the square moulding and dripstone over the heads of doorways, forming a spandrel which is usually filled with foliage-carving or shield sculptures. Another peculiarity of this style is the use of the broad two-centered arch, which, if not as beautiful as the pointed arch, has a simple majesty. The massive piers of all the former heavier styles are made smaller in this; they have lighter round columns or shafts pinned upon them, generally clustered boldly on their front, and going up clean, straight, and lofty. There is more of stateliness and less of ponderousness in all the features of this style. The porch over the side entrance of Canterbury Cathedral is a beautiful specimen of the Perpendicular architecture. The windows are divided into strong vertical lines running from top to bottom, crossed several times at right angles by lighter transoms, and separating at their heads into many smaller elegant geometric figures. The perpendicular west window of Westminster Cathedral is a good example of these characteristics. Every part of the edifice is paneled, and the debasement of this style usually consists in the loads of coarse ornament, introduced into this panel-work, such as shields and armorial devices. The vaulting of the "Perpendicular style" is elaborately groined with ribs radiating from common centres, and the points of intersection drooping down, resembling immense white scallop shells clustered together. One may see this in the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral, in the principal Hall of Hampton Court, and in the magnificent ceiling of the Divinity School, Oxford. The corbels and pendants of this kind of vault are boldly pronounced and exceedingly rich. They sometimes contain carved figures in niches. Of this architectural period, which is associated chiefly with the time of Henry VIII., "King's College Chapel," at Cambridge, is, without question, the finest illustration, and, in some respects, is the most beautiful edifice in England, perhaps in the world. Its twenty-four side windows, and its great East and West windows, flashing like jewels in the most brilliant colors, make its interior a glorious vision.

After the decadence of the "Perpendicular style," ecclesiastical architecture in England fell into utter weakness and

confusion, the Gothic blending with the revived classical styles, and losing its noble individuality. It no longer was expressive of any peculiar religious sentiment, idea, or earnest faith.

There can be, we think, in an artistic point of view, but one style of Christian ecclesiastical architecture, and that is the Gothic, and of the Gothic, the simple "Early English" style. This combines round and pointed lines; it does not run into vicious or extravagant ornament; it is solid and yet elegant; and its lofty and lightly-springing lines assist the devotional sentiment to ascend to the Author of all Beauty and Goodness. It may be also made entirely convenient for purposes of Protestant worship.

But why expend great sums for the shell of the spiritual temple? Why lower the idea of spiritual Christianity by reviving the immense and costly structures of the Middle Ages in which Faith was formalized and petrified? We entirely agree with the better feeling and more enlarged conceptions of Christian Faith and Duty, which prompt such questions. The day of great church edifices has gone by. There is a truer conception of worship than these structures could symbolize or inspire. Yet there is such a thing as true Art. It springs from the nature God has made. Its place in Christian worship and life has yet to be defined. By denying that it has any place, it becomes the slave of the passions, and develops in all evil directions. Quatremere DeQuincy places Poetry at the head of æsthetic arts, as being the purest product of the mental idea of beauty, and the furthest removed from the material object; then Music; then Painting; then Sculpture; then Architecture. Poetry and Music are already admitted into the idea and form of Christian worship; shall the other Arts, and among them Architecture, be wholly denied a place?

Art is but the form and expression of Beauty. Beauty resides ultimately in the idea; first of all in the absolute idea of Beauty, which has its type in the Divine mind; from thence it enters into the conception of the human mind. It is therefore a divinely implanted principle of our mental being, and

cannot be overlooked or despised without injury to the mind and religious nature. Our Puritan forefathers were greater than their times. They recognized a power and beauty in the soul, which was infinitely superior to any outward manifestation and Art. They broke away from the debasing seductions of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and symbolic forms, that had been made the handmaidens of a false spiritual idea. They returned to the simplicity of the primitive times of Christian faith. They did a work for which the Church can never be grateful enough. They redeemed the spirituality of religious worship. All the carved stone on the globe is not worth one true prayer or unselfish act. Christ is greater than the temple, and Lord even of the Sabbath day. We would ever affirm the purely Christian idea of Whately, in his "Kingdom of Christ," of a religion, externally speaking, "without Temple, Sacrifice, or Altar.".

But the question returns, and may now be calmly met, how far the true idea of Art may legitimately and profitably enter into Christian worship? Shall it be excluded altogether, or may it find a fit, though humble place? How far shall true Art, which is the pure form of Truth, enter into Preaching, Sacred Song, Prayer, Music, and Church Architecture? This important subject we do not now propose to discuss, and have already strayed from our original theme. We will merely venture to lay down our creed in a few words.

God has given us a complex nature. While metaphysicians generally recognize the cognitive, voluntary, and sensitive powers, in some comprehensive method of classification, they are apt to overlook those intermediate and more indefinable qualities of the mind which blend the spiritual with the bodily nature, and which have their home partly in the affectional, and partly in the imaginative or poetic faculties. Over this realm, Art more peculiarly presides. Though confessedly of a lower order of mental qualities, they are no less true and vital than the rest.

"We live by wonder, hope, and love."

The slighting of these more genial attributes of the mind,

which, in their practical operations, take the form of feelings, impulses, desires, rather than severe processes of thought, or rational principles of action, is a useless loss of power, and works evil. They are strong, though perhaps inferior powers. They are characteristically and intensely human; and they may be trained upward into almost spiritual beauty, or they may sink into the ground and produce nothing but death. Our conception of Christian worship would also join with the higher spiritual faculties, those lowlier ones. It would embrace the whole man in his attempt to reach after and lay hold of God with all his powers, and even with the feeblest and earthly tendrils of his being. The time will come when all that is pure in Art will be consecrated to God's praise.

That which forms the peculiar interest of Architecture, especially of ecclesiastical Architecture, as being a genuine manifestation of the human mind, and of the devotional sentiment-and, at the same time, its entirely subordinate character and service, its inadequacy to take the place of higher religious ideas, and to satisfy the largest rational nature, these truths have never been better expressed than in the following familiar and vigorous lines of an American writer:

"I like a church; I like a cowl;

I love a prophet of the soul;

And in my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;

Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that cowled Churchman be.

"Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?

"Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of nature rolled

The burdens of the Bible old;

The litanies of nations came

Like the volcano's tongue of flame,

Up from the burning core below,—

The canticles of love and woe;
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,

Wrought in sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew;-
The conscious stone to beauty grew.

"Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of leaves and feathers from her breast?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone;
And morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For out of Thought's interior sphere,
These wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat."

We do not believe, however, in attempting to reproduce in our democratic land the costly and vast European Church edifice. The circumstances that could produce it we should never wish to have existing in our country. But when we see such immense sums of money lavishly and selfishly expended on private residences, or sunk in tasteless fashionable display, it seems a pity that some of this treasure should not be used to erect enduring and attractive houses of God. A little more cost, with much more taste that costs nothing, might do this. The stone parish church that inspired Gray's "Elegy," is quite a rude structure; and so are many of the most interesting village churches in England, as John Newton's church at Olney, and Leigh Richmond's at Brading on the Isle of Wight, and, above all, George Herbert's little church at Bemerton, near Salisbury, which hardly seats fifty people. But there they stand still, as good as ever. How different it is with our own less solid church edifices! Last summer