in constant attendance. In the Romish ritual, external emblems are certainly permitted as stimulants to inward devotion; of these, pictures are among the most favored. In our faith, the symbols are simple as its practice, and too sacred even to be named here. We have no wish, then, to decry the use or advantage of paintings to the Catholic; but it seems sufficiently obvious, that to the Protestant they can at best be useless in a place of public worship. In reference to the second consideration, namely, the profit thus accruing to the arts of the country, it has been stated above, that only to the multiplication of paintings has the exclusion in question proved hurtful, and not to the improvement or perfection of the art. In this respect the merits of the Reformation have not only been overlooked, but denied, while the claims of Catholicism, as favorable to elegance, have been too highly exalted. True, a great proportion of the patronage by which the arts have been supported in Italy has been extended by churchmen; this has all been put down to the account of the system. But it is to be remembered, that this protection has been granted more frequently in the character of lay noblemen and princes, than of ecclesiastics. The most splendid works of the pencil are in the private palaces of the popes and cardinals, and other members of the hierarchy; laymen with the same means would have acted similarly. During the infancy of the arts, their feebleness was stayed, and their vigorous manhood nourished, by the free corporations of the republican cities. The Catholic Church only received the arts as orphans, after her temporal, and therefore improper ambition, had destroyed their true and natural parent--Liberty. At this moment, too, very few fine pictures are in churches; they are in public galleries, in private collections, in the cabinets of the curious, and in palaces. Where, then, is the vaunted superiority in the Catholic profession, or where the ancient and permanent disabilities under which Protestantism has been represented as labouring, in regard to the arts of elegance? And why should we incur even the possibility of contaminating the purity and the spirituality of our faith, or of even offending the mind of the humblest believer, by filling our churches with pictures, when there remains to us the amplest field yet unoccupied? We have, in fact, all that is yet in possession of high art; in our royal palaces, in the almost regal seats of our nobility, in our national galleries, in the halls of our universities and institutions, and in our public buildings of every description. Has not the pencil 'ample verge' and 'room' appropriate?