As to churches, we cannot expect much, except that they will be tasteful and commodious audience rooms, commensurate with the importance of their congregations. The religion of to-day appeals to soul, and not to soul and sense. The world is older and better educated than in the cathedral era, and the apostles and prophets are read, not from sculptured doors or painted windows, but from the printed page and the winged word. Childhood, that cannot read, requires gaudily painted primers for its instruction and amusement, but the world is a grown man now; the press has superseded the cathedral, and if we imitate those structures in our churches, we should bear in mind that it was their size that gave them grandeur, and that they would be caricatures without it. We have heard our American church interiors spoken of somewhere as divisible into two classes--the charlotte-russe style and the molasses-candy style. This is not true, we hope; but there is too much truth in it, for it shows the influence of a too close imitation of European palaces and churches, and the hard shamming that has to be done to make this imitation apparent. If our rural architecture has been more successful, it is because our better class of country houses are planned with reference to the landscapes they occupy. A rich level meadow with here and there a waving elm requires a different style of house from a fir-clad bluff on a river bank or a wild gorge in a mountain. No intelligent architect, we take it, would design a country house without an intimate acquaintance with the surroundings, and yet the same man, likely as not, would make you a sketch for the elevation of your house in town, without even looking to see what it was to adjoin on either side. Now this method may be correct, but it seems to us that, by first putting on paper the existing houses, say one or two, on each side of the space to be built upon, the new front could be much better planned, and much of that unnecessary discord avoided which destroys so many of our best streets. This is what is done in painting and other arts, and why not in architecture? Particular situations require particular treatments. A front that would appear well on a narrow street, would be inappropriate on a broad avenue or a square. A corner, or the head of a street, are most responsible situations. A tall marble front, placed in a modest row of freestone, is hideous, and yet the unrelieved monotony of many such rows is quite as bad. A dome, unless at the top of a street or on some open space, is next to worthless. Who would ever notice Boston State House or the Baltimore Cathedral, but for their elevated and central positions? We often find among the old masters elegant architectural paintings, street views, taken from the picturesque cities they lived in. We should like to find some one bold enough to paint a street view of Broadway or Washington street or Chestnut street.