were
consequently of limited extent, and their columns of corresponding
proportions. The citizens sacrificed singly to the gods, or attended
public festivals, comprehending large masses of the people; in which
event the officiating priest or priestess entered the temple, and the
assembled votaries were grouped without. In our churches, on the
contrary, the population of a city is often congregated for hours; and
how magnificently adapted for this object is the vast and solemn
interior of a Gothic cathedral, in which the voice of the priest
reverberates like thunder, and the chorus of the people rises like a
mountain-gust, praising the great Father of all, and rousing the
affrighted conscience of the infidel; while the mighty organ, the
tyrant of music, rages like a hurricane, and rolls his deep floods
of sound in sublime accompaniment! How grand were the conceptions of
the rational barbarians, to whom Europe is indebted for these vast
and noble structures! And how immeasurably they surpass, for all
meditative and devotional objects, the modern application of Greek and
Roman temples, on an enlarged scale, to the purposes of Christian
worship! Had any necessity existed to borrow designs from these
sources, we should rather have modelled our churches from their
theatres, the plan of which is admirably fitted for oratorical
purposes, and for the accommodation of numbers."

We accomplished the last portion of our journey during a night of
superlative beauty. A brilliant and nearly full moon glided with us
through long avenues of lofty elms, linked together by the clustering
tendrils of vines, festooned from tree to tree, and at this season
prodigal of foliage. The coruscations of distant lightning shot
through the clear darkness of Italian night; the moon and evening
star, and Sirius and Orion, soared above us in pure ether, and seemed
to approach our sphere like guardian spirits. The cool breezes which
usher in the dawn now began to whisper through the foliage; a light
vapour arose in the east; and the soft radiance of the first sunbeams
faintly illumined the horizon as we arrived at our destination. Here
the romantic lake of Garda lay expanded before us; its broad surface
ruffled by the mountain breeze, and gleaming like silver in the
moonlight. The waves were heaving in broken and foaming masses, and
reverberated along the rocky shores, finely illustrating the accuracy
of Virgil's descriptive line:

"Fluctibus et