ent place.[3] Filled with a sense of the majestic presence of the edifice, he approached one of the chief portals, to find it crusted with a most uncouth semi-burlesque representation,

t, some are springing into the air, and some are running, as if in wild fright, for their lives. Though the usual expression upon the faces is one of astonishment, yet this is varied. Some are rubbing their eyes as if startled from a deep sleep, but not yet aware of the cause of alarm; others are utterly bewildered, and hesitate to leave their resting-place; some leap out in mad excitement, and others hurry off as if fearing to be again consigned to the tomb. An angel is leading a cheerful company of popes, bishops, and kings t

nterview than the one recorded by ?sop between the wolf and the stork. The old cathedral at Strasburg, destroyed a hundred years ago, was l

the Autun

ted a crime "most scandalous and injurious to religion." His sentence was "to make the amende honorable, naked to his shirt, a rope round his neck, holding in his hand a lighted wax-candle weighing two pounds, before the principal door of the cathedral, whither he will be

Strasburg Cath

ery thing in Europe also, if only from their prodigious magnitude. A cathedral town generally stands in a valley, through which a small river winds. When the visitor from any of the encompassing hills gets his first view of the compact little city, the cathedral looms up in the midst thereof so vast, so tall, that the disproportion to the surrounding structures is sometimes even ludicrous, like a huge black elephant with a flock of small brown sheep huddling about its feet. But when at last the stranger stands in its shadow, he finds the spell of its presence irresistible; and it is a spell which the lapse of time not unfrequently strengthens, till he is conscious of a te

It is Americans who enjoy them most; for they see in them a most captivating assemblage of novelties-vast magnitude, solidity of structure only inferior to nature's own work, venerable age, harmonious and solemn magnificence-all combined in an edifice which can not, on any principle of utility, justify its existence, and does not pay the least fraction of its expenses. Little do they know personally o

tall in Sherborne

me of them be conveyed in printable words? In close proximity to statues of the Virgin, and in chapels whose every line is a line of beauty, we know not how to interpret what M. Champfleury truly styles "deviltries and obscenities unnamable, vice and passion depicted with gross brutality, luxury which has thrown off every disguise, and shows itself naked, bestial, and shameless." And these medi?val artists availed themselves of the accumulated buffooneries and monstrosities of all the previous ages.

ipt of the Thi

carvings are unmistakable caricatures: a monk caught making love to a nun, a wife beating her husband, an aged philosopher ridden by a woman, monkeys wearing bishops' mitres, barbers drawing teeth in ludicrous attitudes, and others less describable. In the huge cathedral of English Winchester, which abounds in curious relics of the Middle Ages, there is a series of painted panels in the chapel of Our Lady, one of which is an eviden

ters, and other works of devotion-we are amazed beyond expression to discover upon their brilliant pages a similar taste in ornamenta

s of the Madonna, the crucifixion, and scenes in the lives of the patriarchs. The gallant hare

Mass-book of the F

t contains various prayers and collects, the office for the dead, and some psalms, all in Latin. It is illustrated by several brilliantly colored, well-drawn, but most grotesque and incomprehensible figures, designed, as has been conjectured, to "expose the wicked and inordinate lives of the clergy

limbs, but an enormous tail; there is a turret, on the top of which a monkey sits, and a savage below is aiming an arrow at him. In the British Museum-that unequaled repository of all that is curious and rare-there is the famous and splendid psalter of Richard II., containing many strange pictures in the taste of the period. On the second page, for example, along with two pictures of the kind usual in Catholic wor

of the Thirteenth Centur

s puffed out raising the tempest, and a black devil clawing the sail from the yard. In selecting a few of the more innocent pictures from the prayer-book of Queen Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. of England, Mr. Malcolm gives expression to his amazement at the character of the drawings, which he dared not exhibit to a British public! Was this boo

ry's Prayer-b

at we see upon them snares set, hares, goats, and other beasts in full flight before hunters exhausting themselves in taking and pursuing them with their dogs; and, again, upon the bank of a river, all kinds of fish caught by fishermen. I answer you that this is a puerility with which to amuse the eyes of the faithful."[4] To one who is acquainted with the history and genius of the Roman Catholic Church, this very simple explanation of the incongruity is sufficient. The policy of that wonderful organization in every age has been to make every possible concession to ignorance that is compat

ll, his magnificent head showing vast capacity paralyzed by an absorbing terror, and exclaimed, "Behold the lapse from Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Seneca, the Plinys, and the Antonines!" The answer made by the clergyman was, "That is not Christianity! In the Christian books no hint of that, no utterance justifying that, can be found." Perhaps neither of the disputants succeeded in expressing the whole truth on this point. The vaunted Roman civilization was, in truth, only a thin crust upon the surface of the empire, embracing but one small class in each province, the people everywhere being ignorant slaves. Into that inert mass of servile ignorance Christianity

r even genuine, until it embraces all classes of the community; an

rs, those animals half human, those spotted tigers, those soldiers in combat, those huntsmen sounding the horn? Here a single head is fitted to several bodies; there upon a single body there are several heads; now a quadruped has a serpent's tail, and now a quadruped's head figures upon a fish's body. Sometimes it is a monster with the fore parts of a horse and the hinder parts of a goat; again an animal with hor

ood of our brethren, and the water in which these ingredients blend is the symbol of the Holy Ghost. The hideous shapes sculptured upon the portals are, of course, malign spirits flying from the temple of the Lord, and seeking refuge in the very substance of the walls! The great length of the temple signifies the tireless patience with which the faithful support the ills of this life in expectation of their celestial home; its breadth symbolizes that large and noble love which embraces both the friends and the enemies of God; its height typifies the hope of final pardon; the roof beams are the prelates, who by the labor of preaching exhibit the truth i

aught to children, though coming down from the Middle Ages, which carries this quaint symbolizing to a point of the highest absurdity. The catechism turns upo

ignify the two

ass signify the two great

ignifies the he

the halter the clapper of the great bell, which is in th

signifies th

the great door of the cathedral

gnify the four f

fy the four great pillars of the cathe

ignifies the pa

great chest wherein Christians put their off

ignifies the ta

holy-water brush of the good dean of the c

a church at Worms an altarpiece of a crudity almost incredible. It represented the Virgin Mary throwing Christ into the hopper of a windmill, from the spout of which he was issuing in the form