up.

We have already spoken of the aisles attached to the sides of the choir, and their beautiful embellishments. Each is decorated with three circular-headed windows, and exhibits a few traces of its ancient altars. That towards the north contains a very curious piscina, fixed upon a pillar, and with small holes pierced round a raised centre, precisely resembling a modern sink. There are likewise the remains of several pedestals, on which images may be supposed to have once stood.

"The choir extends, according to modern arrangement, beyond the tower into the nave itself. The tower rises very nobly upon four slender columns, terminating in pointed arches but with Norman capitals. The lantern is lighted by four lancet windows on each side, the two centre ones not being open. The oaken roof is plain, and supported by very large beam-heads. Eastward from this point, the vaultings of the roof are square, with broad, simple groinings. Beneath, are two ranges of windows, running quite round the chancel, and decorated with an amazing variety of mouldings. Those below form the grand characteristic of this venerable pile, being likewise circular; but so intersecting one another as to form perfect and beautiful pointed arches." This then is the hypothesis of Dr. Milner towards the settlement of the controverted origin of the pointed or English style of architecture. It is, probably, the most reasonable of all solutions. Sir Christopher Wren's account of a Saracenic origin was vague and unsupported; and Warburton's deduction from groves and interlacing boughs, though ingeniously illustrated by the late Sir James Hall, has more prettiness than probability. Dr. Milner's "intersecting hypothesis," as it is technically termed, is brief and simple: "De Blois," he says, "having resolved to ornament the whole sanctuary of his church with intersecting semicircles, conceived the idea of opening them, by way of windows, which at once produced a series of highly-pointed arches." Hence arose the seeming paradox, that "the intersection of two circular arches in the church of St. Cross, produced Salisbury steeple." Conclusive as this hypothesis may appear, it has been much controverted, and among its opponents have been men of great practical knowledge in architecture. Messrs. Brayley and Britton observe "though the specimens referred to by Dr. Milner may not entirely warrant the above supposition, yet they clearly mark the gradation by which the Saxon and Norman styles of architecture were abandoned, for the more enriched and beautiful order that has conferred so much celebrity on the ecclesiastical architects of this country."⁹ The clever writer in The Crypt remarks "the history of the science appears so easy and natural according to Dr. Milner's hypothesis, and so many difficulties must be softened down, so many discordances reconciled, according to any other, as to go a very great way towards establishing the credibility of his idea. Here then is a complete history of an invention, for which every quarter of the globe has been ransacked. And, be it remembered, that the pointed arch did not first display itself in those magnificent proportions, which would have accompanied it from the beginning, if brought over from foreign climes in its full perfection; but exactly in that want of proportion, which was the natural result of the intersection."¹⁰

To return to the choir. On each side of the altar is curious and elegant Gothic spire-work; and traces may be seen of ancient stone work, all that now remains of the high altar. The wooden altar-screen is described as "execrable enough"; but sixteen stalls in the choir, which are referred to the time of Henry VII., are ingeniously ornamented with "carved figures of illustrious scripture personages."¹¹

The pavement throughout the church is still chiefly composed of glazed tiles, "called and supposed to be Roman; though upon some of them we clearly see the hatched and other Saxon ornaments," and upon others the monosyllables HAVE MYNDE (Remember) in the black letter characters used in the fifteenth century. There are passages running round each story, and communicating with the tower; but, "with all its magnificence, the general aspect of the interior is sadly disfigured by a thick coating of yellow ochre." (The Crypt.)

Such is the venerable pile of St. Cross, surrounded by some of the finest scenery in the county. Our Correspondent P.Q. earnestly observes "it was in and near this hospital that he was educated; in its noble church he was a chorister, and his feelings of veneration for the whole establishment, dedicated to the highest of Christian virtues, will never be effaced." Would that every heart beamed with so amiable a sense of gratitude. Reverting to the ancient purposes of the foundation it is to be feared they are not realized with the poet's prediction: that

THE NATURALIST.

THE PEARL IN THE OYSTER.

Cowper eloquently says

There is glory in the grass, and splendour in the flower;

and the imagery might have been extended to the irridescent pearl within the rudely-formed shell of the oyster. Poets have feigned that pearls are

we need scarcely add that science has exploded this imaginative fertility.

Pearl is, in fact, a calcareous secretion by the fish of bivalve shells; and principally by such as inhabit shells of foliated structure, as sea and fresh water muscles, oysters, &c. A pearl consists of carbonate of lime, in the form of nacre, and animal matter arranged in concentric layers around a nucleus; the solution indicating no trace of any phosphate of lime. To this lamellar structure the irridescence is to be ascribed. Each layer is presumed to be annual; so that a pearl must be of slow growth, and those of large size can only be found in full-grown oysters. The finest and largest are produced from the Meleagrina margaratifera, (Lamarck,) a native of the sea, and of various coasts. A considerable number are likewise taken from the Unio margaratifera, which inhabits the rivers of Europe; and, it is singular, as remarked by Humboldt, that though several species of this genus abound in the rivers of South America, no pearls are ever found in them. The pearls are situated in the body of the oyster, or they lie loose between it and the shell; or, lastly, they are fixed to the latter by a kind of neck; and it is said they do not appear until the animal has reached its fourth year.

Naturalists have much disputed the formation of pearls. Mr. Gray justly observes they are merely the internal nacred coat of the shell, which has been forced, by some extraneous cause, to assume a spherical form. Lister, on the other hand, states "a distemper in the creature produces them," and compares them with calculi in the kidneys of man. But, as observed by a more recent inquirer,