This citation, in the first book of Durand, his translators have thus rendered, or adopted this rendering: What time thou passest by the Rood, bow humbly evermore: The version is not quite faithful, since it is the Image, not the Rood, which the Latin speaks of; and the mistranslation is clenched tight by substituting "which there was crucified" for "whom it designates" or depicts. But let this stand as it will, what shall we say of the taste which, in the very face of this passage, could go out of the way to translate "veneramur" by "adore" in the immediately preceding sentence, to introduce the following note? "We here use the word adore in the sense given to it by the great and good Bishop Montague in his Just Treatise of Invocation: when he says, speaking of the Saints, 'I do admire, reverence, adore them in their kind.'" We do not feel inclined to sing, "Pleased let me trifle time away," by enquiring into the propriety of men of other centuries using the terms "adore" and "worship," or men of other language the words VENEROR and ADoro, Aarpevo and dovλeuw, to signify, or to approach without absolutely signifying, that honour which is due to God alone. But certainly, for men of this century, writing in this language, out of the mere fondness for a word, to take pains to use it in one sentence, simply to contradict the next, is, to say the least of it, absurd. The varieties of the symbolic Cross are almost innumerable: for, besides that it is frequently associated with other symbols of the Crucifixion, as with the Crown of Thorns, the form itself is often elegantly varied, though always in some degree at the expense of the original association of the symbol: for the Cross ragulée, expressing one made of ragged stocks of trees, rather reminds one of the hermits of the wilderness, and, only by an ulterior association, of Golgotha. When fitchée or pointed, it reminds us rather of the navigator fixing it as his banner on some newly discovered region of simple savages, soon to be enslaved or hunted as beasts by the profaners of the sacred emblem. Pattée, or potencée, or molinée, it is not easy to associate with a Church or anything else in reason: and the last is so modified at the extremities in many cases, as never possibly to suggest to the unlettered hind the idea of a Cross at all. So is the Cross bottonnée, which yet in its first form, by its shamrock or clover terminations, symbolises (to those who are told to note it) the mystery of the Trinity as well as the Atonement. Nine or ten of these symbols are figured in the pages of the Translation of Durand: most of them beautiful as figures, but remote from the obvious remembrance of the great fact symbolised. One, however, plainly enough expresses what is meant, but (to use the language of the Introduction in another case) "almost at the expense of decorum ;" for under a niche is represented, as was not unfrequent, the Father, "whom no man hath seen or can see," enthroned and holding between his knees the Cross with the Son crucified upon it. Such a mode of expressing that awful transaction, on which all the hopes of our being have depended, seems to sink our HH spirits into the abyss for very shame, not at our own sins, but man's presumption. Such a representation, wrought with a Phidias's feeling of the majestic and sublime, either in the rich material of the Olympian Jove, or the unearthly chaste severity of monumental marble, would shock the believer to the heart: how much more, wrought with skill, perhaps below the meanest material, and with feeling below that skill! If we believe the awful and beloved Being whom we worship, and who so loved us as to give Himself "to die for us;" if we believe-what devils believe regarding us-that there is a God who gave his only begotten Son "to die for us;" if we believe those to be his words"Take heed, ye saw no manner of similitude;" if we believe, what we have been taught from childhood, that this is His command-" Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor likeness of anything that is in heaven. Thou shalt not bow down to them;" then, a Religion based upon the Bible cannot coexist in our hearts with any feeling as to such exhibitions short of sorrow, indignation, and disgust. No: the "Ezekiel's Vision" of Raffaelle himself cannot approve itself to the understanding or heart that is imbued with Scripture Truth. Nor the attempt of him who endeavoured to express to the eye that verse-" God divided the Light from the Darkness." Why, the very embodying from fancy of those powers of Darkness of whom we have spoken, as flying from the walls of the Holy House, almost comes within the literal scope of the Commandment; for every sinner who has ever crouched despairing before such a representation, has paid to the supposed irresistibleness of those ministers just the same sort of worship as the pagans paid some of their more abhorred deities— as the savage still pays the Principle of Evil. Let the lover of Scripture read through the Book of Job, and, turning to Rubens's picture of that patriarch's temptations, say if they speak the same language either to his understanding or affections. That mode of expressing to the senses the love of the Father and the Son, which has given rise to these observations, is sometimes found also upon brasses, with addition of a Dove to express the other person of the Trinity. The relative proportions of the Crucified Son and of the Father, are always regulated by the same barbarian idea of involving the sublime in the gigantic: it was the simple and coarse idea of semicivilised Egypt. Witness her heroes on their battlefields in the painted basreliefs: her collossi with the pigmy wives, themselves colossal to mere men, standing beside their husbands' knees. It may be presumed, that, if we may but dispense a little with the commandments, such taste might approve itself to some cultivated minds among us who delight to turn, from the fastidious cultivation in which they have been bred, to the outré ideal of ages, which in these points might be called Gothic, but that the name would be too flattering a designation: for we find the conventional representation of Royal Saints wearing their crowns during their passion," is, at p. lxxxvi. of the Introduction, absolutely kept in countenance by-"a sign-post of King Charles II. in the Royal Oak," at a place in Gloucestershire, which is duly named: as if it were defence enough for natural bad taste, that it "is natural to us." Surely, one is tempted to conjecture these reasoners may be right. Is it not within the verge of possibility that they know themselves? In the same and the preceding page we read, that "in modern paintings (of the Crucifixion) the arms are high above the head, the whole weight of the body seeming to rest upon them." And this, beside the literal truth, "gives occasion to that miserable display of anatomical knowledge in which such pictures so much abound. The Catholic representation pictures the arms as extended horizontally; thereby signifying how the Saviour, when extended on the cross, embraced the whole world." P. lxxxv. And this wretched pun upon a metaphor is called "moral truth," to which, "as it ever ought to be, physical truth is sacrificed." Had they discovered the conceit in the sermon of a schismatic, instead of a sainted father, how they had laughed it to scorn! But everything that sparkles in a mine is set down for a gem; but that can be but glass which glitters on a dunghill. What is "literal truth" to a falsehood, if symbolic? How refreshing it is to turn from the "miserable display of anatomical knowledge" in some pictures, to the "happy attempts of anatomical ignorance in these simple graven image-makers!" Guido and Michel Angelo were but poor Pagans compared to the nameless Norman statuary. They had not even the Christian humility to pervert what they knew, and so seem not to know the literal truth. So little knowledge had they of moralities and mysteries, that they perceived not what a mysterious moral charm a touch or two of burlesque (it matters little whether designed or accidental), can throw over the most awful scene that ever passed upon the vast theatre of earth. Give us but what is low, and coarse, and ignorant, we will clothe it in symbolism; it is then radiant as an angel of light-if only there be no literal truth about it. The man who in an unintelligent, uncouth age executes, though but rudely, what is worthy to be termed a work of art, merits and receives a kind of respect. We do not laugh at his errors or deficiencies. There is a pleasure in examining his performance; and it is not that of contrasting it unfavourably with the skill, knowledge, or taste, of later times. Can no one remember being struck with admiration at sight of a well-preserved early English Crucifix over the porch of a little sequestered Church, examining it, sketching it, delighting all the while to find more in it than he expected? Yet all this had been reversed by a mental comparison with the antique or the modern. Again: has no one been ashamed at seeing pictures of crucifixes of the Perpendicular age; simply from the depreciating contrast with monumental sculptures of the same period? But if even that which one has admired be brought into parallel with or exalted above all the feeling, and intellect, and skill that enthusiastic genius has since lavished on the same subject—as is done in the passage above cited, by implication-then common sense crows triumphantly over the eccentric anti-refinement, and one is painfully overwhelmed with proof of the definition that " man is a laughing animal." But neither coarse mysticism nor fine taste constitutes religion, nor a part of it. Those who seek it in such things, must experience the disappointment of the jealous-minded Andrea Del Verocchio, who, dying in a Venetian hospital, put back from his lips an ill-carved crucifix, begging for a better if those around would not see him die in despair! We feel that the mind which can calmly contemplate the rude sculptures of that one death for which, as its end and destruction, death was allowed to propagate itself through the world, would turn with abhorrence from the exalting the most triumphant work of devotional genius in that shape, on the altar of the Church of once Protestantised England. It would but remind us of those days whose darkness was rendered more palpable by the bonfires of heretic martyrdoms-of the days when the Rood of Grace in the Cistercian Abbey of Boxley bowed or shook its head, bent its brows, rolled its eyes, moved its lips, and beckoned with its hands-when Partridge suspected and examined its wheelwork, when the Maidstone people flocked to inspect it on its way to London, when it exhibited in private for the King and Court, and in public for the citizens at Paul's Cross, and (its funeral sermon being preached by Bishop Hilsey, of Rochester) was then broken and buried, never, we trust, to rise again. Many a like tale of those times requires to be told again, "lest God's people forget it;" as Fox's account of the Dominican Image of the Virgin, at Berne. But without taking for granted that the minds of the simple might yet be deluded, at least for a time and for the ends required, by the marvels of galvanic, electric, and optical science-as of old, by the coarser machinery of mechanics—it is sufficient that the growing magic of a thousand years was uprooted in the sixteenth century. We cannot again consent to subject the spirit to the senses; what freedom the soul has over the corporeal, must be maintained. The image has been plucked from the altar, and the altar has lost its name and form. Yet the practices with which Tractarianism has begun are incomplete without the images, if the principles of Symbolism are correct: for, as Durandus states (and his translators point out his statement as "remarkable"-" giving fresh authority to the custom of the English Church"), there are two candlesticks on the altar, and they signify the joy of Jews and Gentiles at Christ's nativity. Sec. 27, c. iii. And "The cross also is to be placed on the altar, that the crossbearers may thence raise it-as Simon, the Cyrenian, took the cross from the shoulders of Christ, and bore it. Between the two candlesticks the cross is placed on the altar, because Christ standeth in the Church the mediator between two peoples." Sec. 31, c. iii. "The candlesticks, without the lights, express no joy. The lighted candles, without the cross, express not the cause of joy. Then should we not have the sanctuary and cross veiled during Lent?" Sec. 34. "And if such a thing as a procession should take place during Lent, should not the crosses go forth covered with their veils ?” Sec. 34. And ought we not, then, to have the elegant procession on Palm Sunday, when the unveiled cross, dressed with olive and palm, went forth with the song, "Lo! the King cometh," and the veiled cross, meeting it, seemed straight to vanish; and the church-doors were found sparred, and were opened by the cross; and the songs of the angels were no more heard alone; and the altar cross was unveiled, to symbolise the vision of the Divine Majesty? All this, described by Becon, in his Potation for Lent, should be restored, of course: for why should the imaginative and the intellectual be contented with cold forms and barren semi-revivals? And while the intellectual and the imaginative are being satisfied for a while with the restoration of the mystery, what are the poor of Christ's flock to do? for Becon's interlocutors confess that not one in a thousand knew what this procession preached to them. Then, too, would be wanted what the "Words to Church Builders" inform us there was always before the Rebellion, either in the village or churchyard-the cross of stone. Doubtless, round those beautiful heaven-pointing shafts, or pinnacled turrets, with canopied niches, upon those lofty ranges of round or polygonal steps, stood the children that from the High Place sang the "Gloria Laus" in a dead language to their everliving Lord, as the unveiled cross stopped before them, while they cast down their flowers and cakes of bread, symbolising the flowers of virtues and bread of alms brought forth by childlike Christians, who are above the praise of men. Alas! riddles are gone out of fashion: and till the world grows fond of them again, and more intelligent of them than it has ever showed itself hitherto, we must abide their loss. The experiment has been tried on a scale sufficiently large and long by pontiffs, rabbies, mystagogues, priests, and monks. Let us proceed now with the new plan of plainspeaking; for there is an aid poured upon it, or rather an efficiency put into it, which has been withheld from the cunningly devised words and ways of man's wisdom. To terminate all that has been said here on the forms of crosses-of which, by-the-by, the quatrefoil may be considered one, the most beautiful, perhaps, of all cruciform equalsided figures, and a link between them and the florid ornament—it may be remarked that the Calvary cross is the only one which simply and quite intelligibly specifies its symbolic purport. There is an instance of its architectural employment which is worth mentioning, as a fine exception to the non-devotional character of Perpendicular Symbolism. The east window of Louth Church, Lincolnshire, being of seven lights, has at the spring of the arch two transoms, as they may be called, but that they are interrupted at the central light, which terminates in a square head above, and is of the same breadth with the crossbeam of light between them. The effect is thus that of a vast cross reaching from the bottom of the window to the midst of the perpendicular tracery; and, if distinguished by coloured or ground glass, or by being left plain in a window glazed in either variety, the result would be very imposing. It is singular that in the Camden "Words to Church Builders" are given lists of decorated and perpendicular windows up to the number of five lights, but none of se ven, though the number was evidently intended to be symbolical. There is one particular in which it is, perhaps, impossible not to coincide with the Cambridge Camden Society-that the ridged tombstone, with or without the Lombardic |