We say old, but where is the cathedral not old? save and except a few just springing into existence, evidences we would hope of a reaction in the devotional tendencies of our nature, rising up once more through the confused assemblage of churches and chapels, and meeting houses, reared in honour of man’s intellect, sectarian _isms_; human deity in fact, with its standard _freedom of thought_, under which the myriad diverse forms of hero worshippers have rallied themselves, each with their own atom of the broken statue of truth, that they may vainly strive _of their own power_ to re-unite again into a perfect and harmonious whole. Setting aside, however, these later efforts to regain something of the lofty conceptions that can alone enter into the mind of a worshipper of God, not man, we have to deal with the monuments of a past age yet left among us, witnessing to the early life in the church, though not unmingled with symptoms of disease, and marks of the progress of decay,—marks which are indeed fearfully manifest in the relics existing in our country, that bear almost equal traces of corruption and spiritual growth, each struggling, as it were, for victory. Is there any one who can walk through the lofty nave of a cathedral, and not feel _lifted up_ to something? may be he knows not _what_; but the spirit of worship, of adoration, is breathed on him as it were from the structure around him. And should it not be so? does not the blue vault of heaven, with its unfathomed ocean of suns and worlds, each moving in its own orbit, obeying one common law of order and perfect harmony, call up our reverence for the God of _Nature_? and has it ever been forbidden that the heart and understanding should be appealed to through the medium of the outward senses, for the worship of the God of _Revelation_? Is the eye to be closed, the mouth dumb, the ear deaf, to all save the intellectual teachings of a fellow man? Is _music_ the gift of heaven, _colour_ born in heaven’s light, _incense_ the fragrance of the garden, planted by God’s hand, _form_ the clothing of soul and spirit, to be banished from the temple dedicated to the service of that living God, who created the music of the bird, the waterfall, and the thunder, who painted the rainbow in the window of heaven, who scented the earth with sweet flowers, and herbs and “spicy groves,” who gave to each tree, each leaf, each bird and flower, each fibre, sinew, and muscle of the human frame, each crystal, and each gem of earth, each shell of the ocean’s depths, each moss and weed that creeps around the base of hidden rocks, even to the noisome fungus and worm that owes its birth alike to death and to decay a material body, full of beauty and adaptation in all its parts; revealing thus to man, that all thought, all life, all spirit, must dwell within an outer covering of _form_. True, the spirit and life may depart, the garment may cover rottenness and decay, the symbol may be