high, and a charming pinnacle at each end. It is also of older date, the foundation was laid in the year 1200, by the "pious, chaste and brave" Baldwin, Count of Flanders, but not finished until the beginning of the next century. Baldwin was one of those stalwart Crusaders who joined the French and Venetians in their attack on Constantinople, led by the Doge of Venice, "blind old Dandolo," then in his 97th year.* Byron alludes to him in "Childe Harold's lamentation over fallen Venice, now,-if our telegrams may be relied on,-no longer true in its application to that city:

"The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns:
An emperor tramples where an emperor knelt.
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces; and chains
Clank over sceptered cities; nations melt,
From power's high pinnacle, where they have felt
The sunshine for a while, and downward go,
Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt.
O for an hour of blind old DANDOLO !

Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe."
Childe Harold, c. iv., St. 12

The city yielded to the power of the combined forces, and the deposed emperor, Isaac, with his son Alexis, were placed on the throne. An insurrection ensued, which led to the assassination of both these princes-to a fresh attack on and capture of the city. The usurper, named Murzuphlus, was hurled from the top of a column 140 feet high. Baldwin was elected Emperor of the East and, unhappily for him, he exchanged the humbler and more stable government of his peaceful subjects for the dangerous attractions of an imperial crown. Involved in war with the Bulgarians, he was taken prisoner, and the historian† tells us that having resisted the licentious approaches of the Queen he was made to suffer a cruel death.

You may be reminded here that " diaper," the figured linen in daily use, derives its name from the town of " Ypres." It is a variety of the fabric known to housekeepers as "Holland," for which the looms of the Netherlands were

*This age may be accepted on the evidence, in preference to 80, fixed by some writers.

+ Nicetas: "Hist. Byzant."

famous. Of this material, as you recollect, at 8s. an ell were made the dozen of shirts which Mistress Quickly bought for Sir John Falstaff,* and it must have taken a tolerably large quantity to envelope that bulky personage. These the ungrateful knight disparaged as "filthy dowlas," an inferior stuff produced at Dowlais, a town in Picardy.

The finest kind of linen was made at Cambray, whence it is still known as "cambric."

"Mechlin "+ gave its name to the most delicate lace. In like manner many other commodities employed for domestic use took their names from the places where they were manufactured. Thus " Arras," a town in Normandy, supplied the hangings with which, in semi-barbarous times, the rough unplastered walls of state rooms were hung, while the stone or earthen floors were strewed with rushes. Behind the arras, as you remember, Polonius concealed himself by preconcerted arrangement to overhear the conversation between Hamlet and his mother, an artifice which cost the inquisitive old gentleman his life. The "jane,"‡ of which your wife's

* HOSTESS.-You owe me money, Sir John, and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it. I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back FALSTAFF.-" Doulas," filthy "dowlas." I have given them away to bakers' wives, and they have made bolters of them.

an ell.

HOSTESS.-Now, as I am a true woman, "Holland" of eight shillings
1st part of Henry IV., Act iii., Scene 3.
t "The silver knot o'erlooks the Mechlin lace,
And adds becoming beauties to the face.
Brocaded flowers in the gay Mantua shine,

And the rich stays the taper shape confine."-GAY.
Jane signified also in Chaucer's time a coin. He says:

"Of Brugges* were his hosen broun,

His robe was of ciclatoun, t

That coste many a Jane."

The Rime of Sir Thopas, 15, 145

They were also called Gallie men, or Gallie half-pence, and were imported by sailors trading to Genoa, who landed their cargoes at the Gallie key in Thames-street. The use of them was forbidden by 13 Hen. IV. cap. vi., and again by 3 Hen. V. cap. i., by the name of Gallie half-pence, and half-pence of Genoa, and it was made felony to use or import them or suskins and dotkins, and all manner of Scottish money of silver. The suskin was a Flemish coin, the dotkin Dutch * A town in Belgium.

Whether this material was of silk or leather, stamped and gilt, is uncertain.

B

boots are made, came originally from Genoa. The “kersey,” which some of you perhaps wear, is by divers etymologists supposed to be a corruption of Jersey. The derivation of your guernseys is more obvious; worsted is so called from a village of that name in Norfolk, colonised by a body of Flemings in the reign of Henry II. Russia and Morocco denote the countries from which come particular kinds of leather; the cordovan used in our boots from Cordova, the ancient Corduba, in Spain, gave the appellation of "cordwainer" to that useful craftsman, and the name to one of the wards of the city of London; "fustian" in your jackets was introduced from Fustat, or Old Cairo in Egypt, situated about four miles from the present town; as also "dimity,” from Damietta, a town on one of the seven mouths of the Nile ; 'cyprus,' "* the cloth used in mourning, was brought from the isle of Cyprus; "gauze," from Gaza in Palestine; "damask," from Damascus in Syria; "sarcenet," is the silk of the Saracens.

As our milliners and mantle makers immigrated into England from Milant and Mantua, in Italy, with their "Paduasoys," or silks of Padua, in their "Port Mantuas," or Portmantles, fashion went further afield; "muslin" was brought from Musool, in Mesopotamia; "taffety" from Persia; "calico" from Calicut, in the East Indies; "chintz" from the same country; "nankin," so much in vogue when patronized by the late Prince Regent, came from that town in China, paid for, according to the substantial rules of the Celestial Empire, in "cash," that is, in hard dollars, not in the rude copper money of China, perforated and hung on strings, the name of which, as a general term for coin, has been also incorporated into our language.

was a diminutive of the doit, a coin, of which Shakespeare frequently makes mention, so called from digitus, Lat., doigt, Fr., because no bigger than the top of the finger.

* Amongst the wares offered for sale by Autolycus are:

"Lawn as white as driven snow,
Cyprus black as any crow."
Winter's Tale, Act iv.

+ Stowe says that, in the time of Edward VI., there were not above a dozen milliners in all London. The commodities they dealt in chiefly, were owches, brooches, aglets, spurs, caps, glasses, &c., wares that came from beyond the seas, from Italy, from Venice, France, or Spain.

Having thus glanced at the causes which influenced the growth of Secular Architecture, your attention may be called to other causes which operated in another direction with even more striking results.

The remarkable increase of the temporal power of the Pope, and the vigorous development of the chief monastic orders about this time, gave a marvellous impetus to the erection of the great cathedrals, conventual churches, and religious houses on the continent of Europe. Of these

with fifty others, leap into the recollection before utterance. In England, the invasion by William I., the confiscation of the estates of the Saxon nobility, and the profuse endowment of the ecclesiastical bodies, combined to create a new epoch in the history of Architecture, displacing the homely Saxon by the ponderous and proud Norman, and giving the successive transitional gradations of the pointed,* or early English, florid, or geometrical, and perpendicular styles.

It is not my intention to dilate on any of the interesting subjects connected with these stupendous buildings. In some, in their gradual enlargement during five centuries, from the Conquest to the Reformation, many portions distinct in style were inharmoniously mixed.

Como, already mentioned, was-as you who are members of the "mystic tie "+ must be aware-the cradle of the

The pointed arch is formed by the segments of two intersecting semicircles struck from points equidistant from the centre of a common diameter. Its origin has been the subject of much learned disquisition, supposed at one time to have been the offspring of the Saracenic, at others to have grown out of the Roman, through the Saxon and Norman. Probably we must look to the Oriental nations for the parentage common to all the arched and vaulted styles.-Archæologia, xvii.; Gibbon, vol. vii., 33; Knight's Principles of Taste, 162.

This bond of union seems to have been stronger than any charter, for it is a remarkable fact that the masons were never legally incor

great Guild of Freemasons, and she sent forth in the 11th and 12th centuries organised bodies of workmen to undertake the erection of those great works which distinguished that age. So long as the designing and planning of them were in the hands of the clergy-the only men of learning and taste in those rude times-these buildings reflected the lofty aspirations, the swelling pride and pomp, or the elevated devotional feelings by which the originators were animated. But when the great Masonic bodies became so powerful as to imagine themselves independent of the guidance and influence of their clerical directors, a change occurred at once. Admirably skilled to execute the technical details of their calling, they usurped the planning as well as the construction of their buildings. The result was that an historic era is now palpably defined throughout Europe, by a belt of masonry devoid of taste and the higher elements of beauty. The buildings of this period were erected by honest, plain, practical, but ignorant selfsufficient men, during the time which elapsed between their having discarded the direction of the refined clergy and their having surrendered themselves at discretion to the dominion of regularly educated, enlightened, professional lay Architects.

Your own experience will supply instances in which a like assumption by builders, acting in a sphere beyond their capacity, has entailed on their employers much inconvenience and loss, while they themselves have gained neither in pocket nor in reputation.

You will not, however, refuse to be detained for a short time to learn the length of these buildings; an attempt to give the width is abandoned, for, varying as it does in different parts by projecting chapels and porches, the statements of different authors cannot be reconciled.

porated like other traders. That they held annual chapters to fix the rate of their wages, to the subversion of the law and grevous damage of the commonalty in violation of the Statute of Labourers, is apparent from the Act 3, Hen. VI., c. 1, which forbids such confederation, and makes such act felony. Coke's Inst., III., 99. Hallam's Mid. Ages, iii., 435. Stowe, v., 215, says they did frequent a mutual assembly in London in the 12th year of K. Henry IV., and arms were granted to them by William Hawkestone, Clarencieux King-at-Arms, 13 Ed. IV.