the
mausoleums of Gizeh and the hieroglyphic shafts of Luxor and Karnac
there existed a modification, the intensity of whose meaning they
were not prepared to understand. Neither their civilization nor their
religion required such an exponent; so they exhausted themselves with
their mountainous bulks of stone and their pictured monoliths.

We know not how the first view of a Christian spire would affect the
mind of an alien; but so far as our own experiences are concerned,
though perhaps familiar only with the lowliest and most unpretending of
its kind, we are conscious that it deeply impressed even the "unsunned
temper" of our childhood. The wisest among us may not be able to define
precisely these impressions, or trace to their source the admiration
and satisfaction it occasions, yet all are ready to acknowledge its
beautiful fitness to adorn and glorify the Christian temple. But to the
thoughtful mind how suggestive it is of pleasant imagery! It is "the
silent finger" that points to heaven; it is an upward aspiration of the
soul; a prayer from the depths of a troubled heart; a _suspirium de
profundis;_ a hymn of thanksgiving; a pure life, throwing of the worldly
and approaching the ethereal; a finite mind searching, till lost in the
vastness of the unknown and unapproachable; a beautiful attempt; a
voice of praise sent up from the earth, till, like the soaring lark, it
"becomes a sightless song." Indeed, our unbidden thoughts, that wild-ivy
of the mind, are trained upward by the spire, till it is hung round with
the tenderest associations and recollections of all that is sweet and
softening in our natures. Thus, when the painter has represented on his
canvas some wild phase of scenery, where the gadding vine, the tangled
underwood, the troubled brook, the black, frowning rock, the untamed
savage growth of the forest,

"Old plash of rains and refuse patched with moss,"

impress us with awe, and a sad, homeless feeling, as if we were lost
children, how eloquent is that last touch of his pencil that shows us
a simple spire peeping over the tree-tops! How it comforts us! How it
brings us home again, and bestows an air

"Of sweet civility on rustic wilds"!

But even if we were not inclined to be sentimental on the subject, even
if base utilities had crowded out from our hearts the blessed capacity
of shedding rosy light on things about us, the coldest esteem could not
but ripen into affection, when we reflected t