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Updated: May 14, 2025
These little oratories are often found near fountains, streams or tree-clumps where travellers would be likely to alight. Even the paws of the Sphinx are covered with such graffiti; and those of Ipsambul or Abu Simbal have proved treasures to epigraphists.
It was to prevent this suicide of love that our ingenious France invented boudoirs. Women could not well have Virgil's willows in the economy of our modern dwellings. On the downfall of oratories, these little cubbies become boudoirs. This conjugal drama has three acts. The act of the prologue is already played.
The first and simplest form of this beautiful and familiar subject, we find in those innumerable half-length figures of the Madonna, holding her Child in her arms, painted chiefly for oratories, private or way-side chapels, and for the studies, libraries, and retired chambers of the devout, as an excitement to religious feeling, and a memorial of the mystery of the Incarnation, where large or grander subjects, or more expensive pictures, would be misplaced.
And first addressing the bishop, he bade him that he should thenceforth plough on the land, and fish in the water, lest he should seem to tempt the Lord his God; then, that he should not presume to glory in any miracle worked by him through the divine grace; and, lastly, the saint gave command that the men should be divided from the women, and that distinct dwellings and oratories should be builded for either sex.
One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth: for they dig and affectionately work continually in her bosom; or else, shut up in private Oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her; seldom looking up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and then with comparative indifference.
Nor were the churches of those early times anything more than an exquisite expression of what men were surrounded by in their daily lives and avocations. The houses and oratories of noble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful.
Headlong was our pace; and at every altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the right hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled anew in sympathy with the secret word that was flying past. Forty leagues we might have run in the cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and choir.
Immediately there was an almost noiseless step on the floor; and a figure emerged from a deep niche, that looked as if it might once have been an oratory, in ancient times; and the figure, too, might have been supposed to possess the devout and sanctified character of such as knelt in the oratories of ancient times.
Daily church services, frequent communions, memorials of our Christian calling continually presented to our notice, in crosses and way-side oratories; commemorations of holy men, of all times and countries; the doctrine of the communion of saints practically taught; religious orders, especially of women, of different kinds, and under different rules, delivered only from the snare and sin of perpetual vows; all these, most of which are of some efficacy for good, even in a corrupt church, belong no less to the true church, and would there be purely beneficial.
The season of spring was in all its vigour, and the grotesque branches of the almond trees in full blossom fantastically chequered the clear blue sky; the earth, variegated with hyacinths and jonquils, breathed forth a fragrance which diffused through the soul a divine repose; myriads of bees, and scarce fewer of Santons, had there taken up their abode; on the banks of the stream hives and oratories were alternately ranged, and their neatness and whiteness were set off by the deep green of the cypresses that spired up amongst them.
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