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pression on public opinion; its leading doctrines rested rather on metaphysical than on physical considerations; its fundamental positions were found to be gratuitous; and many of the illustrations, although ingenious, were conceived to be inapplicable and inconclusive. It is now seldom referred to, except as a splendid monument of fruitless labour and misapplied learning. With the name of Darwin, we must close our consideration of the very interesting subject before us. Dr. Bostock has given us an account of the state of medicine subsequent to that time, in France and other nations of Europe, to which we refer our readers. Much improvement has taken place in the method of practice, in the skilfulness of operations, and in the materials of pharmacy. Many diseases of an epidemic nature, as Cholera or Influenza, that have assumed an alarming form, and swept with frightful devastation over every part of the globe, have been examined with an anxious care that has not always been crowned with proportional success. Journals have been established for the purpose of recording and more widely circulating the interesting events of individual practice. Medical education has been supplied by the establishment of King's College and the London University, with a course of instruction complete in all its parts. Many most ingenious inventions have been formed for allaying the torments of disease, and lessening the evils which accompany a long confinement. The present treatment of the gout, compared with that which existed even thirty or forty years since, may be called the triumph of modern skill. That terrific disease the stone has lost much of its former power. The small-pox will soon be known only as one of those scourges of nature that has passed away; and with the improved cure of disease, the important subject of the preservation of health is far better understood; and not only does the authority of the medical world, but the undeniable proof of the tables of the annuity offices makes evident, that the result of the improvement of medical knowledge has been crowned with the great object which it sought to attain-the more frequent alleviation of disease, and the increased duration of human life. 'But there is one essential requisite, Dr. Bostock concludes his work by saying, without which the best means of improvement can be of no avail-a mind disposed to the reception of truth, determined to follow it, wherever it may lead the inquirer, united to a high sense of moral obligation which may induce the medical practitioner to bear in mind that his profession is a deposit placed in his hands for the benefit of mankind, and that he incurs an awful degree of moral responsibility who abuses this sacred trust, or diverts it to a base or selfish purpose."

ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES OF NORMANDY.

MR. URBAN,

IN continuation of my former papers on the Antiquities of Normandy, I shall in this give some account of the Churches of St. Gervais at Rouen, and St. Vandrille near Caudebec; for the purpose, principally, of corroborating the opinion now so generally and, I think, truly entertained, that the distinguishing features of SaxoNorman architecture may certainly be traced to Roman prototypes.

The church of St. Gervais is situated on a gentle eminence, in the north

western suburb of Rouen, and is, with the exception of its nave, the oldest structure still existing, and one of the earliest religious foundations of which the ancient capital of the Velocassian Gauls can boast. The crypt and apsis, or east end, are its most interesting portions. The former is figured and described in Cotman's splendid work;* but the editor, without assigning to it any positive date, merely states that it was built before the eleventh cen

* Vol. i. p. 56.

tury. There is no reason, however, why we should not boldly advocate, for this reverend remain, a higher date, and deem it really the holy workmanship of St. Victrix, Archbishop of Rouen, A. D. 386, who, having received from St. Ambrose some reliques of the martyred St. Gervais, then founded and personally assisted (as he himself informs us, in his discourse "de laude Sanctorum") in carrying the stones for its construction on his own proper shoulders, a method of mortifying the flesh to which he submitted, with a view, no doubt, of adding, at the same time, to the sanctity of this his favourite endowment. Mr. Rickman says this crypt was constructed A.D. 350.

The only part, however, of the present church of St. Gervais that is attributable to the piety of St. Victrix, and probably the whole then intended to be built, is the above-named subterraneous chapel; the Christian converts of that day and country not daring to erect more lofty edifices. But by whom, and when the superstructure was raised, is not precisely known. It was granted by Duke Richard II. A. D. 1020, to Fecamp Abbey, and was afterwards attached to St. Peter's at Chartres; but in the thirteenth century it again passed to the Abbots of Fecamp, who continued to be the Priors of St. Gervais, until it eventually became itself an independ. ent abbey.

This church, or one of its apartments, was the death-place of the mighty Conqueror of England, in the 61st year of his age, on the 9th Sept. A.D. 1087. Having been dangerously injured by the pommel of his saddle at the burning of Mantes, when on his way to Paris with an intention of revenging an insult expressed toward him by Philip King of France, he caused himself to be conveyed to the Church of St. Gervais, "ad ecclesiam Sancti Gervasii ;" and there "in domo non sua, " in the house of another, Ordericus Vitalis states, and not, as by some said, in a palace at the Mont aux Malades, but in presence of the sacred relics of Saint Gervais, did this most potent hero breathe his last,

"Deserted in his utmost need

By those his former bounty fed."

Even in the grave was this ambitious prince exposed to ignominy; for in 1562, when Caen was sacked by the Protestant troops of Chastillon, the tomb of William was violated, and his bones so widely scattered, that some of them were again brought to the theatre of his grand oppression, England.

But we must now proceed with the architectural description of our subject, from which its interesting history has, perhaps, too long detained us. Its largest portion is quite modern, in bad taste, or rather without any taste at all, being as plain and as insipid as slates and whitewash can render it. The semicircular wall of the east end is, however, nearly in its pristine state, and highly instructive as a specimen of the first transition from the Roman to the Gothic style of architecture. This wall was formerly embellished with engaged columns, which time has partly worn away, but of which the capitals remain in sufficiently intelligible preservation, and are of almost pure Roman Doric and Ionic forms. Some have the common volutes at their angles; one has, in place of these, two erected eagles with displayed wings; and another has an upright foliaged capital, somewhat in Corinthian, and somewhat in the Gothic taste. These capitals, no doubt, originally had an horizontal architrave or cornice, as the eaves of the roof are three or four feet higher than their abaci; and the intervening masonry, though much abraded, has every appearance of being coeval with the shafts and capitals; but it affords no traces of the arched forms which at a later period sprung directly from the capitals, when a more complete decadence from pure Roman had ensued than the subject now before us demon

strates.

The crypt, though less illustrative of Gothic architecture than the wall just described, may be considered an example of a primitive Christian church, and we shall therefore notice it with the particularity it merits. It is immediately beneath the eastern portion of the chancel, from which it is entered through a trap-door and down a narrow flight of eight-andtwenty steps of stone. In length it is 35 ft. by 14 in breadth, and 15 in

height; the roof being a plain semicircular vault of small sized rag-stones; and its east end is also semicircular. It is divided into two unequal parts, like nave and choir, by a plain semicircular and very massive arch, of which the soffit stones are small and rough, badly joined, and without a regular key-stone, or any appearance of stucco or the opus reticulatum so frequent in true Roman temples. This arch springs from square projecting abaci on great square pillars, about 8 feet high, which are made up of Roman bricks and small rag stones. A bench of large slab-stones is at tached to all the walls except where it is interrupted by the division pillars, the altar, and the entrance at the centre of the western end. This entrance is a narrow, lofty, semicircular arch, communicating with the stair abovementioned, and was apparently the original access to this subterranean church. On the north and south sides near the west end, inarched in the thickness of the walls, are the tombs, rude table monuments or altars, of the two first Archbishops of Rouen, St. Mellon and St. Avitien; and probably their bones still moulder underneath, for these arches were piously blocked up during the period of Cal vinistic outrage, and re-opened to the faithful, A.D. 1723. The altar is of one rough stone, about eight feet in length, and covered with the dust of many years, as are also the figures of the Virgin and Child, and other rude embellishments of this hermitage-like chapel. The only light admitted to this crypt is through a small window at its eastern end, above the altar, which, although much mutilated, was once semicircularly headed and straight sided. So dark, however, must have been this chapel, that artificial light was absolutely necessary for the performance of its services, and possibly, from this necessity arose, in some degree, the practice of employing lights in almost every ceremony of the Roman Catholic religion.

Saint Vandrille is a little village situated in a valley about a league from Caudebec. The church is of that early Saxo-Norman style which has been lately called, from its similarity to that of many ancient Christian churches in the holy city, Romanesque.

It consists of a nave and chancel, with north and south ailes, a short north and south transept, and a low square tower at their intersection. The principal external ancient features of this building, are the plain flat chancel buttresses terminating in a plain parapet, supported by a series of blocksthe semicircular apsis of the south transept, and its large horizontal torus at the base of its window, which is semicircularly headed with an archivolt, embellished by the nail-head moulding. The windows of the chancel and of the west end are semicircularly headed, those of the chancel being the most spacious. The former door - way was also semicircularly arched; but the present entrance, and the eastern window, and the other windows, are innovations of the fourteenth century, and the buttresses of the ailes are in the various forms and situations which the upholding of the fabric has, from time to time, made necessary.

The principal internal features of the church at St. Vandrille, are strongly tinctured with a Roman origin, considering that it must still be deemed a Gothic structure. The columns of the nave are cylindrical and of classical proportions, being slenderer than those of a subsequent era, although some antiquaries have estimated the antiquity of Gothic columns in the direct ratio of their comparative diameters with their height. The bases of these columns have the claw ornament so characteristic of their style. The ca pitals closely resemble the Ionic order, except that their volutes are much smaller, and their abacuses shallower, but they have a well-marked neck and astragal of Roman form. The columns of the tower are lower than the others, and support pointed arches; but all the other arches are semicircular, and have their several soffits adorned with square sunk pannels, in each of which are five rosettes. The columns of the chancel are similar to those of the nave; but they have also, upon their chancel side or aspect, three shafts attached, which run up higher than the Ionic capitals, and support the transverse and diagonal ribs of the chancel vaulting, which are embellished at their intersections with bosses of small human heads, and lambs.

The south transept is in similar style to the nave and chancel; but the northern transept has pointed arches springing from slender shafts attached to the wall, and from brackets of a Roman form which are adorned with arabesques. The font is probably coeval with the Church, and stands upon one stout central column, and eight surrounding slender shafts.

The ruined abbey of Fontenelle is close to the parish church just described. It has been despoiled long since for the erection of a palace of the Archbishops of Rouen, which was partially destroyed at the Revolution, and is now a cotton manufactory. Much of its splendour yet remains, and its history has been published by M. Langlois of Rouen, whose talents as a draughtsman are equal to his learning and discrimination as an antiquary. PLANTAGENET.

QUÆSTIONES VENUSINÆ,

No. V.

IN the Review department of the Gentleman's Magazine for June, pp. 637-8, the late edition of Professor Anthon's Horace from Doering's text printed in this country, has afforded to the Reviewer, J. M., opportunity to start his own idea for the restoration of what he terms a corrupt passage in Horace; and he calls on the author of Horatius Restitutus to pronounce his judgment on the passage so restored.

The old reading stood thus, 1 E. xvi. 39, 40.

Falsus honor juvat, et mendax infamia terret,

Quem nisi mendosum et mendacem?

As early as in the year 1578, Cruquius, on the authority of MSS. scrupled not to substitute medicandum in the text instead of mendacem, supplying at the same time a clear and sufficient exposition of the advantage of sense afforded by the new reading over the old.

In 1701, our own Baxter was the first editor who followed Cruquius in adopting medicandum. The following is a very good sample of his better style of criticism.

"Mendosum et Mendacem cacozelon est Horatio indignum: quare non dubitavimus cum Cruquii MSS. et veteri interprete medicandum in suam sedem

reducere. Medicandum, h. e. non sảnum. Vet. Schol. Egentem scilicet Helleboro."

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In 1711, Dr. Bentley, that "first critic whom a scholar would wish to consult in adjusting the text of Horace, came out with his memorable edition; and if I were set to justify the splendid character here quoted of him from Dr Parr, I don't know that a more decisive proof could by specimen be given of his critical superiority than in his note on this very passage. His masterly talent is devoted to the defence against Torrentius and the complete illustration of the readingmedicandum. The demonstration is to my mind as solid as it is luminous.

First of all then, let J. M. be advised to bestow another perusal on that powerful note, and with increased attention too; before he again speaks of the passage in the reading approved by Cruquius, Baxter, Bentley, Cuningham, and Gesner, as most corrupt," and one "that has defied the learning and ingenuity of all the commentators."

Secondly, as an improvement on the old lection, mendosum et mendacem, had we nothing else from any quarter proposed, J. M. might take the compliment due to his ingenuity for a very plausible emendation in ventosum et mendacem; that is, so far as ventosum might contribute to abate the cacozelon by Baxter justly condemned.

But thirdly, J. M. must not forget, that he proceeds per saltum over some sixty years of interval or more, if from the meaning of a term like ventosus in Seneca he would pass back at once, and assume the similar acceptation for it when proposed ex ingenio in Horace.

That poet has himself used the word ventosus four several times: let us see in what usage.

In its literal sense, 4 C. iv. 45-6, mare ventosum, wind-tost, liable with every wind to change its state.

To the metaphorical sense, 1 E. xix. 37, ventosæ plebis, fickle and changeable as if it shifted with every wind, Tully may seem to have preluded in the well known passage Pro Murenâ, (Quod enim fretum... tot motus, tantas, tam varias habere putatis agitationes fluctuum, quantas perturba

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*C the first letter of Carmina.

tiones et quantos æstus habet ratio comitiorum?) as well as by the phrase popularis aura, which, like many other phrases belonging to civil life, Horace had in common with Cicero.

Again, we find the epithet in a similar application, 2 E. i. 177, ventoso Gloria curru, where the fickleness of such Glory is by an easy metonymy attributed to her car.

But Horace, in the notion of fickle, humorous, capricious, has also applied the term personally to himself. 1 E. viii. 12, Romæ Tibur amem, ventosus, Tibure Romam.

Now I assert that none of these acceptations will suit that meaning of ventosus, combined with mendax in Seneca, for which J. M. ex emendatione would into the text of Horace introduce it; inasmuch as the use of ventosus so combined is to mark the specific character of the braggard alone, comprehending no other whatsoever. Ventosus as a personal attribute in the sense of loud, noisy, boastful, is elsewhere unknown to Horace; and in the passage before us, it is a general, not a specific character, that is demanded by the context.

Let the reader therefore judge, from the sentence of Seneca here more fully quoted, how little relevant the quotation of J. M. can be considered to any purpose of illustrating Horace.

Fugere itaque debebit [iracundus] omnes, quos irritaturos iracundiam sciet. Qui sunt, inquis, isti? Multi ex variis causis idem facturi; offendet te superbus contemptu, dives contumelia, petulans injuriâ, lividus malignitate, pugnax contentione, ventosus et mendax vanitate. Non feres a suspicioso timeri, a pertinace vinci, a delicato fastidiri," &c. &c. Senecæ de Irâ, I. iii. c. viii. ex ed. J. Fr. Gronovii. Elzevir, 1649, V. i. pp. 65, 66. 16th June. H. R.

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however, many who regard the Portraits on Medals as the least instructive, and, disdaining the effigy of the Emperor, turn to the reverse, which records his victories, his vanity, or his munificence.

Upon these designs we have many learned commentaries, whilst the obverses have been frequently neglected by numismatic writers, although collections of portraits have been highly valued in all civilized countries, even by those who were not attached to antiquarian studies.

Some early authors give indifferent representations of the heads on the coins of those Emperors of whom they furnish biographical notices, but scarcely ever make any remarks on the features exhibited. It will, however, be found that the countenance of the despot, as delineated on his medals, generally accords with the descriptions furnished by the ancient historians. Visconti, in his " Iconographie Romaine," (a work which, unfortunately for the antiquary, he did not live to complete,) has devoted some chapters to the portraits found on consular coins; but his attributions appear to me to be sometimes fanciful; for instance, he tells us that the head on the remarkable coins of the Gens Memmia, recording the celebration of the first Cerialia, is that of Romulus; but there does not appear to exist any sufficient authority for such an hypothesis. The same writer attributes to the founder of Rome the head on a coin or rather medalet, of probably the time of the Antonines. It bears a bearded head crowned with waterweeds, and is doubtless intended for that of a river god-perhaps for the Tiber. On the coins of Roman families, we have, however, several portraits of undoubted authenticity, although some of them are so rude as to leave a

suspicion as to their being very accurate likenesses. Of these the head of Tatius Sabinus and the Consul Postumius may be cited as examples; but the heads of Ancus and of Numa may be considered accurate portraits of the Roman monarchs. The Denarii of Pompey bear a portrait which agrees with the description of Plutarch; though on some of them the features are very clumsily, and indeed grotesquely executed; but these may have been the performance

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