A decorated window in the west gable of Paisley Abbey, belonging to a period fully a century later than the lower portion of the same front, exhibits the preference for the circular instead of the ogee arch, which would have been combined with the other features of its tracery in any English example of the style. The round-headed light is found to prevail alike in the plainest and the most ornate tracery, from the abandonment of the First-pointed style about the middle of the thirteenth century, till the final close of Scottish medieval ecclesiology in the troubled reign of James V. The curious but remarkably simple window figured here is one of the original ones in the nave of the beautiful little collegiate church of Corstorphine, near Edinburgh, founded by Sir John Forrester in 1429. But it is not in such minor features as tracery heads only that the rounded arch is employed. Throughout the whole period from the introduction of the Scottish geometric Gothic, in the reign of William the Lion, till the abandonment of medieval art, it continued to be used interchangeably with the pointed arch wherever convenience or taste suggested its adoption. In the triforium of Paisley Abbey one of the most remarkable examples occurs of its use in common with the later form of arch in the main features of the architectural design. Corresponding in breadth to each bay of the nave is a large semicircular arch spring from short clustered columns, with moulded capitals, nearly resembling those of the plainer First-pointed pillars of the nave. The rich mouldings of the triforium arch are recessed to the same depth as the pointed arches below, and are again subdivided by a slender clustered column into two pointed and cusped cinquefoil arches, with a quaterfoil in the space between. A similar arrangement, though executed in a less ornate style, occurs in the nave of Dunkeld Cathedral, the work of Bishop Robert de Cardeny, 1406,[647] while the practical end in view may be observed in the nave of Holyrood Abbey, where a constructive semicircular arch is thrown from pillar to pillar at the same elevation, though there concealed by the triforium screen. The object in both cases obviously was to throw the principal weight upon the supporting columns of the centre aisle. These examples serve to shew the interchangeable use of the round and pointed arch by the Scottish architect as it best suited his purpose, or harmonized with the general arrangements of his design. So also in the doorways, the clere-story windows, and the tracery, the rounded arch is systematically used in the Scottish Decorated period interchangeably with the later pointed forms. But the taste for rounded forms also manifests itself in other ways: in circular turret stair-cases, as at Linlithgow, and formerly in that attached to the beautiful south porch of St. Giles's, Edinburgh; and again in the vaulted roofs of belfry towers, where the converging ribs meet in a large open moulded circle, as at St. Giles's, Edinburgh, St. Michael's, Linlithgow, the collegiate churches of Seton and Torphichen, and till recently in the rich groining, springing from large half figures of angels bearing shields and scrolls, of the plain west tower of Glasgow Cathedral,—most injudiciously removed to restore the west front to a uniformity which but poorly repays the idea of size and elevation formerly conveyed by the contrast between the central and west towers.

Examples of the semicircular-headed doorway are of constant occurrence throughout the whole Scottish Decorated period, accompanied with the utmost variety and extent of decoration. The west door of the Abbey Church, Haddington, is a very pleasing example of two orders repeating the favourite roll-and-fillet moulding, with a deep hollow between filled with floriated decoration. It is divided into two doorways by a central shaft, and both it and the jam-shafts have richly floriated capitals and moulded bases. The triple, round-headed windows of the tower, and indeed the whole style of its decoration, are no less markedly characteristic of the peculiarities of the Scottish Decorated period. A still more beautiful doorway, of similar construction, formed, till the year 1829, the entrance to a chapel added to the south aisle of the collegiate church of St. Giles at Edinburgh in 1387. It is now rebuilt between two of the pillars of the central tower, but shorn of many of its finest adjuncts. Similar illustrations might be greatly multiplied, as in the vestry door of the cathedral at Iona, filled in with a trefoil arch; in the beautiful cloister doorway of Melrose Abbey; in the gracefully proportioned priests' door of the collegiate church of Seton, on the south side of the choir, adorned with the arms of Sir William Seton on a shield couche, about the year 1400, but more probably the work of his son; who was buried there in 1441; and in the richly decorated south doorway of Holyrood Abbey, with ogee canopy, and flanking buttresses, the work of Abbot Crawfurd about 1458. The same form of doorway was to be seen, accompanied with several varieties of detail, in the collegiate church of the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, founded by Mary of Gueldres, the widow of James II., in 1462, and recklessly demolished in the progress of the North British Railway operations in 1848. In some respects this was the finest example of late decorated work in Scotland. The entrance from the north transept to the chantry chapel, latterly used as the vestry, was by a neat round-headed doorway, with a simple roll-and-triple-fillet moulding, with a broad hollow externally running continuously round the arch, and with a hood-mould enriched with flowers in the hollow, springing from moulded corbels.

Another small round-headed doorway, with a similarly decorated hood moulding, but with engaged jam-shafts with moulded capitals and bases, latterly blocked up, had formed the entrance to the north transept; and a large one, of like construction, but with the rich mouldings in the jams carried round the head of the arch, without capitals, was placed within a groined porch formed in the angle of the south transept, and formed the principal entrance to the church. The decorations of this fine doorway consisted entirely of a series of filleted quarter-roll mouldings, continued round the recess of the doorway without any break. The most beautiful portion of the whole building was the richly decorated groined roof of the choir and apse, with its vaulting shafts springing from corbels sculptured into all manner of grotesque forms of imps, grinning masks, and caricatures of monks and friars, such as the one here figured, which projected nearly over the site of the old high altar, as if in purposed mockery of the rites on which it seemed to look down. Yet above these unseemly drolls rose the ribbed groins of the beautiful roof, in its eastern portion especially, hardly to be surpassed in chaste design or elaborately varied details. In this point, however, it more nearly approximated to the usual arrangement of English roofs, being enriched with clustering ribs and bosses, and divided by transverse pointed arches into vaulted bays. The most striking peculiarity in the Scottish stone roof-work is the use of the single vault instead of the transverse groined vaulting, deemed essential elsewhere to ecclesiastical roofing. In its earliest and simplest forms, as in the choir at South Queensferry, it differs in no way from the contemporary baronial halls, as at Borthwick or Crichton, from which it appears to have been directly derived. It is probable, however, that pictorial decoration was employed to relieve its otherwise bald surface, as was certainly the case in the baronial halls, traces of which still remain both at Borthwick and Craigmillar. It continued in use to the last in this very simple form, where little decoration was required, as in the muniment room of the church of the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, while the choir of the same building presented one of the chastest and richest specimens of a groined vault in Scotland.

The single vaulted church roof, so like that of the baronial hall, may be very fitly traced to the almost exclusive occupation of Scottish builders, for nearly a century previous to its introduction in military architecture. But while retaining its form they speedily learned to restore it to harmony with the decorated work below. The chapel of St. Mirinus, more frequently termed the sounding aisle, attached to the south side of Paisley Abbey, furnishes a remarkably beautiful specimen of a ribbed roof of this simple form, treated with great variety, and an ingenious adaptation to the variations in the walls from which it springs, which shews how entirely the architect was familiar with this style of vaulting, so little known elsewhere. The choir of the collegiate church of Bothwell, founded by the grim Earl of Douglas in 1398, is another very fine example, in which the richness of details abundantly proves that economy had no influence in the choice of this favourite form of ceiling. Another magnificent specimen of the richest style of Scottish decorated Gothic is Lincluden Abbey, the work of the same grim Earl; but its graceful vaulting-shafts no longer sustain the branching ribs of stone. The choir at Seton is a plainer and less complete example. Only the eastern portion, including the apse, is decorated with moulded ribs, which spring from sculptured corbels, and meet in the ridge rib, where they are tied by equally fine bosses at the intersections. George, second Lord Seton, is said by the historian of the house of Seton to have "pendit the choir and biggit the vestry," about the year 1493;[648] but the chronology of this work is manifestly wrong in some places, and is altogether a very unsafe guide for the ecclesiologist. In nearly all those examples no side aisles exist, and they are indeed very generally confined in Scotland to the largest collegiate and abbey churches, being introduced evidently less for ornament than for use, where an unusual amount of space was required. Occasionally even the semicircular arch is employed in the roof, as in the Lady Chapel at Roslin, where the greater elevation of the pointed arch would be objectionable from its peculiar position. The choir of the beautiful little cross-church of St. Monance, Fifeshire, finished apparently in 1369, furnishes an interesting example of the transition to the transverse vaulted roof, the ridge ribs of the cross-vaults being bent down about half-way from the centre, where they diverge from a boss into three groin ribs, the centre one springing nearly from the top of each window, which is as usual considerably below the vaulted roof. The choir-roof of the collegiate church of the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, A.D. 1462, may be considered as marking the period when the peculiar Scottish vaulted roof was generally abandoned, though more than one interesting example of its use at later dates remain to be noticed. It is retained in the older portion of the north aisle of the choir of St. Giles's Church at Edinburgh, while the two eastern bays, as well as the beautifully groined centre aisle, the work of the same period as the collegiate foundation of Mary of Gueldres, are in conformity with the newer style.

The same convenience which suggested the use of the round instead of the more elevated pointed arch, also occasionally led to the use of the still more depressed segmental arch, as in the chantry doorway at Bothwell; or even to the two-centred flat arch with segmental curves, as in the great doorway of the beautiful screen and organ-loft at Glasgow, and in a smaller doorway, the work of Abbot Crawfurd, circa 1460, now built into the east arch of the north aisle of Holyrood Abbey. The segmental arch is most frequently employed in monumental recesses, as at St. Bridget's Douglas, St. Kentigern's Borthwick, and in the choir at Seton; but other Scottish churches exhibit the semicircular arch employed for the same purpose, as in the magnificent tomb of Margaret, countess of Douglas, at Lincluden, and in the recesses under the great north and south windows of the transepts at Seton. One of the most beautiful Scottish examples of a late segmental arched doorway, which is figured here, is that of the vestry or chantry chapel of Bothwell Church, Lanarkshire.

The window tracery of the same period, and accompanying the other features of the Scottish Decorated style already described, partakes of the like character and forms. The pointed window-head is subdivided by round-headed lights, and these again are filled in with foliated details, the result of which is exceedingly pleasing in the best examples, from the striking contrasts produced by the combination of pointed and circular forms, as well as from the flowing tracery frequently resulting from the union of the two, and producing the pear-shaped light which predominates in Scottish Decorated tracery. This latter source of expression has led some writers to describe Scottish tracery as exhibiting an approximation to the French flamboyant style. Nothing, however, can be more unwarranted. The ogee form is almost never designedly adopted, and even seems to be often purposely avoided, as in the Paisley window already cited, and in many similar examples. The window figured below, from the south aisle of the nave of Dunkeld Cathedral, is a very characteristic example of the mode of introducing the circular and semicircular forms, to modify the ogee tracery lines which so greatly predominate in the true French flamboyant. The multiplication of descriptions of minute details of tracery could, however, very partially serve to convey any distinct idea of the peculiar characteristics of Scottish window tracery. The woodcut of one of the windows on the south side of the nave of St. Michael's Church, Linlithgow, may suffice as a characteristic illustration of the most familiar combinations of the style. Another though greatly inferior example of the same class of Scottish Decorated tracery from Melrose, is engraved in the Glossary of Architecture. (Plate CCXLVIII., vol. iii.) One remarkable Scottish specimen of ecclesiastical architecture must not be omitted to be noticed, as a singular instance of the local peculiarities developed by the building materials of particular districts. The west front of the cathedral of St. Machar at Old Aberdeen, is chiefly curious as shewing the form which the style assumed when produced with the intractable granite of the country. Its erection dates about 1380-1400;[649] but instead of one large west window, divided by light monials and tracery into numerous lights, the breadth of front is filled in with a series of tall, narrow, lancet-like, but round-headed windows, with no other ornament than a cusped trefoil in the head. The towers on either side are equally simple and unornate, and are chiefly interesting as genuine specimens of granite Gothic, of which the modern town exhibits some more ornate, but greatly less satisfactory examples.

Another peculiar use of the semicircular arch is in clere-story windows, as in the choir of the remarkable little cathedral of Iona, built by Abbot Finlay, in the reign of Robert the Bruce, i.e., prior to 1329;[650] in the nave of Sweetheart Abbey, erected, according to Fordun, in 1275; and in the large collegiate church of St. Michael at Linlithgow, perhaps added after the conflagration of the church mentioned by Fordun as occurring in 1424. The latter windows are divided by a neat mullion into two lights, with trifoliated pointed heads. In this church may be also noted the occurrence of corby-stepped gables, a favourite feature of Scottish domestic architecture, occasionally transferred to ecclesiastical edifices. Interesting examples of the tall, narrow, round-headed window, occur in the private chapel of the neighbouring palace. Among the decorations of Linlithgow Church should also be noted the shields attached to the columns, and wrought into the bosses of the roof. These are of frequent occurrence in Scottish churches. They abound in the beautiful ruin of Lincluden Abbey; and are also employed in a peculiar manner as decorations of the capitals of pillars, where they have frequently an exceedingly bold effect, as in the eastmost pillars of St. Giles's choir at Edinburgh, and also in the Rothesay chapel, in the nave, where large shields, blazoned with royal and noble arms, project from the cardinal faces of the abaci, and overhang the lower mouldings of the capital.

No mention has yet been made of the celebrated collegiate church of Roslin, founded by William St. Clair, Earl of Caithness, in 1466, because it has hitherto been usual to regard it as an altogether unique architectural monstrosity. It will be seen, however, from the preceding sketch of the most characteristic peculiarities of the Scottish Decorated style, that many of the most remarkable features of Roslin Chapel are derived from the prevailing models of the period, though carried to an exuberant excess. The circular doorway and segmental porch, the dark vaulted roof, and much of the window tracery, are all common to the style. Even the singular arrangement of its retro-choir, with a clustered pillar terminating the vista of the centre aisle, is nearly a repetition of that of the cathedral of St. Mungo at Glasgow. Various portions of other edifices will also be found to furnish examples of arrangement and details corresponding with those of Roslin, as in the doorway of the south porch and other features of St. Michael's, Linlithgow, and also in some parts of the beautiful ruined church of St. Bridget, Douglas. It is altogether a mistake to regard the singularly interesting church at Roslin, which even the critic enjoys while he condemns, as an exotic produced by foreign skill. Its counterparts will be more easily found in Scotland than in any other part of Europe. It is a curious fact, worthy of note in passing, that only twenty-two varieties of mason's marks occur throughout the whole building, indicating perhaps the number of skilled workmen to whose elaborate art we owe its intricate and endless variety of sculptured details. Among these, notwithstanding the many descriptions and drawings which have been made of the chapel, it is little known that there exist the remarkable series of medieval religious allegories—the seven acts of mercy, the seven deadly sins, and the dance of death: the latter including at least twenty different groups and scenes—as strange a story as was ever told in stone.

From some of the few dates which have been given it will be perceived that the close of the Scottish Decorated period is as totally disconnected with that of England as is the development of its peculiar and most characteristic features. The large collegiate church of St. Giles at Edinburgh, the cathedral of the bishopric during the brief period of the existence of the see, exhibited, till its recent remodelling, a most interesting progressive series of examples of this style, from its simplest to its latest pure state. The destruction of so much of this by the misdirected zeal of modern beautifiers is a source of just regret to the Scottish ecclesiologist, as the dates of many of the additions were ascertainable, and afforded a safe guide in tracing out the gradual development of the style. But enough still remains in the interior to be well worthy of study. The oldest portion is the north aisle of the choir, with its longitudinal vault, shewing what was the style of the centre aisle of the nave previous to 1829, and also of the choir prior to the erection of the present beautiful clere-story about 1466. The date of the north aisle may not improbably be yet ascertained precisely; meanwhile, in the absence of such evidence, its mouldings and other details appear to justify the assignment of its erection immediately after the burning of the church and town by Edward III. in 1355. A charter of David II., dated A.D. 1359, confirms under the great seal the endowment of the altar of St. Catherine there with the upper lands of Merchiston. Like the neighbouring abbey, however, it was repeatedly spoiled, burned, repaired, and rebuilt. In the archives of the burgh a contract is still preserved made in the year 1380 between the Provost and certain masons to vault over a part of the church,—probably the simple but fine ribbed vault of the nave demolished in 1829. A small aisle of two bays, built between the north transept and a fine late Romanesque porch,—only defaced in the latter end of the last century, and finally demolished in our own day,—appeared from its style to be of nearly the same date. The woodcut shews the singular sculptures on one of the bosses in the eastern bay, which appeared from the original painted glass formerly in its window to have been the chapel of St. Eloi, the patron saint of the ancient corporation of Hammermen.

In 1385 the church was again burned by the army of Richard II.;[651] and in 1387, as appears by the agreement with "Johne Johne of Stone and Johne Skayer, masounys," still preserved among the city archives, the five chapels were added on the south side of the nave. One of these included the beautiful porch and doorway already described, which is required by the contract to be "in als gude maner als the durre standand in the west gavyl of ye foresaid kyrk."[652] From this, therefore, we may presume that the great west door—demolished as appears from the burgh records, along with the whole west wall in 1561—was also in the favourite Scottish form of the rounded arch. Various entries in the accounts of the Great Chamberlain of Scotland, rendered at the Exchequer between the years 1390 and 1413, shew that the cost of the restoration of the main building had been borne by Government, while the city was engaged in extending it by the addition of a second aisle on the south side of the nave; and to this period there can be no hesitation in assigning the present south aisle of the nave,—closely corresponding in style to the five chapels built in fulfilment of the contract of 1387. The next addition was a second aisle added to the north side of the nave, forming two bays to the west of the ancient Romanesque porch defaced in 1760. This beautiful little fragment still remains, with its light and elegant clustered pillar adorned with large blazoned shields on a rich foliated capital, from which spring the ribs of its groined roof and the arches which connect it with the adjoining aisle. The heraldic devices on the shields supply a clue to the date as well as to the singularly interesting associations connected with this portion of the church, from which I have given it the name of the Rothesay Chapel. They consist of the arms of Robert Duke of Albany, second son of Robert II., and of Archibald fourth Earl of Douglas, two Scottish nobles found acting in concert only on one other occasion, when David Duke of Rothesay was starved to death in the dungeon of Falkland Palace, A.D. 1401. It seems only a legitimate inference to assume that this chapel may have been founded by them as an expiatory offering for that dark deed, and a chaplain appointed to say masses at its altar for their own and their victim's souls. A Parliament holden at Holyrood, 16th May 1402, enacted the solemn farce of examining them as to the causes of the prince's death, and a public remission was drawn up under the King's seal, declaring their innocence in terms which leave no doubt of their guilt.[653] It amply accords with the spirit of the age to find the two perpetrators of this ruthless murder, after having satisfied the formalities of an earthly tribunal, proceeding to purchase peace with heaven.

The next addition to the Collegiate Church was the Preston aisle, added to the south side of the choir by William Prestoune of Gortoune in 1454, agreeably to a charter setting forth the great labour and charges of his father, "for the gettyn of the arme bane of Saint Gele—the quhilk bane he freely left to our moyr Kirk of Saint Gele of Edinburgh." The curious charter has been repeatedly printed.[654] The chaste and highly decorated groining of this portion of the church shews the progress of the style, which is still farther illustrated by the beautiful clere-story and east bays of the choir, added about the year 1462,[655] at which time the burgh records furnish evidence of considerable work being in progress. The latest addition to the metropolitan church, with the exception of the rebuilding of the beautiful crown tower in 1648, was the addition of a third aisle of two bays, in 1513, between the south transept and the porch erected on the south side of the nave in 1387. This formed a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Gabriel the Archangel. It was an example of great value to the Scottish ecclesiologist, as shewing the adherence to the Decorated style, and its increasingly elaborate yet chaste adornment with richly sculptured groining, at that late period, one hundred and thirty-six years after the date assigned by Rickman for its abandonment in England. Unhappily only a mutilated fragment of this most interesting addition to the building survived the operations of 1829. The favourite and beautiful Scottish crown towers must also be noted, still preserved in St. Giles's, Edinburgh, King's College, Aberdeen, and the Tolbooth of Glasgow, but once also surmounting the towers of St. Michael's, Linlithgow, the Abbey Church of Haddington—styled from its beauty the Lamp of the Lothians—and also, as seems probable from its appearance, the lofty tower at Dundee. Nothing could more effectually demonstrate the total freedom of our native architects from all English influence than this remarkable disagreement in the chronology of the styles practised in the two kingdoms; nor must it be forgot that the passion of the previous sovereign, James III., was for architecture, and that his favourite councillor and companion was his architect, Cochrane, who fell a victim to the jealousy of the rude Scottish barons, excited by the marks of royal favour he received. In no country of Europe was architecture more zealously encouraged than in Scotland during his reign. Our Scottish poet Drummond somewhat quaintly sums up his character in terms more censorious than might have been expected from his own dalliance with the muses: "He was much given to buildings and trimming up of chapels, halls, and gardens, as usually are the lovers of idleness; and the rarest frames of churches and palaces in Scotland were mostly raised about his time: an humour, which though it be allowable in men which have not much to do, yet it is harmful in princes."[656] There was still less need to go to foreign sources for instruction or for artistic models during the prosperous reign of James IV., the favourer of learning and the arts; the patron of our greatest national poets, Dunbar, Kennedy, Gawn Douglas, and others of the Scottish Makars; of Chepman the introducer of the Scottish printing-press; and indeed the encourager of all the most liberal pursuits of a chivalrous age. Under his more popular rule, architecture was encouraged no less royally than in that of his father, and excited the Scottish nobles to emulation instead of jealousy.

Dunbar's noble poem of the Thrissill AND THE Rois commemorates the reunion of Scotland and England in the affiancing of James IV. to the Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. of England in 1501; and it is curious to note how completely coincident with this is the manifestation of the influence of English models on the contemporary architecture of Scotland. The Perpendicular or Third-pointed English style appears in Scotland as a mere exotic, too temporarily tried to be properly regarded as a national style, and when used at all, employed contemporaneously with the pure native Decorated work. The earliest, and if I mistake not the only entire example of a Third-pointed building in Scotland is the parish church of Ladykirk, on the banks of the Tweed, built by James IV. in the year 1500. It is a somewhat stiff and formal structure externally, betraying the introduction of an unfamiliar style. In the interior, however, the features of the older native models predominate, and the plain single vaulted arch is especially remarkable in connexion with other details of a style which was wont in the hands of the southern architect to expend its utmost exuberance in pendants, bosses, and fan-tracery on the groined roof. The magnificent perpendicular work of the eastern portions of Melrose Abbey, however, exhibit no such formality or plainness, though probably a nearly contemporary structure. The arms of Andrew Hunter, abbot of Melrose, prior to 1453, are cut on one of the buttresses of the Decorated nave. John Fraser, a later abbot, promoted from Melrose to the see of Ross in 1485, completed the cathedral at Fortrose; the pure and elaborate Decorated work of which admits of no unfavourable comparison with Melrose nave, and shews that we must look to a later date, and most probably to the following century, for the introduction of perpendicular details in the completion of its choir. In the valuable little fragment of the roof of the latter, fortunately still standing, where all else is gone, we once more see the influence of Scottish taste modifying the characteristics of the new style. Here too, instead of the fan-tracery and pendants of contemporary English roofs, is the Scottish single vault, enriched only with additional ribs and bosses, but preserving the favourite feature of carrying the roof completely above the side lights, and making it depend for illumination upon the great east window. The few other examples of Scottish perpendicular work which exist are scarcely sufficient to admit of any general deductions. The semi-hexagonal apse, both at Linlithgow and Stirling, shew it modified at a later date by native peculiarities, derived from the favourite Decorated style, and in the latter—ascribed to Cardinal Beaton—also exhibiting a singular introduction of the round-headed lights of the earlier period, into the tracery of large perpendicular windows, as well as a peculiar adaptation of the Scottish vaulted roof. Both, however, must be regarded as late and somewhat debased examples. Along with these may also be noted the occasional use of the square-headed window, as in the chantry chapel of the church of the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, and in the clere-story of St. Mary's at Leith, both destroyed within the last few years. The singular church at South Queensferry furnishes a very curious example of some of the features of perpendicular Gothic applied in a novel fashion to an ecclesiastical edifice. The north wall appears to have been almost entirely occupied by the buildings of the monastery, so that it is destitute of ornament, and only pierced with one small pointed window of one light at the east end of the choir, near to which a round-headed door—now blocked up—has communicated with the attached buildings. There is no indication of a north transept having ever existed. Both the nave and south transept are entirely lighted with square-headed windows. That of the transept is divided into three lights, neatly cusped in the head. The west end of the nave is furnished with a window in the same style, while the door, which is small and plain, is at the west end of the south side; two other square-headed windows of two lights fill up this side of the nave, and a large and heavy rectangular tower, measuring in greatest breadth, from north to south, across the length of the church, occupies the intersection of the transept with the nave and choir. Altogether the church is more curious than admirable as a late specimen of Scottish medieval art.

While this transient attempt at the naturalization of the English Tudor style of architecture in Scottish art has thus left some few enduring traces, it is worthy of note that its most characteristic feature, the four-centred arch, is nearly, if not quite unknown in Scotland, otherwise than as a modern exotic which figures in the favourite perpendicular rifacciamentos of ecclesiastical facades, wedded too often to the bald church or meeting-house with about as much congruity as the ill-assorted pair that figure in Hogarth's well-known wedding scene. Whatever might have resulted under more favourable circumstances, the new style was destined to no full development in Scotland. By a charter dated 1st August 1513, Walter Chepman, burgess of Edinburgh, memorable as the introducer of the printing-press to Scotland, founded and endowed an altar in the south transept, or "Holy Blood Aisle" of St. Giles's Church, "in honour of God, the Virgin Mary, St. John the Evangelist, and all saints." It was a period of national happiness and prosperity, in which learning and the arts met with the most ample encouragement. Only one brief month thereafter all this was at an end. James and the chief of his nobles lay dead on Flodden Field; Scotland was at the mercy of Henry VIII.; the Crown devolved to an infant; and faction, ignorance, and bigotry replaced all the advantages of the wise and beneficent rule of James IV. It is not by slow degrees, but abruptly, like the unfinished page of a mutilated chronicle, that the history of Scottish medieval art comes to an end. Yet the favourite forms and mouldings of the Decorated Period lingered long after in the domestic architecture of the country. The ornamental ambries found in the castellated mansions, and even in the wealthier burghal dwellings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, partake so much of the character of earlier ecclesiastical features, that they are frequently described as fonts, stoups, or piscinæ; and even when standing, as is their usual wont, by the side of the huge old fashioned fire-place, they have been assumed to afford evidence that the domestic halls and kitchens of our ancestors were their chapels or baptistries. Some few of these relics of obsolete tastes and manners still linger about the old closes of Edinburgh, though now rapidly disappearing before the ruthless strides of modern innovation. The vignette shews the form of one of these ornamental ambries from a singular antique mansion in the Old Town of Edinburgh, which bore the date 1557, and was believed to have been occupied for a time as the residence of the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise. Another large chamber in the same building bore evidence of having been at one time used as a private oratory, and in it was a curious and still more highly decorated niche, which, however, exhibited somewhat of the debased excesses pertaining to that closing period in which the pure Gothic passed into the picturesque but lawless style of the Elizabethan age. Nevertheless its pierced stone-work served to illustrate the lingering adherence to the earlier national style of window-tracery far down into the sixteenth century.

Into the characteristics of the later baronial and domestic architecture of Scotland it is impossible to enter here, though some of their peculiarities well merit the increased degree of attention they are now receiving. The picturesqueness of the turret stairs, with their lintels decorated with monograms and armorial bearings, and inscribed with quaint legends and pious mottos; the crow-stepped gables, finials, and dormer windows, and the singular overhanging carved "timber lands" of the old streets and closes of Edinburgh, are familiar to all. Some of their features might still be borrowed with advantage to our modern street architecture; but for the most part they are only valuable as the memorials of a period and state of society which has for ever passed away.

Before quitting the interesting subject of medieval architecture as developed in Scotland, some notice of the ancient and mysterious fraternity of Free Masons seems necessary in order to embrace one important source of that singular progressive unity of purpose traceable throughout the various stages of medieval ecclesiology. While Free Masonry was denounced in many countries of Europe, and was placed for a time under the ban of the law by Henry VI. of England, its chief protector, it appears to have met with no check or restraint in Scotland; and having been made the subject of special royal favour by James I., it has ever since continued to be cherished here with greater zeal than in almost any other country of Christendom. With its modern existence, however, apart from the practice of the art, we have here as little to do as with its extravagant claims to an antiquity nearly coeval with the art of building. We can trace the association of masons into guilds or corporations in some parts of Europe at the very dawn of medieval art. In Lombardy such a free guild of masons was established in the tenth century; and the craft is believed to have first obtained footing in England under the Saxon king, Athelstane, about the same period.[657] In Normandy we only discover the rise of such an association in the middle of the twelfth century; but the practice of secret combination obviously emanated from an ecclesiastical source. The whole system of guilds originated, in part at least, in the necessity of preserving and extending such speculative and practical knowledge as may now be safely committed to the press. Such a security for the safe keeping of traditional knowledge was specially required in regard to architecture, which depends so entirely on combined operations, and needs the assistance of the chief branches of science which were carried to any perfection during that period. The whole decorative arts of the medieval era were subordinate to architecture, and it was essentially the handmaid of the Church. Ecclesiastics were at once its patrons and the chief practisers of its highest branches, so that the establishment of an order which embraced within its fellowship all the practical artificers as naturally sprung from the requirements of the Church as its various monastic fraternities. Hence, wherever any great ecclesiastical work was to be carried on, a guild of masons was organized, which no doubt soon embraced practitioners of every requisite branch of art. Accordingly we still find in Scotland that the oldest masonic lodges are at Dunfermline, Elgin, Melrose, Kilwinning, Arbroath, Glasgow, and other sites of remarkable early ecclesiastical edifices, while generally some parish churches or other minor ecclesiastical edifices still exist within the surrounding district, betraying traces of the same workmanship as the parent edifice. To the oneness of belief by which medieval Christendom was held together under its common head, and to the practical unity of the ecclesiastical corporation which constituted the Church, apart from the laity, may be traced the rise and gradual development of the successive styles of Gothic architecture. But to the operations of the masonic lodges within their several districts must be ascribed the local peculiarities and provincialisms which may be detected grouping around almost every great abbey or other remarkable ecclesiastical structure. The geographical and political isolation of Scotland, which gave to its Church a degree of independence unknown to most other countries of Papal Christendom, as well as its very partial share in the great movements of medieval Europe, including the crusades, all tended to give additional importance to those local influences which in other countries were more subordinated by external sources of change. To this source, therefore, we can hardly err in referring much of the peculiar character ascribable to Scottish Ecclesiology, which it is attempted here to reduce to some system.

The revived interest in the study of medieval architecture, added to the happy substitution of investigation for the older and more convenient practice of theorizing, have led to considerable attention being directed to the singular marks or symbols, apparently the works of the original builders, which are observable on all ancient churches. That masons' marks are old as the building of the Pyramids is undoubted. They were discovered by Colonel Howard Vyse on forcing his way into the chambers of construction of the great pyramid, where there cannot be a doubt no human being had been before since the completion of its vast masonry. Similar marks have also been observed on Roman altars and on structures of an equally early era. The most, however, that can now be inferred from such is the invariable practice of each workman marking the stone he had cut, which remains in use in our own day to distinguish the work of different individuals. But much more than this appears to be deducible from the medieval masons' marks. "The fact that in these buildings it is only a certain number of the stones which bear symbols; that the marks found in different countries (although the variety is great) are in many cases identical, and in all have a singular accordance in character, seems to shew that the men who employed them did so by system, and that the system, if not the same in England, Germany, and France, was closely analogous in one country to that of the others."[658] The observation and collation of these marks have accordingly become objects of interest, as calculated to aid in the elucidation of the history of the medieval masonic guilds. It is not, however, sufficient merely to detect the occasional identity of single mason-marks on different and widely distant buildings. The following, for example, includes, I believe, the entire set of mason-marks to be found on Roslin Chapel. Of these the first, Δ, is only to be found on the altars and piscinæ, and the two adjoining ones around the doors. A comparison of these with the mason-marks of Gloucester Cathedral, Malmsbury Abbey Church, Furness Abbey, &c.,[659] will shew that several of the symbols are common to all these; but this can lead to no conclusion. Many of the subordinate lines added to regular figures are still recognised among the craft as additions given to distinguish the symbols of two masons when the mark of a member admitted from another lodge was the same as that already borne by one of their own number. If, however, the entire series, or the greater number of the marks on one building could be detected on another apparently of the same age, it would be such a coincidence as could hardly be ascribed to any other cause than that both were the work of the same masonic lodge. I should anticipate, for example, that such would be found to be the case, to some considerable extent, on the oldest portions of Dunfermline and Lindisfarne Abbeys, and Durham Cathedral. The united cooperation of a very few zealous labourers may soon bring such a question to the test, if sufficient care is taken to discriminate between the original work and the additions or alterations of subsequent builders. Meanwhile, when so much zeal is displayed in the collection of Roman potters' stamps, medieval pilgrims' signs, tradesmen's and tavern tokens of the seventeenth century, and even the more recent provincial copper coinage, it may suffice to suggest that the collection of complete sets of mason-marks from ecclesiastical edifices,—discriminating those belonging to portions of different dates,—may furnish a clue to the influence of masonic guilds on the development of successive styles, or the prevalence of remarkable provincial peculiarities.

We obtain from Father Hay's "Genealogie of the Sainte Claires of Rosslyn," a curious account of the assembling of the needful band of artificers for the building of the collegiate church founded by William Saint Clair, Earl of Caithness:—