arvellous and rapturous combinations;--and well indeed and lawfully, while
he keeps to that line which is his own; but, should he happen to be
attracted, as he well may, by the sublimity, so congenial to him, of the
Catholic doctrine and ritual, should he engage in sacred themes, should he
resolve by means of his art to do honour to the Mass, or the Divine
Office,--(he cannot have a more pious, a better purpose, and Religion will
gracefully accept what he gracefully offers; but)--is it not certain, from
the circumstances of the case, that he will be carried on rather to use
Religion than to minister to it, unless Religion is strong on its own
ground, and reminds him that, if he would do honour to the highest of
subjects, he must make himself its scholar, must humbly follow the
thoughts given him, and must aim at the glory, not of his own gift, but of
the Great Giver?

7.

As to Architecture, it is a remark, if I recollect aright both of Fenelon
and Berkeley, men so different, that it carries more with it even than the
names of those celebrated men, that the Gothic style is not as _simple_ as
befits ecclesiastical structures. I understand this to be a similar
judgment to that which I have been passing on the cultivation of Painting
and Music. For myself, certainly I think that that style which, whatever
be its origin, is called Gothic, is endowed with a profound and a
commanding beauty, such as no other style possesses with which we are
acquainted, and which probably the Church will not see surpassed till it
attain to the Celestial City. No other architecture, now used for sacred
purposes, seems to be the growth of an idea, whereas the Gothic style is
as harmonious and as intellectual as it is graceful. But this feeling
should not blind us, rather it should awaken us, to the danger lest what
is really a divine gift be incautiously used as an end rather than as a
means. It is surely quite within the bounds of possibility, that, as the
_renaissance_ three centuries ago carried away its own day, in spite of
the Church, into excesses in literature and art, so that revival of an
almost forgotten architecture, which is at present taking place in our own
countries, in France, and in Germany, may in some way or other run away
with us into this or that error, unless we keep a watch over its course. I
am not speaking of Ireland; but to English Catholics at least it would be
a serious evil, if it came as the emblem and advoca