The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain. By Ralph Adams Cram.
(Gay and Bird. 12s. 6d. net.)—Mr. Cram has done good service in putting together these descriptions of the ruined Abbeys. He begins with Glastonbury (which is, we hope, to be secured for the nation), and proceeds to describe seventeen other Abbeys, of which four (Sedburgh, Kelso, Melrose, and Dryburgh) are in North Britain. All the descriptions are copiously illustrated with repro- ductions of photographs. For the book generally we have nothing but praise. It is a pity, however, that Mr. Cram did not use more moderation of language in his introduction. He will not allow the existence of any corruption in the monasteries beyond what may be accounted for by the frailty of human nature. He quotes Dugdale's wish that the King had reformed rather than destroyed the monasteries. Let him read in Dugdale Cardinal Morton's Visitation of St. Albans. Here was one of the greatest monas- teries in the kingdom, belonging to the most distinguished of the Orders. The writer is the Primate of All England; he speaks of what he knows ; there is no question of dissolution in the air; and the details are such that they cannot be quoted here even in the obscurity of Latin. Nor does this stand alone. Pat aside the Reports of Henry VIII.'s Commissioners, and there remains in earlier visitations a formidable body of adverse evidence. Another subsidiary proof is that the numbers of the inmates had diminished most seriously, not because their incomes were insufficient, but because the houses themselves were in ill repute.
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