is fortunately preserved in Monteith's Theatre of Mortality:

"St. Nicholas' stately structure here doth stand,
No paroch church can match't in all the land;
Our architectors, most worthy of renown,

Did build this church for to decore the town ;
And that God's worship might be in it raist:
Should not their virtuous paines be highly praist
Who such a splendid fabric did erect?
No Momus eye can blame its architect.
With all the ornaments fit to decore

A Temple, where our God we should adore
In sp'rit and truth; with fear and trembling we
Should worship him within his sanctuarie.
It hath, of real and of casual rent,
Enough it to maintain, if rightly spent ;
Then, let its masters in succeeding ages
Bestow its rents, and not be sacrilegious.

And since we praise those who this work did found,
And raised it up even from the gravely ground.

Let all succeeding ages mind that we

Deserve some praise by our posteritie.

AN adjunct of the ancient choir was the crypt at the east end, forming a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, as our Lady of Pity. It was connected with the former by two flights of steps, one at the east end of each of the said aisles. It was intended for the accommodation, during the performance of mass, of the aged, sick, and infirm, who could thus, with less fatigue, participate in the service. For many years this chapel was degraded into a cellar for all sorts of odds and ends. There were deposited the stocks, which had doubtless, in their day, done ecclesiastical duty, but now exchanged for more refined, but not less tyrannical instruments of priestly domination. There, too, was kept the hideous gibbet; and, when the building was taken down in 1837, upturned the suit of irons for which, in 1776, Morrison (murderer of his wife) had been measured. At one time this chapel was used as a plumber's

shop; at another time it was redolent of the savoury streams of the soup kitchen for the poor, and that, too, on Sunday, it being then deemed no sin to furnish the cold and hungry with a good dinner even on that day, although malice, slander, and swindling would seem now, as in olden times, quite consonant with envenomed Sabbatical observance. In the same place are said to have been found the last fragments of the organ which woke the echoes of the ancient church, leading and aiding the service of worshippers, which would seem less objectionable than a case where a congregation is all but struck dumb by a squalling and expensive choir. The crypt is now converted into a vestibule, chapel, and vestry, and is fitted up with much of the carved work which adorned the old East and West Churches, particularly the former. When that venerable structure was doomed to wanton destruction by Provost James Blaikie and the Rev. Mr. Foote, it was resolved that every fragment of the carved work should be strictly preserved. Nevertheless, a good Ideal of it was sold and converted into articles of household furniture. The only remnant of the canopy of the choir (a counterpart of that in King's College Chapel, and probably the work of the same artificer, John Findon) was cut up, partly to adorn a set of book-shelves, partly to form a sideboard; several chiffoniers were constructed out of carved panels emblazoned with the armorial

bearings of "gentle blood;" a similar panel does, or did do, duty as a fire-screen in an aristocratic mansion not twenty miles from Aberdeen; but perish the thought!-that there should be any truth in the report that part of the plenishing of a sanctuary is actually degraded into a coal-box, and that, too, under the very eye of the pastorate! In the front of the lower western gallery, which Presbyterianism had thrust into the old choir, was an ancient terminal figure, with hands and arms arrayed in the usual attitude of devotion. What was our horror, several years afterwards, to find an object, which had long excited our reverent admiration, stowed away in the corner of the garret of a gentleman-ay! a professed archæologist, from which durance vile it seemed to pray, although in vain, for deliverance!

The square tower has already been referred to as part of the original fabric. At a less remote period it was crowned by the steeple. The most remarkable tenant of the tower is old "Lowrie," which has given warning (as it still does) of the flight of time for more than five hundred years. He and his sister Maria (the 6th bell) were both presented to the church by Provost William Leith, in ecclesiastical expiation of his slaughter, in a quarrel, of a Bailie Catanach at Barkmill, where for many years a cairn marked the spot where the rash deed was perpetrated. Lowrie is 4 ft. 1 in,

across the mouth, weighs about 26 cwts., and sounds F. He was head of the house until the arrival of the new bells, of which the largest, the tenor, weighs about 32 cwts. The cultivation of change-ringing has been here retarded by various causes. A little

is still done in that way; but, until greater proficiency is attained, parties who remember the ringing of the fine old bells will regret the absence of their random measures, when, on occasions of rejoicing, they declaimed away, at the very top of their bent, in a transport of jubilation.

A tolerable volume might be filled with narration of matters connected with our ancient church. At present attention shall be confined to one—

THE TRADITION OF THE RAT.

Those who attended the Mathematical School previously to 1837 (how long is more their business than concerns the too forwardly curious!) will recollect the boyish interest excited by the appearance, on a string-course of the old choir, and in the angle formed by the gable of the church and the south side of the apse, of the figure of a quadruped, which was pronounced to be a " rotten," and which certainly looked as like that as anything else. But why such a disgusting varmint in close contiguity with the sanctuary of the church? Why was it placed there? How long it was ere reply to this