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Compared with it the great French cathedrals, with their stilted roofs so often unbroken, except by a small flêche and with their outlines concealed in a crowd of flying buttresses, are apt to look short and huddled when seen from a distance.
Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directly from Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, and shaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin?
There is still extant, in the books of the council, an order, of which I cannot remember the date, but which was doubtless issued after the Reformation, directing that the lead, which covers the two cathedrals of Elgin and Aberdeen, shall be taken away, and converted into money for the support of the army.
I could not help comparing some of the ancient cathedrals and abbey churches to so many old cheeses.
In many parish churches the general custom of a quarterly administration was broken through in favour of a monthly one, and in many cathedrals the Sacrament might once more be received on every Lord's Day. But Bishop Tomline might well feel it a matter for just complaint, that being at St.
She had precious old laces, too, almost worth their weight in diamonds, laces which had been snatched from altars in ancient Spanish cathedrals during the wars, and which it would not be safe to leave a duchess alone with for ten minutes. The old house was fat with the deposits of rich generations which had gone before.
The cathedrals of the middle ages were each erected by such a corporation, and attest their skill and energy. But these corporations of working masons have passed away, and Masonry is now, even in profession, only theoretical, and in fact, so far as this art is concerned, is not even this. It does not teach the theory of architecture.
This peculiarity may be seen to an almost painful extent at Evreux. Our three churches, then Coutances and Dol certainly rank with our smaller English cathedrals, allowing for a greater effect of height, partly positive, partly produced by narrowness. They are, in fact, English second-class churches with the height of English first-class churches.
The subject of spire and tower architecture, however, is so interesting and extensive, that I have thoughts of writing a detached essay upon it, and, at all events, cannot enter upon it here: but this much is enough for the reader to note for our present purpose, that, although many towers do in reality stand on piers or shafts, as the central towers of cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and the real structure of the best and strongest, are the elevation of gradually diminishing weight on massy or even solid foundation.
This architecture was the first flowering of the Gothic race; they had no Homers; the flame found vent not by imaged words and vitalized alphabet; they vitalized stone, and their poets were minster-builders; their epics, cathedrals. This is why one cathedral like Strassburg, or Notre Dame has a thousandfold the power of any number of Madeleines. The Madeleine is simply a building; these are poems.
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