THEIR INVETERATE ENEMIES. 297 that is gigantic in conception, all that is bold in design, and symmetrical in proportion and architecture. The majestic towers, gracefully tapering spires, and crocketted pinnacles, stately porches, pointed arches, arcades of clustered pillars, mullioned windows, glowing glass, niches furnished with sculpture of the highest merit, paintings and arabesques, fretted work, carvings, and traceries of stone, embroideries, draping them in a vesture of variety and perpetuity, all contribute to form a perfect whole, and tuned in a harmonious symphony, which thrills every religious feeling and causes every fibre of our hearts to vibrate to notes of awe, astonishment, and veneration! Youth invests the human figure with its beauties of form, contour, and complexion, as the spring-time colours the herbage and foliage with the brightest verdure, tinges the rose in crimson, and tints the lilies and all nature's blossoms and flowers with the glowing dyes of the rainbow; but age is the prized honour of the Gothic cathedrals, and the gray lines and sombre vesture of antiquity are the garments they admire, and which lend majesty to their appearance. Those grand and gorgeous architectural structures are subjected to the assaults of three merciless foes-time, which corrodes and moulders their materials and carvings -revolution, which despoils, pillages, and dilapidatesand restorations, which distort, deteriorate, and desecrate. Of all their inveterate, irreconcileable enemies, the most dreaded and destructive is the uneducated, inexperienced, and incompetent architect, of contracted mind and rude conception, so ignoble and lowly, that he can never elevate himself to the exalted heights and grandeur of conception of the genius which designed those wondrous temples; and when called on to effect necessary 298 THE TRANSITION PERIOD. restorations, all his incisions on his majestic patient generate a gangrene, all his ornaments cover it with a leprosy, and all his restorations are excrescences and hideous petrified deformities. Those noble structures, during the flourishing days of their entirety and architectural grandeur, are elevated far beyond the reach of the desolating hand of the talentless architect. But when they are impaired and dilapidated by the ravages of time, and nod with age, and that they fall into his despoiling hands, then he mercilessly deprives them of their symmetry and their beauty by clumsy anachronisms, and stigmatizes them by the tasteless incongruity of his additions and restorations just as "the living ass kicks the dead lion". It is as the elevated oak's leaf, which, when blooming in the summer of its existence, waved defiantly aloft from towering branches raised above the reach of grovelling reptiles, till, in the autumn of its years, it moulders, nipped by the winter frosts of time, it falls to the earth, and is then slimed and corroded by the crawling snail upon the ground! Many of those Gothic cathedrals, having required an entire age and several generations to complete, present a most interesting record of the vicissitudes of time, the gradual development of taste, and the transition of various styles or orders of architecture. We have some foundations and partial elevations, even effected in Carlovingian days, or during the days of architectural art, when the Roman, Saxon, and Gregorian style prevailed; consequently, the lower portion of some, exhibited the low, stunted, and heavy pillar and circular arch, and were continued in the naked, cold style of the early Gothic, and completed in the light, elegant, floriated, pointed style of the highly developed Gothic of our more recent ages. Winchester presents a remarkable example of this, GENIUS OF MODERN ARCHITECTS. 299 in the variety of styles which are combined in its construction and this complexity of structure is very apparent in many other transition cathedrals. Those venerable, elaborate, exquisite specimens of architectural refinement, which are at once temples and tabernacles almost worthy of the dwelling of God with man, and at the same time petrified religious poems, chaunting His glories, having been transmitted to us from ages of faith and piety, when every one lived for God alone, and when "art was still religion", present us the results of their creations, which are such as that "Art hath not anywhere a scene more fair”. These fabrications of religious fingers, manipulated and woven into such delicate carvings, traceries, and lacework, merit to be kept under glass cases, if thus they could be preserved from decay: but time has an oxide, and a moth, which corrodes and cuts through everything but our heavenly treasures. These Gothic cathedrals are productions of a genius of design, of taste, art, and religion, which probably never will be rivalled, and if once destroyed, will never be reproduced; but by judicious restorations of mouldering parts, effected by eminent architects, they may be long preserved, and transmitted to many future generations. The remarkable improvement in the ecclesiastical architecture of these countries during the past half century, affords convincing testimony that we are provided with architects of taste, knowledge, and accomplishments, which reflect honour on their noble profession, and who preclude all necessity of committing such restorations to those incompetent men, who will only generate a gangrene in the aged constitutions, will even anticipate the ravages of time, and accelerate the destruction of these venerable fabrics. 300 THE POPE'S PALACE. The Vatican Palace, Library, FTER the termination of the ceremonies, I of the hundreds of millions of the faithful all over the Christian world-as the residence of the visible head of the Church, Christ's vicar on earth-the influence there exercised over the most momentous events recorded in universal history-and over literature, science, and art-its extensive library and museum, containing the rarest volumes and manuscripts, and priceless gems of ancient and modern paintings and sculpture, mosaics, marbles, and bronzes, and its sublime adjoining Basilica and gorgeous shrines of the Princes of the Apostles-is incomparably the most important, the most revered, and most august fabric that ever was from the beginning, is now, or ever shall be on the habitable globe. Some idea of its extent may be formed from the fact that St. Peter's church, with the adjoining buildings, occupies an area of eight English acres, and with the Vatican Palace and gardens, all occupy a space equal to that which is occupied by the entire city of Turin. This Vatican Palace is 1151 feet in length, and 767 feet in breadth. It contains chambers, courts, galleries, museums, and chapels, and halls, gorgeous in architec tural beauty, and almost incredible in size and number. It contains the grandest staircase in any palace in the world, with eight others of surpassing magnificence, and two hundred staircases of a lesser character; twenty great courts and galleries, and four thousand four hundred and twenty-two apartments, with windows, the number of which have never been counted! The original building was erected by Constantine. The buildings which constitute the present palace were erected separately at different periods by many Popes, according to the designs of different architects, and do not display a uniformity of architectural design. The residence of the Popes for more than a thousand years was the Lateran Palace. Pope Gregory XI. was the first who fixed the Papal residence in the Vatican in the year 1377, after the Popes had returned from Avignon. Very probably this resolution was taken in consequence of its proximity to the fortress of St. Angelo, which afforded a security in ages of social convulsions; and this idea is still further strengthened by the subterranean passage which communicates between the palace and the castle, and which was built by Pope John XXIII. THE LIBRARY. The present buildings of the Vatican library were erected in the year 1588 by Sixtus V. The library contains 100,000 volumes of printed books. But these are of minor importance when compared with the inestimable treasures of ancient documents, manuscripts, and palimpsests, which are preserved in its archives. It comprises, in addition to its own most extensive collection, the valuable collections of other libraries throughout Europe, which, during many ages, were transferred here, and all accumulated in this vast treasure of literature, some documents dating so far back as the fifth century. It comprises the collections of Fulvius Ursinus, that of the Benedictine library of Bobbio, the Palatine library of Heidelberg, a portion of which, however, has some time since been |