union, going, however, farther and deeper, in that it protected the work as well as the worker. By the time of the Tudors the days of its usefulness seemed to have passed, and instead of benefiting, its numerous restrictions tended to cramp growing industries. To escape such limitation, craftsmen began to leave the towns and establish them selves in remote villages, where they could pursue their work in their own way. Thus the trade of the Eastern counties and the West of England had by the close of the sixteenth century spread to the Midlands, and was firmly established in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Kent, Reading, and York were producing heavy cloths; Worcester and Hereford a cloth so fine that, by a chapter of the Benedictine order held at Westminster Abbey, it was forbidden to be worn by monks, as too luxurious; Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire broad cloths in white and red had achieved popularity; whilst the Midlands furnished "Penistone cloth" and "Forest white"; and Devonshire greys and "kersey" or causeway" cloths, so named from some obsolete reason chroniclers have not given us. "Causeway" is still pronounced by homely Devonshire people as "kersey," and the flight of imagination which has peopled the ancient village of Kersey with looms and cloth-weavers is without actual basis in fact.

Various measures were put in force to prevent this migration of trade from the old centres. Henry VIII. enacted that "no one should dye, shear or calendar wool but in Norwich"; but even then Bradford and Leeds had become lively and prosperous clothweaving towns, and Wakefield, the trading capital of the West Riding, exceeded them both in size and importance. We find the citizens of York in 1544 complaining of the competition "of sundry evil-disposed persons and apprentices," who had "withdrawn themselves out of the city and competed with York in manufacturing coverlets and blanketines." York got the monopoly, but she gained little thereby; restrictive measures only tended to drive the manufacturers further afield; indeed, the history of textile arts, more than any other, illustrates the futility of endeavouring by legislation to hinder the free course of trade.

An important progressive movement in this

industry marked the sixteenth century. Cloth had hitherto been carried to Holland and Belgium to be dyed, and many Flemings found lucrative employment in completing English manufactures before they were shipped from Antwerp to all parts of the world. A London merchant, named William Cholmley, in Edward VI.'s reign, conceived the idea of performing these last offices for the cloth at home. By experiment he "found that Thames water was as good for dyeing as that of the Low Countries," and forthwith imported Flemish dyers to instruct his own servants. Having mastered their secrets, he patriotically offered his discovery to the Government for the public good, prophesying that, "if his proposal were taken advantage of, and England would rely upon herself to complete her manufactures, the trade of Antwerp would droop and London become the mart of the world." The complete fulfilment of this prophecy has abundantly proved the merchant's foresight and sagacity.

(To be continued.)

entire

EFORE the middle of the tenth century the Jews had become a rich and powerful body in Toledo. At that time they occupied two districts or regions of the city named Great and Little Jewry. These Jewries occupied a large space, and were surrounded by an enclosing wall, of which remains still exist, and so formed a considerable and thriving town in itself, comprised in the greater city. The Jews, in addition to all this, kept going mercantile establishments in another region, La Alcana, which formerly stood where now are the cathedral cloisters and several adjoining streets. Such was the condition of the Toledan Jews at the time of the reconquest of the city by the Christian warriors in 1085. Henceforth they were alternately persecuted or tolerated, according

The

instance of his Hebrew Treasurer, to construct a new and magnificent synagogue. architect and director of the works was the Rabbi Meir Aben-Aldebi, and the date 1366. It served for Jewish worship till 1494, when the Jews were driven out of Spain, under Ferdinand and Isabella. The edifice was then turned into a church, under the invocation of St. Benedict, and conceded to the military order of the Knights of Calatrava. The name El Transito was popularly given to the church from a picture representing "El Transito," or passage from the world of the B. V. Mary, which seems to have been held in much esteem.

roof, provided with tie-beams below, is artesonado as to the higher part; and the arteson, or trough, is inverted above the spectator, and so the peculiar form and disposition are plainly perceived.

The extreme profusion of beautiful ornament is such that it is impossible to do justice to it in these brief remarks. Our illustration will, however, aid the reader to form an idea of what the reality is like. It is disposed in three chief bands. The lower division presents a broad band of foliage between double lines of Hebrew inscriptions. Here we have vine-leaves, and the imitation is more exact than usual. This seems to show a very advanced period of Moorish art, as in the

Alhambra de Granada, wherein the forms at length become more natural, and the imitation often exact. Amid the foliage appear the shield and arms of Don Pedro, King of Castile and Leon.

The second band of ornament shows chiefly a richly foliated arcade, with doubled columns between. The forms are circular, the cusps heavy and inclined to be coarse, compared with those of Gothic buildings. Neverthe

less, it is impossible not to see here the reacting influence of the Gothic style upon the Moorish. The pillars recall Romanesque rather than Gothic art, while the capitals are strange to a Northern eye. The stucco celosias, through which the light does actually penetrate, and the pointed arch containing them, are more especially Moorish. The interlacing forms of the celosias are, perhaps, of more ancient design than the floriated ornament around.

The upper band contains a single line of inscription, and this is about all. The richThe rich ness of the roof is on a par with all the rest, though here the timber takes the shape of stars and sharp-edged geometrical lines. The east wall of the synagogue had its own peculiar decoration, as, indeed, became the Jewish worship. It shows a different disposition in the ornament, which in certain respects is still richer and more elaborate than that of the side-walls I have been describing. The lower bands here are perpendicular, above which runs a sort of canopy peculiarly Moorish, seen likewise at Granada.

The fine late Gothic retablo, or reredos, which stood here for several centuries to mark the conversion of the building to the worship of Christ, has been of late years removed to another site, thus to show the original ornament complete.

sea. The view eastward from it is across the Irish Sea to the coast of Cumberland. Landward the prospect is over the southern part of Man, and is stopped by the chain of hills which cross the island from its eastern to its western coast. The visible landscape, where it has become fixed in the sentiments of men, is a Norse land: the name of every visible object of Nature, of every visible piece of land in it that bears a name, is Norse. The church of Lonan alone in all the view has a name that is not Norse. Lonan is thought to be the name of St. Adamnan, Abbot of Iona, who died in the year 704, and who was the biographer of the Blessed Columba. It is the name "Onan "

and a remnant of the word "Keeil"-KillOnan, as the church is still called, and Onan is, by comparison of dedication names in Scotland, a well-ascertained corruption of Adamnan. A runic inscription of about 1150 has lately been found at Cornaa, a valley on the coast in the parish adjoining Lonan on the north, which reads:

Christ, Patrick, Malachy, Onan.
John the Shepherd carved this in Kornadal.

Malachy is presumed to be the Abbot of
Bangor, in Ireland, who died in 1140, and

whose name is associated with that of St. Bernard.

This name of the church is part of a system sustained for some time in Man, by which the names of the holy sites there have preserved to us the names of a cycle of teachers, who in all else have passed into the retreat of the blessed. This cycle of teachers is of a time some centuries before Man Their influence survived the changes which became definitely a Norse centre of power. such a growth of power implies, and remains until to-day representative of the authority still most powerful in Man.

When the kingdom of Man in 1265 passed into the possession of the Crown of Scotland,

BY A. KNOX.

HE old church of the parish of Lonan lies about the middle of the east coast of Man. It is situated nearly above cliffs that descend sheer for four hundred feet into the

tutions in Man into conformity with those existing in the larger kingdom. A parochial system was established in the Church, but of what order it superseded no certain knowledge exists. Some consider it to have been a system which utilized the multitude of Treen churches, whose remains are distributed over Man. The Treens were the

estates of the Taxiaxi, or freeholders, under the Manx kings. In Lonan there were fourteen such Treens, remaining still as a division of land for administrative purposes, and their chapels, the foundations or the

plan of the first and smaller building. It is not apparent where the western wall of the first church stood. The walls throughout are of rubble; the western part is built of field-stones, laid mostly in courses on their

sites of them, are still identifiable. It was from among the Treens that a selection was made of buildings that were to serve in the then future as parish churches. Some of these churches-Lonan being one-are in remote and inaccessible parts of their parish, which suggests that some definite reasons determined the choice of them as parish churches. In the case of Lonan this reason is suggested: About the year 1190 Reginald, King of Man, gave to the priory of St. Bees a grant of the land of Escadala, in Man. This name does not survive, but it has been ascertained to mean Clay-dale. The headland against the church is called Clay-head, and presumably the dell that begins there, encircles the church, and, after a course of about a mile opens upon the sea, is Escadala. The dell is now without a name, but it is of equal size with other dales in Man bearing the Norse appellation "dal." On this presumption the status of the church there would determine its choice as a parish church.

The church is built in two parts, which have had their origin at different times. The eastern part is the older, and is greatly different in the character of its structure from the western portion. The junction of the two buildings is very clear, for the walls are not bonded until above four feet from the ground. This clean line of junction represents probably the eastern jambs of doorways into the first church. The extended church, as it is seen in plan, shows doubtless also the

bed face. The doors in the north and south walls are bordered with dressed red sandstone brought from the western coast of Man. The stones are regularly cut, and beautifully disposed in an alternate wide and narrow arrangement. Some of the long stones are on their face three feet broad and six inches high, and alternate with stones six inches square. The jambs of the west window are gone, but their rests remain in the rubble wall. The eastern building is ruder. The sandstone is absent, but the wall and its angles have in it-not in consistent ordergreat stones four and five feet long. The stones throughout seem quarry stones, and are laid on their edge.

KIRK LONAN, N.E. CORNER OF CHURCH.

The windows of the church, excepting that in the western wall, are in the older building. The east window is large, and arched semicircularly; the arches of the other two are pointed. The north window, at some time