of India.

In any event I have never seen a church in which the aspect of northern
forests was more striking, or where one more involuntarily imagines long
alleys of trunks terminating in glimpses of daylight, curved branches
meeting in acute angles, domes of irregular and commingling foliage,
universal shade scattered with lights through colored and diaphanous
leaves. Sometimes a section of yellow panes, through which the sun
darts, launches into the obscurity its shower of rays and a portion of
the nave glows like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, a
window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the
tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in
which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting
radiance. Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall,
exposes an infinity of intersecting moldings similar to the delicate
meshes of some marvelous twining and climbing plant. A day might be
passed here as in a forest, in the presence of grandeurs as solemn as
those of nature, before caprices as fascinating, amid the same
intermingling of sublime monotony and inexhaustible fecundity, before
contrasts and metamorphoses of light as rich and as unexpected. A mystic
reverie, combined with a fresh sentiment of northern nature, such is the
source of Gothic architecture.

PISA'S FOUR GLORIES[4]

BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

There are two Pisas--one in which people have lapsed into ennui, and
live from hand to mouth since the decadence, which is in fact the entire
city, except a remote corner; the other is this corner, a marble
sepulcher where the Duomo, Baptistery, Leaning Tower and Campo-Santo
silently repose like beautiful dead beings. This is the genuine Pisa,
and in these relics of a departed life, one beholds a world.

In 1083 in order to honor the Virgin, who had given them a victory over
the Saracens of Sardignia, they [the Pisans] laid the foundations of
their Duomo. This edifice is almost a Roman basilica, that is to say a
temple surmounted by another temple, or, if you prefer it, a house
having a gable for its facade which gable is cut off at the peak to
support another house of smaller dimensions. Five stories of columns
entirely cover the facade with their superposed porticos. Two by two
they stand coupled together to support small arcades; all these pretty
shapes of white marble under their dark arcades form an aerial