The most striking characteristic which the house of God presents, in its whole and its parts, is, then, the free flight, the shooting in points formed either by broken arches or by right lines. In Greek architecture, exact proportion between support and height is everywhere observed. Here, on the contrary, the operation of supporting and the disposition at a right angle—the most convenient for this end—disappears or is effaced. The walls and the column shoot without marked difference between what supports and what is supported, and meet in an acute angle. Hence the acute triangle and the ogee, which form the characteristic traits of Gothic architecture. We are not able to follow the author in the detailed explication of the different forms and the divers parts of the Gothic edifice, and of its total structure. THE METAPHYSICS OF MATERIALISM. By D. G. BRINTON. _Ubi tres physici, ibi duo athei_,—the proverb is something musty. Natural science is and always has been materialistic. The explanation is simple. There is as great antagonism between chemical research and metaphysical speculation, as there is between what “Youthful poets dream, On summer’s eve by haunted stream,” and book-keeping by double entry, and nothing is more customary than to deny what we do not understand. Of late years this scientific materialism has been making gigantic strides. Since the imposing fabric of the Hegelian philosophy proved but a house built on sands, the scales and metre have become our only gods. Germany—mystic, metaphysical Germany—strange to say, leads the van in this crusade against all faith and all idealism. Vogt, the geologist, Moleschott, the physiologist, Virchow, the greatest of all living histologists, Büchner, Tiedemann, Reuchlin, Meldeg, and many others, not only hold these opinions, but have left the seclusion of the laboratory and the clinic to enter the arena of polemics in their favor. We do not mention the French and English advocates of “positive philosophy.” Their name is Legion.