out a price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and statutes of God. Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in the vain ministry to the desire of the eye or the pride of life, were those marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the colors of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them that once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,-" He shall return, to do judgment and justice."

JOHN RUSKIN,

The Stones of Venice.

CHRISTIANITY THE SAVIOUR OF
CIVILIZATION.

Ir is a remarkable fact in history that it was nothing but Christianity saved Rome from utter extinction. Had she not been the chosen home of this rising faith and new glory, the barbarians would scarcely have left one stone upon another: she would have been to us what Nineveh, Babylon, Thebes, and many other cities are, a tradition grand, yet almost beyond conception. As over the great solitudes of the sites of those mighty cities, wild beasts wander and howl by night, so it would have been with Rome when her glory fell, had not another and brighter glory settled upon her ruins. In fact, the remains of her ancient social life were never completely dispersed; and when the first dawn of the new religion appeared, and the old luminaries of pagan night receded before the rays of a brighter day, its votaries instinctively settled at Rome. Popes followed in the wake of Cæsars; the glory of the Flavian amphitheatre gave way before the new splendors of a Vatican; gladiators

and games were supplanted by religious processions and masses; unable to destroy feudalism, it created chivalry; in its convents persecuted innocence always found an asylum, and against the ambition of tyrants it opposed the power of its thunders. But it was at Rome that the vicarial head of the Church had taken up his abode; toward Rome were bent periodically the footsteps of thousands of pilgrims; and from Rome as from a centre emanated all the influences which the new religion exercised over the nations who had enlisted under the cross. That every stage of her history, and more especially of her future destiny, should be intensely interesting to Europe and all the outlying colonies, the rising new worlds of European planting, is not to be wondered at, for she is the foster-mother of modern civilization. When the wolf and the jackal roamed over the very sites of our proudest cities, when offerings were made to strange gods by a Druidical priesthood, and the inhabitants of this country were but a band of painted savages, Rome was in the very zenith of civilized life. When the migration of the northern hordes toward the South, extinguished the just kindling torch of civilization, and overwhelmed in its dark flood all the evidences of refinement in Europe, Rome suffered last and least ;

in her temples were gathered, as in a sanctuary, learning, science, and art; there was kept burning, dimly enough, yet still cherished with tender care, the trembling lamp of genius, until the better time should come when it might be reproduced and its genial rays diffused; and when the time did come, and the nations awoke from a long slumber to a new life, it was from Rome and Roman traditions that the new order of things drew its laws, its language, and its faith. In nearly every part of Europe traces are to be found of Roman life; it has permeated through the very aspect of the country, the blood of the races, their thought, their laws, their idiom, so that civilization seems to have been concentrated into a focus at Rome, and thence radiated over all the world. It is from the fountains of her lore that all modern law has been derived, and she may well be called the lawgiver of Europe.

O'DELL TRAVERS HILL, English Monasticism: Its Rise and Influence.

HOLY WEEK IN ROME.

THE service opens by a portion of the Lamentations of Jeremiah sung by the choristers, after which the Pope recites the pater-noster in a low voice; then being seated on the throne, and crowned with the mitre, the theme is continued, sung loud and sweet by the first soprano, in a tone so long sustained, so high, so pure, so silvery and so mellifluous, as to produce the most exquisite effect, in contrast with the deep choruses, answering in rich harmony at the conclusion of every strophe; and again the lamenting voice is heard, tender and pathetic, repeating one sweet prolonged tone, sounding clear and high in the distance, till brought down again by the chorus. It is as if a being of another world were heard lamenting over a ruined city, with the responses of a dejected people, and forms a grand and mournful preparation for the Miserere.

The last light being extinguished, the chorus, in hurried sounds, proclaims that our Saviour is betrayed; then, for a moment, as a symbol of the