Builders" (1). I will, therefore, make use of some of the material of that article, adding to it or condensing it as may seem expedient.

Wherever the Romans planted colonies, they established collegia. The collegium was a corporation or guild of persons associated in support of a common object; there were colleges of artists, of architects, or builders, and artisans, as well as colleges associated with the administration and government, with religion and law. The collegium consisted of a president (who was styled magister) and members (sodales). That collegia were established in Britain shortly after its conquest by the Romans is certain; there were certainly colleges of artisans, collegia fabrorum, in Britain in the reign of Claudius. Under Roman instruction, the Britons reached a high degree of excellence as builders, "so that, when the cities of the Empire of Gaul and the fortresses on the Rhine were destroyed, Constantius Chlorus, A.D. 298, sent to Britain for, and employed, British architects in repairing and re-edifying them."*

But the quality of the work of members of these ancient guilds of builders and artisans in Britain is not left to conjecture; we can judge for ourselves what it was from remains of the Roman Baths at Bath, the Roman and Romano-British remains at Silchester, and in all parts of the country.

At Silchester-Calleva Atrebatum-we have the foundations of the earliest Christian church known in Britain; it was erected in the very centre of the city, close to the forum and not far from the heathen temples which it supplanted, and its plan will help us to understand the plan of Saxon churches of a later age. The church was very small, basilican in form, nearly 30 feet long, and, with its two aisles, 20 feet wide, with an apse at the west

(1) "The Cathedral Builders," by Leader Scott. Sampson Low, Marston, and Co.

*Eumenes Panegyric V. c 21. "Ex hac Britanniæ facultate victoriæ plurimos quibus illæ provinciæ redundabant accepit artifices."

end and a narthex at the east; the building stood in the midst of a court with the laver in front of the narthex, eleven feet distant from the entrance, and there was a well in the court 40 feet from the

apse.

FIG. 1.-Silchester, Plan of small Romano-British Basilican

Church.

On each side of the apse was a chamber. The chambers which formerly existed at Britford, and into which the ancient arches opened, were similar to these, but without the aisles.

The small size of the Silchester Church is undoubtedly a puzzle; if a suggestion might be hazarded, I suppose it is possible that this small basilica might be the earliest church, and that it was preserved after it became necessary to build a larger one, if Silchester was not destroyed before that necessity

arose.

But there seems to have been a use in early Christian church establishments for a small basilican church even where there was a larger one. In Central Syria the large ecclesiastical establishments at Kalat Sema'n (fifth century), El-Barah and KherbetHass (sixth century) possessed small basilican churches close beside the larger churches. A plan of the ecclesiastical

establishment at Kherbet-Hass is subjoined, showing the small basilica (B) near the larger one (A).

FIG. 2.-Plan of Church Establishment (6th Cent.) at Kherbet-Hâss. Central Syria. A. Large Basilican Church. B. Small Basilican Church.

The occidental plan of the Silchester church will help to confirm the belief that Christianity came to Britain in primitive times direct from the east and not from the west, if it is a fact, as a well-known Oriental scholar and explorer has stated, that the ancient churches in Syria, and in the east generally, have their apsides at the west end, and churches of the Western Church at the east end. The custom of the British churches as to the time of keeping Easter, &c., points in the same direction, the customs they followed being those of the Eastern, not of the Western Church, and the fact that the church stood in the midst of a court following the Eastern plan, may also be evidence to the same effect.

THE CAPITALS OF THE PILLARS ARE ANCIENT ROMAN, EVIDENTLY TAKEN FROM THE ROMAN THEATRE LATELY EXHUMED FROM THE SIDE OF THE HILL ON WHICH THE CATHEDRAL IS BUILT. THE WRITER FOUND A SIMILAR CAPITAL AMONGST THE RUINS. THE SMALL CAPITALS, THE SECOND ON THE LEFT AND THE THIRD ON THE RIGHT, ARE SAID TO BE ETRUSCAN.