But, as Bishop Potter pointed out in the admirable letter in which he promulgated the project of an American cathedral, this very prevalence and predominance of the utilitarian spirit makes it most desirable that there should be a conspicuous counteraction and an impressive reminder, in a great commercial town, that there are other than commercial interests and other than physical needs. A “metropolitan” church, in the modern sense of the adjective, dominating the more prosaic erections of a city, as a cathedral must do if reared upon the noble site secured for the Cathedral of New York, is the conversion into a beacon of Mr. Ruskin’s “lamp of sacrifice.” It belongs to its function that it could not by any conceivable possibility “pay,” and that it should be, first of all, a religious monument. There is some danger that this may be forgotten, for in the design of ordinary churches, in which the architects who have been working at the problem presented by the cathedral are commonly exercised, they feel at every turn the pressure of the utilitarian spirit. They are required to “accommodate” a congregation, in most cases at a minimum of cost, so that the preacher may be well seen and heard of all. The muses of acoustics, ventilation, and sanitary plumbing preside over their labors, necessarily to the greater or less detriment of architecture. The features that give dignity to the minsters of the Middle Ages are apt to be obstructive of the comfort of the congregation. If a cathedral were to be merely or mainly a huge auditorium, nearly all the traditions of ecclesiastical architecture would have to be sacrificed. Doubtless, in a true cathedral of such dimensions as those contemplated for the Cathedral of New York, an ample space for preaching must accrue. But a building in which this space is the object of the design can scarcely become a cathedral. Mr. R. L. Stevenson, considering the apse of Noyon, observes: “I could never fathom how any man dares to lift up his voice in a cathedral. What has he to say that will not be an anticlimax? For though I have heard a considerable variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that was so expressive as a cathedral. ’Tis the best preacher itself, and preaches day and night, not only telling you of man’s art and aspirations in the past, but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies.” At all events, a cathedral is much more and other than a place to preach in. If that alone were its purpose, it would be best fulfilled by an enclosed and unobstructed space, extending to the limits of the carrying power of the human voice. But such an erection would resemble a mediæval cathedral much less than it would resemble a modern rink. In truth, the justification of a modern and Protestant cathedral is not to be looked for in its “usefulness.” The altar, and not the pulpit, is the centre and culmination of its interior design, as it can scarcely be said