As the centuries wore on, the best of the clergy grew restive under this monstrous style of ornamentation. "What purpose," wrote St. Bernard, about A.D. 1140, "serve in our cloisters, under the eyes of the brothers and during their pious readings, those ridiculous monstrosities, those prodigies of beauties deformed or deformities made beautiful? Why those nasty monkeys, those furious lions, those monstrous centaurs, those animals half human, those spotted tigers, those soldiers in combat, those huntsmen sounding the horn? Here a single head is fitted to several bodies; there upon a single body there are several heads; now a quadruped has a serpent's tail, and now a quadruped's head figures upon a fish's body. Sometimes it is a monster with the fore parts of a horse and the hinder parts of a goat; again an animal with horns ends with the hind quarters of a horse. Everywhere is seen a variety of strange forms, so numerous and so odd that the brothers occupy themselves more in deciphering the marbles than their books, and pass whole days in studying all those figures much more attentively than the divine law. Great God! if you are not ashamed of such useless things, how, at least, can you avoid regretting the enormity of their cost?" How, indeed! The honest abbé was far from seeing the symbolical meaning in those odd figures which modern investigators have imagined. He was simply ashamed of the ecclesiastical caricatures; but a century or two later ingenious writers began to cover them with the fig-leaves of a symbolical interpretation. According to the ingenious M. Durand, who wrote (A.D. 1459) thirty years before Luther was born, every part of a cathedral has its spiritual meaning. The stones of which it is built represent the faithful, the lime that forms part of the cement is an emblem of fervent charity, the sand mingled with it signifies the actions undertaken by us for the good of our brethren, and the water in which these ingredients blend is the symbol of the Holy Ghost. The hideous shapes sculptured upon the portals are, of course, _malign spirits flying from the temple of the Lord, and seeking refuge in the very substance of the walls_! The great length of the temple signifies the tireless patience with which the faithful support the ills of this life in expectation of their celestial home; its breadth symbolizes that large and noble love which embraces both the friends and the enemies of God; its height typifies the hope of final pardon; the roof beams are the prelates, who by the labor of preaching exhibit the truth in all its clearness; the windows are the Scriptures, which receive the light from the sun of truth, and keep out the winds, snows, and hail of heresy and false doctrine devised by the father of schism and falsehood; the iron bars and pins that sustain the windows are the general councils, ecumenical and orthodox, which have sustained the holy and canonical