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Foment, Juni, and Berruguete are among the most noted retablo sculptors, but space will not permit of a more prolific classification or analysis. GOLD AND SILVERSMITHS. The vessels used on the altar-table, effigies of saints, processional crosses, etc., in beaten gold and silver, are well worth examination.

Each seat, or stall, has its movable miserecordia, with projecting rests for the elbows, from which rise two detached slender columns, supporting an elaborate canopy. At the eastern end of the choir is the altar-table, raised above the regular floor by a series of 15 steps.

'It is true that they are very crude, made in coarse terra-cotta, with no artistic skill; nevertheless, they are eloquent, for they tell us that the Great Goddess was worshipped in the town-shrine of Gournia, as in the Palace of Knossos. Here were her images twined with snakes, her doves, the "horns of consecration," the low, three-legged altar-table, and cultus vases.

The choir, as wide as the nave and often as high, is rectangular; an altar-table generally stands in the western extremity, which is closed off by a wall.

But Summer and his bosom-wife saw it with different eyes, to them the altar-table was covered with the offerings of nature. The evening sky shone like gold, no church dome could ever gleam so brightly, and between the golden evening and the blushing morning there was moonlight. It was indeed summer.

This position was proved to be archæologically correct when Sir G. Scott lowered the floor of this part of the church. The reredos, one of the fittings provided by Dr. and Mrs. Griffith, and designed by Scott, projects beyond the altar-table on each side in a way that is unusual and not altogether pleasing.

To the east the high altar, to the west the choir, claim the greater part of our attention. For it is here that the people centred their gifts. The objects used on the altar-table are of gold, silver, jasper, and agate; the monstrance in the central niche of the altar-piece is also of silver, and the garments worn by the effigy are woven in gold, silk, and precious stones.

At the end of the saloon was the Joss-house, or idol-house, containing the idol Chin-Tee, having eighteen arms, with her attendants, Tung-Sam and Tung-See. The richly-gilt idol was made of one solid piece of camphor-wood, and had a red scarf thrown round it. An altar-table, also of camphor-wood, and painted red, stood in front of the Joss-house, with an incense burner placed upon it.

I dreamed that I was standing inside the communion rails of a church I on one side of the altar-table, and the clergyman, with his surplice and his prayer-book, on the other. "After a time there walked towards us, down the aisle of the church, a man and a woman, coming to be married. You were the woman.

It was not she, however, who knelt with bowed head and clasped hands before the altar-table, the winter sunbeams making the shadows of the ivy sprays dance upon the deep mourning dress and pale cheek.