it is also obvious and inevitable that when it has been reached there is no other conclusion to be drawn. You cannot proceed to determine, from any or all of their special features and characteristics, whether any of them is older or more recent than the others. The evidence of type is present, but the evidence of time is absent. I now place along with each of them the record which relates to it, and I ask you to mark the result. They instantly receive an attribution of time in addition to the attribution of type they have already received. The records relate that the first specimen was obtained in a Swiss lake-dwelling associated with objects of the Stone age; that the second came from a Scottish broch, in which it was associated with objects of the Iron age and of Christian time; and that the third was taken from the hands of a woman using it about a dozen years ago. It is thus plain that no evidence relevant to infer conclusions of relative age exists in the objects themselves, and that such evidence is only to be found in the records relating to them which reveal their individual associations. And so with these constructions; if we could add to the archæological evidence existing in themselves any evidence existing in record regarding them, we should instantly have the element of time superadded to the element of type. But we must bear in mind that when once the type has been established, it might have continued for centuries before it was absolutely superseded by those which succeeded it, and as Dr. Arthur Mitchell has shown, there may be a difficulty, in certain circumstances, in determining whether a dry-built beehive structure in the Western Islands may be ancient or may be recent. I trust, however, that I have made it clear that no such difficulty exists with regard to the determination of type; that it is the determination of the type and not the determination of the time to which the specimen belongs that is the function of archæology proper, and that conclusions regarding the ancientness or the recentness of any

particular example can only be reached when special evidence, which partakes of the nature of record or testimony, exists regarding it. In the case of these composite groups which I have described, the difficulty which may exist in other circumstances does not apply; and with regard to each of these, I say that I know no earlier type of Christian construction remaining in Scotland. But I do not say of the individual examples that they are therefore the earliest that ever existed. Nor do I say that the types which I have described are the only types of Christian buildings that have existed. We know from the writings of Bede and Adamnan that it was not an uncommon thing for the Scotic monasteries to be constructed of wood.1 And if any remains of such wooden structures were still to be found, I should be called on to deal with them as I have done with those of stone. But in the absence of such remains the wooden type of structure affects the archæological investigation no more than any other historical fact

1 It does not by any means follow that because the Scotic mode of construction was usually to build with wood, all stone churches must necessarily belong to a time when the use of wood had been given up. In the islands where there was no wood, stone must have been used to some extent even from the earliest times. Both in the Orkney and Shetland isles and throughout the Hebrides the people were familiar with the construction of massive stone buildings long before the introduction of Christianity. In Iona we must accept Adamnan's testimony when he tells us that they brought the wood to build their cells from the mainland. But this does not oblige us to believe that they erected no stone constructions. Again, while St. Finan rebuilt the church at Lindisfarne, founded by Aidan, "not of stone but of hewn timber after the Scotic manner," St. Cuthbert constructed his monastery in the island of Farne of stones and earth. It is described by Bede (who wrote his life of the saint before 731) as almost of a round form, four or five perches from wall to wall. The wall was on the outside of the height of a man, but made higher on the inside by excavating the interior. It was constructed wholly of rough stones and earth, and uncemented. This wall enclosed two buildings, of which one was a small church, the other for the common uses of a habitation. Both were similarly constructed and roofed with unhewn timber, thatched with hay. Outside the enclosure was a larger house for the accommodation of strangers visiting the monastery.

which is admitted as established on the credible testimony of contemporary writers.

From the point we have reached we can now survey the different phases of advancement exhibited by the ecclesiastical structure in ascending order. (1.) The simple type of edifice, small in size and rude in construction, consisting of a single chamber, and having but one door and one window.1 Of these we have found two varieties, one constructed by laying stone upon stone without any cementing material, the other built with lime mortar; (2.) The more complex type consisting of nave and chancel, of which we have found such varieties as (1) a variety in which the chancel is not bonded into the nave, thus forming a transition from the single-chambered to the double-chambered type, (2) a variety in which there is no chancel arch, the opening from the nave being flat-headed, with inclined instead of perpendicular jambs, and differing in no respect from the doorway in the west end; (3.) A variety in which there is no chancel arch proper, the end of the barrelvault of the chancel roof opening directly into the nave; and (4.) A variety with the chancel arch fully developed, and other features which link on with the current architecture of the twelfth century. We can now also see that the earliest group of these remains is an extension from the great group of monastic remains in Ireland, characterised by an aggregation of circular uncemented beehive roofed cells round a small oratory or church, and that the second group is also an extension of the Irish style of small churches unconnected

1 Among the existing stone buildings of this class in Ireland we find a great want of uniformity as to size, but their average may be stated to be about fifteen feet in length and ten in breadth, interior measurement. They had a single doorway almost always placed in the centre of the west wall, and were lighted by a single window placed in the centre of the east wall, and had a stone altar usually, perhaps always, placed beneath this window.-Petrie, Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, p. 348.

with monastic buildings. Again, comparing the distinctive features of this typical form of early church with those of the Pagan structures among which it first appears, we find that while it partakes of their constructive features, inasmuch as it is built without cement, and has the jambs of its doors inclined instead of perpendicular, and its roof constructed of stone, it differs from them in the important elements of angularity and regularity of form, and possesses in its west doorway, its east window, and its altar platform a series of features that are never presented by Pagan structures. And while it thus differs from all forms of Pagan structure that are native to the country, it also differs from those forms of early Church structure that were common in Christian countries in Europe, and is thus a special form of Christian structure peculiar to a special area. Mr. Freeman has shown how from the primitive Romanesque style, which was common to all western Christendom, local forms were gradually developed as national speech has been developed from the Roman tongue. But we have seen that there was, in Ireland and in Scotland, a more primitive form of church, differing from the Roman or European type in the essential elements of form and construction. The Roman type, which subsequently became European, was basilican in form, having its east end constructed in a rounded apse. Here, on the other hand, the earlier churches are not basilican in form, but are invariably small oblong rectangular buildings, with square ends and high pitched roofs of stone. No example of an apsidal termination exists among them, and whatever may be the secret of their derivation, they are certainly not built after what was known as the Roman manner. Their special features, as I

1

1 In Rome itself, with the exception of the few churches of a sepulchral or memorial character, which are circular or octagonal in plan, the basilican form prevailed from the fourth century down to 1150.-The Churches of Rome earlier than 1150, by Alexander Nesbitt in Archæologia, vol. xl. p. 157.

have shown, are the extreme rudeness of their construction, the extreme simplicity of their form, the insignificance of their dimensions, and the total absence of any attempt at ornament or refinement of detail.1 I do not insist on these features for the purpose of drawing any conclusion from them as to the capacity and culture of the men who made and used them. If I were to infer that their uniformity of plan implied a deficiency of inventive power, or that the absence of decoration implied an inability to produce or to appreciate it, I should be doing what is often done, but I should be drawing conclusions destitute of relevant evidence to support them. There are other lines of investigation by which the quality of the culture of the early Christian period in Scotland may be partially disclosed, and it is only when we have fully exhausted these, that we shall see how greatly we should have erred if we had sought to deduce that culture from a single phase of the conditions of life with which it has no necessary connection. I do not say that the highest expression of a people's culture may not be found in their architecture. I only say that it is not always or necessarily so, and that a people may be highly cultured in other respects without possessing a

1 It is by no means improbable that the severe simplicity, as well as the uniformity of plan and size, which usually characterise our early churches was less the result of the poverty or ignorance of their founders than of choice, originating in the spirit of their faith, or a veneration for some model given them by their first teachers, for that the earliest Christian churches on the Continent before the time of Constantine were like these, small and unadorned, there is no reason to doubt.-Petrie's Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, p. 191. "These buildings (in Ireland) themselves of the most venerable antiquity, the earliest existing Christian temples in northern Europe, are the representatives of others more venerable still. They derived not their origin from the gorgeous basilicas of Constantine and Theodosius, but in them we behold the direct offspring of the lowly temples of the days of persecution, the humble shrines where Cyprian bent in worship, and which Valerian and Diocletian swept from off the earth."-Freeman's History of Architecture-The Early Romanesque of Ireland.