I have some difficulty in proceeding with what I want to say, because I know you must partly think I am jesting with you. I feel indeed some disposition to smile myself; not because I jest, but in the sense of contrast between what, logically, it seems, ought to be; and what we must confess, not jestingly, to be the facts. How great also,--how quaint, the confusion of sentiment in our minds, as to this matter! We continually talk of honouring God with our buildings; and yet, we dare not say, boldly, that, in His sight, we in the least expect to honour ourselves by them! And admitting, though I by no means feel disposed to admit, that here and there we may, at present, be honouring Him by work that is worthy of the nature He gave us, in how many places, think you, are we offending Him by work that is disgraceful to it? 56. Let me return, yet for an instant, to my bird and her nest. If not actually complacent and exultant in her architecture, we may at least imagine that she, and her mate, and the choir they join with, cannot but be complacent and exultant in their song. I gave you, in a former lecture, the skylark as a type of mastership in music; and remembering--some of you, I suppose, are not likely soon to forget,--the saint to whom yesterday was dedicated, let me read to you to-day some of the prettiest English words in which our natural feeling about such song is expressed. "And anone, as I the day espide, No lenger would I in my bed abide, But unto a wood that was fast by, I went forth alone boldely, And held the way downe by a brook side, Till I came to a laund of white and green, So faire one had I never in been, The ground was green, ypoudred with daisie, The floures and the greves like hie, All greene and white, was nothing els seene. There sat I downe among the faire flours, And saw the birds trip out of hir hours, There as they rested hem all the night, They were so joyfull of the dayes light, They began of May for to done honours. They coud that service all by rote, There was many a lovely note, Some sang loud, as they had plained, And some in other manner voice yfained, And some all out with the full throte. They proyned hem and made hem right gay, And daunceden and lepten on the spray, And evermore two and two in fere, Right so as they had chosen hem to yere In Feverere, upon saint Valentines day." You recollect, perhaps, the dispute that follows between the cuckoo and the nightingale, and the promise which the sweet singer makes to Chaucer for rescuing her. "And then came the Nightingale to me And said Friend, forsooth I thanke thee That thou hast liked me to rescue, And one avow to Love make I now That all this May, I will thy singer be.