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Vol. LX.— No. 30.
THE CATHOLIC: HERALD.
IS PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY BY
M. FITHIAN,
No. 61 North Second Street, Philadeiphia.
Terms.—Three Dollars per annum,
en advance. Five Dollars will be ret
Philadelphia, Thursday, July 29, 1841.
farther. Churches, more peculiarly the larger and
more magnificent ones, though the same holds also
measurably true of the smallest, were not only an im-
bodiment of vast ideas and grand conceptions, volumes
payable half yearly in which great minds wrote high imaginings, and sue-
éeived for 2 copies, or 1 | cessive generations each theirown; but they were an
copy for two years. All arrearages must be settled prior to imbodiment too, so far as in different cases they might
ordering a paper to be discontinued. All Communications, | be, of the mysteries of the one Catholic Faith. This
except from Agents, or Subscribers enclosing remittances,
addressed ‘“'I'o the Editor of the
must be post paid, and 1
Catholic Herald, Philadelphia, Pa.’’
Poetry,
HALLOWED BE THY NAME.
* List to the dreamy tone that dwells
In rippling wave, or sighing tree;
Go, hearken to the old chureh bells,
‘The whistling bird, the whizzing bee.
Interpret right, and ye will find
"Tis ‘power and glory’ they proclaim:
‘The chimes, the creatures, watere, wind,
All publish ‘ha}lowed be thy name!’
« The pilgrim journeys till he bleeds,
To gain the altar of his sires,
‘The hermit pores above his beads,
With zeal that never wanes nor tires:
But holiest rite or longest prayer, _
‘That soul can yield or wisdom frame,
What better import can it bear
‘Than ‘ Fatuer, hallowed be thy name!”
“ The savage kneeling to the sun,
To give his thanks or ask a boon;
‘The raptures of the idiot one
Who laughs to see the clear round moon;
The saint well taught in Christian lore,
‘The Moslem prostrate at his flame,
All worship, wonder, and adore,
All ead in ‘ Hallowed be thy name!’ ©
« Whate’er may be man's faith or creed,
‘Those precious words comprise it still :
We trace them in the bloomy mead,’
We hear them ia the flowing rill.
One chorus hails the Great Supreme ;
Each varied breathing tells the same.
The strains may differ; but the theme
Is ‘ Fatuen, hailowed be Thy name!’,”
- . Exiza Coor.
The following communication, which we copy from our
New York contemporary, is so filled with the breathings of
Catho icity, that we transfer it to our columns, It contains
a beautiful exposition. of those sublime notions which
essentially enter into the. Architecture of the Catholic
Church.’ What a pity the mind which can so justly ap-
preciate. THe TRUE 1peA of the Catholic Church, will not
adopt all its living beauties.
, From the Churchman,
‘ “THE TRUE IDEA.”
Victor Hugo, in his wild and frightful. romance of
“Notre Dame de Paris,” brings out the thought, that
before printing was invented, and while written books
were. scarce, men wrote their great ideas for the
world, in architecture. The letters in this language,
were the rude piles of stones, erected as niemorials of
some great event, by the wandering chieftain. ‘The
words, are found in the votive: pillar or the solitary
cell. ‘The sentences, in the collection of pillar-words
into the early temple, rude and unpolished, but sha-
dowing forth lofty imaginations. ‘The volumes, are
those rare creations of intellect, which under various
forms and in various developments, have charmed and
ever will charm, all better minds. ‘To apply this to
one country: we find the letters in the Cairus and
Barrows of northern and southern Britain: the words
in the giant pillar, or tall, round, simple, Pictish tower:
Stonehenge is a sentence: York Minster a finished
and glorious volume. Perhaps this may be called a
conceit; it does not seem to us to be so, but we think
it the “true idea’’:—which words, by the way, we
copy for a motto from Dr. Greenwood’s very gratify-
ing letter, In the case of churches, we may go still
was the great primary idea: exuberant fancy, refined
taste, lofty conception, all might work together and do
their utmost, but they must work in subserviency to
this. Nay, so far was the principle carried, that, as
we shall notice by and. by, architectural regularity
was,,in one point at least, sacrificed to the preserva-
tion of theidea. *
Now, to illustrate all this, let us take one of the
cathedrals first, and then perhaps a parish church, as
facts in point. ‘Whe cathedral will show, in the most
perfect inanner, becanse of its greater size and more
various parts, how. Victor Hugo's notion is correct ;
and how completely the principle 1 have noticed, as
peculiar to the erection of churches, is carried out;
and the parish church will serve to satisfy us, that al-
though the imbodiment of the Faith cannot be in it so
entire as in the cathedral, still it was, so far as might
be, the guiding principle in its construction, and that
in subservieney to which the architect wrought. In
this way we may’ perhaps come at the ‘* true idea’’ of
a church, and obtain a uniform principle.
Winchester Cathedral may well serve us for an in-
stance, not because no other one would answer, but
because of its great grandeur, and awful magnificence.
We may look at it from two points of view ; consider-
ing itas a work of art, and as achurch. Viewing it
as’ a work of art, we read in it the very developments
of lofty thought, in many generations: for it was up-
wards of three centuries in building. This is not the
place to enter into the questio vexata, of how far any
remnants of the Saxon architecture are to be found in
Britain: nor is it important for us.to know. It is
enough to observe, that in the transept of the cathedral
we are considering, we find the round arch, low round-
headed. windows, and massy circular pillars, with
regular capital and base, which mark that adolteration
or perhaps rude imitation of the true Grecian or Ro-
man manners, which was-the national architecture of
the Saxons, and was improved and extended by the
Normans. ‘his is the development of the same spirit,
that built on inaccessible crags, strong holds for strong
men. The same solidity, heaviness, and capability of
resistance, that are seen in those, are seen also here.
It is plainly an erection of the warlike spirit: strength
the great object: strength accompanied certainly by
grandeur; but the grandeur arising more from size
than the disposal of parts; and a result, apparently,
more than an original plan. | Still as the warlike spirit
developed itself among the Normans, in a mote grace-
ul way, aud with a higher tone than among the
Saxons, so did it, as the master-spirit, expand in
architecture: it gave a loftier pillar, a rounder and less
depressed arch, and added ornaments in fret-works and
zigzag mouldings : ornaments from a ruder source than
the contemplative minds imbued with the spirit of
beauty. ‘Phe choir, the chapels, and above all, Wyke-
ham’s noble nave, are developments of another spirit;
of a state of things in which mind had gained over
matter some degree of ascendency ; was cultivated,
and warmed with glorious conceptions of the beautiful.
lis developments are -gradual indeed, and we know
that it was not the general spirit of mankind. It was
the scholar’s spirit, instinct. with a love of all beauty.
And because Gop had made “lofty bowers and forest
canopies,” to inspire religiousness in men, so spirits
that had become deeply. religious, and consequently
knew and loved the best and highest of all beauty,
“fell instinctively into those forms which were con-
genial to them 3” they did not merely imitate and copy
the forest temples, but they developed anew: the in-
ward idea, derived from the great archetypal one; and
so as Gop had set forth to us the archetype in forms
that could not but be fit, they wrote their true idea,
derived from these creations of beauty, and agreeing
with their archetype, in forms that agreed with its
developement in the visivle creation; forms that we
call by an unmeaning name ; and whose existence we
lie Merrvly,
Whole Number 446
endeavor to account for in asharp, and calcusatiPge
and material spirit, that only shows how far we have
declined from the lofty spirit of their framers. What
amind must that of William Wyckham have been ~
the spirit that wrought with so splendid a munificences
might well have left its developement in the world, in
forms, like those on which the eye never tires of gaz-
ing in his own cathedral church,
But various as are the features under which, for
generations on generations, great minds have bere set
forth their greatness, and left in durable forms their
impress, every thing has been done under the domi-
nance of one idea... That idea, the same from the be-
ginning, derived from an infinitely higher source than
any thing human; and so, as perfect in. the outfit,
continuing unchanged, while the forms and creations
made subject to it, have ever changed with the different
mind who gave them being.. ‘Io imbody the myste-
ries of the Faith: this was the idea that governed all:
it was to this that art did homage, and went not a step
beyond the limits which this rule imposed, Nay, she
even yielded-some of her own rights, and went out
from’ her own course ; for though it was a noble ser-
vitude, she was still a servant. There is still the
arrangement of nave, and choir, and transept, in the
cross ; that form never may be given up, for it tells of
the mystery of. our redemption; but whence is the
seeming deformity, that the nave and choir are not
upon the same straight line? As you pass the transept,
the line from the centre of the western end is as it
were broken, and if continued straight on, it would
strike aside from the centre of the eastern end; art has.
been here violated, and for what? Because the head of
the Redeemer was bowed upon the cross, when he
gave up his spirit as aransom for all flesh. What
mean the three-fold aisles? ‘They are erected to the
glory of the triune Gop. The great eastern window?
Day ever dawns in the east, and thence shone the light
of the sun of righteousness; and thence shall beam the
awful glory of-the second coming. Why does the
choir hold predominence among all other parts of the
fabric, and they all converge as it were to it as a centre?
Because it is the sanctuary,. and is set apart for the
services and mysteries of religion: itis, be itsaid with
reverence, the heavenly place, pruned from. the. re-
maining portions, and so decorated with all that art or
wealth can give. Indeed every thing is significant:
not here only, but in all other similarerections: and in
all every thing is so done for the glory of Gop, that
even the most hidden parts are wrought ‘¢as Gop him-
self for his own glory and the luxury of our senses,
has wrought out the embroidery of his flowers, and the
plumage of his insects,”
In a parish church we shall not find nor can we ex-
pect to find the prime idea, so fully carried out: for
the cathedrals are the * oratorios of the church.” It is
here that she keeps up a lively similitude of the life of
saints in heaven; and therefore we expect more of
size, more of grandeur, and so a wider scope for the
great principle to work in. | Still, so far as they could
go, the builders of ancient parish churches in England
went. We sometimes find the cruciform: always the
eastern window and the altar under it: frequently the
triple aisle : the ‘* massive tower, emblem of the strong-
hold of Gop’s truth; the heaven-pointing spire: the
cross on the eastern end: the pulpit in the nave: and
the chancel narrower than the body, because not all
who are bidden to the banquet come; nay, even the
cock on the spire, so often and so unjustly flouted at,
« was raised in other days to tell,
How when they tired of prayer, apostles fell.”
Now, is there not in this plan something strikingly
analogous to what, we may say with reverence, seems
to be the plan in the works of Gop in nature? Are not
those works, types of moral truths ? and are they not
imbodiments of some or all of the great mysteries of
our being? Is, for instance, the death of nature in winter,
and its revivification in spring, merely ordained for its
continuance; might not Gop have provided for the
same end in other ways by his infinite power? Is not
rather this plan, in its highest office, designed to kee
continually before us, the great truth and mystery of
the resurrection ? It is to be feared that we have quite
too materialistic a way of judging of these things ; that