The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1862-05-13 00:00:00

LITERARY EXTRACTS.

The follow iny extracts, from the pen of if. Monte, Esq.,
of Dorchester, and taken from the Quarles ly Review,
will be read with interest.

LULWORTH CASTLE.—" Lul worth is the gem of the
coast, and has points of interest distinct from its
formation awl scenery, Scarcely two miles from the
cove there is the castle of the Weida, one of the oldest
families in England. Here ere to be. seen the drawings
of piles Hus.sey, native of Marnliull, in Dorset, and a
proteve of the owner ofifLulwerth, in the middle of last
century. A detailed account of this really temarkahle
man may be seen in Maton's • Western Counties.' His
fundamental notion—he seems to have been a kind of
belated Pythagorean—was this: that every human face
was in harmony with itself; and that if the keynote is
once obtained, the proportionate intervals follow as
a wetter of course. It would probably be an easy task
to maintain, if not to demonetrate, an opposite theory,
namely, that nine out of every ten human faces do not
present Us with harmonies at all, but with discords.
Be this as it may, Hussey has left many portraits
corrected by a musical scale, and believed theui all to
have gained in character and eliptessicth by the em-
ployment of Ids method. The present Castle WM built
by Lord Bindon, ajunior member of the Howard family,
in 1600; the property was bought from the Howards by
Welds in 1641."

SilEtiaollNE CHURCH.—'.'St. Mary's, Sherborne, is
nearly as fine • specimen of third pointed as can be met
with anywhere. The church is quite cathedrallike in
size, and excellent in all other respects. The lofty
Norman arches of the tower—they are the chief Norman
feature in the chtirch—are remarkable from the fact
of their having been under-built of late years. It is
st, singe to see an oil tower standing on nineteenth cen-
tury piers. In the effect of a church's interior no
element is more important than the roof, and in the
vaulted roof it was as soon as anywhere that the
failure of the old mysterious instinct for the noble
showed itself. At Sherburne nave and choir are
vaultel, but the roofs are ribbed by a sufficiently rich
multiplicity of lines without mazy frittered prettiness.
A great cross chnrch, with • fine roof, it always worth
seeing, even though bob otherwise excellent; but here
all is good, all is in keeping, and a recent costly
restoration—due chiefly to the late Earl Digby
and to Mr. Wingfield Dighy, bit heir
and successor in Sherborne Castle--has been • real
success. Much that has been due is truly admirable,
especially the polychroming, which, to some extent, has
taken the place of the banished whitewash. It is
chiefly applied to the panelled stonework of the choir,
and only the sunk faces are painted, while the Hamden
Hill stone of the ribs and foliations remains untouched.
The result is that you perceive at once the glow of
colour' and the bona-fick reality of the wall work
beneath."
THE CHliszt BANic,—" The Chesil Bank is one of the
longest and strangest ridges of pebbles in Europe. From
its Portland extremit. it extends north-west-ward in a
regular curve parallel to the coast, and from this it is
separated by • narrow backwater called the Fleet, which
ends in Lord Ilchester's swan-decoy at Abbotsbury,
stocked in the palmy day, of the Abbots with 7,000
swans, The bank unitee with the mainland here, and
runs along the shore nearly air tulles further, ',taking
a total of almost 16, be the cliffs at Burton Castle, near
Bridport The breadth at the Abbotsbury end is 170
yards, and 200 at Portland, both reckonings being taken
at low water of spring-tides. The base of blue clay is
covered to a depth of from four to she feet with a
emit of smooth round pebbles, chiefly of a white
calcareous spor, but partly of a quartz, marl, and jasper.
so deep that a hors's legs sink nearly to the knee at
every step. The soundest theory that has hitherto been
offered to explain whence this stock of pebbles is
derived is this, that they are driven up by the wind-
wavet from tho chalk cliffs west of Bridport, in the
neighbourhood of Lyme, Sidmouth, or Be-re Head. The
size of the pebbles' gradually decrease from east to west.
At Portland stones are often picked up three or four
inches in diameter, but near Bridport they are no bigger
than coarse particles of sand, and four or five go to the
inch. The change is gradual, bait so constant that
smugglers landing on the bank in thick weather or a
dark night can tell the exact spot without difficulty.
The cause of the largest shingle being found to leeward
is supposed to be that large pebbles of exceptional size
offer nearly the whole of their surface to the action of
the wind-waves, and are, therefore, far more easily
moved than the small ones, which are closely embedded
together, and over which the waves have a tendency
to travel. During the gale of December 27th, 18.52, the
quintitY of shingle scoured away between Abbotsbury
and Portland was 3,673,300 tons, and the quantity
thrown in during the next eighteen days was 2,671,500
tons. On the 21st November, in the same year, &heavy
ground-swell, consequent on half a gale of only four
hours' duration from the south-west, scoured away
within eighteen hours 4,553,200 tons, and in five &lye
afterwards 3,533,200 tons of shingle were found to have
been thrown in again. Tho quantities were derived
from careful admeaanrement of the profile of the bank."
wiainoatig MINSTCH.—" Witnbonie Minster is the
other great Dorset church. The interior owes almost
everything to thn thirteenth century architect. It
exhibits an uncommon arrangement of the choir, under
which runs an unusually lofty crypt, and the choir floor
is raised accordingly, and is reached from the choir by
a considerable flight of steps. The whole east end,
within and without, is of the utmost excellence, and the
east window consists of an early pointed triplst, over
each light of which is a qnstrefoil, a feature of very
We °warrant*. The exterior of the aittlloll Is leas
striking, but here, as within, the east sad is very fine.