Above, arose the tower which crowned the whole structure, but of its existence the only remaining evidence is the most singular and beautiful feature of the ruin. It is the great cross rib traversing the vault diagonally from N.W. to S.E., and spanning the mid-air free and unconnected with the building but at its spring. Had this been a pointed arch, it would have fallen with its superstructure, but the pressure of the round arch being only at the sides, it is likely to endure as long as the parts which buttress it up. The chancel beyond the transepts had originally a semicircular termination, as is still discernible on the floor—a feature retained in all the Norman churches abroad. In this part of the edifice, it is to be regretted, is a departure from the unity of style which pervades the rest of the fabric—the circular apse has given place to a rectangular, lighted by pointed windows, in compliance with the fashion of the day, and in violation of the grave simplicity of the rest of the structure. Buttresses of slight projection run all round the building. They were scarcely needed by the Norman architects, from the enormous thickness of their walls, and their inferior height; but in them we may trace the rudiments of what became, in the hands of the Gothic builders, so beautiful and necessary a member, shooting up into airy pinnacles and spires, and impressing a lofty and majestic character upon the whole. Of the conventual buildings the traces are few and indistinct. The most important to their comforts—the vast kitchen chimney yet remains in all its original strength and completeness. The large walled space adjoining was probably the Refectory, with which the kitchen would communicate by the buttery-hatch. The building is now secured from violence and wanton dilapidation, and as it has only to contend against the silent erosion of lichen and wallflower, we may hope that it will long continue to adorn our district—a monument of a far distant age and far different state of society, and a beautiful and affecting link between the past and the present. ---------------------------- CENTENARY OF THE “ABERDEEN JOURNAL.” ON Wednesday evening, January 5, 1848, the gentlemen connected with the city and county of Aberdeen gave a splendid entertainment to Mr David Chalmers, the present proprietor of the “Aberdeen Journal,” in celebration of the centenary of that newspaper, it being exactly one hundred years that day since its first number was published. The art of printing was introduced into Aberdeen in the year 1622, by Edward Raban, the “Laird of Letters,” as he styled himself, who printed the first Aberdeen Almanack, “long the only work of its kind in Scotland, and, as such, acquiring a sort of proverbial celebrity. The password of pious Mr Turnbull, in the novel of _Red Gauntlet_—‘a plague on all Aberdeen Almanacks’—will readily occur to the reader.”