tion is bewildering. There was hard work enough to do all night, and though much was lost, something was saved. Old Trinity seemed safe all night, but toward morning the fire swept into her rear, and there was no chance. She went at four in the morning. I saw her well afire, inside and out, carried off some books and robes, and left her. She went majestically, and her great tower stands now as solid as ever, a most picturesque and stately ruin. She died in dignity. I did not know how much I liked the great gloomy old thing till I saw her windows bursting and the flame running along the old high pews.

"I feel that it was better for the church to go so than to be torn down stone by stone. Of course, our immediate inconvenience is great, and we shall live in much discomfort for the next two years. have engaged the Lowell Institute, a lec

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ture-hall that seats a thousand people, and shall begin service there next Sunday." And according to the journals of the day his sermon in Huntington Hall the following Sabbath was full of an onward and upward sweep, of life through death lesson of the fire.

the

The erection of the new Trinity Church was a matter very near Brooks's heart. During his next few summer vacations abroad his thoughts hovered constantly over the work that was to result in the noble edifice on Copley Square with which his name must be forever linked. To Mr. Robert Treat Paine, one of his letters about this time confides his intense interest in the work:

TOURS, FRANCE, Aug. 4, 1874. "DEAR BOB:- And how's the new church? I dreamed of it when I wrote

to you from London, and now I dream of it again, slowly rising, course on course. I shouldn't wonder if the robing-room were done up to the eaves, but I would give much to step out of the hotel and look in the gorgeous moonlight at that blessed lot on the Back Bay."

And again, "How many things I have coveted for the new church. There was a big mosaic at Salviati's that would glorify our chapel."

It is probable that the supreme beauty of Trinity Church is due very largely to this constant thought of its rector concerning it. Mr. Brooks was not an architect, but he had travelled much and made himself very familiar with historic

churches in the countries he had visited. His desire to combine with whatever should have place in a Protestant church