monastic institution are remarkable. It was founded and endowed by
William the Lion, King of Scots, in the year 1178, and dedicated to
St. Thomas à Becket, the martyr of the principle of ecclesiastical
supremacy, whose slaughter at the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral
occurred in 1170, and who was canonized in 1173. This great
establishment, richly endowed, was thus a magnificent piece of homage
by the Scottish King to a principle which, especially under the bold
and uncompromising guidance of its great advocate, had solely
perplexed and baffled his royal neighbor on the English throne, and
boded future trouble and humiliation to all thrones and temporal
dignities. Much antiquarian speculation has been exerted, but without
very obvious success, to fathom the motives for this act of
munificence. William had invaded those parts of the north of England
which were previously held in a species of feudality by the Kings of
Scotland, and was disgracefully defeated at Alnwick, and committed to
captivity, just at the time when the English monarch, whose forces
accomplished the victory and capture, was enduring his humiliating
penance at the tomb of the canonized archbishop. Lord Hailes, who says
that "William was personally acquainted with Becket, when there was
little probability of his ever becoming a confessor, martyr and
saint," endeavoring to discover a motive for the munificence of the
Scottish King, continues to say: "Perhaps it was meant as a public
declaration that he did not ascribe his disaster at Alnwick to the
ill-will of his old friend. He may, perhaps, have been hurried by the
torrent of popular prejudices into the belief that his disaster
proceeded from the partiality of Becket towards the penitent Henry;
and he might imagine that if equal honors were done in Scotland to the
new saint as in England he might, on future occasions, observe a
neutrality."[4] It is remarkable that several of the early chroniclers
allude to this friendship between the Scottish monarch, who was a
resolute champion of temporal authority, and the representative of
ecclesiastical supremacy....
Princes may be induced, by personal circumstances, to change their
views, and in the times when they were not controlled by responsible
ministers, they gave effect to their alterations of opinion. It is
quite possible that at the time when he founded the Abbey, William was
partial to Church ascendency, for his celebrated contest with the
ecclesiastical power arose out of subsequent events. This King's
disputes with the Church have a somewhat complex shape. The clergy of
his own dominions had a spiritual war against the English hierarchy,
who asserted a claim to exercise metropolitan authority over them; and
it might have been supposed that William, if he sought to humble his
own clergy, would have found it politic to favor the pretensions of
those of England. But the interests of the two clerical bodies became
in the end united. Thus the war which had so long raged in England,
passed towards the north, with this difference, that the King of Scots
had to encounter not only his own native hierarchy, but the victorious
Church of England, just elated by its triumph over Henry. The Chapter
of St. Andrews had elected a person to be their bishop, not acceptable
to William, who desired to give the chair to his own chaplain. The
King seized the temporalities, and prevailed on the other bishops to
countenance his favorite. The bishop-elect appealed to Rome. Pope
Alexander III issued legatine powers over Scotland to the Archbishop
of York, who, along with the Bishop of Durham, after an ineffectual
war of minor threats and inflictions, excommunicated the King, and
laid the kingdom under interdict. At this point Alexander III died,
and the new pope thought it wise to make concessions to an
uncompromising adversary in a rude and distant land, who had shown
himself possessed of an extent of temporal power sufficient to
counteract the power of Rome, even among the ecclesiastics themselves.
It was before this great feud commenced that the Abbey was founded;
but during its continuance the institution received, from whatever
motives, many tokens of royal favor, as well as precious gifts from
the great barons. Among the list of benefactors we find many of those
old Norman names, which cease to be associated with Scottish history
after the War of Independence. It is a still more striking instance of
the community of interest between the two kingdoms anterior to this
war, that while we find a Scottish king devoting a great monastic
establishment to the memory of an English prelate, we should find an
English king conferring special privileges and immunities within his
realm on the Scottish brotherhood....
The Abbey was founded for Tyronesian monks, and the parent stock
whence it received its first inmates was the old Abbey of Kelso. In
the year of the foundation, Reginald, elected "Abbot of the Church of
St. Thomas," was, with his convent, released of all subjection and
obedience to the abbot and convent of Kelso. The church was completed
and consecrated under the abbacy of Ralph de Lamley, in 1233.
Aberbrothwick was one of those ecclesiastical institutions immediately
connected with the spread of the Roman hierarchy, which gradually
sucked up the curious pristine establishment of the Culdees; and the
muniments of the Abbey thus afford some traces of the character and
history of this religious body, at least towards the period of their
extinction. Thus, while the Church of Abernethy, an ancient seat of
the Culdees, is granted by King William to his new foundation, Orme of
Abernethy, who is also styled Abbot of Abernethy, grants the half of
the tithes of the property of himself and his heirs, the other half of
which belongs to the Culdees of Abernethy, while some disposals of a
strictly ecclesiastical character are made by the same document. Thus
we find an abbot who makes disposal for his heirs--a counterpart to
those references to the legitimate progeny of churchmen, which
frequently puzzle the antiquary in his researches through early
Scottish ecclesiastical history.
The Abbot of Aberbrothwick possessed a peculiar privilege, the origin
of which is in some measure associated with the Culdees--the custody
of the Brecbennach, or consecrated banner of St. Columba. The lands of
Forglen, the church of which was dedicated to Adomnan the biographer
of Columba, were gifted for the maintenance of the banner. The
privilege was conferred on the Abbey by King William, but as it
inferred the warlike service of following the banner to the King's
host, the actual custody was held by laymen, the Abbey enjoying the
pecuniary advantages attached to the privilege, as religious houses
drew the temporalities of churches served by vicars.
It will readily be believed that this, one of the richest and most
magnificent monastic institutions in Scotland, numbered many eminent
men among its abbots, who from time to time connect it with the early
history of Scotland. It is even associated with a literature that has
survived to the present day, in having been presided over by Gavin
Douglas, the translator of Virgil. The two Beatons, Cardinal David and
Archbishop James, also successively its abbots, give it a more
ambiguous reputation. At the Reformation, the wealth of the Abbey was
converted into a temporal lordship, in favor of Lord Claude Hamilton,
third son of the Duke of Chatelherault, and the greater part of the
temporalities came, in the seventeenth century, into the hands of the
Panmure family.
In a tradition immortalized by a fine ballad of Southey's, it is said
that the abbots of Aberbrothwick, in their munificent humanity
preserved a beacon on that dangerous reef of rock in the German Ocean,
which is supposed to have received its name of the "Bell Rock" from
the peculiar character of the warning machinery of which the abbot
made use:
"The Abbot of Aberbrothwick
Had placed that bell on the Inchcape rock,
On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
And over the waves its warning rung.
"When the rock was hid by the surge's swell,
The mariners heard the warning bell;
And then they knew the perilous rock,
And bless'd the Abbot of Aberbrothwick."
The tradition represents a rover, in the recklessness of prosperity
and sunshine, cutting the bell-rope, and afterwards returning in foul
weather to be shipwrecked on the rock from which he had impiously
removed the warning beacon. No evidence of the existence of the bell
is found in the records of the Abbey; and on the subject of its wanton
removal, the sagacious engineer of the Northern Lights say, "It in no
measure accords with the respect and veneration entertained by seamen
of all classes for landmarks; more especially as there seems to be no
difficulty in accounting for the disappearance of such an apparatus,
unprotected, as it must have been, from the raging element of the
sea."[5]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Annals, 1178.
[5] Stevenson on the Bell Rock Light-house, 69.
DESIGN FOR A STORE. MESSRS. WAIT & CUTTER, ARCHITECTS, BOSTON, MASS.
[Illustration: SOCIETIES]
BOSTON SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTS.
Recommendations by the Boston Society of Architects, in regard to
practice in obtaining estimates from contractors:
1. Drawings, when offered for final or competitive estimates, should
be sufficient in number and character to represent the proposed works
clearly; should be at a scale of not less than one-eighth of an inch
to the foot, and be rendered in ink or some permanent process.
2. Proper details should be furnished for work that is not otherwise
sufficiently described for estimate.
3. Specifications should be in ink. They should be definite where not
sufficiently defined and explained by drawings, and every distinctive
class of work to be included in contract should be mentioned and
placed under its appropriate heading.
4. Contractors should be notified, at time of estimate, if they are to
be restricted in the employment of their subcontractors.
5. Sub-bids received by architects should be held as confidential
communications until all the estimates in a given class of work have
been submitted.
The principal contractor should add to his bids all these subestimates
while in the architect's office, and should sign a tender in which the
names of these above-mentioned subcontractors should be enumerated.
6. A subcontractor should not (without his free consent) be placed
under a general contractor, and no general contractor should be
compelled to accept (without his free consent) the estimate of any
subcontractor.
7. Should a contractor decline to assume in his contract the estimate
for any work not included in his original estimate, he should not
thereby be denied the contract upon the portions of the work covered
by his original estimate.
8. Estimates should not be binding more than thirty days after
received.
9. Unless previous notification has been given to the contrary in the
specification or otherwise, the lowest invited bidder is entitled to
the contract. If radical changes are made, the whole competition
should be reopened.
10. After bids have been received, and before the award, bidders
should not be allowed to amend their estimates.
[Illustration: COMMUNICATIONS]
[_The editors cannot pay attention to demands of correspondents who
forget to give their names and addresses as guaranty of good faith;
nor do they hold themselves responsible for opinions expressed by
their correspondents._]
BARYE'S ADMIRER.
NEW YORK, N.Y., December 28, 1889.
TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT:--
_Dear Sirs,_--I have just seen a letter from "Anglo-American" in your
issue of December 14, in which he calls for the name of the English
artist who said concerning the French sculptor, Barye: "Had he been
born in Great Britain, we would have had a group by Barye in every
square in London."
Théophile Silvestre reports this remark as if uttered in his presence.
He says (1856) that the speaker was Mr. Herbert, an artist of
distinction. Probably this was Arthur J. Herbert. Your correspondent
takes the remark perhaps too literally, when it merely meant to
express admiration through a slight exaggeration. Mr. Herbert would
have been content to see a few squares only decorated with groups by
an English equivalent of Barye, had one existed.
As to the assertion by "Anglo-American" that Alfred Stevens was "an
artist not inferior to Barye" it will be shared by few who have
studied the works of the great French sculptor of animals and men.
"Anglo-American" is right in saying that my short paper in _Harper's
Weekly_ errs in giving two bronze groups after Barye to Mount Vernon
Square, Baltimore, instead of four. Were I a resident of that city, I
could hardly have known this better, and how the error got there
puzzles me. Certainly had I been permitted to see a proof of that
paper the mistake would have been corrected, unimportant as it is, so
far as Barye is concerned. I must compliment your correspondent on the
quickness of eye that detected the slip and regret that the
proof-reader of _Harper's Weekly_ did not know his Baltimore to the
same degree. But he is himself in error when he speaks of the "_Life
and Works of Antoine Louis Barye_," written by me and published by the
Barye Monument Association as a catalogue. The catalogue is quite
another thing from the _édition deluxe_, which is the only edition of
the "_Life_."
CHARLES DE KAY.
EVAPORATION OF WATER IN TRAPS.
TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT:--
_Dear Sirs,_--In a late issue of your journal an advocate of
Trap-venting, says of ordinary S-traps "If the traps are filled even
once in two months they will keep their seals intact."
Most persons now agree that S-traps which are back-vented in the
ordinary manner require refilling by hand as often as once a
fortnight. It is, therefore, clear that the system of back-venting is
a very dangerous one. Its original object was to afford security. It
is now found (and strangely enough, even by its advocates) that it
totally fails in this respect and that it requires an amount of
attention which experience and common-sense show us it will never
receive.
My experiments on the rate of seal-reduction through evaporation
produced by back-venting were made with the greatest care and show a
more rapid loss than is generally supposed. If the reports of these
experiments are studied, it will be seen that every precaution was
taken to secure trustworthy results. Although my experiments on
siphonage were made during the same year and on the same system of
piping with those on evaporation, it will be seen by studying the
drawings and text of the report that the former in no wise interfered
with the latter. No experiments on siphonage were made while the water
stood high in the traps during the tests for evaporation, and no
disturbance of the water seals was made by this or any other cause
during the evaporation tests. It would have been exceedingly careless
and totally unnecessary to allow of any such disturbance. Moreover,
most of the experiments on evaporation were made, as shown, on a stack
so connected with the rest of the system of piping that such
disturbance would have been impossible. Even had we not so carefully
closed the inlet or house-side of the traps.
I found that a warm flue caused the back-vent pipe to evaporate enough
of the water from the seal of the trap to break it in less than a
week, and I am confident that this often happens in practice.
How short-sighted and foolish is it to endeavor to throw discredit on
these experiments which were made with the greatest care and honesty
and which were witnessed and subscribed to by impartial experts, and
to argue that, because other experiments made under different
conditions showed a somewhat slower rate of evaporation, therefore
cases could never occur in which the more rapid rate might be
encountered in practice.
It is likely that the public will very soon awake to a sense of the
importance of investigating this matter for themselves. Their Boards
of Health will then find that with a very small outlay they can obtain
the truth; and that a vast amount of unnecessary complication and
expense can be saved in plumbing and, at the same time greater
security be obtained.
When we consider, too, the well-known unreliability of the vent-pipe
in other ways and the frequency with which it is found totally closed
by grease, it becomes something more than folly to recommend the
public to place implicit reliance upon it.
J. P. PUTNAM.
[Illustration: NOTES AND CLIPPINGS]
THE DIVINING-ROD.--Professor Ray Lankester, having recently expressed
some doubts of the alleged powers of a boy "water-finder." Dr.
McClure, who is chairman of the company by whom the boy is employed,
has denied emphatically that the boy, whose name is Rodwell, is an
impostor. He says that the lad, when tested, never failed to find
either water or mineral veins, the lodes having always been found
exactly at the places indicated. The divining-rod which he holds only
moves in obedience to the muscular contraction of his hands, and a rod
of any kind of wood, or even of any material substance whatever, can
be used, provided it be a conductor of electricity. Dr. McClure's
statements have excited considerable comment in England. The phenomena
of tests by the divining-rod are not by any means new. They have never
been described from a scientific point-of-view, nor has any
philosophical explanation of them ever been advanced, but there is no
question whatever of their existence, and of their being now regarded
by the most advanced scientists as beyond the region of chicanery and
imposture. Mr. W. J. Jenks, in a recent lecture on "The Protection of
Electric Light Stations from Lightning," treats the subject very
exhaustively, and shows that where the ability to locate electrical or
magnetic attraction is vested in an individual the results are
absolutely reliable. He instances the case of two gentlemen of
Merrimac, Massachusetts, named Prescott, who for several years have
given displays of this rare faculty. As an illustration of the
certainty with which the Prescott brothers could indicate the location
of electrical attraction, Mr. Jenks gives a well-authenticated
incident which took place at Amesbury not long ago. Several old
citizens were sceptical as to the accuracy of the conclusions supposed
to have been reached, and determined on a severe test. Taking twenty
or more citizens as witnesses, they requested the Prescott brothers to
accompany them, and indicating a stretch of highway before them, some
forty or fifty rods in length, stated that some years previous
lightning had struck on that road, and wished to be informed as to the
exact spot. Proceeding several rods, two cross currents were marked
out; both extending for some distance in the travelled pathway and
crossed by another at right angles. Testing carefully the roads in
both directions, this electrical centre was pointed out as the
greatest danger in the vicinity. The party was then invited to examine
an ancient volume of official records, where it was chronicled that on
the 7th of October, 1802, a man who was driving two yoke of cattle was
struck by lightning in that exact spot and, with all his animals, was
instantly killed. The occurrence had been deemed at the time so
remarkable that the circumstance, with a minute description of the
locality, had been recorded, though long forgotten by all but perhaps
a few of the oldest citizens.
* * * * *
THE DANGERS OF ELECTRICITY.--The rapid spread of electric lighting
in America has not been accomplished without very considerable loss
of life. From a list compiled by Mr. Harold P. Brown, of New York,
we learn that eighty-seven persons have been killed up to the
commencement of this year. This is a very serious total, and if
there were any likelihood of the rate being maintained, it would
supply ample reason for very stringent legislative control being
exercised over all electric installations. Happily many of the
accidents may be attributed to the want of knowledge which always
characterizes a new manufacture, while numbers of them are also due
to the hasty and careless methods of erection adopted in America.
Both these causes may be expected to decrease rapidly in the future,
particularly if the municipalities insist on the mains being placed
underground, instead of being strung on poles in the streets. Mr.
Brown is well-known from his persistent opposition to the alternate
current system; he never misses an opportunity of insisting upon its
dangers, and of comparing it, to its detriment, with the
direct-current system. Now as the alternate system is rapidly
spreading all over London and also in many parts of the kingdom,
this is a question which interests us directly. Are we running
special risks by permitting its establishment? As far as lighting
currents of fifty or one hundred volts are concerned, it certainly
matters little or nothing whether they are direct or alternate, for
neither will produce any serious injury on the human frame. When it
comes to currents of distribution of two thousand volts, then it is
quite conceivable that death is more certain by the alternate
current, but unfortunately it is also fairly certain with the direct
current, so that there is very little to choose between them. A
house in which the fittings were charged to such a potential would
be as dangerous as a battlefield. What is wanted is sufficiently
good workmanship to prevent contact ever being made between the
distributing mains and the service wires, and this there should be
no difficulty in obtaining. Even if a leak should occur the device
of putting the service main to earth at one point will prevent it
doing any harm. Mr. Brown refers to two cases in which men were
killed by contact with a perfectly insulated wire, their death being
caused by the static charge. We feel considerable doubt as to the
possibility of any one being killed by a static charge under these
circumstances; we prefer to believe that the insulator was bad,
probably a mere taping of non-waterproof material. Just as the
death-rate on a railway varies inversely as the perfection of the
signalling appliances, so the fatalities in America from electricity
will decrease as better materials are adopted, and more care is
expended in erection.--_Engineering._
* * * * *