naces, ranged on either hand down the long vista, and
glowing here and there from the galleries, really made us feel prouder
of our race than did many a dim, dilapidated temple of the Old World.

As to churches, we cannot expect much, except that they will be tasteful
and commodious audience rooms, commensurate with the importance of their
congregations. The religion of to-day appeals to soul, and not to soul
and sense. The world is older and better educated than in the cathedral
era, and the apostles and prophets are read, not from sculptured doors
or painted windows, but from the printed page and the winged word.
Childhood, that cannot read, requires gaudily painted primers for its
instruction and amusement, but the world is a grown man now; the press
has superseded the cathedral, and if we imitate those structures in our
churches, we should bear in mind that it was their size that gave them
grandeur, and that they would be caricatures without it. We have heard
our American church interiors spoken of somewhere as divisible into two
classes--the charlotte-russe style and the molasses-candy style. This is
not true, we hope; but there is too much truth in it, for it shows the
influence of a too close imitation of European palaces and churches, and
the hard shamming that has to be done to make this imitation apparent.

If our rural architecture has been more successful, it is because our
better class of country houses are planned with reference to the
landscapes they occupy. A rich level meadow with here and there a waving
elm requires a different style of house from a fir-clad bluff on a river
bank or a wild gorge in a mountain. No intelligent architect, we take
it, would design a country house without an intimate acquaintance with
the surroundings, and yet the same man, likely as not, would make you a
sketch for the elevation of your house in town, without even looking to
see what it was to adjoin on either side. Now this method may be
correct, but it seems to us that, by first putting on paper the existing
houses, say one or two, on each side of the space to be built upon, the
new front could be much better planned, and much of that unnecessary
discord avoided which destroys so many of our best streets. This is what
is done in painting and other arts, and why not in architecture?
Particular situations require particular treatments. A front that would
appear well on a narrow street, would be inappropriate on a broad aven