y, astronomy, geology, and
all the other phies, nies, onomies, and ologies, that ever perplexed or
enlightened the brains of the rising generation; we adopt the term, in
memory of those so-called happy days of childhood, when its vague
mysticism suggested to our country born and school-bred pates a wide
field of speculation for fancy to wander in; a Cathedral and a Bishop's
see being to us, in their unexplained nomenclature, figures of speech as
hieroglyphical as any inscription that ever puzzled a Belzoni or a
Caviglia to decipher.

We have grown, however, to know something of the meaning of these terms;
and having lived to see a few specimens of real cathedrals and live
bishops, we are now quite ready to acknowledge the priority of their
claims upon our notice when rambling among the lions of an old city.

We say old, but where is the cathedral not old? save and except a few
just springing into existence, evidences we would hope of a reaction in
the devotional tendencies of our nature, rising up once more through the
confused assemblage of churches and chapels, and meeting houses, reared
in honour of man's intellect, sectarian _isms_; human deity in fact, with
its standard _freedom of thought_, under which the myriad diverse forms
of hero worshippers have rallied themselves, each with their own atom of
the broken statue of truth, that they may vainly strive _of their own
power_ to re-unite again into a perfect and harmonious whole. Setting
aside, however, these later efforts to regain something of the lofty
conceptions that can alone enter into the mind of a worshipper of God,
not man, we have to deal with the monuments of a past age yet left among
us, witnessing to the early life in the church, though not unmingled with
symptoms of disease, and marks of the progress of decay,--marks which are
indeed fearfully manifest in the relics existing in our country, that
bear almost equal traces of corruption and spiritual growth, each
struggling, as it were, for victory. Is there any one who can walk
through the lofty nave of a cathedral, and not feel _lifted up_ to
something? may be he knows not _what_; but the spirit of worship, of
adoration, is breathed on him as it were from the structure around him.
And should it not be so? does not the blue vault of heaven, with its
unfathomed ocean of suns and worlds, each moving in its own orbit,
obeying one common law of order and perfect harmony, call up our
reverence for the God