At the north portal of Rouen cathedral but a few years since, I was obliged to climb into the roof of a wretched barrack or book-stall, erected in the seventeenth century, to inspect the unrivalled sculpture representing the creation of the world and the early Scripture history, and the very purloins of the roof were held by mortices cut into images of splendid design, and the rough walls built rudely against the most elaborate tabernacle-work and bas-reliefs. The tenants of these miserable shops, which gave the name of the Cour des Libraires to the northern approach of the cathedral, paid regular rent to the chapter down to the great revolution. I am happy to state that these unsightly excrescences have been demolished by the government, and the whole beauty of the original design is now visible. At Aix-la-Chapelle, a city reported, and, I believe, with truth, to be full of devout persons, the Dom is incumbered with houses and shops for the sale of snuff-boxes, pipes, and tobacco, between every buttress of the apsis surrounding the high altar, and the owners of these habitations are driving their bargains and cooking their victuals within a few feet of the high altar of a church which is the depository of the most venerable reliques of Europe. I mention these things to show how sadly the ancient reverence of sacred buildings and things has declined in latter times, and most assuredly they are intimately connected with the screen question. Rites so sacred as those of the Catholic church require every watchfulness, both in conduct and in externals, to preserve them in due veneration; and an irreverent arrangement in the construction of a church may be the cause of infinite sin and scandal. Now, therefore, that we are beginning, as it were, _de novo_, to restore the churches of God, how important is it that we should so construct them, that they may by their symbolic and ancient fashion, set forth the stupendous mysteries for whose celebration they are raised, and, at the same time, prove them to belong to that very faith that generated, centuries ago, those great principles of Christian art which we may rival, but scarcely excel!