it would be pleasant to have the service of a little more social nature, and more human. When we put him away off in the apse, and set him up for a Goth, and then seat ourselves at a distance, scattered about among the pillars, the whole thing seems to me a trifle unnatural. Though I do not mean to say that the congregations do not "enjoy their religion" in their splendid edifices which cost so much money and are really so beautiful. A good many people have the idea, so it seems, that Gothic architecture and Christianity are essentially one and the same thing. Just as many regard it as an act of piety to work an altar cloth or to cushion a pulpit. It may be, and it may not be. Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us a valuable religious experience, bringing out many of the Christian virtues. It may have had its origin in pride, but it is all being overruled for our good. Of course I need n't explain that it is the thirteenth century ecclesiastic Gothic that is epidemic in this country; and I think it has attacked the Congregational and the other non-ritual churches more violently than any others. We have had it here in its most beautiful and dangerous forms. I believe we are pretty much all of us supplied with a Gothic church now. Such has been the enthusiasm in this devout direction, that I should not be surprised to see our rich private citizens putting up Gothic churches for their individual amusement and sanctification. As the day will probably come when every man in Hartford will live in his own mammoth, five-story granite insurance building, it may not be unreasonable to expect that every man will sport his own Gothic church. It is beginning to be discovered that the Gothic sort of church edifice is fatal to the Congregational style of worship that has been prevalent here in New England; but it will do nicely (as they say in Boston) for private devotion.