on the wall of Troy, in the sun-shine, in the quiet enjoyment of nature's out-ofdoor blessings. We had heard that he was quite childish, and were agreeably surprised to find him so perfectly rational, collected, and with no further appearance of childishness than that resulting from the feebleness of old age. In his venerable face and white locks we could recognise much of that simple and Christian character

which has dictated the statue of Christ, and in his cordial manner the spirit which he had drawn from Christ's religion. He came to meet us, told us he had planted that pear-tree with his own hands, as well as most of the plants in the garden, and gathered us pears and roses for our daughter. Mrs. Dannecker, who is much younger, appeared a very kind and judicious guardian of his age."

"This noble artist has a house in the Neustadt in Dresden, where in the winter he receives his friends, and where a most interesting class of persons is to be met; but in summer he returns to his Weinberg hills, his vineyard at Tösnitz, six or seven miles down the valley. They who would know exactly where his abode then is, may readily see it, by standing on the fine airy bridge of Dresden, and looking down the valley to the next range of hills. On their ridge at Tösnitz stands a tower; directly below it, at the foot of the hills, is a white house, and there nestles Retsch in his poetical retirement, maturing those beautiful conceptions which have given him so wide a fame. A pleasant drive down the valley brought us into this region of vineyards, which in the bright colour of autumn does not want for pic turesque effect. In the midst of these we found the very simple cottage of the artist. His wife and niece compose all his family, and he can muse on his fancies at will. His house was furnished, as German houses often are, somewhat barely, and with no traces of picture or print on the walls, but a piano and heaps of music told the art of which his wife is passionately fond. While noticing these things, a very broad and stout-built man, of middle stature, and with a great quantity of grey hair, stood before us. By portraits which we had seen of him, and which are like and yet unlike, we immediately recognised him. Though polite, yet there was a coldness in his manner, which seemed plainly to say, Who are these who come to interrupt me out of mere curiosity, for they are quite strangers to me? When, however, he understood that Mrs. Howitt was the English poetess in whom he had expressed so much interest, a mist seemed to pass from his eyes, he stretched out his arms, grasped her hand in both his, and shook it with a heartiness that must have been felt some minutes after. He then gave one of his hands to our daughter, another to myself, with equally vigourous demon

:

strations of pleasure, and set about to display to us everything that he thought could gratify us. Through various narrow passages, and up various stairs of his rustic abode he conducted us to his own little study, where he shewed to us from his window his vineyard running up the hill, pulled from a shelf a copy of Mrs. Howitt's Seven Temptations,' and sate down to a little table, where he told us he had sketched most of the outlines of Faust and Shakspere. He exhibited to us drawings and paintings in profusion, 'till his niece appeared with a tray, bearing splendid wine and grapes from his own vineyard: a perfect little picture in itself, for in the pretty and amiable looking niece we could see the prototype of many of his young damsels in his sketches. He then drew from the fireside a heap of drawings-the album of his wife, a book which, from Mrs. Jamieson's interesting description, we had a great desire to see. This is unquestionably the most valuable and beautiful album in the world. It is filled with the most perfect creations of his fancy, whether sportive or solemn, as they have accumulated through years, and it is a thousand pities that they were not published during his lifetime, while he could superintend their execution, and see that justice was done to them. It is a volume of the poetry of sublimity, beauty and piety; for while he is the finest illustrator of the ideas of great poets, he is also a great poet himself, writing out his imaginations with his pencil. The zephyr besetting his wife in a walk, fluttering her dress, and carrying off her hat, is a charming piece of sportiveness. The Angel of Goodness blessing her, is most beautiful, with the heavenly beauty of love. Christ as a youth, standing with an axe in his hand, before the shop of Joseph, with children about him, to whom he is pointing out the beauties of nature, and thence unfolding to them the Creator, is full of the holiest piety and youthful grace. The Angel of Death, severe in youthful beauty; and the sublime figure of

an hospital or house of God, of two chaplains, one of whom should be the master or guardian (Magister sive Custos) of the said hospital, and thirteen widows bent by old age, and depressed by poverty, (senio contractis et paupertate depressis) in a certain messuage of the said John Plumptre." I am induced to believe this to be that person in effigy.

While I am on the subject of effigies, I must remind you that, some years since, the author of the "Monumental Effigies of Great Britain" discovered in the church of Fontevraud in Normandy, some effigies of the Sovereigns of England, previously lost to this nation, consisting of Henry the 2nd and his Queen Alianor de Guienne, Richard the 1st or Cœur de Lion, his Queen Berengaria, Isabel d'Angouleme the Queen of John, and also an enamelled tablet of Geoffrey Plantagenet. The latter in the library at Mans. More recently, another effigy of Richard the First has been discovered in the cathedral church of Rouen, and is represented and described in the last volume of the Archæologia.

These royal memorials are much wanted to complete the chain of our historical illustrations; and should a friendly application be made, I make no doubt that, in return for the courtesy shown the people of France, in allowing the late exhumation of Napoleon Buonaparte, at the request of that courteous nation, and their conservation ensured by being intrusted to the care of those already charged with the preservation of the effigies of our Monarchs, we may live to see them, before many years, added to that number, in the Abbey Church of WestYours, &c.

minster.

THE ITINERANT ANTIQUARY. Note. Whilst we have little doubt of the general accuracy of our Correspondent's observations as to the age and costume of the Effigy here engraved, we think he is probably mistaken in his supposition that it was made for John Plumptre.

The Plumptres had a chapel in this church, dedicated to All Saints; the monuments in which are represented by Thoroton. On one of them, a table monument, was an effigy, which, from

Thoroton's plate, seems to have had a cap not very different from the present figure In Throsby's time, however, its head was defaced and broken (see his sketch, vol. ii. p. 83.)

But the present effigy, which is also slightly sketched by Throsby, was on the opposite side of the church, "behind a seat or pew, in a recess of the wall, in a place very difficult to be seen." EDIT.

Oct.

MR. URBAN, ALTHOUGH the adage, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum," be very proper as a rule for general conduct, I have no doubt that you will excuse my bringing to your notice an error committed by the lately deceased Abbé de la Rue, in having designated the hall of Caen Castle as "the most ancient monument in that town," and "the church of the castle." And since the learned Abbé proceeded solely on this error to found the current erroneous opinion, that only "from the eleventh century downwards has it been customary to place the choirs of sacred edifices to the east :" I beg, with an intent of setting aside these errors, most fully to corroborate, from my recent local investigation, the statement of Mr. Stapleton (in his learned preface to the Norman Exchequer Rolls, edited by him for the Society of Antiquaries,) that the aforesaid hall possesses "6 no architectural feature to distinguish it from the ordinary Aula" of any other palatial building of of antiquity. For as there still remains within the castle precincts an edifice which both De Bourgeville and Huet in their "Antiquitès," and "Origines de Caen," assert to have been the parish church of St. George, before the castle was erected; and, as there was also in the castle a chapel for the private devotion of its governor, there could have been no necessity for permanently applying this hall to any such religious purposes as to entitle it to the denomination of either church or chapel. But, in order to prove that St. George's church is at least coeval with the hall, if not of the age which Huet says, we require, in justice to M. de la Rue, some further evidence; which, however, for want of written documents to that

effect, we must fain let the old church give for itself, through the following description.

In plan, this edifice consists merely of a nave, with south porch, and a chancel, without either aisles or tower. But the only exterior parts, that I need particularly describe, are the north wall, and portions of the south and west walls of its nave, all which are formed of irregularly shaped rag-stones cemented together with thick joints of coarse mortar. The north wall is divided into three plain compartments, by slightly-projecting doubleflat buttresses, resting on lofty plinths; which not being hidden by the earth, as they generally are, I would infer that the ground about this building, if ever used for a burial-place, did not remain so long enough to raise it much above the natural level of the rocky eminence now occupied by

The

the castle. Two of these buttresses are perfectly in their original state, their wider portions being continuous up to the cornice, but their facings terminate about one foot below it, with plain sloped heads. cornice is simply a plain projecting blocking with chamfered under edge, and is supported by corbels, of which, although there are eight in each compartment, no two of the twenty-four are ornamented alike. Several are rude representations of human heads, some with mustachios, "bearded like pards," and some "imberbes" as Apollo, but all here amicably intermixed-a circumstance strongly in favour of Huet's statement, that St. George's church was built before the Conquest, if it be true that, after that event, mustachioed Anglo-Saxons only were placed in these situations of slavery, upon the same principle that the Romans made use of Persians and Caryatides. Some corbels are adorned with fulllength figures of children, and on one corbel are two infants sitting together like the Siamese twins, meant probably for the zodiacal Gemini, although no other decidedly zodiacal signs appear.

The roof is tiled, and of recent construction.

The small ancient windows of the nave are exteriorly blocked up, as are now the more modern windows of this edifice (it having been latterly a

powder magazine), but interiorly their plain splayed jambs, and semicircular heads, may yet be seen.

The western wall has been recently much altered. The late doorway, now blocked up, was of pointed form; but, as there yet exists, on its north flank, a semicircularly headed statue-niche, we have little doubt that the original doorway was also semicircular.

The chancel is of the fifteenth century; as is a porch attached to the south side of the nave, which has an external canopied doorway and an internal flatheaded one, exhibiting the same flamboyant tracery and prismatic mouldings as the modern windows in the nave and chancel.

But the chief characteristic portion of this edifice is the great semicircular archway between its nave and chancel. This springs on either side from a column (now much mutilated), half engaged in the ends of a transverse wall. The capital is sculptured, but in very low relief, with small attached upright leaves that cover only the lower third part of its bell; and the angular volutes, as well as this foliage, want that boldness of projection we find on capitals of later date. The abacus is reeded, and the astragal is adorned with running foliage in a style of elegance so little accordant with the feeble execution of the other portions of this capital, that I can almost suppose it has been thus sculptured since its first formation.

The archivolt mouldings consist of a bold tore, or round, separated by a fillet from a cavetto, or hollow, which is again separated by a double reed from two counterset-zigzagged tores, having each on their mesial or middle flank a fillet, the quadrangular spaces between these fillets being deeply bevelled down to the said mesial line. Above these mouldings, at some little distance, is a broad label sculptured with a series of contiguous circles intersected from the label's edges by a series of semicircles that are equal in radius to the circles-all the spaces bounded by curved lines having bevelled sinkings.

The wall about this arch, as well as the other walls of the nave, are quite plain, having neither attached columns or corbels; and it is therefore very probable that the original