igh portals into the nave of the church, and could distinguish the
opposite windows storied with gorgeous emblazonries of saints and
martyrs, angels and archangels, whilst above them were seen the
Madonna, and "the Lamb of God" with the cross; and through the upper
panes streamed in the golden rays of the sun, and the blue light of the
unfathomable heavens: then, as I myself was entering, suddenly the
shattering trumpet-stop was opened: and I heard the full choir singing
the great anthem of Pergolesi--"And the Dead shall arise:" at which
instant I also wept with the multitude, and acknowledged a common faith
and a common hope: and for a moment I will confess that I apostatized
to the church of Rome for the sake of her pomps and vanities: a sin
which I trust is forgiven me, as I can assure the church of Scotland
that it is the single occasion throughout my life on which I have had
any wanderings of thought from her pure and orthodox creed.

Under a similar impulse, caught from the contagion of public
enthusiasm, Bertram pressed after the procession into the church. He
was carried by the crowd into a situation from which he could overlook
the entire nave which was in the simplest style of Gothic architecture
and naked of all the ornaments which belong to the florid Gothic of a
later age. The massy pillars were left unviolated by the petty hand of
household neatness: they stood severe in monumental granite,
unwhitewashed, unstuccoed, without tricks or frippery. All the
gingerbread work of plinths to the base, or fretted cornices to the
capitals, had been banished by the austerity of the presiding taste.
And it struck Bertram also, as a picturesque circumstance in the whole
effect and at the same time a circumstance of rude grandeur which well
accorded with the spirit of the architecture, that there was no
ceiling: the whole was open to the slates; and the vast beams and
joists of oak, which had been laid for upwards of four hundred years,
were clearly distinguishable. Below these were suspended antique
banners which floated at times in the currents of air: and all the
pillars were hung with shields, helmets, shirts of mail, and other
ancient records of warlike achievements--arranged in the manner of
trophies. All these were covered with venerable dust, the deposition of
centuries, which no loyal-hearted Welchman would on any account have
disturbed.

The service, as is usual at Machynleth--at Bangor Cathedral and other
gr