CATHEDRALS OF SCOTLAND.

Aberdeen.

It was a pile of simplest masonry,
Of narrow windows and vast buttresses,
Built to endure the shocks of time and chance;
Yet showing many a rent, as well it might
Warred on for ever by the elements.

NEAR the "Queen of the North," the type of modern activity and enterprise, remain the ill-fated ruins of its ancient pride, begun in 1357—the Cathedral of St. Machar, the contemporary of St. Columba. It is an impressive building, 200 ft. long, without a sign of decay in its rigid outlines, though for centuries

Exposed to the tumultuous seas,

And scourged by the wind's tempestuous sway;

but from its material, granite, has a stately, but stern, gloomy look. The church, however, appears to advantage, rising over a group of venerable trees, which follow the windings of the Don.

At the west end are two symmetrical and simple machicolated steeples of castellated design, 112 ft. high, and at a height of 52 ft. terminating in spires. These are octagonal, with two embattled bands, having crocketed pinnacles on the angles, and a profusion of spire-lights. There is a window, plain, unmoulded, and round-headed in each face of the square base of either spire. The west front, imposing and bold in design, Decorated, was, with the walls of the nave,

begun between the years 1420-1440, by Bishop Leighton, but not completed till the first quarter of the 16th century. Seven long equal one-light windows divided by stone shafts, and round-headed but trefoiled, stand over the great entrance, a double doorway of two pointed arches, with an aureole in the spandrils under a round-headed arch. In the gable are two round-headed but foliated windows, surmounted by a small square window and a cross. There is a large gabled south porch, crowstepped, and having a parvise with a foliated circle in the gable. Bishop Lyndsay, 1441-1459, roofed the nave of seven bays, which is nearly perfect.

The pillars in the interior are round, and have mere mouldings for capitals. The clerestory is composed of very narrow trefoiled lights, framed on the inside between short massive columns. There is no triforium. The aisle windows are of three lights with geometrical tracery. The wood ceiling is flat, but very richly carved, gilded, and coloured; panelled in saltiers and squares, with flowered crosses of elegant design at the intersection of the saltiers, and heraldic bearings of kings, and ecclesiastics, and laymen, at the crossing of the main ribs, which part it into forty-eight longitudinal divisions; for the blazoning James Wintoun, of Angus, received £8 Scots from Bishop Gawain Dunbar, 1515-1531, who built the south transept. The flowered capitals and clustered pillars at the east end once supported the arch of the square central tower, like the choir and transept, being of freestone, it has long since perished. A fragment of the walls of the transept has been suffered to remain in the south wing are embedded two superb freestone tombs, in monumental recesses-one of Bishop Leighton, 1422-1448, who built this transept: a panelled altar-tomb, with an effigy under a round arch trefoiled in grand curvilinear sweeps, beneath a rich cornice. The other monument is of Bishop Gawain Douglas, an altar-tomb, panelled, under a round arch, with a vignette and Tudor ornaments.

Arms: Az. a temple arg. St. Machar, pontifically vested, in his sinister a pastoral staff; his right hand extended over three children in a boiling caldron.

The choir was destroyed by a furious mob from New Aber

deen, who would have demolished the entire structure had not the Earl of Huntley, and Leslie of Balquhar, seasonably arrived at the head of their retainers. The rabble carried off the bells and unroofed the church. The Covenanters destroyed the altar. The church was unroofed 1568. In 1649 the exquisite carved work was hewn down, and only a beautifullycarved pulpit was left. Cromwell took away a great part of the stones to build a fort at Aberdeen. The great central tower, with its wooden spire 150 ft. high, built by Bishop Elphinstone, 1487-1514, having been undermined by Cromwell's troopers, fell May 9, 1688. The bells formerly hung on trees, a custom not extinct in Scotland a century since.

The Use followed by Aberdeen, Caithness, and Elgin, was that of Lincoln, whilst Glasgow and Dunkeld adopted St. Osmund's Rule. The bishopric was founded by King David. Among the prelates occur W. Elphinstone, founder of King's College and Lord Chancellor, Matthew Scot, L. C., Greenlaw, L. C, Spence, Privy Seal, and W. Stewart, Lord Treasurer, Jolly and Skinner. Barbour, the poet of Bruce, was a canon. Bishop Seabury, first bishop of the church of America, was consecrated at Aberdeen. The cathedral contains the monument of Bishop Scougall.

The bridge over the Don is a fine specimen of ancient work. The College of the Holy Trinity and St. Mary, now known, in commemoration of James IV., under the title of King's, was founded in 1505 by Bishop Elphinstone. The tower, 100 ft. high, erected 1515, and rebuilt 1636, is of four stories, embattled, and crowned with a lantern, of circular ribs crossing, which is surmounted by a crown: the window of the library is round-headed, and filled with flamboyant tracery. The ceiling is of wood, richly carved. In the chapel the open screen, and a double range of canopied stalls, are exquisitely carved, infinite in variety of design, luxuriant fancy, and of extreme delicacy. They were preserved by the gallant conduct of Hector Boethius, the principal, who armed the students and checked the assault of the barons of the Mearns, who came down furiously flushed with the sack of the cathedral.

Brechin.

Though Time

Has hushed the choral anthems, and o'erthrown
The altar, nor the holy crucifix

Spared, whereon hung outstretched in agony
The Eternal's visioned arms, 'tis dedicate

To prayer and penitence still; so says the hush
Of earth and heaven unto the setting sun,

With a profounder meaning than the burst
Of hymns in morn or evening orisons.

THE Cathedral, 114 ft. long, which is of the 12th century, is now a parish kirk. Until 1806, it remained perfect externally, but in that year the transept was destroyed, new aisles were built, and a roof stripped off from the nave, which had been framed in a wood among the braes of Angus, with timbers, as in Styria, steeped in some chemical preparation. Part of the Lady Chapel remains. The nave of five bays is late and plain Early English, mixed with Decorated work. The north-west tower is Decorated, square and massive, of three stories; the undermost being rib-vaulted with cornershafts; the capitals and bases are Early English. The rich west window, slightly flamboyant, is set under a crowstepped gable. In the tower, which is crowned with an octagonal spire, having dormer windows, are three bells. On the south side of the nave is a detached round tower of the 12th century, 80 ft. high, with a spired roof 23 ft. in height, lighted with dormer windows; the diameter ranges from 16 to 20 ft. This tower slightly tapers upwards; the side to the church is straight, the other forms with it an obtuse angle. The whole structure has been seen to sway in a heavy wind. The only other instance in Scotland of a similar building is at Abernethy. The choir is Early and pure Early English, plain outside but rich within; it was 84 ft. 4 in. long, but now measures only 30 ft. 10 in.

The Maison Dieu, Early English, was built in 1256.

Among the bishops occur P. de Leuchars and G. Shoreswood, lord chancellors.

Arms: Arg., three piles meeting at the points in base, gu.

Dunblane.

Inexorably calm, with silent pace,

Here Time hath passed; what ruin marks his way!
This pile, now crumbling o'er its hallowed base,

Turned not his step, nor could his course delay.

DUNBLANE, on the banks of Allan Water, derives its name from Dun, a hill, and St. Blaan, a native of Bute and the founder of a Culdee monastery here. The cathedral is 216 ft. long by 76 ft. broad and 58 ft. high. The aisleless choir of six bays is Norman and Early English, and lighted by tall windows. It retains a unique feature in Scotland, its stalls of black oak canopied, 32 in number, with the Dean's seat and bishop's throne, and its lofty vaulted roof. There never was a transept. The architecture is mainly pure Early English, with the exception of the Norman Tower. The west front is very grand: a steep gable with a rose window rises above three magnificent lofty lancets with trefoiled lights: each, long and narrow, is of two lights; in the head of the central is a cinquefoil, and a quatrefoil in the heads of the other two; above these, in the gable, is an aureole within a bevelled fringe of bay leaves, arranged like chevrons, with their points in contact. The west door is superb, flanked by two lesser doors and two projecting pedimented buttresses.

The nave of eight bays, with arches of unequal span, has long Decorated windows and a battlemented parapet. The south aisle is roofless. The clerestory in each bay has two two-light foliated windows with a quatrefoil in the head, set between flat pilaster-buttresses, crocketed. The north aisle, being continued eastward, formed a chapter house, which is beautifully groined. The aisleless choir is of six bays with pointed three-light trefoiled windows. The east window is a triplet, the lateral lancets being very narrow; that in the centre is of double their breadth, of four-lights foliated, with a band of quatrefoils in the middle, and of similar tracery in the head. The choir will remind the visitor of the Lady Chapel at Lichfield.