minds, and an immense variety of operatives who carried out with masterly practical skill what their superiors in science designed. Thus the massive Norman pier was gradually lightened into the clustered shaft of elegant Gothic; the low wagon-vault expanded into the fairy roof of tracery, and the small window of primitive churches, became "a transparent wall of gorgeous hues" in the sublimest cathedrals, and, despite shameful neglect or abuse, still remain as the most wonderful miracles of art. No buildings on earth are more interesting than the cathedrals of Europe, and especially of England, since each one stands the built-up chronicle of national architecture, on which, from crypt to spire, are recorded in significant language, the wonders of inventive genius and constructive-skill. In tracing the hand of Providence in monumental art, it is important to observe that all original invention in architecture comes from Greece through Rome, and that the coloring thereof is also derived from the East. The Doric and Corinthian orders are the formative molds of all subsequent forms, the one of all Romanesque buildings, Byzantine, Lombard, and Norman; and the other of all Gothic, French, German, and English. Says Ruskin, in his Stones of Venice, "Those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the framework and strength of architecture, are from the race of Japhet: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ishmael, Abraham, and Shem."