Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860», sayfa 10

ABDEL-HASSAN

 
The compensations of calamity are made apparent after long intervals of
time.
The sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all fact.
 

—EMERSON.

 
Abdel-Hassan o'er the Desert journeyed with his caravan,—
Many a richly laden camel, many a faithful serving-man.
 
 
And before the haughty master bowed alike the man and beast;
For the power of Abdel-Hassan was the wonder of the East.
 
 
It was now the twelfth day's journey, but its closing did not bring
Abdel-Hassan and his servants to the long-expected spring.
 
 
From the ancient line of travel they had wandered far away,
And at evening, faint and weary, on a waste of Desert lay.
 
 
Fainting men and famished camels stretched them round the master's tent;
For the water-skins were empty, and the dates were nearly spent.
 
 
All the night, as Abdel-Hassan on the Desert lay apart,
Nothing broke the lifeless silence but the throbbing of his heart;
 
 
All the night he heard it beating, while his sleepless, anxious eyes
Watched the shining constellations wheeling onward through the skies.
 
 
When the glowing orbs, receding, paled before the coming day,
Abdel-Hassan called his servants and devoutly knelt to pray.
 
 
Then his words were few and solemn to the leader of his train:—
"Thirty men and eighty camels, Haroun, in thy care remain.
 
 
"Keep the beasts and guard the treasure till the needed aid I bring.
God is great! His name is mighty!—I, alone, will seek the spring."
 
 
Mounted on his strongest camel, Abdel-Hassan rode away,
While his faithful followers watched him passing, in the blaze of day,
 
 
Like a speck upon the Desert, like a moving human hand,
Where the fiery skies were sweeping down to meet the burning sand.
 
 
Passed he then their far horizon, and beyond it rode alone;—
They alone, with Arab patience, lay within its flaming zone.
 
 
Day by day the servants waited, but the master never came,—
Day by day, in feebler accents, called on Allah's holy name.
 
 
One by one they killed the camels, loathing still the proffered food,
But in weakness or in frenzy slaked their burning thirst in blood.
 
 
On unheeded heaps of treasure rested each unconscious head;
While, with pious care, the dying struggled to entomb the dead.
 
 
So they perished. Gaunt with famine, still did Haroun's trusty hand
For his latest dead companion scoop sepulture in the sand.
 
 
Then he died; and pious Nature, where he lay so gaunt and grim,
Moved by her divine compassion, did the same kind thing for him.
 
 
Earth upon her burning bosom held him in his final rest,
While the hot winds of the Desert piled the sand above his breast.—
 
 
Onward in his fiery travel Abdel-Hassan held his way,
Yielding to the camel's instinct, halting not, by night or day,
 
 
'Till the faithful beast, exhausted in her fearful journey, fell,
With her eye upon the palm-trees rising o'er the lonely well:
 
 
With a faint, convulsive struggle, and a feeble moan, she died,
While her still surviving master lay unconscious by her side.
 
 
So he lay until the evening, when a passing caravan
From the dead incumbering camel brought to life the dying man.
 
 
Slowly murmured Abdel-Hassan, as they bathed his fainting head,
"All is lost, for all have perished!—they are numbered with the dead!
 
 
"I, who had such power and treasure but a single moon ago,
Now my life and poor subsistence to a stranger's bounty owe.
 
 
"God is great! His name is mighty! He is victor in the strife!
Stripped of pride and power and substance, He hath left me faith
 
 
and life."—
Sixty years had Abdel-Hassan, since the stranger's friendly hand
 
 
Saved him from the burning Desert, lived and prospered in the land;
And his life of peaceful labor, in its pure and simple ways,
 
 
For his loss fourfold returned him, and a mighty length of days.
Sixty years of faith and patience gave him wisdom's mural crown;
 
 
Sons and daughters brought him honor with his riches and renown.
Men beheld his reverend aspect, and revered his blameless name;
 
 
And in peace he dwelt with strangers, in the fulness of his fame.
But the heart of Abdel-Hassan yearned, as yearns the heart of man,
 
 
Still to die among his kindred, ending life where it began.
So he summoned all his household, and he gave the brief command,—
 
 
"Go and gather all our substance;—we depart from out the land."
Then they journeyed to the Desert with a great and numerous train,
 
 
To his old nomadic instinct trusting life and wealth again.
It was now the sixth day's journey, when they met the moving sand,
 
 
On the great wind of the Desert, driving o'er that arid land;
And the air was red and fervid with the Simoom's fiery breath;—
 
 
None could see his nearest fellow in the stifling blast of death.
Blinded men from prostrate camels piled the stores to windward round,
 
 
And within the barrier herded, on the hot, unstable ground.
Two whole days the great wind lasted, when the living of the train
 
 
From the hot drifts dug the camels and resumed their way again.
But the lines of care grew deeper on the master's swarthy cheek,
 
 
While around the weakest fainted and the strongest waxéd weak;
And the water-skins were empty, and a silent murmur ran
 
 
From the faint, bewildered servants through the straggling caravan:—
"Let the land we left be blessed!—that to which we go, accurst!—
 
 
From our pleasant wells of water came we here to die of thirst?"
But the master stilled the murmur with his steadfast, quiet eye:—
 
 
"God is great," he said, devoutly,—"when He wills it, we shall die."
As he spake, he swept the Desert with his vision clear and calm,
 
 
And along the far horizon saw the green crest of the palm.
Man and beast, with weak steps quickened, hasted to the lonely well,
 
 
And around it, faint and panting, in a grateful tumult fell.
Many days they stayed and rested, and amidst his fervent prayer
 
 
Abdel-Hassan pondered deeply that strange bond which held him there.
Then there came an aged stranger, journeying with his caravan;
 
 
And when each had each saluted, Abdel-Hassan thus began:—
"Knowest thou this well of water? lies it on the travelled ways?"
 
 
And he answered,—"From the highway thou art distant many days.
"Where thou seest this well of water, where these thorns and
 
 
palm-trees stand,
Once the Desert swept unbroken in a waste of burning sand;
 
 
"There was neither life nor herbage, not a drop of water lay,
All along the arid valley where thou seest this well to-day.
 
 
"Sixty years have wrought their changes since a man of wealth
and pride,
 
 
With his servants and his camels, here, amidst his riches, died.
"As we journeyed o'er the Desert, dead beneath the blazing sky,
 
 
Here I saw them, beasts and masters, in a common burial lie;
"Thirty men and eighty camels did the shrouding sand infold;
 
 
And we gathered up their treasure, spices, precious stones, and gold;
"Then we heaped the sand above them, and, beneath the burning sun,
 
 
With a friendly care we finished what the winds had well begun.
"Still I hold that master's treasure, and his record, and his name;
 
 
Long I waited for his kindred, but no kindred ever came.
"Time, who beareth all things onward, hither bore our steps again,
 
 
When around this spot were scattered whitened bones of beasts and men;
"And from out the heaving hillocks of the mingled sand and mould
 
 
Lo! the little palms were springing, which to-day are great and old.
"From the shrubs we held the camels; for I felt that life of man,
 
 
Breaking to new forms of being, through that tender herbage ran.
"In the graves of men and camels long the dates unheeded lay,
 
 
Till their germs of life commanded larger life from that decay;
"And the falling dews, arrested, nourished every tender shoot,
 
 
While beneath, the hidden moisture gathered to each wandering root.
"So they grew; and I have watched them, as we journeyed, year by year;
 
 
And we digged this well beneath them, where thou seest it, fresh and
clear.
 
 
"Thus from waste and loss and sorrow still are joy and beauty born,
Like the fruitage of these palm-trees and the blossom of the thorn;
 
 
"Life from death, and good from evil!—from that buried caravan
Springs the life to save the living, many a weak, despairing man."
 
 
As he ended, Abdel-Hassan, quivering through his aged frame,
Asked, in accents slow and broken, "Knowest thou that master's name?"
 
 
"He was known as Abdel-Hassan, famed for wealth and power and pride;
But the proud have often fallen, and, as he, the great have died!"
 
 
Then, upon the ground before them, prostrate Abdel-Hassan fell,
With his aged hands extended, trembling, to the lonely well,—
 
 
And the sacred soil beneath him cast upon his hoary head,—
Named the servants and the camels,—summoned Haroun from the dead,—
 
 
Clutched the unconscious palms around him, as if they were living men,—
And before him, in their order, rose his buried train again.
 
 
Moved by pity, spake the stranger, bending o'er him in his grief:—
"What affects the man of sorrow? Speak,—for speaking is relief."
 
 
Then he answered, rising slowly to that aged stranger's knee,—
"Thou beholdest Abdel-Hassan! They were mine, and I am he!"
 
 
Wondering, stood they all around him, and a reverent silence kept,
While, amidst them, Abdel-Hassan lifted up his voice and wept.
 
 
Joy and grief, and faith and triumph, mingled in his flowing tears;
Refluent on his patient spirit rolled the tide of sixty years.
 
 
As the past and present blended, lo! his larger vision saw,
In his own life's compensation, Nature's universal law.
 
 
"God is good, O reverend stranger! He hath taught me of His ways,
By this great and crowning lesson, in the evening of my days.
 
 
"Keep the treasure,—I have plenty,—and am richer that I see
Life ascend, through change and evil, to that perfect life to be,—
 
 
"In each woe a blessing folded, from all loss a greater gain,
Joy and hope from fear and sorrow, rest and peace from toil and pain.
 
 
"God is great! His name is mighty! He is victor in the strife!
For He bringeth Good from Evil, and from Death commandeth Life!"
 

ABOUT SPIRES

When the children of Shem said one to another at Babel,—"Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top shall reach unto heaven," they typified a remarkable trait of the human mind,—a desire for a tangible and material exponent of itself in its most heroic moods. In the earlier ages of the world, when humanity, as it were, was becoming conscious of itself and its godlike energies, it seems as if this desire could find no nobler expression than in towers. The same spirit of enterprise which in our own day stretches forth inquiring hands into unexplored realms of physical and intellectual being, and acknowledges in the spoils of such search its noblest and proudest attainments, in more primeval times appears to have been content with the actual and visible invasion of high building into that sky which to them was the great type of the unknown and mysterious.

The birth of these structures was not of the practical necessities of life, but of that fond desire of the soul which has ever haunted mankind with intimations of immortality. Towers thus became the boldest imaginable symbols of energy and power. And when, in the course of time, they became exigencies of society, and familiarized by the idea of usefulness, even then they could not but be recognized as expressions of the more heroic elements of human nature.

Founded in superabundant massiveness, and built in prodigality of strength, the tower seems to defy the elements and to outlive tradition. Old age restores it to more than its primeval significance; and when humbler erections have passed away and crumbled in ruins, it appears once more to rise above the customary uses of men, and to become a companion for tempests and clouds. Dismantled, deserted, and bearing,

 
"Inscribed upon its visionary sides,
This history of many a winter's storm,
And obscure record of the path of fire,"
 

Nature lays claim to it, and with moss and ivy and eld, with weeds and flowers, she takes it to her bosom.

 
"Dying insensibly away
From human thoughts and purposes,"
 

we at length associate it with no achievements of man, and its masonry becomes venerable to us, as shaped by mysterious beings,—Ghouls or Titans,—no fellow-workers of ours.

Let us for a while forget the tedious realisms around us, and eat of the dreamy Lotos. Let us look eastward over the wide waters, and behold, along the horizon, the "dim rich cities" printing themselves against the morning. Let us listen to their mellow chimes that come faintly to us, and bless those deep-toned utterances so full of the tenderness of ancient days and the melody of gray traditions. Let us bless them; for, like lyres of Amphion, at their sound arose the bell-bearing tower, which made cities beautiful and their people happy. O St. Chrysostom! there were other golden mouths than thine that preached by the Bosphorus, and their pulpits were the airy chambers of the first Christian towers. Where the muezzin every hour from the lofty minaret now calls the faithful Mahometan to prayer, were first heard those matin and vesper chimes which since then throughout Catholic Europe have accompanied the rising and the setting of the sun. Thus the Christian tower immediately becomes associated with the tenderest and most poetical ideas of monastic and pastoral religion. It seemed emulous from the beginning to be the first to catch the beams of morning, and, like the statue of Memnon, to respond to the golden touch by sounds of music. Then the fervid heart of Italy took fire, and from her bosom uprose over all her cities the beautiful campanile. Still and solemn it stood on the plains of Lombardy, like a sentinel on the outskirts of our faith, whispering to the vast of space that all was well. Over the lagunes of Venice the weary toil of two centuries piled up the tower of St. Mark. Ravenna, with barbaric pride, built her round-cinctured towers to the glory of the Exarchate. Rome followed with her square campaniles, whose arcaded chambers looked down on a hundred cloisters. Then there were La Ghirlandina at Modena, Il Torazzo at Cremona, Torre della Mangia at Siena, the Garisenda at Bologna, the Leaning Tower at Pisa. Everywhere they sought the skies with emulous heights, and ere long they arose in such number as to give a distinctive aspect to the Christian city, and to warn the traveller from afar that he approached walls within which religion was a pride and a power. Who has not admired the Giotto Campanile, called "the Beautiful," at Florence? And who has not wondered at the splendor of her citizens, whose command was, "to construct an edifice whose magnificence should be beyond the conception even of the cognoscenti, and whose height and quality of workmanship should surpass all that has been built in any style, in Greece or Rome, even at the most florid period of their power!"

But the spiritualization and glory of the tower are yet wanting. There is a very human expression about it, as it stands in the midst of those glimmering lands, with its haughty summit commanding far-distant plains,—

 
"Far as the wild swan wings, to where the sky
Dips down to sea and sands,"—
 

a very human expression of scornful pride and imperious dominion. We shall see how it outgrew its mere humanities and became an expression of immortal aspirations, a symbol of our relationship with ethereal existences.

These Italian campaniles had either flat summits, or were crowned with a low, unimportant roof. But as they approached the North of Lombardy, and found their way into Germany, France, and Britain, these roofs, through the necessities of climate, became steeper and sharper. Many of the little gray mountain-chapels in the South of Switzerland still lift up these pointed towers amid the hamlets of the valley, having gathered in the hardy flocks at eventide for seven or eight centuries. The same early modifications may yet be seen on the banks of the Rhine, where the conical, stork-haunted caps of the round towers are so picturesquely associated with that legendary scenery. Those dear, time-worn, rugged, red-tiled roofs, with their peaks coming in just where they are needed,—what could the artist do without them? Then the same necessities made the early French and Norman builders push up into the air those gaunt, quaint old camelbacks, with spindles or pinnacles astride. You cannot but love them for their strangeness and the surprise they make against the quiet sky. In Britain, too, you might have beheld this tendency, where the lordly curfew quenched the lights in castle and cot from beneath a very extinguisher of a roof. Now, as, in the natural growth of the human mind, the heart became more and more impregnated with the beauty of holiness, and the prayers of men ascended with somewhat of purer aspiration to heaven, so did they build their tower-roofs higher and higher into the air, till at length the spire was born. In one of those quaint antique towers of Normandy, Coutances, it was first fully developed; and it is curious to see how in this instance its roof-origin was still remembered: for it has tall, gabled garret-windows rising from its base, connected by rude cross-bars to the slope of the spire; and it has a kind of scaly mail, Ruskin says, which is nothing more than the copying in stone of the common wooden shingles of the house-roof. Now the proud Italian architects, disdainful though they were of the arts of the rude Northern builders, could not but admit the expressiveness of the pointed roof; so they placed a form of it on some of their campaniles, as on those of Venice and Cremona, in both these instances making it a third of the whole height. But the spire, though an effective, was as yet an unambitious structure,—scarcely more than an exaltation or an apotheosis of the roof. For a long time it continued to be merely a supplementary addition in wood to the solid masonry of the tower, and in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries was often added to substructures of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth.

Surely it is very dull in us, out of our present enlightenment, to continue to distinguish the mediaeval times as the Dark Ages, as if they were glimmering and ghostly, and men groped about in them blindly, living in a sort of dusky romance of feudality. Did you ever study De la Roche's incarnation of Mediaeval Art in his Hemicycle,—that long saintly robe with its still and serious folds, that fair dreamy face, those upturned eyes, "the homes of silent prayer," the contemplative repose? It is truly an exquisite idealization; yet there is something wanting. I believe the piety of those days was rather a passion than a sentiment. Their "beauty of holiness" was rather an active emotional impulse than a passive spiritualization, and was incomplete without a material expression, a tangible demonstration of itself. Like the fabled Narcissus, it yearned for its own image. Hence the joy and luxury of the ecclesiastical buildings of that period. They were the very blossoming of the tree of knowledge. This was, indeed, an unenlightened, perhaps a superstitious principle of worship; but it was enthusiastic, self-sacrificing, and chivalrous. It, indeed, sent the stylite to his pillar, the hermit to the wilderness, the ascetic to the scourge and hair-cloth shirt; but it also led the warrior to the Holy Land, the beggar to the castle-hearth, and the workman to the building of the House of God. It is no wonder that a religion born thus in childlike fervor, and seeking expression in outward signs, built upward. It is no wonder that out of the prosaic elements of the roof it made the spiritual essence of the spire. If we look through the whole range of architectural forms in classic or mediaeval times, we shall find no one so indicative of any human emotion as this simple outline is of the highest of all emotions,—prayer. It is a significant fact, that the sentiment of aspiration is nowhere hinted at in Classic Art, and we look in vain for it in all pagan architectures. This is not surprising. The worshippers who built in those schools demonstrated there all the noblest ideas they were capable of,—intellectual beauty, dignity, power, truth, chastity, courage, and all the other virtues cherished in their theologies; but their personal relations with any higher sphere of existence, vague and undefined as they were, called for no expression in their temples, and obtained none.

The pyramidal form has ever possessed peculiar fascinations for men, and, from its simplicity, grandeur, and power, has been used in all ages with innumerable modifications in those structures whose object was to impress and overawe,—as in the pyramids of Egypt, the temples of India and Mexico, and in all the earliest funereal monuments. It involved a rude symbolism, which recommended itself to the barbarous childhood of nations. But it was not until the pyramid was sharpened and spiritualized into the spire that it gained its completest triumph over the secret emotions of men. The Egyptians made the nearest approach to it in the obelisk. That mysterious people felt very keenly the suggestiveness of the pyramidal form, and refined the language of its sentiment into some very beautiful expressions. Yet between the mausoleums of Gizeh and the hieroglyphic shafts of Luxor and Karnac there existed a modification, the intensity of whose meaning they were not prepared to understand. Neither their civilization nor their religion required such an exponent; so they exhausted themselves with their mountainous bulks of stone and their pictured monoliths.

We know not how the first view of a Christian spire would affect the mind of an alien; but so far as our own experiences are concerned, though perhaps familiar only with the lowliest and most unpretending of its kind, we are conscious that it deeply impressed even the "unsunned temper" of our childhood. The wisest among us may not be able to define precisely these impressions, or trace to their source the admiration and satisfaction it occasions, yet all are ready to acknowledge its beautiful fitness to adorn and glorify the Christian temple. But to the thoughtful mind how suggestive it is of pleasant imagery! It is "the silent finger" that points to heaven; it is an upward aspiration of the soul; a prayer from the depths of a troubled heart; a suspirium de profundis; a hymn of thanksgiving; a pure life, throwing of the worldly and approaching the ethereal; a finite mind searching, till lost in the vastness of the unknown and unapproachable; a beautiful attempt; a voice of praise sent up from the earth, till, like the soaring lark, it "becomes a sightless song." Indeed, our unbidden thoughts, that wild-ivy of the mind, are trained upward by the spire, till it is hung round with the tenderest associations and recollections of all that is sweet and softening in our natures. Thus, when the painter has represented on his canvas some wild phase of scenery, where the gadding vine, the tangled underwood, the troubled brook, the black, frowning rock, the untamed savage growth of the forest,

"Old plash of rains and refuse patched with moss,"

impress us with awe, and a sad, homeless feeling, as if we were lost children, how eloquent is that last touch of his pencil that shows us a simple spire peeping over the tree-tops! How it comforts us! How it brings us home again, and bestows an air

"Of sweet civility on rustic wilds"!

But even if we were not inclined to be sentimental on the subject, even if base utilities had crowded out from our hearts the blessed capacity of shedding rosy light on things about us, the coldest esteem could not but ripen into affection, when we reflected that the spire never adorned the shrine of a pagan god, never glorified the mosque of a false prophet, never, in purity, arose from any unconsecrated ground; but when, at last, the Church of Christ felt the "beauty of holiness," then it developed out of that beauty and pointed the way to God. It exhaled from the growing perfection of the Church, as fragrance from an opening flower. It is, therefore, peculiarly holy. It is a monitor of especial grace. "It marshals us the way that we are going," like the visionary dagger of Macbeth; but the knell that sounds beneath it summons only to heaven.

Practically, it is utterly useless; and this is its honor and its unspeakable dignity. We cannot even climb it, as we could a tower; for it is nearly as unapproachable as the Oracle of God, save to the innocent birds, who love to flock and wheel about it in the sunshine, and build their nests in its "coignes of vantage," or, in the night-time, to the troops of stars which touch it in their journey through the skies. It is as beautifully idle as the lilies of the field; and yet its expressiveness touches us so nearly, the propriety of its sentiment is so striking, that, when the great test question of this living age is applied to it, and we are asked, What is its use? what is it good for? the heart is shocked at the impiety of the question, and the feelings revolt, as against an insult. Upon the arches of Canterbury Minster is carved,

NON * NOBIS * DOMINE * NON * NOBIS * SED * NOMINI * TVO * DA * GLORIAM *

Nothing can be simpler than the composition of the pure spire. The aesthetics of its development and growth are characteristically natural and apparent. They are like the history of a flower from bud to bloom under a warm sun. Let us become botanists of Art for a while, and analyze those flowers of worship, as they opened "in that first garden of their simpleness."

Considering the growth of the spire from the tower-roof, it might naturally be supposed that the earliest forms would be square or round, in plan. But no sooner had the roof passed into this new sphere of existence, than the fine intelligence of the builders perceived that it needed refinement. They saw that in a square spire there was so coarse a distinction between the tapering mass of light and the tapering mass of shadow, that the delicacy and lightness necessary to express the sentiment they desired to convey did not exist in the new feature;—in a round spire, on the other hand, they found that this distinction of light and shade was too little marked; it was vapid and effeminate, and quite without that delicious crispiness of effect which they at once obtained by cutting off the corners of the square spire, and reducing it to an octagon. With very rare exceptions, as in the southwest spire of Chartres Cathedral, this form was always used. Now it will be seen that a difficulty arises in the beginning, how to unite the octagon of the spire with the square of the tower. There are four triangular spaces at the summit of the tower left uncovered by the superstructure; and how best to treat these, simple as the task may seem, constitutes what may be called the touchstone of architectural genius in spire-building. There are several general ways of effecting this, each of them subject to such modifications, in individual instances, as to give them an ever-varying character.

Perhaps the earliest method was simply to occupy those triangular spaces with pyramidal masses of masonry, sloping back against the adjacent faces of the tower,—an expedient which Nature herself might have suggested in the first snow-storm. Then they boldly cut the Gordian knot by shaving off the corners of the tower at the top, thus creating there an octagonal platform, to which the spire would exactly correspond. Still oftener they chamfered the spire upwards from the corners of the tower: in other words, they placed, as it were, a square spire on their tower, occupying the whole of its summit, and then obtained the necessary octangularity by shaving off the angles of the spire from the apex to a certain point near the base, where the cutting was continued obliquely to the corners of the tower. The latest method was to build pinnacles on the triangular territory. In such cases the spire usually stood wholly within the outer boundaries, and parapets assisted to conceal the first springing of the spire.

The first of these methods is usually considered the most perfect and beautiful, on account of its simplicity and candor. This is called the broach; and it is the only form thus far spoken of wherein the tapering surfaces rise directly from the tower-cornice, without mutilating the tower or violating the pure outlines of the spire. The heavenward aspiration, as it were, ascends without effort from the solidity of the tower. It seems to typify a certain fitness and adaptability to heavenly things even in the gross and earthly nature of man. One cannot fail to admire its unaffected dignity, its harmonious balance, its graceful proportions.

It would be impossible within the limits of this article to give any idea of the wonderful diversity of treatment these simple generic forms received at the hands of the early builders. The changes of combination, proportion, and ornamentation were endless. For the mediaeval spirit was eminently earnest in its labor, and would not be content with copying an old shape merely because it was a good shape. It would not be satisfied with the cold repetition of a written litany of architectural forms; but its ardent piety, its thoughtful zeal, the life of its love, demanded an ever-varying expression in these visible prayers. Emerson himself might find nought to censure there, in the way of undue conformities and consistencies. Its language was written with the infinite alphabet of Nature.

We are speaking now especially of England; and we, her children, may well be proud that these divine enthusiasms of antiquity, which we thought so quaint, so rare, so far away from us, nowhere else found fairer demonstrations. The English spires bear especial witness to the zeal and aspiration of their builders. They belted them with bands of ornament, cut at first in imitation of tiles, and afterwards beautifully panelled with foliations. Moulded ribs began to run up the angles of the spires, and, when they met at the summit, would exultingly curl themselves together in the most precious cruciforms. Quaint spire-lights began to appear. Sometimes curious dormers would project from alternate sides; and the very ribs, as if, in this spring-time of Art, they felt, quickening along their lengths, the mysterious movements of a new life, sprouted out here and there with knots of leafage, timidly at first, and then with all the wealth and profusion of the harvest. The same impulse wreathed the crowning cross with a thousand midsummer fancies, till the circle of Eternity, or the triangle of Trinity, which often mingled with its arms, scarcely knew itself. The pinnacles, too, blossomed into crockets and bud-like finials, and began to gather more thickly about the roots of the spire, and from them often leaped flying-buttresses against it. During this time the spire itself was growing more and more acute, its lines becoming more and more eloquent. After the fourteenth century, the tower began to be crowned with intricate panelled tracery of parapets and battlements, from behind which the spire, an entirely separate structure, shot up into the sky. In this, the period of the perpendicular style, pinnacles, purfled to the last degree, crowded about the base of the spire, reminding one of the admiring throng gathered about the base of some old picture of the Ascension. But there is another English form which perhaps conveys this sentiment even more impressively: We refer to that whose prototype exists in the steeple of the Church of St. Nicholas at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This, however, has four turrets, one on each angle, from which, with great lightness, leap towards each other four grand flying-buttresses, which join hands over an empty void and hold in the air a lantern and spirolet of great elegance. This is a very bold piece of construction. It has been imitated at St. Giles's, Edinburgh, at Linlithgow, in the college tower of Aberdeen, and it is especially made known to the world by Sir Christopher Wren's famous use of it in the steeple of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, London.