JOY IN EVERY COUNTENANCE.

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also assisted as sponsor. The Litany of the Saints was then chaunted. The solemn Mass was then commenced, during which the candidates for orders were ordained, and the former Jew received his first communion. At the "Gloria in excelsis", the organ pealed forth its most glorious strains, the bells chimed their merriest peals, the guns of St. Angelo thundered forth their booming volleys, discharges of musketry, mortars, and rockets resounded in all directions, and continued during the entire day, and the cavalry and military, who carried their arms reversed during the last two days, now elevated their swords, fixed bayonets, and carried their arms erect, and joy beamed from every countenance. The ceremonies in this Lateran Basilica commenced on this morning at six o'clock, and, though continued uninterruptedly, did not terminate till three o'clock this afternoon. On this evening the ceremony of the coronation of the Blessed Virgin takes place in the church of San Marcello: and the church of St. Ignatius is festooned, and decorated with dazzling splendour, preparatory to the "Quarante' ore", or forty hours' adoration. On the evening of Holy Saturday all the private houses in Rome are visited by one of the parochial clergy, and blessed with the holy water of Holy Saturday.

Christian Architecture.

F all the external auxiliaries employed by the Church for the purpose of imparting solemnity to her ceremonies, impressing the souls of her children with religious sentiments, nobility of conception, and feelings of reverential awe,

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ORDER OF ARCHITECTURE.

through the medium of the senses, there is not one more noble or more efficacious than that of architecture. Christian architecture! The examples of proportion, of beauty and sublimity which it presents to our contemplation, educates our eye, refines our taste, expands our views, and elevates our ideas to heavenly conceptions! Architecture must be studied both as an art and as a science. If the student confine himself to the former, he degenerates into the character of a mere artizan: if he theorize merely in the latter, then he becomes speculative and ideal, and will never produce anything substantial and practically useful. The union of both constitutes the perfect architect. The architect, besides being a scientific artist of the highest order himself, is likewise the protector and preserver of the works of the sculptor and the painter, that decorate the walls of his structures -he preserves them and transmits them to posterity. The architect's works are the traditions of momentuous events. He is the historian of the relative character and refinement of successive ages; and Christian architecture possesses all these qualifications, and exercises them in favour of religion, which has enlisted her in her service. The principal orders or styles of architecture are, the Egyptian, the Etruscan, the Saracenic, the Grecian, the Roman, and the Gothic: but my object in this work is merely to allude to Christian architecture, in contradistinction to pagan architecture. As architecture is historical, and illustrative of the condition of the society and character of the age ¡in which it was employed, so Christian architecture is a faithful and enduring memorial of the condition of religion at the period when the various specimens now extant had been erected.

In the early ages of Christianity, the first fervent

EARLY CHRISTIAN STYLE.

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disciples of the cross, who sacrificed wealth and home and all for the love of their Divine Master, lived in caverns, in crypts, and catacombs, to conceal themselves from the persecutors who sought to exterminate them. Their churches, and ceremonies, and decorations, and all the requirements for divine worship, were accommodated to their circumstances and privations. They grew up habituated to them, and attached to them by the dearest reminiscences. Their architecture, sculpture, and paintings, as a natural consequence, became deeply impressed with that character. They were lowly, arched crypts, effigies of our crucified Lord and His afflicted Mother, rude paintings of martyrs, hooks, swords, gridirons, and other instruments of torture. In subsequent years of comparative peace and prosperity, when the Roman empire began to decline, and the Christian Church to triumph, the Christians, increasing in numbers, finding the mighty structures of Roman and Grecian architecture unoccupied and deserted, appropriated them to accommodate their greater requirements, as well as a significant emblem of their triumphs over the powers of this world. Thus religion there assumed, and consecrated to her own use, those mighty efforts of architectural art, which she so conveniently found accommodated to her purposes, and hence it is that ever since, the ultramontane Christian architecture is established almost exclusively, on the Grecian, Roman, and Byzantine type. In countries, however, where religion found no order of architecture to have been previously established, she instituted one of her own, invented and inspired by the spirit of Christianity, and that order is called the Gothic order. It is the creation of Christianity, and may in an especial manner be styled the Christian order of architecture. It is an order of archi

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ADAPTABILITY OF THE GOTHIC.

tecture perfectly adapted to all her wants: its subdued light and reverential air admirably harmonize with the solemnity of her ceremonies, and every compartment seems constructed to breathe her mystic character. Behold the lofty elevation of its groined arched ceiling, with its illuminated decorations of God, the holy Virgin, and His angels and saints, which appear as though we burst an opening through illimitable space, and caught a glimpse of our eternal inheritances and the glorious regions of the blessed! The clustered pillars are emblematical of the union of the faithful in the bonds of charity, the strongest foundation and most efficient support of the spiritual temple of faith and religion. Its elevated, graceful, tapering spire, terminating in a point, directs our souls to our heavenly kingdom, as the culminating climax of all our ambition and happiness. The extended nave and aisles, and the captivating perspective they present, indicate the extent to which we should expand our minds, to obtain capacity to learn the heavenly truths, and lessons of faith, which religion reveals. The varied and brilliant lines of the stained glass windows, reflecting in the sunshine their tints of purple, crimson, and amber on the tesselated pavement, like the diamonds strewed before the paths of eastern princes, seem to indicate the virtues and good works with which we should cover our passage through life to a blessed eternity.

In this Christian Gothic architecture, there is one feature particularly remarkable, and in which it will be found to differ materially when contrasted with the ancient architecture of Greece and Rome. In the Grecian and Roman style, all the cornices and other principal lines were horizontal, running parallel to the earth, ambitious seemingly of nothing but. territorial extent and

worldly aggrandizement-even the arches were semicircular, so that when the eye met a pillar, it ran up and round the arch, and down again at the other side to the earth; whereas in the Gothic architecture, all the chief lines were perpendicular, leading the eye and the spirit to supernatural things, and even where it met an arch, the segment of the curve terminated in the apex above, and had no inducement to descend again. Then the apse, the side chapels, and various recesses, with every grade of light, seemed to symbolize the Church's discipline, which, by the happy union and subordination of all the parts, secured the perfection of the whole, and there, no matter what the vocation or disposition of any soul, he found some portion of the church accommodated to his condition. Thus the Gothic Christian order of architecture was sublime, appropriate, expressive, and characteristic, and it was capable of any amount of ornamentation, as the soul may progressively aspire to the most exalted perfection and to every grade and variety of virtue. This style of architecture, from the term "Gothic", by which it is designated, may be associated in our memories with the recollection of a people usually regarded as barbarous. But we must recollect that they were early and fervent converts to Christianity, and in this character they appear more honourable, and it elevates them highly in our estimation, even higher than the erudition, sciences, and refinements which may have been the characteristics of other cotemporaneous infidel nations, and the Gothic architecture which we admire, has been the offspring, not of their barbarity, but of their Christianity. The country in which the Gothic style of architecture was first developed in a remarkable degree, was Spain, and it became one of the relics of the invasions and conquests of Gothic