The New Lectern.

IT is of bronze, solid and graceful, and over six feet in height. There we see a strong majestic eagle firmly grasping in his claws the writhing form of a dragon; a group which symbolises the might of Truth, or the Word of God, strangling the spirit of lies, or the power of evil. It is the gift of Mrs. Richard Hunt in memory of her husband, and contains an inscription to which the letters R.I.P. are appended.

Choir and Altar Screen.

E now take our stand beneath the Tower, and before us is a full view of the Choir, one of the most chaste and perfect examples of Early English work, with Triforium, Clerestory, and groined stone roof, terminated with a magnificent Altar screen, the gift of Bishop Fox, in 1520. Shortly before this he had bestowed a similar gift upon his own Cathedral at Winchester. Both screens agree in several particulars, not only in the arrangement and general design, but in the actual number of the niches. Perhaps the present

* So wrote an eminent archæologist (Gent's. Mag. 1834, Pt. I., pp. 151–4. The present aspect of the Winchester screen, in its recent happy and successful restoration, rich in noble statuary of force and feeling and true artistic merit, does not seem to confirm the opinion as to equality in the number of niches. It, too, has suffered much in its time at the hands of "classical" enthusiasts; the fronts of canopies and pedestals were hacked away to provide a smooth and level surface for a wooden Baldacchino, and clumsy urns on ugly bases-senseless and incongruous ornaments-were introduced (Vide Dean Kitchin's Great Screen of Winchester Cathedral).

Our own GREAT SCREEN became the victim of similar barbarous treatment, in the days when a wooden substitute, the supposed design of Wren, with pictured urns and all the rest, was raised against it, so as to completely hide it!

number (33) was chosen in allusion to the thirty-three years of our Lord's earthly life. This costly legacy is stamped with

(Taken before removal of Candelabra to its original position beneath the Tower). Fox's peculiar device, the Pelican feeding her young. The same device, however, we have already pointed out on one of the bosses belonging to the roof of the Nave, which was rebuilt fifty years before, and which, therefore, could not have been the work of this Bishop. It contains one or two grotesques, from which the one at Winchester is free, probably, it is said, because the latter was wrought more immediately under his own eye, but, as a matter of fact, we find him very frequently

residing at his Southwark palace at this period. Carvers in those days were allowed to indulge their eccentricities a little too freely. Here we have a man chasing a fox-a rude mode, very likely, on the part of the workman, of connecting the Bishop's name with his gift.* The Screen, which is about 30 feet in height, is divided horizontally, as in the Winchester example, into three stages or stories. Vertically it is also tripartite. This arrangement was adopted in allusion to the sacred number Three. The most important variations from its original design, for which Wallace, the architect, who restored it in 1833, is responsible, consist in the addition of the cornices, filled with angels, above the lowest and second stories; and over the third, the range of angels holding shields. But the most significant change was the introduction of niches in the middle space of the lowest stage, behind the High Altar. This space, which seems to have been an exact square, was left entirely blank by Fox, with the exception of two small niches, one on each side close to the ogee-headed doors. The Winchester Screen possessed this same peculiarity. The blank was evidently intended by the Bishop to be occupied by some work of art in painting, sculpture, or mosaic. And when we proceed to fill the niches with statues, a work which will no doubt be soon taken in hand, it would be only fair to the memory of the munificent prelate, who has left us this valuable legacy, to return to his original design. The corresponding space in Winchester Cathedral is now filled with Benjamin West's picture of the Raising of Lazarus. At present our Screen is like a picture-frame without the picture— a scene of magnificent emptiness! But when the niches are filled up with appropriate statues, what a resplendent spectacle we shall have in this Choir-an assemblage of angels, and saintly men of the past, prophets and apostles, uniting, as it were, in the glorious anthem, Te Deum Laudamus. The ancient materials of the Screen consist of Caen and firestone. Painswick stone was used in its restoration. Such portions as are new were scrupulously worked from models made from the original remains, and replaced in the same situations which were occupied by the originals.

* The introduction of this device would not, however, have been displeasing to the Bishop; for we learn that when President of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, he "gave hangings thereunto with a Fox woven therein."

William Wickham ii., Bishop of Winchester, lies buried (1595) within the Sacrarium, without a line or word on any stone to indicate the spot. They have not treated him so at Winchester, although their recognition has been tardy. And on the floor of the Choir are names to conjure with— Edmond Shakespeare (1607), John Fletcher (1625), and Philip Massinger (1639).*

This is all the notice that has been taken of them for centuries. The first was:—

Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more."

And yet he was the brother of the immortal “Swan of Avon," the poet "not of an age, but of all time," and our most distinguished PARISHIONER, who lived, and wrote some of the most magnificent of his masterpieces, in this Parish, for representation at "the most celebrated theatre the world has ever seen" (Halliwell-Phillips), in which our Poet held sharesthe Globe of Bankside; the site of which, at present covered by the brewery of Messrs. Barclay, Perkins & Co., is close at hand. It was in this Parish the genius of William Shakespeare rose to its greatest height. Shortly after the death of Edmond, he retired for the rest of his brief days to his native town, which, if we may trust tradition, he never failed to visit annually from the time he left it to seek his fortune on the London boards. In 1616, on his 52nd birthday (St. George's Day, April 23rd), he passed into that "undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns."

To the other two belonged also the poet's pen:
. . . the true divining rod

Which trembles towards the inner founts of feeling."

Let Fletcher, a Bishop's son, remind us, in his own words, of this one useful lesson :

"Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,

Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."

And as to Massinger, the note of his burial in our church

* The inscriptions are mere modern scratches. of their fellow-poets and actors, have recently been seen, with memorial windows in the Nave.

These men, and some honoured, as we have

register implores the passing tribute of a sigh.'-" Philip Massinger, stranger." Here the word "stranger" does not simply signify that he was not a parishioner, but that he died in poverty and obscurity. He had lived in great distress, and would have perished from sheer want, but for the bounty of one or two men of rank. He lived in this parish, he and Fletcher occupying one room between them on Bankside.

He had instructed others in "The New Way to Pay Old Debts," but he himself, poor fellow, had to trust for his own discharge to that Old, Old Way through the Valley of the Shadow, wherein all human claims are cancelled, and the burden of penury is laid down.

IT

Gifts and Donors.

T will, perhaps, be convenient here, as most of them are in sight, to enumerate (pour encourager les autres) some of the gifts which the Church has received during its Restoration and since :