The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-12-27
OLD PULPIIS.
Some of the Most Venerable Structures
 StiM in Existence.

there says the London Standard. Phi losophers, he tells us, have managed 1t by building various edifices in the air; and of these the pulpit Is chief In very early times there were no pulpits; the preacher stood-as St. Augustine says he himself did-on the altar steps. His next ascent was to the "ambo," q raised station In the choir, from which, at one period, the gospel and the epis- tie were read. The erection of pulpits in the nave was later idea. Abbot Samson, whom Carlyle has celebrated in Past and Present" had one placed in his church at Bury St. Edmunds, and thence, as his chronicler Jocelin re- lates, The used to sermonize the people in English" This was about the time of Richard l., but pulpits did not grow common in England till long after wards.
 Though a few of the thirteenth cen tury still remain, most of our Gothic ones, unless they are quite modern, were put up between 1850 and 1850 In l 1908 pulpit was ordered to be placed l lAI SNNAy IlAdilll lApl uii SebNJ toC AHA nished. Stone, at this date, seems to 1 have gone out of fashion; and the new | pulpits were generally made of that | eXcrescence of the earth" as a seven | teenth century nobleman called it, which Providence has provided for the payment of debts" namely, oak 1 timber, With this alteration the drum ecclesiastic became more resonant than ever Sometimes it lent itself to quite | illegitimate effects. At TWyWell in Northamptonshire, for instance, there is or recently was, a wooden pulpit with the front panel split. The village tradition is that preacher in Crom- wells time purposely kicked it out to | impress a particular text on his hear CTS. A hundred years later the zeal of the Puritans had given place to the drowsiness of the Georgian clergy, It was then, according to the poet Cow { per, that pulpits were first covered. with crimson velvet. The local squire, though he could generally cut the ser mon short by standing up in his pew, did not like to have his nap disturbed while 1t lasted; and he guarded himself against unexpected noises under pre- tence of beautifying the structure from which they might have come.
 Many outdoor pulpts remain. There is one looking into the court of Mazda I len college, Oxford It is entered by a door at the back, and covered by a stone tester or canopy, which shelters the occupant from rain and rough weather. There is a still finer one at the Cathedral of St. Lo, in Normandy, another at Notre Dame. Vitre, and a small one, recessed in the wall, at Pis 1 toia, in Italy. Perhaps the most strik- l ing is at Prato, in the same country. It 1 is circular in plan; 1t stands out boldly from an angle of the church, and it is protected by what, if 1t were of wood instead of marble, might be called great eoffered sounding board. Being very large, its general effect is remark able enough, but it is also noticeable for five or six beautiful groups of 1 winged boys, with which Donatello 1 sculptured it's panels. Refectories, in monksh times, often had pulpits of l their own, There Is a picturesque one at Shrewsbury Abbey and others at Great Walsingham and at Wells Granite pulpits, covered with fanciful ornaments incised with pointed ham l mer, and of course unpublished, may be | found in Devonshre and Cornwall | There was formerly a wrought-iron pulpit In Durham Cathedral, and there are one or two modern ones in London. 1 For really fine specimens in this metal, 1 however we must go to Spain, and es- pecially to Burgos and Avila.
 Old English stone pulpits were gene rally small so small that some of them may even yet be unknown,' having been 1 hidden away under later additions. This was the case with one of much beauty, discovered about thirty years | ago during a restoration at Shipton-un- | Wychwood. Being very diminu- tive, it has been shaped out of single block and like Merlin in the hollow tree, it had been long afterwards en- closed for generations in the once fash 1 ionable "three-decker." This fate could hardly have overtaken our largest examples, such as that in Trin- ity church, Coventry. But medieval Italy was the place for immense and magnificent pulpts; so magnificent l that, as MT. Ruskin remarks, even the ! clergy for whom they were built sell dom cared to use them. As Beatrice says of Don Pedro, they were "too cost | ly for every day wear" and the preach CT who was in earnest preferred a hum- bier standing place. The cast of one of them in the South Kensington Museum is familiar enough; but few people who pass it know that for ages it's original has ceased to exist, except in scattered fragments. Sculptured for Pisa Cathe- dral by, Giovanni Pisano about the year 1902, 1t remained there till 1896. Then came a great fire, in which the roof of the church was destroyed. The pulpit was much injured. Its panels were removed to the crypt, other DOT 1 tions were placed i'll the Campo Santo, and out of the rest was made a smaller and palmer structure, which is still in use.
 1 There is a specimen at Pistoia little inferior to what it was when perfect 1 The Pisan one is round, while this is l oblong in plan. It is attributed to Gu 1 glielmo d'Agnello, and it's archaic look | ing sculptures of scriptural subjects ! have a quaintness not easily forgotten. | The sculptures are the glory of early Italian pulpits, though sometimes, as at Ravello, near Naples, geometrical