At Drüggelte, near Soest, there is a small circular church which deserves notice for the singularity of its plan. Externally it is a polygon of twelve sides. Internally it has four circular piers in the centre, two very large and strong, two more slender, and around them a circle of twelve columns of very attenuated form. As is usual in German churches, the door and apse are not placed symmetrically as regards each other. Its dimensions are small, being only 35 ft. across internally. The German architects are not quite agreed as to its date; generally it is said that its founder brought the plan from the Holy Land, and built it here early in the 12th century in imitation of the Rotunda which the Crusaders found on their arrival in Jerusalem. [Illustration: 728. Plan of Church at Drüggelte. (From Kugler.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.] Though it is anticipating to some extent the order of the dates of the buildings of Germany, it may be as well to complete here the subject of the circular churches of that country; for after the beginning of the 11th century they ceased to be used except in rare and isolated instances. At that date all the barbarian tribes had been converted, and the baptism of infants was a far less important ceremony than the admission of adults into the bosom of the Church, and one not requiring a separate edifice for its celebration, and tombs had long since ceased to be objects of ambition among a purely Aryan race. At the same time the immense increase of the ecclesiastical orders, and liturgical forms then established, rendered the circular form of church inconvenient and inapplicable to the wants of the age. The basilica, on the other hand, was equally sacred with the baptistery, and soon came to be considered equally applicable to the entombment of emperors and to other similar purposes. The circular church called the Baptistery at Bonn (Woodcut No. 729), which was removed only a few years ago, was one of the most interesting specimens of this class of monuments in the age to which it belongs. No record of its erection has been preserved, but its style is evidently of the 11th century. Excepting that the straight or rectangular part is here used as a porch, instead of being inserted between the apse and the round church to form a choir, the building is almost identical with St. Tomaso in Limine, and other Lombard churches of the same age. Both externally and internally it is certainly a pleasing and elegant form of church, though little adapted either for the accommodation of a large congregation or to the ceremonies of the Mediæval Church. [Illustration: 729. Baptistery at Bonn. (From Boisserée’s ‘Nieder Rhein.’)]