f working in
it for pictorial effect would infallibly be the destruction of all the
appreciation of the noble qualities of pictorial color.

In the second place, this modern barbarism destroys the true
appreciation of the qualities of glass. It denies, and endeavors as far
as possible to conceal, the transparency, which is not only its great
virtue in a merely utilitarian point of view, but its great spiritual
character; the character by which in church architecture it becomes
most touchingly impressive, as typical of the entrances of the Holy
Spirit into the heart of man; a typical expression rendered specific and
intense by the purity and brilliancy of its sevenfold hues;[165] and
therefore in endeavoring to turn the window into a picture, we at once
lose the sanctity and power of the noble material, and employ it to an
end which is utterly impossible it should ever worthily attain. The true
perfection of a painted window is to be serene, intense, brilliant, like
flaming jewellery; full of easily legible and quaint subjects, and
exquisitely subtle, yet simple, in its harmonies. In a word, this
perfection has been consummated in the designs, never to be surpassed,
if ever again to be approached by human art, of the French windows of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

FOOTNOTES

[163] I do not like to hear Protestants speaking with gross and
uncharitable contempt even of the worship of relics. Elisha once
trusted his own staff too far; nor can I see any reasonable ground
for the scorn, or the unkind rebuke, of those who have been taught
from their youth upwards that to hope even in the hem of the garment
may sometimes be better than to spend the living on physicians.

[164] Casa Tiepolo (?) in Lazari's Guide.

[165] I do not think that there is anything more necessary to the
progress of European art in the present day than the complete
understanding of this sanctity of Color. I had much pleasure in
finding it, the other day, fully understood and thus sweetly
expressed in a little volume of poems by a Miss Maynard:

"For still in every land, though to Thy name
Arose no temple,--still in every age,
Though heedless man had quite forgot Thy praise,
_We_ praised Thee; and at rise and set of sun
Did we assemble duly, and intone
A choral hymn that all the lands might hear.
In heaven, on earth, and in the deep we praised Thee