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Vol. VAL—Aa. 51,
‘THE CATHOLIC HERALD
{S PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY BY
M. FITUITAN,
Philadciphia,
Wake all her hopes, and animate her faith,
"Till my weapt soul, anticipating Heaven,
Bursts from the thraldom of incumb’ring clay;
And on the wings of ecstacy upborne,
Springs into liberty, and light, and life.
No. GL North Second Street, Philadelphi
Terms.—Three Dollars per annum, payable nalf year
tv inadvance. Five Dollars will be received for 2 copies,
or J copy for twoyears, Allarrearages must be settled prior
t) ordering a paper to be discontinued. All Communica-
tions, except from Agents, or Subscribers enclosing remit
tances, must be post. paid, and addressed “To the Editor
of the Catholic Herald, Philadelphia, Pa.”
Yoctry,
For the Catholic Herald.
THOUGHTS AT MIDNIGHT.
From the diary of an invalid.
BY MRS. ANYA H. DORSEY,
Oh when the body cannot rest,
And the spiritis anblest,
A weary sufferer, then is man;
But when holy, deep repose,
Falls geutly, round his earthly woes,
llope, seems his pathway then to span!
When Death coméslike a gentle wave, to steal
The hrightly hoarded sands, of life away ;
We glide along, and scarcely know, or feel
‘The sorrowing blight, which marks our sad decay.
I thank thee. FarHar—Gon—that thou, hast laid
"Thy hand so gently oa my fainting bead;
“I fain would see wnce more, spring's dewy shade,
Aa: qual the fragrance, which its blossoms shed ;
Day, afier day, 1 see the sunlight fall,
Aad yearn to kiss it, as: it seems to sleep, |
So brilliantly upon my chamber wall ;
It gladdens me, and then I cannot weep;
Jt makes me dream of an eternal clime,
Where music blends in one undying chime.
°Tis midnight now; the solemn hush of death,
Seems brovding o'er the earth, in grandeur mild,
And the blest music of my infant's breath,
Sounds like a bird note, in the deseri wild.
Ile sleeps; and angels whisper in his dreams,
Of golden clouds, and sunny streams, and things
Of glitterance. Ile smiles amid the gleams,
Thrown o'er his heart, by sleep's mysterious wings,
And fain would dweil forever, mid the isles
OF starry light, and play among their lowe s;
And flit along, where sun-beam ever smiles,
And shining waves, pass by th’ unfa-ing bowers.
4
Dream on my boy, upon thy mother’s breast!
Years will pass on, but may not bring thee rest,
‘Pho fount is failing in life's sunny spring :
And like an autumn leaf, flushed with decay,
Waits but a wild, aud wintry blast, 10 fling
Ion the stream, which floats from earth away,
Oh, Saviour! by thy suff"rings, by thy death,
Swuile on me, when death's shadows close around ;
Gh, [oly Mother! calm my parting breath,
And soothe my sul, with words of heavenly sound!
Oh, Faruzr—Gov—receive each bitter pain,
With prayers, and deep repentance, offered up,
Give me thy peace, and every drop I'll drain,
And think the gloomy chalice mercy’s cup;
‘hen Death a smile, aad seraph form shall wear,
. And the dark tom) in robes of hght appear.
Baltimore, Dec 4, 1839. °
a
ON DEATI.
BY DR: PORTEUS, BISUOP OF LONDON.
‘hou,
. Whom soft eyed Pity once led down from Heaven,
‘To bleed for man, to teach him how to live, ”
And, oh! still larder lesson, how to die;
Disdain not Thou to smooth the restless bed
Of sickness and of pain, Forgive the tear
LECTURES ON ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHI-
TECTURE,
Delivered to the Students of St. Mary’s College, Oscott, by
A.W. PUGIN, +
Professor of Ecclesiastical Antiquitiesin that College.
Lecrurs tux Tnirp, [Concluded.}
Continued from page 386.
shall now proceed to give some account of the use
of stained glass in domestic edifices ; for this beautiful
decoration was not entirely confined to ecclesiastical
buildings during the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries, but it was generally used in the
larger apartments of royal and noble residences. ‘The
mansions of merchants were also ornamented after the
same manner; and the windows of many private houses
in’ the ancient cities, contained small medallions of
sacred history.
The windows of those truly noble banqueting-halls,
of Westininster, Eltham, Hampton Court, Kenilworth,
Warwick, Windsor, Christ Church, Crosby, and many
others, blazed with the heraldic. charges of their royal
and noble founders. Nor were those belonging to the
Episcopal residences of Croydon, Durham, Lincoln,
Wells, and Lambeth, inferior to the former in brilliant
variety; and the same description may justly be
applied to the great halls of the larger abbies aud col-
exes.
I must here remark, that the great dining-halls in the
abbies were distinct apartments from the refectories,
which latter were appropriated solely for the use of the
monks, who dined in silence according to the monastic
rule; avhile the halls were devoted to the hospitable
reception of the numerous guests, gratuitously. enter-
tained at the larger abbies, not unfrequently amounting
to many hundreds in number.
Heraldic badges, charges and mottos, so much in
vogue at this period, furnished an ample source of de-
coration for the windows of those buildings. Occa-
sionally, however, figures of patron. saints, sacred
historical, and even romantic subjects, .were - intro:
dueed,
Le Viel, in his history of the art of staining glass,
describes the chambers of the royal palaces of, Charles
the Sixth, at the Louvre; and St. Pol, as being, fur-
nished with richly stained windows, equally , brilliant
in colour as those of the Sainte Chapelle, previously
mentioned; among which were images of saints, each
seated ona throne surmounted by an elaborate canopy.
These were all designed by Jean de St. Romaine, a
famons sculptor of the time. The» poet Chaucer
describes a chamber, in his Dream, of which the win-
dows represented the whole history of Troy, in painted
glass, 7
Beryl was a sort of crystal, with which. some, of
the most sumptuous apartments were glazed, Chaucer,
in his * Romanute of the Rose,” speaks thus of a castle,
where
« Every window and each fenestral,
Wrought was with beryl and of clear crystal "
During the dynasty of the ‘Tudors, shields of arms,
surrounded by circular borders of heraldic flowers,
were frequently set in lights, filled up with the repeli-
tion of the motto, running bendy, with’ rows of quar-
reils between the scrolls, on which ‘initial letters, or
small badges, were generally painted.’ In “Piers
Plowman,’ the following lines refer pointedly 10 win.
dows of this description. .
“ Wyde wyndowes ywrought ywrittten ful thicke
shynen with shapen shelds al shewen abonte with
merkes of Merchauntes ymedeled between mo ‘than
twentie and two twyse ynombered. ‘There is non he-
raud that hath half swich a rolle,”? . :
The. * merkes” of merchants here spoken of, were a
sortof badges adopted by tradesmen and others, who
had no heraldic bearings.’ ‘Tiese * merkes’" ormarks,
That feeble nature drops. Calm all her fears,
are frequently met wish in chapels erected by guilds or
Whole Number 3
a tesediny .
my wrest
confraternities of trades, who were formerly associated
for the performance of ,pious duties. « ‘The custom of
bearing these marks was prevalent throughout Europe,
and in the cemetery of Nuremberg a great variety of
them are to be found} on the tombs of the citizens, .
most of whom were
cal occupation. .
am not acquainted with any example of windows,
filled up by inscriptions and quarries with shields in-
terspersed, existing on the continent. The smaller
windows of domestic buildings, both in France, Fian-
ders, and Germany, mostly consisted of white quarries,
edged with a narrow border of running foliage, and one
medallion placed in the centre of each light, in which ;
Was a representation of a single figure, or- a subject
painted on white glass, relieved by brown and yellow
only, and generally surrounded by an inscription.” A
very curious specimen of this style of glass existed for-
merly in an old house in tslington, and the ‘celebrated
John Carter has given’a faithful representation of itin
his valuable work an ancient sculpture and paint
ing. .
Some of these small subjects were painted in the
most beatiful and finished manner; nor did those great
masters, Albert Durer and Lucas Van Leyden, disdain
the execution of them; for some fine specimens of
those admirable artists are to be seen, painted by their
own hands, on glass’ medallions’ of this ‘description.
Dering the latter part of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, stained glass was occasionally introduced in
the windows of apartments, but of so inferior an exe-
cution and. debased design,’ that the procuctions of
these periods do not merit any particular remarks,
Nothing contributed ina greater degree to the solemn
grandeur of the ancient churches, than the varied and
modulated light admitted through: the stained glass,
with which both the lights and tracery of the various
windows were filled... Sublime, indeed, is the effectof
a building thus furnished with brilliant and transparent
imagery, . As jusilyfoliserves an anciént and holy wri-
ter, the very light of day, by passing through 50 glo- ’
jous a medium, became better suited to the sacredness
of the place, . ae
The profusion of gilding and painting employed in
the decoration of the old ehurebes, and which modern
ignorant artists condemn as tawdry ornament, was ab-
solutely necessary to supporta general richness through-
out the edifice, of which the stained windows seemed
'o be the foundation. Foi when these ‘glorious
churches were in their full splendour, they presented
an harmonious effect of most surpassing richness. ‘The
vivid colours of the glass were recalled to the eye b
the mosaic enamelled tile pavements, by the gould and
colours which relieved the woud and stone carvings, by ‘
the painted panvels of the sereens and altars, by the
tapestry hangings, and antipendiums’ of massive em:
broidery, by the shrines of gold and ‘silver, enriched
with jewels, and lastly, by the gorgeous vestments. of
the clergy, covered with imagery, pearls and precious
stones. ‘The effect of stained glass in churches which
have been stripped of all these ancient beauties, is far
too spotty; the contrast between plain walls and the
most vivid culours is too violent; of which the present
nave of York, since it has been teashed, is-a most atri-
king example,—-for more than half the beauty’ of the
old windows is lost by the mass of whitened sione with
which they are surrounded..: The beautiful: efieet of
wax tapers, of which a vast number were constantly
burning in different parts of the churches, was greatly -
increased by the subdued light of the whole building’;
and, it must be universally admitted, that such a soften!
ed and mysterious lightas is produced in a building
filled with stained windows, is weil caleulated to awa.
ken those emotions and thoughts, in the hears and
minds of the worshippers, which they should feel and
entertain, when within the temples, and before the al-
tars of God. ; ;
Did time permit me, I could enlarge greatly on the
sublime appearance of the ancient. buildings, produced
entirely by their glass; but 1 must néw draw your at-
tention to another and more important effect than ihat
of mere light and shade, or fascinating coloury which is
caused by the employment of painted windows. 7 ule
Inde to the edification’and instruction: of the people,
persons engaged in some mechani-
t
Believe me, the ancient Chureluten, s0 fur trom seck=