THE PAGEANT OF THE CHURCH.--With brilliant light and ineffable melody, the triumph advances: “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. xxi. 2). Headed by seven candlesticks of gold as standards, followed by the twenty-four elders, white-robed and crowned with lilies, singing Mary’s praises; between the four living creatures of Ezekiel and St. John, crowned with green, comes a triumphal chariot, more glorious than the sun, upon two wheels; drawn by a Griffin, half lion and half eagle, whose golden wings stretch up far out of sight, through the seven luminous bands that form the processional canopy. By the right wheel dance three maidens, symbolic of the theological virtues; by the left wheel dance four, who represent the cardinal virtues, following the measure of Prudence, as the others take their step from the song of Charity. The seven candlesticks are the gifts of the Holy Spirit; the twenty-four elders, either the patriarchs and prophets, or the books of the Old Testament; the four living creatures, the four Evangelists, or their four Gospels; the Griffin, Christ Himself in His Human and Divine Natures. Lastly, follow seven more elders, white-robed but crowned with flaming red flowers; a physician, and one with shining sword; four of humble appearance; an old man “sleeping with face alert.” According to Benvenuto da Imola, these represent St. Peter (who had intrusted to him the power of healing souls) and St. Paul, the four great Latin doctors, and St. Bernard. More usually they are regarded as personifying the books of the New Testament--the Acts, St. Paul’s Epistles, the Epistles of St. Peter, James, John, and Jude, the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John. Upon the chariot, amidst a hundred Angels singing and scattering flowers, Beatrice appears, clad in the mystical colours, red, white, green, crowned with the olive of wisdom and of peace over her snow-white veil. And, at the advent of the Wisdom divinely revealed to man, Virgil silently vanishes; he has tasted of the delights of the Earthly Paradise, has witnessed the triumph of the Church from which he is for ever cut off, the Faith he never knew, and has gone back to his mournful dwelling-place (_Purg._ xxx.).