The seven Chapels of Tongues, built around the Choir on lines converging toward the Sanctuary and deriving their name from the fact that they were intended for services of the church in the languages of the principal ethnological groups or regions of the world, are one of the noblest conceptions of the Cathedral. In early Gothic churches, the fundamental idea of the apse with radiating chapels was Christ in the company of his Saints. Here, in the great cosmopolitan Diocese of New York, this idea has appropriately been carried a step further in these chapels to include the idea of all the nations of the earth gathered around the Altar of the Saviour of Mankind. They recall the cry of the multitude in Jerusalem at Pentecost: “How hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born ... the wonderful works of God” (Acts ii. 8, 11). Among the interesting services held in these chapels are those in the eastern (St. Saviour’s) chapel for the Japanese and Chinese in their languages and for colored people in English. The spirit fostered by these chapels is occasionally reflected in great congregations, entirely of Italians, entirely of negroes, or predominantly of some other race, at services held in the main part of the Cathedral filling it to its utmost capacity.[33] Services in English are held in one or more of the chapels every day of the year, and oftentimes weddings and baptisms are held in them. As a group, the seven Chapels of Tongues eloquently express the catholic and democratic spirit of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine referred to on page 14. They may be visited in order either from south to north or north to south; but by beginning on the south side they will be seen in the order in which they were observed on the exterior (p. 31), and by looking through the archways of the Choir to the opposite side of the Ambulatory, glimpses may be had of the tapestries and the clerestory windows in the order in which they have been described. The chapels are all separate gifts and are memorials of the persons mentioned under their respective headings following: The Chapel of St. James