bandman building a tower in his vineyard, and the
beautiful expressions in Solomon's song,--"The tower of Lebanon, which
looketh towards Damascus;" "I am a wall, and my breasts like
towers;"--you recollect the Psalmist's expressions of love and delight,
"Go ye round about Jerusalem; tell the towers thereof: mark ye well her
bulwarks; consider her palaces, that ye may tell it to the generation
following." You see in all these cases how completely the tower is a
subject of human pride, or delight, or defense, not in any wise
associated with religious sentiment; the towers of Jerusalem being named
in the same sentence, not with her temple, but with her bulwarks and
palaces. And thus, when the tower is in reality connected with a place
of worship, it was generally done to add to its magnificence, but not to
add to its religious expression. And over the whole of the world, you
have various species of elevated buildings, the Egyptian pyramid, the
Indian and Chinese pagoda, the Turkish minaret, and the Christian
belfry,--all of them raised either to make a show from a distance, or to
cry from, or swing bells in, or hang them round, or for some other very
human reason. Thus, when the good people of Beauvais were building their
cathedral, that of Amiens, then just completed, had excited the
admiration of all France; and the people of Beauvais, in their jealousy
and determination to beat the people of Amiens, set to work to build a
tower to their own cathedral as high as they possibly could. They built
it so high that it tumbled down, and they were never able to finish
their cathedral at all--it stands a wreck to this day. But you will not,
I should think, imagine this to have been done in heavenward aspiration.
Mind, however, I don't blame the people of Beauvais, except for their
bad building. I think their desire to beat the citizens of Amiens a most
amiable weakness, and only wish I could see the citizens of Edinburgh
and Glasgow inflamed with the same emulation, building Gothic towers[7]
instead of manufactory chimneys. Only do not confound a feeling which,
though healthy and right, may be nearly analogous to that in which you
play a cricket-match, with any feeling allied to your hope of heaven.

[Footnote 7: I did not, at the time of the delivery of these lectures,
know how many Gothic towers the worthy Glaswegians _have_ lately built:
that of St. Peter's, in particular, being a most meritorious effort.]

20. Such being the