locks and slight doors—though covered with the
tanned skins of flayed sacrilegious thieves—were
not always to be relied on, remodelled the chamber,
and trusted for the future to double massive
doors and multitudinous locks, still with the
terror of flayed thief-skin superadded. A few
pieces of ironwork yet remain, which evidently
once belonged to some large leather bag or
'forcer' as it was called; indeed, "one of these
bags, characteristically ornamented, is still in
the Pyx chamber. There are notices of their
being used for the conveyance of the stolen
treasure, and they are referred to as regular
places of deposit in Bishop Stapleton's
Calendar."

Now we will go back to the Abbey as it is.

The Cathedral, as we know it, is substantially
of Henry the Third's time. After-additions,
enrichments, debasements, and alterations have
been made, but the roots lie down among the
years when the third Henry was chastising his
revolted barons, and being chastised of France.
But he did not build the beautiful chapel of St.
Katherine which stood on the eastern side of
the Little Cloisters; for in 1176, when Henry
the Second was on the throne, one of the rude,
coarse, prelatical conflicts of those times took
place there, to the edification of the laity standing
round. A synod was held in the chapel—the
Pope's legate in the chair, and the Archbishops
of York and Canterbury attending. Quietly he
of Canterbury seated himself in the place of
honour at the legate's right hand; rudely he of
York attempted forcible dispossession; when
the retinue of Canterbury, holding their master's
honour as their own, sprang upon the intruding
archbishop, and, consecrate as he was, sacred as
were the precincts, and thrice holy the Pope's
representative, laid on him with bats and fists,
till the Archbishop of Canterbury, for sake of
their common order, was fain to rescue him
from their hands. Very lovely was the work
which our third Harry did. Exquisite capitals
of natural foliage; a "divine liturgy" of beautiful
angels; arch, and column, and spandril,
and boss, and specially one rose window, the
like of which England had never yet seen; a
portal which, from its surpassing richness and
majesty, was called by some Solomon's Porch,
though the real "Solomon's Porch" was erected
by Richard the Second; windows of the richest
and most elaborate tracing trefoils and quatrefoils,
intermingled in a labyrinth of beauty; and
a chapter-house which all the world said was
"incomparable," but which now, unhappily, is
a mere collection of shelves and drawers for
public records, with every beauty hidden save the
light, slender shaft springing up in the centre
like a stone fountain, and such portions of the
wall columns as are left exposed between the
shop-looking fittings.

It was in this degraded chapter-house that
Mr. Scott made some interesting discoveries. In
the first place, he found one of the windows
walled up with the moulded ribs of a lost vaulting,
the ribs carefully packed like wine-bottles
in a bin, with their moulded sides inwards.
Then, one day, while peeping and peering about
the wooden presses for records, he pulled away
an arris fillet which closed the space between
the press and the wall, and came upon an arched
recess with something lying at the bottom. On
lowering a small bull's-eye lantern by a string,
he saw that it was the head of a beautiful full-
sized statue in a niche, which afterwards proved
to be a statue of the Virgin, with angels censing
in the adjoining spaces. Then he found, at the
back of the stalls, some rare old painting of the
fourteenth century, containing, amoug others,
hosts of cherubim and seraphim with blue wings,
but eyed, like peacock's feathers; one of the
angels bearing on his wing-feathers the names
of all the Christian virtues, as charity, alms-
giving, simplicity, fidelity, humility, &c.

All the outer portions, such as the doorway,
&c., of this beautiful building, are falling rapidly
to ruin; the surface of the stone being in such
a state of decay that it cannot bear to be touched,
though never so lightly. But Mr. Scott, first
blowing away the dust by means of a pair of
bellows, gently syringes a certain solution of
his which he is using all through the Abbey, and
which immediately hardens the stone and sets
the surface in exactly its present condition; by
which means it is possible to re-collect all the
fast-vanishing fragments of ornamentation and
design, and to re-construct the whole from the
"bricks of Babylon" remaining. On a certain
door, leading into what is called the Chapel of
St. Blaise, but which is rightfully the Old
Revestry, were formerly nailed tanned human skins
to deter the sacrilegious from unlawful entering;
and even yet Mr. Gilbert Scott found strips of
white leather hanging beneath the hinges of
another door, which, Mr. Quekett and his
microscope pronounced to be indubitable human
parchment. Mr. Scott believes that door to be
the door, covered with human skin, which
formerly led into the chamber of the Pyx. It was
here, too, in what he calls this chamber of
mystery, that he found the heaps of parchment rolls
and small, turned, wooden seal-boxes, which the
Westminster boys, creeping in through a door
left for an unguarded moment open, carried off
in triumph; to the great scandal of the authorities
and the future exclusion of the architect
and antiquarian. Afterwards, when this exclusion
of ten years was supposed to have atoned
for the forgetfuluess of a moment, Mr. Scott
was again admitted to examine the parchments.
He found them to consist of records from the
time of Henry the Third to that of Edward the
Third; none of any public importance for they
mostly belonged to private matters of sale,
transfer, and title-deeds; but many very curious
and interesting, and, for the most part, well
preserved.

In Edward the Third's time the star of the
old Abbey was once more in the ascendant.
Many things were done then for the embellishment
of this glorious pile; and some "Pipe
rolls," containing the exact accounts of work
and wages for many consecutive weeks, have
been found, and are appended to Mr. Scott's