believe that these wells and springs, where they existed, formed the Saxon fonts; but what provision was made where they did not exist we are not prepared to say. An incident in Bede indicates the provision which was made for the consecration of the elements of the holy Communion. He tells us of two priests of the English nation who "went into the province of the Old Saxons to try whether they could there gain any to Christ by preaching;" and "the barbarians, finding them to be of another religion, by their continual prayer, and singing of psalms and hymns, and by their daily offering the sacrifice of the saving oblation-for they had with them sacred vessels and a consecrated table for an altar-began to grow jealous of them."*

If the reader cares to exercise his imagination, he may pause here, and picture to himself one of these primitive churches with its congregation assembled. A swelling knoll at the edge of the forest may be the scene, hard by the manor-house and hamlet of a Saxon Thane; the venerable oaks of a grove of Druidical origin surround it; scattered about are low barrows, the burial places of past generations; a sacred stream bubbles up within the circle, and flows away in a little rill, and is lost in the forest; an ancient yew stands alone in the midst, and by its side a massive cross of stone, sculptured all over with curious carving. The people-thane and freemen, churls and house-carles, men, women, and children-stand around, or sit upon the turf. Beside the cross stands the priest preaching the Word. A rude trestle in front of the massive shaft supports the thin silver-mounted slab of consecrated wood which forms the altar; upon it stand chalice and paten of silver gilt, ready for the celebration of the holy mystery. The green turf, chequered with moving shadows, and starred with flowers, is the pavement; the forest vistas are the vaulted aisles; the blue sky, resting on the arching branches, is the roof; and the wind, surging in solemn

* These portable altars were in common use both in Anglo-Saxon and in later times. We must confine ourselves to a few notices, for which we are indebted to Dr. Rock's "Church of our Fathers," which will illustrate the subject in hand. Martene was shown in the abbey of Abdinghoff, at Paderbourne, three super-altars of porphyry set in silver, one of which, if we are to believe the Latin verses inscribed around it, was consecrated by St. Gregory the Great, and given by that pontiff to St. Angustine, when he sent him on his mission to England. Another super-altar of jasper, circular in shape, and mounted in silver, upon which St. Augustine was also traditionally said to have celebrated, is recorded among the possessions of St. Alban's Abbey ("Monasticum Ang.,” ii. p. 221). A Saxon portable altar of wood encased in silver was found in a bishop's grave in Durham Cathedral in 1828; a description and engraving of it are given in Raine's "St. Cuthbert," p. 199. Simeon of Durham, in his account of the translation of the relics of St. Acca, about the middle of the eleventh century, tells us there was found upon the saint's breast a wood table in the fashion of an altar, made of two pieces of wood joined with silver nails. Leland tells us that a portable altar, said to have been used by Bede, was preserved at Jarrow down to his time.

whispers through the foliage, is the organ of this primeval church. Many of our country churchyards really presented some such scene as this twelve hundred years ago.

We are indebted to Theodore of Tarsus, who filled the see of Canterbury from 668 to 690, for the introduction into England of the parochial system, which had already been established in his native East under the Emperor Justinian. The essence of the change was the substitution of the continual ministrations of a resident pastor for the occasional visitations of a missionary. Theodore encouraged the landowners to build churches and parsonages on their manors. The sovereigns promoted

the work by civil legislation.* Their churches, rude wooden structures, built after the fashion of the Thane's Hall, would naturally be erected on the sites where the people had been used to meet, hallowed to them now by many associations. In many cases the old station-cross was not thrown down to make way for the church, but

A law of about the time of Athelstan enacts that if a churl thrived so as to have five hides of his own land, a church, a kitchen, a bell-tower, and a burggate seat, from that time forward he should be esteemed equal in honour to a Thane. There is a law of similar purport among the ancient laws and institutes of Wales. It enacts that when a church is consecrated by permission of the king, a man of that trev (no doubt the man of the township who built the church) might be a taeog in the morning, but became that night a freeman.

the church was built beside, and usually on the north side of the venerable monument, and thus we find them still, in many instances, in the west and north of England. It is curious that one of these rude wooden churches remains to the present day, and has been used for divine worship from that day to this. It forms the existing nave of the parish church of Greensted, near Ongar, in Essex. A brick chancel has been added on the east, and a timber belfry built on to its west end, and a porch applied to its south side. But there the venerable relic still exists to show us what the rude log churches of Saxon times were like. It is composed of large chestnut trees split asunder, and

set upright close to each other, with the round side outwards. The ends are roughly hewn so as to fit into a sill at the bottom, and into a plate at the top, into which they are fastened with wooden pins. There are sixteen of these logs on the south side, and two door-posts; on the north side twenty-one logs and two vacancies now filled up with plaster. The church thus formed was about thirty feet long by fourteen wide, and the log walls are five feet six inches high. The county historians adduce reasons for the belief that this church was erected for the reception of the body of St. Edmund, on its return from London to Bury, in the year 1013. It seems quite compatible with the evidence

which they submit, that the church already existed when the bearers of the royal saint deposited their burden within it for their night's halt.

But population was increasing; the forests, and marshes, and moors were being reclaimed, and giving rise to new manors; churls and freemen were rising to the position of Thanes; and it belonged to the dignity of a lord of a manor to have his own church and his own priest. The sites for these new churches would be chosen with reference to the convenience of the Thane, and that would usually be for the convenience of the people too; the house-carles of the Thane would form no inconsiderable proportion of the population of a Saxon manor; the hamlet was probably hard by ; and the hall and the hamlet would form the common centre of the one or two freemen and tenants and scattered borderers who completed the population of the manor. This will account for the frequency with which we still find the village church close by the squire's hall.

There is one other curious peculiarity in the sites of our country churches which is worth notice; it is that in the great majority of instances they are on the north side of the village, and on the north side of the road which leads to them. We have seen no satisfactory explanation of the circumstance. It may be connected with the superstitious idea which still survives among our peasantry, that the north side of the churchyard itself is less sacred than the remainder of the consecrated ground. It is still the rule in country churchyards that the north side is unoccupied by graves, when the fulness of the rest of the ground has not made it necessary to use every available space. "To be buried there," say the translators of Durandus, "is, in the language of the eastern counties, to be buried out of sanctuary; and the spot is appropriated to suicides, unbaptized persons, and excommunicates. A particular portion is, in Devonshire, set apart! for the second class, and called the Chrisomer. Where the contrary is the case, it may be worth inquiring how far it does not arise from the accidental position of the churchyard cross on the north side. There the spell seems broken, and the villagers' graves cluster round it, as if the shadow of that sacred symbol were a sufficient protection to the sleeping dust." Connected perhaps with this question is another fact, that the principal entrance to our churches is nearly always on the south side; even where the road is on the north side of the church, and a north door exists for the convenience of the people, there is usually a door of equal and frequently of greater size and higher decoration on the south side. The symbolists remind us that the very name of the church-nave—was given in allusion to the ship in which the godly rode over the deluge of God's wrath, and tell us that the church door is on the south because it was commanded to Noah, "The door shalt thou set in the side thereof."