standing near it, claiming, undoubtedly, as high antiquity as any structure in our land; and the walls of that old church having echoed, doubtless, to truths uttered long centuries since by earnest lips. The wind seems always to be stirring upon that high hill; and often when in the streets below it sounded as if only whispering gently, we have found it, as we reached the summit, making music so wild among the walls, that it might seem like some loud anthem chaunted from the arches.

The few traditions which tell us anything of the origin of this church are dim and uncertain. We would fain believe some of the most pleasing of them, but reason will not sanction all in which imagination might delight. In the absence alike of authentic records, and of positive indications in the architecture itself, each thoughtful person has a theory of his own on the subject; but in one point all agree, either that the structure was raised by Roman hands, or that it was built of the materials of a Roman building. Roman tiles appear in every part of it: it contains round-headed doorways and windows of Roman bricks, and the same material, mixed with stone, is worked up in the walls apparently without plan, but showing, on careful investigation, manifest proofs of architectural design.

The Romish calendar tells us that Lucius, who was king of Britain towards the close of the second century, on becoming a believer in Christ, reared this edifice; but all the records of this are unsatisfactory. The monks again tell us that when Augustine visited this land in 590, on his errand of light and love, Ethelbert, having been converted to the Christian faith, gave to this missionary the church of Dover Castle, which having, during the late centuries of Saxon darkness, been defiled by Pagan worship, was reconsecrated by Augustine, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

There seems better reason for believing that the present church belongs to a period somewhat later, and was built from old Roman remains, between the time of Augustine and the reign of Alfred. Many good archæologists consider that there are, in the edifice, some marked tokens of Anglo-Saxon architecture: while it is well known that these artificers were accustomed to use the materials of former structures in their work. There are, however, writers of good authority, who consider that the present remains of the church were raised by early Norman architects; and assert that it has nothing to distinguish it from work of the twelfth century.

The various alterations of this old building prevent our arriving at certain conclusions, for few churches have undergone greater changes. The walls once contained apertures intended for windows, which are now filled with masonry. It has had three different roofs, the traces of which are clearly marked, and its windows have been variously altered, and received additions to their original number. The church is in the form of a cross; the quadrangular tower being supported by four lofty arches. On the north and south sides the pilasters are of squared stone, but two older arches, including their pilasters, are formed after the manner of the Romans with tiles. The inhabitants of Dover have now planted a holly, to be called the Wellington tree, in the graveyard of this old church, in memory of their late Constable and Warden.

It would be strange if the Christians of later years could look unmoved on a structure like this. Within its walls, though some superstitions were practised, yet the light of the gospel was sounded amid the darkness of the From this spot went forth religious truths, which have since cheered the living and upheld the dying, and have been proclaimed from Britain to the farthest isles of the sea. Much of the poet's description is applicable :

age.

"Since that low window's arch was reared

There have been many a rise and fall;
Yet this lone temple of the poor

Stands preaching over all.

The rough rude Saxon reared it up,
The temple of his God to be:

And here, in simple earnestness,
He came and bent the knee.

Then came the Norman in his pride,
Attended by his Saxon slaves:

And then the priests of later times
Sang mass above their graves."

When Augustine preached Christianity to Kent, Ethelbert, its king, welcomed its truths, and his subjects embraced, with more or less of sincerity and zeal, the Christian faith. Eadbald, his successor, also, in the later years of his life, renounced the errors of Paganism, and is said to have annexed to this church of Dover Castle a college of twenty-four ecclesiastics. Not a vestige of this college now remains, but an institution of the kind was, doubtless, near the church, for the ruins of a gateway still exist under the edge of the cliff, which are probably the remnants of the ancient building called, in early times, Monksgate, which had a tower and drawbridge. The apartments of some of the monks were, most likely, over the arched passage.

The canons must have had a pleasant home on this lofty eminence, with its pure air and fine prospect, and the distant music of the waves; and they must have looked down on a very different town from that of the modern Dover. Even yet, alternating with its bright and handsome new houses, may be seen, in some of the by-ways of the town, old gables, with their dingy fronts and broken and patched walls and chimneys. These dwellings, and some old irregular narrow streets, with their roads formed of pebbles laid in the soil, tell of later years than those in which the monks looked down on Dover; but some old names, as that of Adrian's Street, remind us of times even older than they. Still the white cliff towers above the town as it did when the Romans called one of its projections the Tarpeian, because from its summits the guilty were projected into the depths below; and still, when the foundation for the modern house is constructed, the pick-axe falls upon the old wall which Severus built here; while almost every step which we traverse has its reminiscences of long past ages. According to the Doomsday-book, Dover was, as early as the time of Edward the Confessor, of "abilitie to arme yeerely twentie vessels of the sea by the space of fifteene days together, eche vessel having therein one-and-twentie able men." In the time of William the Conqueror, however, a destructive fire left to the town but five-and-twenty dwellinghouses.

Of the history of these canons of the castle church we know nothing; but our attention is again called to them, or at least to their successors, as we come to review the history of a church built in the town in A.d. 696. Ancient chronicles record that Withrid, king of Kent, reared the church of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and several edifices near it, for the accommodation of twenty-two secular canons, whom he removed from the church on the hill. Three chaplains were, however, appointed to conduct the service in the ancient edifice, and it was continued until the year 1690. In order to reconcile the canons to their change of situation, the king secured to them,

by charter, all the franchise and possessions which they had hitherto enjoyed; and they were, at an early period, farther endowed with large grants of land in the neighbourhood of their church: while Withrid added to them the privilege of exemption from the jurisdiction of any ordinary or judge, save the King and the Pope. The names of several of the canons, who were also chaplains to the king, are recorded in the Doomsday Book, and here, too, is a summary of their lands, made in the reigns of Edward the Confessor and William, detailing clearly the nature of the property, though some difficulty occurs in defining its extent, from an uncertainty as to the meaning of terms employed in measurement. In the time of Edward, the property produced sixty-one pounds; but prior to the Conquest some encroachments were made on it, and when the Norman survey was taken, the produce was stated at 481. 6s. 4d. Three pounds of this money was devoted to purchasing shoes for the canons.

For four hundred years the canons dwelt on this spot, and during this period they are recorded by Kilburn to have built three churches in the town. These churches were subordinate to their own of St. Martin's-leGrand, and until its great bell had tolled the signal, none of them presumed to commence the service of the mass. One of them, St. Peter's church, stood on the ground now occupied by the Antwerp Inn; but of its architecture we know nothing. In sinking a cellar in 1810, a head was found here, which is supposed to be that of the unfortunate Duke of Suffolk, who was beheaded in 1450. The skull was nearly perfect, but soon crumbled on exposure to air. The last rector of this church was appointed in 1616, but it is doubtful if the church was then used for Divine service. The parish church of St. Mary the Virgin, still in use, is also supposed to have been built by these secular canons.

We shall not easily forget the impression of dreariness produced on our mind by the first visit to the burial-ground of the old church of St. Martinle-Grand. It was on a November afternoon, amid gloomy fogs and in a cold wind which swept over the neglected tombs like a wail for those whom men had long forgotten. As we could then trace more clearly the broken remains of the once magnificent church and priory, the words of Robert Nicholl came to the mind:

"Decaying roofless walls! and is this all

That desolation's blighting hand hath left
Of tower, and pinnacle, and gilded hall?
The everlasting rocks by time are cleft,
Within each crevice spiders weave their weft.

Where are the glancing eyes that here have beamed,
Where are the hearts which whilom here have beat,
Where are the shaven monks, so grim who seemed,
Where are the sitters on the abbot's seat?"

The burial-place, though but recently disused, had the most melancholy aspect of desertion. Heaps of broken crockery and other refuse from the adjoining houses lay at one end. Scarcely a daisy would in spring look up to the sky from that mould, and now not a robin was there to chant a requiem for the departed summer. The graves were wet with the late rains, but neither rain nor sunshine brought greenness to the sods, for there was little grass in that dreary churchyard. We wandered on amid the gloom, searching for the spot where the last remains of the poet Charles Churchill found their resting-place in 1764. It was long ere we could

discover the lowly grave; but at length an old headstone, green with slimy moss, was found, bearing the poet's name and time of decease, with the epitaph from his own poem of The Candidate,' "Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies." One could have wished, certainly, that that life and its enjoyments had been more in accordance with the dictates of virtue and religion; yet it was impossible to look without sorrow on these last memorials of a man of genius--for a man of genius Churchill certainly was. "Churchill," says Cowper, "is a careless writer for the most part; but where shall we find in any of those authors who finish their works with the exactness of a Flemish pencil, those bold and daring strokes of fancy, those numbers so hazardously ventured upon, and so happily finished;

CHURCHILL'S GRAVE.

the matter so compressed, and yet so clear, and the colouring so sparingly laid on, and yet such a beautiful effect? In short, it is not his least praise that he is never guilty of those faults which he lays to the charge of others; a proof that he did not judge by a borrowed standard, or from rules laid down by critics, but that he was qualified to do it by his native powers and his great superiority of genius."

But neglected as was the poet's grave now, it had not been so always; there had been an interval when the last resting-place of genius had been honoured, and when the poet's own wish had in part been fulfilled :

"Let one poor sprig of bay around my head
Bloom whilst I live, and point me out as dead;
Let it-may Heaven indulgent grant my prayer!-
Be planted on my grave nor wither there:

And when on travel bound, some rhyming guest

Roams through the churchyard, while his dinner's drest,
Let it hold up this comment to his eyes,

Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies!"

Between thirty and forty years since a bay was planted, and for some time carefully tended on the spot. A pilot from the neighbouring town of Deal, named Mowll, planted it there. Few who looked on the weatherbeaten exterior of the brave sailor, would have guessed that he should be the only one to fulfil a poet's wish; but the brave are often the gentle too, and he who had many times dared the raging ocean, had a thought of pity for neglected genius. Honoured be his name for this touching expression of sympathy! But the bay-tree did not thrive on the grave; evergreens are said not to flourish well on the soil of Dover; and the sheep browsed on its young leaves, and thoughtless persons broke away its shoots; and all the care of the planter could not save it. Those who looked upon it tell low it always seemed drooping. Long since it disappeared altogether, and when we stooped to the grave to gather a blade of grass to carry off as a remembrance of Churchill, nothing was there but a small nettle; and no raised sod marked a tomb, for the ground was trodden to a perfect level. It must have been in somewhat similar state in 1816, when Lord Byron,

while his dinner was preparing at a neighbouring inn, literally fulfilled the poet's wish by visiting his grave, and who thus records his impressions:

"I stood beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed,
With not the less of sorrow and of awe,
On that neglected turf and quiet stone
With names no clearer than the names unknown
Which lay unread around it; and I asked

The gardener of that ground why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory tasked
Through the thick deaths of half a century:
And thus he answered: Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so.
He died before my day of sextonship,

And I had not the digging of his grave.'
And is this all? I thought-and do we rip
The veil of Immortality, and crave
I know not what of honour and of light,
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight
So soon and so successless ?"

LUNDY ISLAND.-No. III.

WHEN our first emotions of admiration at the grander features of the scene were a little exhausted, we had leisure to look at the living occupants of the rocks. The perpendicular cliffs of the naked rock, broken into vast angular masses, square columns, and buttresses, like the walls of some old irregular castle, and cut into shelves and ledges, sometimes only a few inches wide, presented a very different scene from the sloping wilderness of thrift-tussocks interspersed with boulders, which we had seen tenanted by

the puffins and razor-bills. Both of these species, indeed, were found here also in considerable numbers; but the species more strictly appropriated to