r, still sinking; the new
pavement of the sixteenth century has disappeared, and that of 1873
which was brought from the suppressed church of S. Niccolo covers the
bases of the columns.

If S. Apollinare Nuovo had been allowed to fall, nothing that we
possess in the world would have compensated us for its loss. For not
only have we here a beautiful interior very largely of the sixth
century, but the great mosaics of the nave which cover the walls above
the arcade under the windows are, I suppose, at once the largest and
the most remarkable works of that time which ever existed. They are
also of an extraordinary and exceptional beauty. They represent upon
both sides, through the whole length of the nave, as it were two long
processions of saints. Upon the Epistle side are the martyrs issuing
out of the city of Ravenna to lay their crowns at the feet of Our Lord
on His throne, guarded by four angels. Upon the Gospel side are the
virgins headed by the three kings, who offer gifts to Our Lord in his
Mother's arms enthroned between four angels. There is nothing in
Christendom to compare with these mosaics. They are unique and, as I
like to think, in their wonderful significance are the key to a
mystery that has for long remained unsolved. For these long
processions of saints, representing that great crowd of witnesses of
which S. Paul speaks, stand there above the arcade and under the
clerestory where in a Gothic church the triforium is set. But the
triforium is the one inexplicable and seemingly useless feature of a
Gothic building. It seems to us, in our ignorance of the mind of the
Middle Age, of what it took for granted, to be there simply for the
sake of beauty, to have no use at all. But what if this church in
Ravenna, the work indeed of a very different school and time, but
springing out of the same spiritual tradition, should hold the key?
What if the triforium of a Gothic church should have been built as it
were for a great crowd of witnesses--the invisible witnesses of the
Everlasting Sacrifice, the sacrifice of Calvary, the sacrifice of the
Mass? It is not only in the presence of the living, devout or half
indifferent, that that great sacrifice is offered through the world,
yesterday, to-day, and for ever, but be sure in the midst of the
chivalry of heaven, a multitude that no man can number, none the less
real because invisible, among whom one day we too are to be numbered.
Not for the living only, but for the w