All the living apartments have stoves in the angles, but the dormitory has a most scientific arrangement for heating; the furnace is at (X), and the smoke is conveyed away by a detached shaft at (Y), between which there must have been some arrangement of flues beneath the floor for heating the sleeping-apartment of the monks. Were it not that the evidence is so incontrovertible, we should feel little inclined to fancy that the monasteries of this dark age showed such refinement and such completeness as is here evidenced; for at no period of their history can anything more perfect be found. In the church especially, the two apses, the number of altars, the crypt and its accompaniments, the sacristy, the library, &c., many of which things have generally been considered as the invention of subsequent ages, are marked out distinctly and clearly, as well-understood and usual arrangements of ecclesiastical edifices. This plan in fact refutes at once all the arguments regarding the dates of churches which have been founded on the supposed era of the introduction of these accessories. By another fortunate coincidence there is a church still standing at Mittelzell, on the island of Reichenau, in the lake of Constance, within thirty miles of St. Gall, which certainly belongs to this date, and is unaltered in nearly all its principal features. It was finished, or at least dedicated, in the year 816, and therefore this event took place just before the rebuilding of St. Gall commenced.[55] [Illustration: 687. Plan of Church at Mittelzell. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.] [Illustration: 688. Elevation of West End of Church at Mittelzell. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.]