more than they could accomplish, and to make a show either beyond their means or beyond what the occasion warrants. We hold it as unbecoming in churches as in individuals, when they seem intended to pass for more than they are worth. The mixture of costly and cheap materials, palpable imitation, incongruity, incompleteness, these things and the like offend cultivated taste as savoring of pretense, as the fruit of abortive ambition. When we see a stone front and brick sides, the next thought is, these people were too poor or else too niggardly to build of stone, yet to build of brick they were ashamed. A framebuilding covered with planks looks better than such a mixture.* When the windows have pointed arches, but the ceiling is flat or an unbroken curve, and the columns are Gre. cian or American, the whole is a mongrel product, to be admired only as it is wondered at. When an open chapel, or a receding colonnade, is painted on the wall behind the pulpit, it seems as if the people had only aimed to do some great thing' for the sake of doing it. The thing represented to the eye would be out of place if it were real, and we take it to be a sound rule that art should not attempt to impose upon us with an imitation, where the original would not be wanted if it could be had. When the interior wood-work, in the pulpit, pews and galleries, looks considerably like marble, or mahogany, or oak, or black walnut, yet we know it is all painted pine, we ask, Why not expend more (yet not a great deal more, in the long run, considering the cost of paint) in getting the more beautiful and enduring mate * A church ceiled with planks grooved together perpendicularly, not even planed, but only painted to resemble dark stone, may be made much more pleasing than most of our rural churches, and is said to endure well. We have heard of one on Greenfield hill. rials themselves, or if they can not be afforded, why put on an appearance which every body sees through? In this particular the oldest churches that we can remember looked better than their more ambitious succes เ sors. 6 The pews were of pine, clear stuff' carefully selected, not disguised with paint, but getting a darker, richer hue with time; and this common material, if only oiled and varnished so as to show the texture and veins, is really more beautiful, as well as cheaper, than with the ' oaking' now in vogue, besides being a reality and not a sham.' Many persons would be surprised to observe the agreeable and varied hues of pine, white-wood, basswood, and other trees common in different parts of our country, when properly wrought and prepared. Yet so little has this fact been understood, that cherry, which is a richer wood than either of those we have named, used to be stained to make it look like a coarse kind of mahogany. The native wood moreover improves with age, while the faded imitations have to be renewed. For ourselves, if we could not afford to have pews made of black walnut or oak, we would not have them pretend to be richer than they are. Imitative painting, even in the higher range of decoration, is at best a superficial temporary beauty in architecture. In ordinary churches every thing that is merely ornamental should be carefully kept subordinate to the general effect intended. The obtrusive appearance of art savors of ostentation, and is therefore offensive. And we may say in general, that when any thing beyond a plain style in church building is attempted, the work must be in judicious hands, or it will betray at one point or another more of ambition than of good taste, more of pretension than of achievement. We have named a few of the most prominent instances that have fallen under our observation, and though others might be noted, we hope these will suffice for a timely caution to some of the multitude who need it. a statue were spoken of in the same manner? Yet architectural design may not less fairly claim exemption from the authority of fashion. Wherever such language can be fitly ap plied to works of taste, it is because art has in those instances sunk itself to a compliance with the caprice of individuals or the whims of a season. Thus painting sometimes degenerates till the style is excessively arti ficial, and of necessity must soon cease to please; in which case the fault of the style is that it has become a fashion at all, and whether it be old or new is a question of litthe consequence. Thus too in architecture we complain not so much of the word fashion, as of the thing itself, and the extent to which it is allowed to affect the popular judg ment and feeling. The style of our churches ought never to have been what is called 'a fashion' at all; but having been such originally, it has necessarily become an old fashion. To replace it now by a new fashion, is only to renew the difficulty sooner or later, and this is the very mistake many congregations are in turn running into, instead of resorting to the true methods of ecclesiastical architecture. A church is to be built: it must be like any other rather than the old one, so as to have the charm of novelty; a committee is appointed; they look at other churches in the neighborhood, marking the 'newest patterns,' for the latest improve We would have it borne in mind among all persons concerned in church building, that architecture since it came to be more than a mere contrivance for sheltering us from the weather, is properly an art, one of the fine arts, and not a creature of fashion. Like painting and sculpture it has its own paramount models, ideas and laws, which originated in the sense of beauty, and are recognized accordingly wherever this part of our nature is developed and cultivated. It is one province in the realm of that faculty which goes under the name of taste. Fashion, on the contrary, is-what we have scarcely any other name for-the product of a capricious fancy, springing from the whims of individuals, depending on novelty for effect, prevailing at certain times and places like contagion or infection, and from its nature ever fluctuating, having no principle but that of change. It has to do with the shape of a bonnet or the cut of a coat; but the proportions of an edifice are properly above its range. The common misapplication of the word shows a popular misconception on this subject. A church is said to be in the fashion' or 'old fashioned,' like an old or new importation of millinery, without reference to any other standard of judgments'-therein often reversing their ment than the custom of the place and time, as if there were no other more comprehensive and enduring.* What would be thought if a picture or theological tendencies; they take their idea of the size and shape of the house from one place, of the steeple from another, of the pulpit from a third, and of the pews from a fourth; and these cold fragments they weld together as they can, in a new plan of their own. But this is not the worst: the members of the committee have also their several notions on the occasion, aesthetical, economical, or nameless, and by the help of mutual concession (to change our figure) they graft these whims of their own on a stock already sufficiently unnatural; and the result is what might be expected. We are not sure that even this picture is overcharged. Our readers can recall instances of some peculiarity in the structure or arrangement of churches, originating in the ignorance or conceit of individuals, and copied, as improvements upon long established models, in one case after another till they had their run' and went out of date. We have heard of a people who had a stone quarry in the midst of them and made a business of exporting that material, yet had such a stubborn predilection for red brick that they built a new church of it without the plea of economy. There was a time long ago when many of our old parish churches were adorned with three tiers of small windows. All our old churches, so far as we are informed, had the pulpit on one side, instead of at the end, as if to enable the people to outflank the minister, or to put them out of the point-blank range of the sermon. In truth it was a well meant, though ill judged contrivance in aid of the hearing, when no aid was needed, and showed the audience to one another better than to the speaker. For a similar reason many churches are made nearly as broad as they are long, or exactly square in the interior; whereas none of them are so large as to require such proportions for the ease of the speaker or the hearers; and an oblong figure in a building or a room is more agreeable to the eye than a square. Then instead of the tower and spire which were the best part of an old New England meetinghouse, it became the fashion' to put a portico or colonnade in front, and perch a low square belfrey above it, like a martin-box on gate-posts, as may often be seen at this day. Another innovation was the putting the pulpit between two front doors of the church; an arrangement at one time fashionable' in a line of churches through the country,* and still suffered to stand in most of them, but not likely to be renewed. The only show of reason for it, that we have discovered, is that a stranger entering the church may be known as such, and may sooner receive the hospitality of a seat; but a modest stranger, if he can not be accommodated by the sexton, would rather at any time take his chance of being recognized sideways than confront all the people. It has been alledged too, that in such a church the people will not look behind them to see others entering or leaving; but it happens that while one hearer would turn his head to a door opening in the rear, twenty will turn their eyes to the same interruption before them, and every speaker knows that their heads may as well be turned round as their eyes turned off. On the other hand there is the inconvenience of making the poorer classes of persons march to the further seats in the face of the congregation, and of often virtually excluding stragglers and such as happen to be late, who will stay out rather than be stared at for going in. The arrangement has been properly complained of also as unsuitable to a house of worship, because in all sacred edifices, ancient and modern, it has been customary to have the rites performed at the end remote from the principal entrance; this uniformity of usage indicating reasons of reverence and impressiveness from which it naturally grew up. We hope many of our respectable congregations will mend their ways in this particular, as some have already. Many congregations are growing wiser too in another particular-abandoning the custom of having lecture-rooms under churches; a fashion only not so bad as putting shops in the same position, The example we have been told was first set in Dr. Mason's church, in Mur ray street, New York. which can be excused only on the plea of extreme poverty. At first such rooms were half under ground, really cellars, low, close and damp, as if to generate bad air and bronchitis; and then this evil was supplanted by another, when the first story above ground was given up to the lecture-room, and the church itself was virtually put up stairs. The latter method allows of more height in the room, yet not two thirds of what is needed; but it detracts more than almost any other arrangement from the convenience and beauty of the church itself. Happily most of our older edifices were built as they ought to have been, on foundations too low to admit of any consecrated caverns beneath, and yet here and there congregations have been indiscreet enough to spoil the old arrangement, by laying an upper floor for the church, and reserving the old one for the lecture-room. The truth is, a lecture-room or chapel has no proper place except over the vestibule, or behind the church, or else detached from it, and every foot that the floor of a church is raised above what is required to avoid dampness, is an inconvenience and a blemish. Another later fashion,' dispenses with what is called the center aisle between the pews, even in wide churches, for no reason that we have heard except that the space immediately before the preacher may all be filled with the audience. Such a reason seems too trivial, for we never knew a speaker annoyed by that vacant stripe of plank or carpet. The center aisle is convenient on various public occasions, especially where processions are required, and we submit it to any unprejudiced judge whether it is not agreeable to the eye as the principal passage through the edifice, giving direct access from the chief entrance to the best seats and to the desk. The innovation has impaired the effect of some of our churches, but it can not prevail generally or long. We might cite other examples, and particularly one we have already noticed-the rage for painting one kind of wood in imitation of another, or graining,' as it is called, and for particular colors also, as for instance green on the inside of the pews, and a glaring white every where else. But we have named cases enough to show our meaning. These notions, and the like, are in architecture, what the whims of ignorant and conceited zealots are in theology, the antics of private judgment. They can not bear the test of time, and this of itself is a critical difference between the works of fashion and those of true art. Their inventors grow weary of their own fancies, and new follies displace the old. By one ill advised experiment a congregation entails upon itself the necessity of another. In distinction from the fashions of times and places, architecture, as we have said, has its own permanent models, ideas, and laws, which are both permanent and just because conformed to the only true standard of beauty, the cultivated judgment of mankind at large, and the more approved by time and trial. None will deny that there is such a thing as beauty in architecture, and that something of the kind may be reasonably expected in the house of God when we once go beyond the limits of bare necessity in the arrangement of such a building. Yet we have heard men on entering a new church pronounce it 'very neat,' as if this were to exhaust the subject, though they might say as much of a new barn. If they are discerning persons, it is an equivocal compliment, like saying that a minister appears to be a good man, to avoid saying he is a poor preacher. The effect of beauty is something more positive and pleasurable. While this is admitted, some still question the existence of any proper stand ard, setting aside criticism with such sayings, as every one to his taste,' and de gustibus,' &c. In their notion of taste they confound the whim of a single mind with the concurring judgments of many, or the sentiment that prevails for a time in a limited circle, with the perva ding growing sentiment of civilized man. But let any person of tolerable cultivation look upon the Parthenon, or St. Peter's church in Rome, or York Minster, and then consider how remote from such things are transient individual caprices, how foreign and inferior seems the popular idea of fashion. In these and other like examples, mankind are sufficiently agreed to prove a common standard by which their individual judgments must in the main be ultimately determined. There are orders and styles in architecture, as there are schools in painting, but these very differences are in harmony though not in unison. They are so many recognitions of manifest beauty, as true Christians of various sects agree in manifold goodness, having diversities of gifts' and ' of operations' but 'the same Spirit.' The structures that have been so tried and approved, embody the various just ideas of architecture, as the lives of certain saints do those of practical Christianity, and such ideas are further developed in living minds by conge nial contemplation. The laws of taste in this department become incorporated as it were with our own perceptions, and hence are more clearly recognized and more easily applied. Thus improvements are to be effected, not by blindly following the usage with which we happen to be most acquainted, nor by running after novelty, but by recurrence to what may be called principles. A new plan ought to be devised without taking' fashion' into the account, and to be neither approved nor rejected upon mere reference to recent usages. We have not room, even if we had the ability, here to set forth these principles as they might be with advantage. One thing that ought always to be considered, is that a church as a whole should have one harmonious effect. The several parts may be in keeping so as to produce a general expression; as such expression is necessary to the varieties of personal beauty, yet results not from single features but from all the elements that in their natural combination make the face and form one whole. The beauty of the spiritual house' is not merely the aggregate of the virtues of all its lively stones,' but a new product of their mutual relation and adjustment. The beauty of a building lies not chiefly in the several parts, but in their harmony, or their subordination to one pervading effect; in that expressiveness which the mind recognizes in the suitable disposition even of things that are not themselves beautiful. Many a church has been spoiled by some one glaring incongruity, while another pleases for this reason, if no other can be found, that it is in keeping with itself throughout. This consideration is particularly important in the remodeling of old churches that have an architectural character already. The confusion of the several orders and styles impairs the effect, because each has a character of its own, whether of simplicity, grace, massiveness, or grandeur, and is capable of some corresponding expression; and the careless distribution of colors also mars designs otherwise the most agreeable. Another just rule is that the architecture of a church should be such as to distinguish it from other public buildings. The Quakers, and portions of some other sects, have made a point of disregarding this distinction as far as possible, but their notion savors of whim or prejudice. There is no good reason why an edifice should |