Mr. URBAN, Shooter's-hill, Feb. 8. Tnd description of the Abbey HE following is a brief history Church of St. Denis, accompanied with the view of an elevation of its western front, measured and drawn by myself in the autumn of 1825. (See Plate I.) St. Denis, and his companions St. Rustique and Eleuthere, came from Rome to Paris, as Christian missionaries, about the year 250; and after converting numbers to Christianity, and establishing a Church at Paris, suffered martyrdom upon the heights of Mont Martre. One of their disciples, a pious woman, named Catulle, with the assistance of her servants, conveyed the bodies of these martyrs, during the darkness of night, about four miles, and interred them, marking their grave with a small heap of stones. The heat of persecution being past, a small Church was built over their remains, which was destroyed during the incursions of the Goths under Honorius. That fine spirited woman, St. Geneviève, incited King Clovis the First to rebuild the Church, which was done about the year 500, and St. Gregory mentions in several places in his history, that this Church became very celebrated under the reigns of the successors of Clovis, and that it was again rebuilt magnificently by Dagobert the First, who was there interred in the year 638. The anonymous monk, author of the life of Dagobert, says that nothing was spared by that king in the building and ornamenting of this Church, that he decorated it with a marble pavement and columns, enriched with gold, silver, and precious stones, and with "toutes les espèces d'embellishment connus dans l'univers." The walls were not painted as was usual with most of the wooden Churches of that period, but were more magnificently covered with stuffs tissued with gold. A door of bronze gave entrance to this Church, then the largest and most handsome in France. Within, a rich tomb was constructed by St. Eloy, the goldsmith, and treasurer of Dagobert; which consisted of a dome sustained by pillars covered with plates of silver, ornamented with precious stones, and the busts of St. Denis and his two friends, to whose honour an alGENT. MAG. June, 1827. tar was raised, in front of the ceno with richly carved foliage, intermingled taph, made of gilded wood, bordered with small golden apples and pearls. About 130 years afterwards, King Pepin began to build the Church of St. Denis of stone, which was finished in the year 775 by his son Charlemagne, under the conduct of a monk of the abbey named Airaud. The lower part of the present western façade is generally considered to be that of the Church of Charlemagne, but surely it is not possible for the minutely sculptured borderings and other carvings about the doors to have continued so sharp as they are for so many centuries; it is more likely to be that of the great Abbot Suger, and of the same age as the first arcade of the nave, and the chapels of the choir, which are incontestably of his time; but it is very possible that the vaults beneath the choir and choir chapels, which have been used as the royal sepulchre for ages, once formed part of the edifice erected by Charlemagne ; and William, the secretary of Suger, says, that the foundations and subterranean Chapels of the Church of Charlemagne, were preserved, but does not mention the façade, which if that had been suffered to remain, he surely would not have omitted. Besides, Felibien, the historian of the abbey, expressly states, that the inhabitants of St. Denis furnished two hundred francs to the Abbot Suger, towards the completion of the portal; and its architecture is an highlyinteresting specimen of the style of that age, when the taste was vibrating between the circular and the pointed arch, and they were both indiscriminately used in the same building; indeed so much so in this facade, that its three doors, and nearly all its windows, are of different dimensions and differently formed arches. The great Suger, (for he rose from a simple Benedictine monk of St. Denis, to the dignity of Abbot of its rich monastery, to fill the high posts of minister to Louis-le-Gros, and Regent of the Empire under Louis-le-Jeune during that King's absence in the second crusade, which high stations he filled with glory to himself and vast advantage to the nation,) seeing his Abbey Church in a ruinous state, determined upon its re-erection, himself super intending the work, and selecting the is but 28 feet wide, while the nave is 40; and this singularity obliged the artist (whose name is unknown, but which may be supposed to have been Jean de Chelles, from the great similarity of style observable in this Church, and that part of the Cathedral of Paris built by that architect); to place the first arch on either side the choir diagonally; this arrangement is extremely awkward, perhaps unparalleled, and could only have been tolerated but upon the ground of some insuperable obstacle or imperious superstition. It is said to have been the latter, and that a tradition was universally believed by the people in the 13th century that each architect had devoutly preserved some part of each of the ancient Churches of St. Denis, supposing that the first Church built there had been consecrated by Jesus Christ himself. The expences incurred in raising the present edifice were chiefly defrayed by St. Louis and his mother Blanche of Castile, which is the reason the arms of France, quartered with those of Castile, were so often repeated in the windows and other parts of the Church, but which were destroyed by the agents of the Revolution. trees necessary from a neighbouring forest. In 1137 he had completed the great reparation, or more probably the entire re-building of the western towers and nave, and invited his sovereign Louis the Seventh and the neighbouring Bishops of Paris, Chartres, Orleans, &c. to lay the first stone of the choir, which was done by the King with great pomp and solemnity; who when arrived at that part of the service, in which the words "All thy walls, O Jerusalem, are of precious stones," occur, took from his finger a valuable ring and threw it into the foundation; the other dignified Prelates and Nobles throwing in other ornaments more or less rich, according to their own individual wealth of pride. The substantial parts of his edifice being completed, Suger ordered the most able artists from different parts of the king dom to ornament it, and painters of glass from foreign countries, who filled the windows (of the small Norman form) with coloured glass, representing different subjects from the Scriptures, and the principal events of the first crusade; several of these windows in the chapels round the choir were remaining before the year 1799, and one in the Lady Chapel had a figure of the great Abbot with a cross in his haud, prostrating himself at the feet of the Virgin; beneath was inscribed "Sugerius Abbas.” In the course of the following century, ecclesiastical architecture experienced that wonderful alteration from the heaviest grandeur to the most aerial lightness; which effect is so forcibly felt by the commonest observer, who contrasts the Church of St. Cross in Hampshire, with the Lady Chapel in Wells Cathedral, or the Cathedral of Rochester with that of Lichfield. The Abbot of St. Denis, Eudes Clement, desirous that his Church should not be out of the "march of improvement," and in cited probably also by St. Louis and the great architects who were in the employ of that extraordinary Monarch, commenced the present nave, transepts, and upper part of the choir in the year 1231, according to Guillaume de Hangis, author of the life of St. Louis. The round pillars of the choir and surrounding chapels, of Suger's edifice, were preserved, which is the reason that the choir The bottom part of the western front (see the Plate) is composed of three doors; that in the middle, 114 ft. wide, by 14 ft. high, is ornamented beneath the arch with a bas relief of Jesus Christ in glory, surrounded by angels and saints holding musical instruments; above the figure of Christ is seen the Father, the Lamb, Cross, &c. and beneath the Saviour are numerous figures representing the resurrection. The stone side forming of this door is charged with eight medallions, representing the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. The mouldings of the arch are filled with four lines of figures of saints, having harps, trumpets, violins, &c. in their hands. The span of the arch of the southern door represents Jesus Christ appearing with several angels to St. Denis and his two friends in prison. The sides are sculptured with rustic occupations for the 12 months of the year; the first medallion shows a peasant reaping; 2. another peasant threshing; 3. two men filling a cask; 4. another man beating a tree, beneath which are pigs eating the fruit; 5. a butcher killing pigs; 6. an old man sitting with a table before him, upon which are three loaves of bread, his folded hands repose upon a vase, a servant appears behind bringing in a plate of food, and in a corner of the apartment is a conical-shaped chimney; 7. a man mowing grass; 8. a traveller on horseback with a staff in his hand; 9. a peasant planting vines; 10. one person in the dress of a monk is assisted by another in felling trees; 11. a man and woman sitting, the woman reads from a book, the man with tongs in his hand stirs the fire; 12. James with game, which he is placing in two houses of a round form like those of the ancient Gauls. The bas relief of the north door shows St. Denis and the other two missionaries led to the scaffold, and its sides have medallions sculptured with the signs of the Zodiac. These three doorways are also further ornamented with numerous small borderings, of very elegant designs, but their most prominent decoration, prior to the year 1770, consisted of the twenty large statues of kings and queens which stood upon pedestals beneath their arches. In that year the façade was repaired, and, to the disgrace of the monks be it spoken, the statues were displaced, which is extraordinary, as they were of importance to the history of the abbey, and much to be lamented as historical portraits of the kings of the second race, which we may reasonably suppose them to have been; for we find in the doorway of the north transept, the statues of the six kings of the third race, which followed; namely, Hugues Capet, Robert-le Pieux, Henri the First, Phillip the First, Louis-le-Gros, and Louisle-Jeune. In the reign of this last prince, the Abbot Suger finished his Church. These, however, are not the originals, as those were destroyed at the Revolution, but having been previously drawn and engraved, have since been restored from those engravings, and the transept-door has thus regained its ancient beauty. It will be seen from the print, that the façade is fiuished with two lofty towers, that of the north crowned with an elegant stone spire, which from its lightness and strength is worthy a minute examination. Although more than one hundred feet high, its sides are only ten inches thick, but it is strengthened at its base by twentyfour pillars, each 14 ft. high, and diameter 10 inches, placed in the interior. A very singular appearance is given to this spire by the seven (the eighth has long ago fallen) pyramids, or small spires, whose base forms a triangle, elevated upon pillars placed at the sides of the great spire, and seemingly nodding destruction to the mortals wandering below. The south tower contains the great Charles, the only bell left by the revolution to the abbey (except the three small clock bells seen at the top of the tower); it was given in 1372 by Charles the Fifth, and has been twice since recast, is of a finely deep and solemn tone. Its diameter is 7 feet; it weighs 14,000 lbs. and bears this inscription, "Ludovicus vocor, Carolus V. me fecit, Ludovicus XV. refecit, 1758." The height of this front is as follows: In 1792 the Abbey of St. Denis was, in common with all other religious establishments, suppressed: its immense collection of rich treasures, consisting of crowns, sceptres, mitres, crosses, cups, vases, dishes, &c. of gold and silver of beautiful workmanship, and enriched with precious stones, was seized upon by the lawless agents of the Revolution; its monka dispersed, and its estates secularized. Yet this was nothing compared with what followed; for, continuing, as usual, to attract crowds of the curious or devout, beneath its venerable roof, the obliteration of its rich stores of antiquity was decreed in the following year. Then began the work of destruction, and the demolition of its altars, its sepulchres ravaged, and the ashes of twelve hundred years succession of Kings and Princes scattered to the winds, or their bones indiscriminately shovelled into a hole in the church-yard. Not a piece of glass left in its windows; that interesting collection of paintings, mostly of the age of Suger, were taken down in the most careless manner, and carried to the Musée des monumens Français, from whence they disappeared, no one |