or court below the famous Picture Gallery. Perhaps you can hardly understand my description, for indeed it requires something of a sketched plan. The building called the Uffizj, in the upper story of which are the worldrenowned paintings and statues, extends along three sides of a narrow parallelogram, one end being open to the glorious Piazza, where stands the palace of the republic, when Florence dreamed of liberty in a different spirit from what she does now. The other end is an arched thoroughfare to the Lung 'Arno, or street along the river. The building is not famous for beauty; it was one of Giorgio Fasari's classicalities, and has a good deal of his blundering pretension. The ground-floor has a colonnade running round it, and between the columns are niches for statues; they are all modern, many of the niches still being empty. There you see the calm Leonardo da Vinci, clothed in his long robe and turban cap, with the beard that dignifies him into a most potent, grave, and reverend seignor. The statue is too accurately copied from his autograph portrait. What is fine in painting is clumsy in sculpture; but the face is very good, though hardly imaginative enough for the painter of the Cenacolo. In another niche stands Machiavelli, with com *In continuing a series of letters from one of our most valued contributors, we need hardly allude to the stirring events which took place even while they were on their way to England. If political changes affect them at all, it must surely be to lend an additional interest to the outpourings of a discriminating mind on the eve of the irruption.-Ed. N. M. B. A. pressed lip and cautious brow. Benevenuto Cellini has a place very near his magnificent Perseus, which glorifies the Loggia of Orgagna; and Orgagna himself bends his grandly serene countenance on the beautiful workmanship of his hands. The modern Italians are very fond of this juxta-position of the artist's effigy and his creation. In the piazza of the cathedral, they have lately placed the statues of its two architects, Arnelp, who designed the ground plan, and Brunelleschi, who planned its majestic dome. The nobly intellectual head of the latter is raised, with an expression of rapturous thankfulness, to that wondrous globe he in truth lived not to see achieved. Now, although these modern statues represent heroes of the past, to me they rather suggested the aspiration and desires of the present race of Florentines. I indulged myself in the hope that these simultaneously-erected images of the great dead represented Florence's injunction to her living children "Go ye, and do likewise ;" and here alone, of all that fair city, could I be mad enough to indulge an expectation of revived glory for the ancient Mazoccho. I think there can hardly be a dissentient voice in regard to the charms of Florence. She is so mignonne, you can walk all over her in a day: you can see your pet churches, your favourite views, without the least fatigue; you need never make an expedition to go sight-seeing. She is so picturesque, she throws herself continually at every turning into the loveliest attitudes. Grace and beauty attend upon her steps. For Italy, she is clean; the pavement lets the rain run off, and an hour of sunshine makes the streets as pleasant as ever. O that I could say health like Florence the less, that she has a spice the same of Rome! Nor will those in strong of the devil in her! That with all her blue eyes and sunny smiles, she can scold right furiously, and her blasts are cutting as an east wind on the coast of Fife. This prevents her luscious Y |