ping up into the sky-line through the roof of the nave. The domestic buildings proper to

the monastic establishment have been demolished in this instance; and into the very area sacred for centuries to the solemn strain of praise and prayer, the physical uses of human life have intruded. The Lar famimiliaris of the homestead, with rites of teakettle and washing-tub, of mop and pail, and cheese-press, now claims it as his own.

The church is thus a "domestic establishment," and pays its rent, its rates and taxes, we hope, punctually. The only "Hours" now observed are meal-times and milking-times; and the farmer now walks into his parlour through the very door where the Augustinians of former days passed in from the covered way, under their now vanished dormitory, to their daily orisons.

out

There is a sadly widowed look about the west front-the first which meets the eye by the ordinary approach. A well-developed string-course divides it into upper and lower members. The stones of the great west window are still dotted in the masonry, with its full-length niche right and left, and a smaller one in the gable over the point of its arch. In that on the left stood once a pontifical figure, perhaps a "St. Thomas of Canterbury," now left flat, lumpy, and left flat, lumpy, and featureless, with all its relief chipped sheer away; looking somewhat like a sugar-loaf cut through in a grocer's shop, but betraying in this state of havoc some lines as of mitre and crozier. Below the string-course looks modern house window through part of the space once filled by the western door of ample proportions, the rest being walled up with clumsy stones. This front is handsomely turretted at its angles, and from the northern one springs a horizontal range of nondescript structure, added since the church was put to secular uses, their line diverging at a very small angle from the line. of the nave; so that, when you look down from the battlements of the church tower, these lines look like those of a forked stick ; while, seen from the ground on the western side, the effect is like that of features with a villanous squint in them. To judge from a date over one of the doors, the early part of the eighteenth century may be credited with this bit of architectural bastardy. This

range of building, which is mean enough, has yet an air about it which looks as if it might be a Somersetshire mason's caricature of some remains which possibly were standing when it was built.

At the foot of the right or southern turret is a small porch of modern structure, which disguises an ancient door, with a small bit of ancient wall, having rough-hewn gurgoyles and other tokens of an early character. Passing through the door we see the south wall of what was the church, and on it, near its western end, the scar of a gable, showing that a building sprang at right angles from it, and the corbels which supported the roof-timbers of this building still adhere, at no great elevation, to the reverse or inner side of the ancient wall, through which we have now passed. This structure, now no more, would have formed the western member of the general ground-plan, the church being the northern, while the southern is still represented in a ruinous hall, of good and fairly ample proportions, with an arched doorway near its western end. This hall is probably conjectured to have been the chief business-room of the monastery, where questions of rent and dues and fees would be adjusted, and such as were payable in money would be paid. The ogee-headed windows on the north side of it, and its timbered roof, not yet gone to utter decay, are noteworthy; and there are tokens of its line having been continued westward at a somewhat lower elevation, as the west window was partially intercepted by the gable of the roof of such continuation. This noble hall is now a cattle-shed. Its chief doorway was northward, communicating perhaps with the Prior's own lodgings, while the south side has for its most conspicuous feature the remnant of a circular stair, which may have led to some muniment room at a high elevation, where the necessary documents connected with the transaction of business below would be kept.

The original plan of the church was simple -a tower between nave and choir. A north aisle added to the nave was perhaps a later extension of the plan. The tower in the thirteenth century was probably low and "squat," and certainly massive, with scanty elevation for bells; and its summit was reached by an external stair-flight. It stands

now in a fifteenth-century case, and is topped by an upper stage of the same date; whilst, again, its lower storey contains an "inner skin" of light perpendicular work in whitish Caen stone, with open arches elegantly supported on recessed shafts and a fan-vaulting springing from each angle. It is not often that we meet so curious a piece of incrustation of style by style in such thorough harmony of spirit yet such startling contrast of form.

The later casing, however, is not symmetrical with the proportions of the original tower, the ground plan of which was not square but oblong, whilst that of the later tower distributed its enlarged area unequally between the north and south sides. On both these sides the older tower, or what was left of it by the fifteenth-century architect, stands masked under a stone pent-house with sloping roof, having something of the air of a buttress broadened out; but on the south side the front of the ground plan was advanced to take in the projection of the external flight of stairs above referred to, which the later south face conceals, all save the upper portion. These stairs only rise to about one-third of the height of the later and taller tower, which would be about one-half the height of the older and shorter one. This width, on what we may call the first floor of his tower, the later architect has turned to account by creating a little parapet walk of a few paces between the southern wall-face of his own tower and the casing of the old. On this walk the staircase lets the visitor out at its head; and its octagonal pyramid cup of fifteenth century work, crowned by a finial, and with cornice decoration of the York and Lancaster rose, looks over the parapet at the top of the lower stage of the tower, and forms one of the most pleasing features of the whole south frontage.

The internal corbels in the second storey of the tower entered from the stairs are part of the old structure, and mark something which disappeared when it was altered. They may have supported floor-timbers or, more probably, the framework on which the bells were hung. These in the older fabric were probably rung from the ground; the ringing-chamber of the later tower being about the height of the belfry of the earlier.

By a simple and beautiful device of mechanical structure, the belfry windows, facing nearly the cardinal points, would hold music as a sponge holds water, letting it as it were dribble out to seem suspended in the air. Each window is blocked by slabs to about one-third of its height, while each windowhead is a massive plate on which the external ornamentation lies in relief. Thus the escape of the sound is concentrated upon the midmost panels. These are elegantly pierced in numerous foliage-shaped eyelets, till each panel becomes a sieve of sound, through which it floated forth sifted into finer vibrations, filling the sky with mistdrops of prolonged melody. How pitiable a sight is this economy of sweet reverberations amidst havoc and desecration! It is an extinguished lantern whose radiance was not luminous but resonant. The tongues which "discoursed" the music have been torn away, but the delicate organization of their voicechords is their mute abiding witness.

The tower once terminated in a pinnacle at each angle, with an added secondary in the middle of each of its faces. Its parapet is worked in a continuous series of framed panels, every panel having an open quatrefoil cut in the heart of its square, and every such opening a foliaged or fruitaged ornament in its central eye; and as much artistic care is lavished on the details of these small centrepieces at this rarely visited height, as modern architects mostly reserve for those more ambitious ornaments which stare one in the face below.

The ruinous eastern member of the church presents problems which the spade might help to solve; but the spade is busy for other more purely terrestrial purposes at Woodspring now, and the problems meanwhile are so far insoluble that speculation may well be forborne. The north aisle, once a chantry, dedicated, as is believed, to Becket, serves now either as a cider cellar or some similar adjunct of the farm-house, whose site is the desecrated nave. Whether such an aisle formed part of the thirteenth-century structure may be questioned. It has been dreadfully mauled, alike by the sacrilegious havoc of the sixteenth and perhaps every succeeding century, and by the demands of economic degradation. The gable of its eastern

extremity preserves a fragmentary outline of a window of three lights, deformed by the modern intrusion of a secular-looking window, picked up probably from the wreckage of the humbler purlieus of the Abbey. It had four buttresses on its north side, of which three remain; the third, at the northwest angle, being much the stoutest. Each wall-curtain between successive buttresses contains a window, windows as well as buttresses being in the perpendicular style. These are, of course, precisely the portions in which alteration or addition is most likely; yet in the absence of any indications of a contrary conclusion their date may be assumed as that of the building.

Here again, we may observe, that the answer to the points which have been noticed as doubtful may lie below the surface; and it is worth while adding that foundations, if once laid bare, are probably capable of yielding traces of successive historic styles hardly less distinct than those shown in walls which they supported. Analogous differences to those which strike the eye in the superstructure would probably reward the equally careful student of the substructure.

At

present it is thought enough to determine, by digging, the lines of vanished wall above the surface, and that is commonly the only question asked of the spade. But foundations may some day be made the subject of scientific classification on their own merits. Something in the depth attained, or in the lay of the stones, or in the temper and quality of the mortar, would probably tell its own tale. Of course the expense, as well as difficulty and tediousness of the work, would be likely to deter any but wealthy, as well as resolute, enthusiasts. On the other hand, whatever lessons buried stones may have to teach, would probably be deduced with absolute certainty, because the earth as jealously preserves what it hides, as weather and the havoc of devastation decay and deface whatever is exposed to them; and now that "the endowment of research become a popular demand, who shall say that such explorations are impossible?

"has

The connection of Woodspring Priory with the memory of Becket was not the mere fortuitous result of the fashionable saintculture of the thirteenth century. This

Priory was founded by William de Courtenaye, probably grandson of one of Becket's murderers, that same William de Tracy, who was first flung by the archbishop on the cathedral floor at Canterbury, in the preliminary struggle, and then with his sword struck the defenceless prelate to his knees. It was further enriched by the grand-daughter of another of the murderers, Hugh Brito, "in the hope," says Dean Stanley, whose "Memorials of Canterbury" we are here following, "that the intercession of the glorious martyr might never be wanting to her and her children." The same authority adds, p. 83, ed. 1855:

In the repairs of Woodspring Church, in 1852, a wooden cup, much decayed, was discovered in a hollow in the back of a statue fixed against the wall. The cup contained a substance which was decided to be the dried residuum of blood. From the connection of the priory with the murderers of Becket, and from the fact that the seal of the prior contained a cup, or chalice, as part of its device, there can be little doubt that this ancient cup was thus preserved at the time of the Dissolution, as a valuable relic, and that the blood which it contained was that of the murdered Primate.

This statement is slightly incorrect. It was not in 1852, nor in "Woodspring Church," but in or before 1849, in the parish church of Kew Stoke, in the northem part of which parish Woodspring Priory Church stands, that the relique was found. The Journal of the Archeological Institute, 1849, pp. 400, 401, states,

On taking down the north wall of the nave (of this church) it became necessary to remove a block of stone, sculptured with a demi figure, on the inside of the church. It was discovered that in the back of this block was hollowed out a small arched chamber, within which was deposited an oaken vessel, or cup, partially decayed and a little split open; in the bottom was a dry incrustation of what appeared to have been coagulated blood. The cup has a rim at the top, as if to receive a cover; the cavity in the stone was firmly closed with a small oak panel, which fitted to a rebate.

ginal edition) is referred to as containing Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. iii. p. 47 (ori

A curious letter to Jocelin, Bishop of Bath, from William Courtenaye, detailing his intention of found. ing a convent of Augustine monks near Bristol, for the benefit of the soul of his father, Robert, &c., who should serve God, the Virgin, and the blessed Martyr, St. Thomas.

The Journal adds, after noticing the probability, agreeably to custom, that a portion

of the saint's relics-e.g., a phial or vase of the blood of the martyr-should be deposited in any monument to his memory, that

There seems nothing unreasonable in supposing that the little cup at Kew Stoke may have been the depository of some of Becket's blood. The form of the niche and the mouldings are of a date earlier than the part of the parish church in which it was placed, but coeval with the conventual Church. It is not unlikely that it was brought from the Priory at the time of the suppression, and placed for security in the site in which it was lately found. There might still, at that period, have been sufficient reverence for the martyr's relic, to have induced the ecclesiastics to take steps for its preservation. It may, however, have been the depository of the heart of some person of note, or benefactor to the fabric.

This is, we think, a probable suggestion. The sculptured block which had guarded some such relic at the Priory was not meant to be shown. The Priory also possessed this relic of the blood of "the holy blissful martyr," which was of course displayed to the admiring eyes of devotees at his shrine. When flight and concealment became necessary, the parish church afforded an asylum to the latter relic, but it was then entombed in a mural figure taken from the Priory Church, and embedded in the wall of the parish church. It was rescued, hoarded, buried, and forgotten, until three centuries and more afterwards, the workman's tool split the cavity, and, like a toad from a block of marble, the relic saw the light again.

in name, been identified with the Chaboras or Khabûr; but it is sufficient to disprove this identification that both Ezekiel and Jeremiah (i. 3) describe the Chebar as being in the land of the Chaldeans. Chebar and Chabor are, it is also to be observed, not the same words; the former being written with a caph, whilst the latter is written with a cheth, in Kings and Chronicles.

The river of Babylon, by which the captives sat down and wept (Ps. cxxxvii. 1), is rendered Chobar in the Septuagint, and Pliny (vi. xxvi.) having given to the Nahr Malcha the name of a Persian satrap, Gobares, Sir Henry Rawlinson (Herodotus, iii. 449), suggested that he may have got that name from

the Semetic Chobar.

But Cellarius, in his Notit. Orb. Antiq., p. 630, quotes the "illustrious Huetius," as identifying in his work on Paradise, the Nahr

Sares with the river of Sura, and as the same as the Chobar or Ghobar. The Nahr, or Nahar Sares, with its lakes, constituted the head waters of the western Euphrates-the Pallacopas of the Macedonians. In its prolongation it passes the Birs Nimrud, or Borsippa, where it was known to the Jews as the Perath of Borsi, or of Borsi, or "the Euphrates of Borsippa." (Neubauer, Geog. du Talmud, pp. 327-346). The further prolongation of this river was also known to the Jews as that of Gobya, or Kufa (Vologesia), which corroborates the identification made by Huetius of the Nahr Sares with the river so called, and which the

Abib with the Birs Mimrud.

By WILLIAM FRANCIS AINSWORTH, F.S.A., F.R.G.S.

HE visions seen by the Prophet Ezekiel are related in the Book of the Prophet to have occurred "among the captives by the river of Chebar." "The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans, by the river Chebar."

Further it is related in the same book, that the Prophet, upon receiving his mission from God, "came to them of the captivity at Telabib, that dwelt by the river of Chebar," (Ezek. iii. 15).

The river Chebar has, from some similarity

Chobar of Scripture. Kufa itself may be another reading for, or version of, Chebar.

Rabbi Petachia, Travels translated by Dr. Benisch p. 33) identified the river of Chebar with the Hindiyah, a branch of the western Euphrates, because the tomb of Ezekiel (figured in Loftus's Chaldæa and Susiana, p. 34), is situated at Keffil on its banks.

The Hindiyah, and the river of Borsippa, were in Loftus's time only one vast lake-like expanse of the same waters; and if not the Gobya or Chobar, it formed part of the same system of irrigation in older times.

Dr. Hincks says, "It is almost certain that Birs is a relic of the ancient name, Borsippa. This was, we believe, first suggested by Ainsworth; but the identity of this site, with the ancient city or suburb of Borsippa, was

first established by Rawlinson, who found in the ruins clay cylinders, with inscriptions, in which Nebuchadnezzar describes the works that he had carried on there, calling the place Borsippa."

What was said in the Researches in Assyria, &c., p. 168, was: "This Birs Nimrud has been generally looked upon as the remnant of the great pile of Babel; but from what has been detailed, it will appear much more probably to have belonged to the city, of Birs, Bursif, and Borsippa, which was perhaps one of the quarters of the Babylon of Herodotus."

Birs is, we have seen, the actual name of the place. Bursif is the name given to it in the Sidra Rablia of the Sabaeaus. It appears also as Biri in the Talmud of Babylon (Erubin, 45a), and as Borsi in Kidduschin (72 a); and the Talmud also notices a temple of Nebo, as being at "Borsip" (Tal. of Babyl. Adobah Zarah, 11, 6). Strabo called the place, Borsippa; Ptolemy wrote it Barsita; and Josephus, Borsippus.

It is strange that Neubauer should say, "no traces have yet been found of this remarkable town." Mannert expressed his hopes that some traveller would succeed in discovering it, guiding himself by the bats, which, according to Strabo, are of greater size there than elsewhere, and which were smoked before being eaten. This is at all events an illustration of bats being used as food in olden times, and whence their prohibition by the Mosaic law.

Neubauer was, however, acquainted with the Birs Nimrûd, which, he says, Oppert sought to identify with the Tower of Babel. "But," he adds, "the Talmud makes mention of another site of idolatry, which it calls Beth Nimrud (House of Nimrod), and which would be best represented by the Birs Nimrûd" (p. 345).

This identification has a further interest in shewing that the Talmudists made a distinction between the temple of Bel, and the Birs or Beth Nimrûd. Neubauer adds, indeed, as if in explanation of the difference, "The ruins of Babel are to be seen in the present day to the north of Helle" (Hillah or Hilleh).

Sir Henry Rawlinson agrees so far with Oppert as to identify the Birs Nimrûd with

the temple of Belus of Herodotus, and Dr. Hincks is also of the same opinion. This because Herodotus said that the temple and the king's palace were on different sides of the river.

But the mound of Babel is separated from the Mujaliba by the bed of a canal, and this canal was apparently once a large derivative from the Euphrates, if not the main stream of the river itself, as Abû'Ifada describes it, adding that it flowed to the city of Nil or Nilyah, after which it was called Nahr Sirat (Res in Assyria, &c., p. 169).

Mr. Loftus has also since pointed out (Chaldaea and Susian, p. 95) that even in Abû'Ifada's time the Euphrates struck off from the modern channel at Babel. "Its sunken bed," he says, "may still be traced on the west of the old pile of Al Haimar (the red), which some authors include within the circumference of the great city of Nebuchad nezzar. Its course terminated in the Tigris, above Kût al Amara, whilst a main artery, derived from the old Euphrates, near the City of Niliya, flowed southward past Niffar.”

Supposing, then, the mound of Babel to represent the Tower of Babel, afterwards the temple of Belus; and the Mujaliba, the ancient palace, with the Kasr (Nebuchadnezzar's palace) superadded, the two would be separated by the old Euphrates river, or, if not so, at all events by a river or canal, which appears to have been the Nile of Babylonia.

Herodotus not only says that the palace and the temple were separated by the river, but he also tells us that they were surrounded by walls of their own in the middle of the two divisions of the city made by the river. This would imply that the two divisions were in juxtaposition, and only separated by the river, whereas the temple of Borsippa is several miles away.

The fact appears to be, that each town had its own Birs, or Baris, or temple, and whilst Babel was the temple of Belus in Babylon, the Birs Nimrûd was the temple of Belus in Borsippa, if it was not, as the Talmudists report, dedicated to Nebo.

The identification of the Birs Nimrûd with the Tower of Babel, made by Mr. Rich, as well as by M. Oppert in his Expedition Scientifique en Mesopotamie, &c., p. 200, has