Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/341

architectural kind exhibit features in perfect accordance with the characteristics of the period to which its origin has been already assigned. Before pursuing the history of this building any further, or bringing in review the incidents that have tended to invest it with interest, I will briefly recur to the life of its founder. Under the hope of improving his fortunes, he had with two friends accompanied the Conqueror to England; they indeed returned early to their native country, but the bright prospects of Simon de St. Liz naturalized him on British soil. Within a few years after his marriage he founded the neighbouring priory of St. Andrew, and filled it with Cluniac monks. The order was indeed never numerous in this country, and it is not a little remarkable that most of the endowments arose out of this early Norman intercourse. Simon de St. Liz, towards the close of his life, made the common journey to the Holy Land, and had even entered upon a second, when death arrested his pilgrimage, and he was buried within the walls of the abbey of St. Mary of Charity, in France, upon which his own recent foundation in Northampton was dependant. Were it within the scope of this enquiry, we might here linger to reflect on the contradictory feelings that actuated the sentiments of the age, contrast the early life of the soldier, his ambition, his rapine, his thirst for bloodshed, with the remorse and devotion of his declining years; we might observe how the two extremes of human nature became strangely blended together in the same individual, how the restless and savage warrior, whose hands were stained with violence and crime, became transformed, under a happier impulse, into the humble penitent and the mortified recluse. But for such a retrospect we have not leisure, nor indeed would the present be a fitting opportunity. Yet we may not omit the avowal, that it is by such comparisons history delights to teach her moral lessons, and that a habit of drawing contrasts whilst instituting enquiries of any intellectual kind, will unveil its really philosophical aspect; and thus too, to carry out the idea a little further, in estimating the relative beauties betwixt military and ecclesiastical architecture, we may observe how, in their intentions so discordant, they mutually engage the attention, the one impressing the mind by its stern solidity, its severe simplicity and dignified repose; the other captivating the eye of taste by its elegancy, richness and variety of decoration, and awakening the deepest feelings of