in the calm twilight, some glorious and wide-spread scene of nature. In the latter case we recognise the creative and omnipotent hand of God; in the former, that of man, struggling to emancipate himself from the thraldom of his own weakness, and seeking to compensate by ideality for the mighty distance which separates his own from his Maker's works! This constant tendency to bring ourselves nearer to the Deity by our works, to perpetuate this contest between mind and matter, constitutes man's whole existence; it is the drama of his life, his passion; it is, in one single word, Art. For what, in fact, is art, but action spiritualized—action which calls into exercise all those higher faculties which harmonize, combine, and blend with the passive strength of nature?
Now, if considered in its highest point of view, Art may be said to partake of somewhat of the Divine nature; is not this especially the case when its efforts are consecrated to the works of God? And this principle, when applied particularly to ecclesiastical architecture, is justified by the most abundant evidence. Nothing, indeed, is so grand as the monuments it has raised; none of the other efforts of art have ever succeeded in producing that wonderful combination of the ponderous with the graceful, the massive with the light, which, like everything that partakes of the sublime, astonishes, amazes, and yet delights. By the union of material and ideal beauty, of which it is the type, it satisfies the double craving of our twofold nature; it impresses our senses, at the same time that it elevates the mind.
It is in this last exclusively moral influence that we recognise the characteristic feature of religious architecture. Being the faithful expression of a feeling of
