he piscina
in the east wall clearly shows. The site of the altar is now occupied by
a disused desk of the character familiar to us in our own school days
some half-a-century ago; it is a sort of pew with doors, within which
the master sat enthroned and ramparted. This room was used as a public
grammar school from 1662 till 1828, and subsequently as a private
school, which was finally closed in 1869. The boys went to this school
and returned from it by the staircase on the north side which has an
entrance from the churchyard; the stairs on the south side were used
when anyone had occasion to go into the church or to go from it to the
room above.

An upper chamber or chapel is an uncommon feature in England. Remains of
staircases give rise to the conjecture that there was a similar chapel
over the Lady Chapel at Chester, and somewhat similar erections are to
be met with on the Continent; but Christchurch Priory is unique in
possessing such a perfect specimen. The dedication of the upper storey
to St Michael, the conductor of souls to Paradise, is appropriate.
Churches built in elevated positions were frequently dedicated to him,
and few if any mediaeval churches dedicated to this archangel are to be
met with on low-lying ground.

Under the western tower stands a modern font. The fragments of a
Norman font, with carvings representing various incidents in the
life of Christ, may be seen, preserved in the north choir aisle. The
fifteenth-century successor has been removed to Bransgore Church, four
miles off.

Against the north wall of the tower stands the monument of the poet
Shelley, the work of the sculptor Weekes. Needless to say, it is but
a cenotaph. The "heart of hearts," "Cor Cordium," and the ashes of the
poet cremated on the Tuscan shore, lie far away, hard by the pyramid
of Caius Cestius, in the grave where the loving hands of Trelawney laid
them in 1823. Here we have an ideal representation of the finding of the
drowned body--not a pleasing one, but less ghastly than the reality; and
below the inscription which tells his name and the number of his years
and the manner of his death, the following stanza from his own "Adonais"
may be read:--

"He hath out-soared the shadow of our night:
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn