: taking the delineations of Mr. Malcolm and others have been carefully attended to, and corrected, abridged or enlarged as circumstances have required. We will now close the account of this Abbey, by a description of its exterior. The outside of the Abbey. The great door-way is of considerable depth, and contracts inwards. The sides are composed of panels, and the roof intersected with numerous ribs. On each side of the door are pedes tals in empty niches, with shields in quatrefoils beneath them. A cornice extends over the whole, on which are ten niches separated by small buttresses: they are without statues, and their canopies are cones foliaged, and pinnacled. Above those is another cornice, totally unfit for the design; indeed, I am at a loss to say what order it belongs to. I am sure the dentals are not Gothic; and I am almost certain the cornice is not correctly Grecian. The King's and eight other coats of arms adorn the freize above it. Hence arises the great painted window before described; it has a border of eight pointed enriched panels; a large heavy cornice over it; and a freize inscribed "Georgis II. 8, A. D. 1735.” The roof is pointed, and contains a small window. Two great buttresses strengthen the towers, and are grand ornaments: with two ranges of canopied niches (unfortunately deprived of their statues) on their fronts. Each tower has projecting wings, paneled. The lower windows are pointed; those above them arches only, filled with quatrefoils and circles. It is from this part that the incongruity of the new design begins in a Tuscan cornice; then a Grecian pediment, and enrichments over the dial of the clock, a poor, tame window, panels, and battlements. The truly great and excellent architect, Sir Christopher Wren reprobates irreconcilable mixtures in designing, thus: "I shall speedily prepare perfect draughts and models, such as I conceive proper to PART III. CONTIN. K agree agree with the original scheme of the architect, without any modern mixtures to show my own inventions." * The ancient front of the Jerusalem Chamber obstructs the view of the south tower; it has a square window, of an horizontal and three upright mullions; with a battlement repaired with bricks. The wall extends some distance westward, when it terminates in modernized houses, against whose end is the ruin of a great arch of decayed stone, leading to Dean's Yard. The north side has nine buttresses, each of five gradations, with windows to the side aisles; and over them semi-windows, filled with quatrefoil. The buttresses are connected to the nave by slender arches; the wall finishes with battlements. The niches on the buttresses all remain, though there are but four statues, which appear but little injured, and are certainly excellent figures. What Sir Christopher Wren said of the north side, nearly one hundred years past, is strictly descriptive at this moment: "but that which is most to be lamented, is the unhappy choice of the materials. The stone is decayed four inches deep, and falls off perpetually in great scales." And so indeed hath the ceasing intended to repair it from the north transept to the towers, leaving a decayed, corroded, and weather-beaten surface, half black, and half the colour of the stones. The front of the transept is less injured, because most of the heavy rains are from the west; and the north-east sides remain perfectly smooth and good, as Sir Christopher Wren left them. The great door is an arch from four large pillars on each side, whose capitals are singularly beautiful foliage. Within them is a range of ten circles inclosing stars on the roof, and on the sides arched panels. The wall is of considerable thickness, adorned by six columns on both sides, with the same number of mouldings. It is remarkable that the tops of all the doors are flat, both in this and the smaller arches. The space over the principal entrance has a vast circle of circles, within which is auother of pointed panels; and in a third others, with the arms of Edward Letter to the Bishop of Rochester. |