eachings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it must be a greater sin
to burn down the cottage of a poor widow, and turn her out at midnight
into the streets to die, than to plunder for gain the richest altar in
the world.

From these and various other similar causes, it happened that, in the
middle ages,--that is, from five hundred to a thousand years
ago,--almost all the great expenditures of money, in all the great
cities and towns of Europe, were made for churches. Sometimes these
churches were so large that they were several hundred years in building.
One generation would begin, another would continue, and a third would
finish the work; that is, provided the finishing work was ever done.
Great numbers of them remain unfinished to the present day, and always
will remain so.

It is generally, however, the exterior which remains incomplete. Within
they are magnificent beyond description. They are so profusely adorned
with altars, chapels, crucifixes, paintings, vessels of gold and
silver, and with sculptures and monuments of every kind, that on
entering them one is quite bewildered with the magnificence of the
scene.

There are a great many different altars where divine service may be
performed, some arranged along the sides of the church, in the recesses
between the pillars, and others in the transepts, and in various little
chapels opening here and there from the transepts and the aisles; and so
extensive and vast is the interior that sometimes four or five different
congregations are engaged in worship in different parts of the church at
the same time, without at all disturbing one another.

One of the most celebrated of these great churches is the cathedral at
Florence, where Mr. George and Rollo were now staying. There is a
representation of it on the next page, which will give you some idea of
its form, though it can convey no conception of its immense magnitude.

The dome that surmounts the centre of the building is the largest in the
world. It was a hundred years after the church was commenced before the
dome was put on. The dome is about a hundred and forty feet wide from
side to side, and almost as high as it is wide. It is more than a
hundred and thirty feet high, which is enough for twelve or fifteen
stories of a good-sized house. And this is the dome alone. The whole
height of the church, from the ground to the top of the cross, is nearly
four hundred feet. You will get a better idea of how high th