t a distance,
scattered about among the pillars, the whole thing seems to me a
trifle unnatural. Though I do not mean to say that the congregations
do not "enjoy their religion" in their splendid edifices which cost
so much money and are really so beautiful.

A good many people have the idea, so it seems, that Gothic
architecture and Christianity are essentially one and the same thing.
Just as many regard it as an act of piety to work an altar cloth or
to cushion a pulpit. It may be, and it may not be.

Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us a valuable religious
experience, bringing out many of the Christian virtues. It may have
had its origin in pride, but it is all being overruled for our good.
Of course I need n't explain that it is the thirteenth century
ecclesiastic Gothic that is epidemic in this country; and I think it
has attacked the Congregational and the other non-ritual churches
more violently than any others. We have had it here in its most
beautiful and dangerous forms. I believe we are pretty much all of
us supplied with a Gothic church now. Such has been the enthusiasm
in this devout direction, that I should not be surprised to see our
rich private citizens putting up Gothic churches for their individual
amusement and sanctification. As the day will probably come when
every man in Hartford will live in his own mammoth, five-story
granite insurance building, it may not be unreasonable to expect that
every man will sport his own Gothic church. It is beginning to be
discovered that the Gothic sort of church edifice is fatal to the
Congregational style of worship that has been prevalent here in New
England; but it will do nicely (as they say in Boston) for private
devotion.

There isn't a finer or purer church than ours any where, inside and
outside Gothic to the last. The elevation of the nave gives it even
that "high-shouldered" appearance which seemed more than anything
else to impress Mr. Hawthorne in the cathedral at Amiens. I fancy
that for genuine high-shoulderness we are not exceeded by any church
in the city. Our chapel in the rear is as Gothic as the rest of it,
--a beautiful little edifice. The committee forgot to make any more
provision for ventilating that than the church, and it takes a pretty
well-seasoned Christian to stay in it long at a time. The
Sunday-school is held there, and it is thought to be best to accustom
the children to bad air before they go into the church. The poor lit