Still another idea, grander than any aspiration of Saracen or Egyptian, we find, when Europe, slowly shaking off the lethargy of the Dark Ages, was developing the idea of religion. It was material, however, as well as spiritual. God was glorified, not only by repentance or holiness of life, but also by the devotion of hand and heart and fortune to His earthly temples and the jewelled shrines of His saints. All that impetus which is now given to religion itself, was turned into the channels of religious art. And yet, temporally speaking, how grand were the results! Slowly but surely arose those vast and wonderful cathedrals, springing lightly out of the quaintly gabled streets, with their richly wrought transepts and their pinnacled spires. Not trailing along the ground like the Greek temple or the Arab mosque--of the earth, earthy--but leading the soul heavenward with their upward flow of harmony. Vast Bibles of stone, bearing on lofty facade and on buttressed flank the sculptured details of Holy Writ--silent lessons, but not lost upon the rude though reverent men who dwelt within their shadow. It is sad to think that there can never be any more cathedrals. For they _grew_ in those times: now they would have to be built. But we are following a tangent. Our idea is, that architecture, to be good, must be appropriate--expressive of the spirit of the age. It should be an epitome of the nation's progress, an abstract of its guiding principles, condensed, as it were, and crystallized into an art. Of what use would a garment be, though ever so elaborate, if it did not fit? Just so our houses, which are but a broader kind of clothing, should be fitted to their purpose, or they will never yield us any pleasure. Suppose that, in searching the ruins of ancient Greece, we found nothing but pusillanimous, sham imitations of Egyptian art. Would we not despise such a paltry method of making matter serve for mind--such a miserable make-shift to save the labor of invention? And yet it is this same servile imitation of classical and foreign models that is fettering the progress of art in America. Instead of honestly constructing what we want, and then decorating it with a style of ornament that should assist, explain, and intensify it, we go wandering off to the ends of the earth, building Grecian temples and Veronese palaces, some entire and some in slices, dreary, indefinite-looking objects, devoid of all constructive principles within, and ornamented with falsified gewgaws without, stuck on in the hope of hiding rather than helping out the flimsy design. Our 'national style' we are sure can never be born of any such travesties. Borrowed architecture never fits well.