e.g. even as the Crucifixion, and the Blessed Virgin with her Divine Child, are so represented, as in the one case to pain and shock the beholder, by the repulsive and harrowing exhibition of bodily agony, instead of concentrating his thoughts in reverential meditation upon the great Atonement and in the other, as merely to suggest ideas of maternal tenderness and infant weakness instead of the Mystery of the Incarnation-the life and substance of the Catholic and Sacramental System. But this objection will not apply to that school of painting for the revival of which I am now pleading. Here the terrestrial element is made subservient to the heavenly; "physical is sacrificed to moral truth": our LORD is not here represented as appealing to our human affection, but as claiming, what has been termed "the exalted love of pure faith," wearing His cross-indented crown, and sometimes arrayed in regal apparel, even upon the "tree of shame"; regarding us even thence as from a throne, as our King and our GoD, in suffering majestic and triumphant.

I will not pursue this topic further, as my space warns me to bring this paper to a close. It has been written rapidly, as a brief notice, and this must be my apology for not going more deeply into the important subject to which I have presumed to invite your attention. If, however, there be any truth in the considerations I have adduced, I trust that they may obtain favour with persons better qualified to illustrate, and enforce them than myself, and bear abundant fruit; that ere long, some able artists may be found willing to apply themselves to that branch of sacred decoration which I have been advocating, in the chastened and reverential, humble, faithful, and loving spirit of the sublime painters of Christian antiquity; artists, who while repudiating a servile archaic imitation of the mechanical defects and shortcomings which occasionally mar the (but for them) almost perfect beauty of the works of those great men, will devote their time and talents, energies, thoughts, and prayers to the production of paintings closely resembling them in their general characteristics of colouring and design, symbolism, and intense religious expression. So, with God's blessing, may a school of sacred art arise among us such as England has never yet possessed even in her Church's palmiest days; a school whose pictorial achievements in times to come, may throw even those of the Masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries into the shade.

ARMENIAN ECCLESIOLOGY.

A History of the Holy Eastern Church. Part I. General Introduction. By the Rev. J. M. Neale, M.A., Warden of Sackville College, East Grinstead. London: Masters.

Rapports sur un Voyage Archéologique dans la Géorgie et dans l'Arménie, exécuté en 1847-1848. Par M. BROSSET, Membre de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences. 3 Livraisons. Avec un Atlas. S. Petersbourg, 1849, 1850, 1851.

IN our February number, we noticed Mr. Neale's dissertation on Byzantine Architecture. We now proceed to give our readers some idea of his researches into the Ecclesiology of Armenia. He thus describes the general characteristics of this other great branch of the Ecclesiology of the East:

"If we take a Byzantine church as described in § 3, and elongate the square by throwing the narthex into it; make all the four arms internally apsidal, and the two opposite ones correspondent; prevent, or exceedingly diminish their external protrusion, by niching the wall on both sides of each; turn the complements of the parallelogram described about the cross into distinct chapels; divide the narthex into two, making it occupy the two chapels to the west, the prothesis and diaconicon occupying the two to the east; replace the central and angular domes by one central tower and spire, circular or octagonal; remove all piers, and support the tower on the parabemata, and the correspondent projections or antiparabemata on the west; the transformation into an Armenian church will be well-nigh complete. The four angular compartments, are, however, now generally used as distinct oratories, or chapels.

"Hence it follows that a purely Armenian church, bisected either longitudinally or latitudinally, would often present (excluding the consideration of doors and windows) two equal and similar halves; a fact which would serve as a definition, inasmuch as no other system of churches is arranged on the same plan. "As all Byzantine churches may be referred to S. Sophia as to their prototype, so may all Armenian churches be derived from S. Hripsime near Etchmiadzine; of which I therefore give an elevation, and a ground plan." -pp. 172, 173.

activity of church-building. But we noted in it so remarkable an extract (remarkable in all ways) from Sir C. Wren, new to ourselves, that we cannot but put it before our readers. "A church," he says, "should not be so filled with pews, but that the poor may have room enough to stand and sit in the alleys, for to them equally is the gospel preached. It were to be wished there were to be no pews, but benches; but there is no stemming the tide of profit, and the advantage of pewkeepers; especially too since by pews in the chapels of ease the minister is chiefly supported."

An Appendix contains some "Remarks on Pointed Architecture," in which however the influence of the late revival is more noticeable.

We conclude this notice with a singular passage from Mr. Gwilt's discussion on the word Altar in his Glossary (p. 890): "The altar of the Protestant churches of England is generally only an oak table, covered with a white cloth, and but little ornamented, either above or on the sides. In country churches we sometimes find superadded as an ornament, to show, we suppose, that painting may be tolerated in Protestant worship, the figures

'Of Moses and Aaron stuck close by the wall,

To hold the Commandments for fear they should fall.'

The fact is, the Church of England is so overawed by sectaries, that she is afraid of doing anything congenial to the feelings of a polished mind as respects the decoration of her churches, which are in the new examples built by the commissioners more than ever stript of all elegant accompaniments; a practice which turns our churches into barns rather than temples of the Most High."

BILLING ON MURAL PAINTING.

On Mural Painting and the Decorations of Churches generally; being a paper read at the Architectural Association, March 14, 1851. By ARTHUR BILLING, Architect, Secretary to the Association. London: G. Bell. 1851. (pp. 30.)

We have been much pleased with this brochure, which, without adducing anything very new or striking, puts together in a readable form a series of examples of polychromatic decoration, as applied to walls, roofs and cielings, stained glass, roodscreens and parcloses, encaustic tiles, metal work, monuments and sepulchral brasses, besides details such as fonts and pulpits. Mr. Billing concludes with an argument in favour of the general restoration of coloured ornament; and has enriched his paper with a careful description, and one or two illustrations of the mural paintings lately discovered by himself in the church of S. Laurence, Reading. This paper, which was kindly sent us by a friend, is reprinted (it is stated) from "The Architect's Journal."

OXFORD ARCHITECTURAL SOCIETY.

A MEETING of the Oxford Architectural Society took place in the Society's Rooms, Holywell, on Wednesday, February 4th, the Rev. S. W. Wayte, M.A. Treasurer, in the chair. The following gentlemen were elected members of the Society :

Lord Valletort, Christ Church.

Lord Schomberg Kerr, New College.

W. M. Birch, Trinity College.

C. Welsh, Wadham College.

The presents received during the vacation were exhibited and the Report of the Committee was read. Several communications had been received by the Secretaries among which a letter from the Rev. T. Woodrooffe was read, announcing that a desecration of one of the chapels of Winchester Cathedral, which has obtained some notoriety, was about to be in part at least if not wholly removed by the Chapter. Circulars in behalf of S. Maurice's church, Winchester, and S. Thomas's church, Newport, I.W. were laid upon the table. An interchange of publications between the Architectural Institute of Scotland and the Oxford Architectural Society was announced.

The Rev. T. Chamberlain of Christ Church read a practical paper "on some principles to be observed in ornamenting churches, as regards illumination, stained glass, encaustic tiles," &c. This paper is printed in our present number.

The thanks of the meeting were voted in the usual manner to Mr. Chamberlain for his paper, after which Mr. Parker rose to suggest the employment of the revived art of Mosaic work for providing dorsals to altars. He also noticed that in parts of France great use was made of different coloured stones, a practice in which it was observed by some one present that Mr. Parker's recommendation had been anticipated by the distinguished architect of All Saints, S. Marylebone.

A discussion of some length then ensued, after which the chairman dissolved the meeting.

A Meeting of the Oxford Architectural Society was held in the Society's rooms, Holywell, on Wednesday, February 18th, the Rev. the Principal of Brasenose College, President, in the chair. Mr. F. Becke, of Exeter College, and Mr. T. B. Vernon, Christ Church, were elected members of the Society.

After an exhibition of the presents received, the report was read stating that the Committee had been more than once employed in examining the plans for the Restoration of S. Mary's, Warwick, which had been submitted to them by the Vicar, the Rev. J. Boudier, and the Architects Messrs. J. and H. Francis. The Vicar had come from Warwick for the purpose of personally holding communication with the Committee and asking their opinion on several points.

Mr. Street read a Paper on True Principles in Architecture, and the possibility of a developement founded thereon. He showed how that for the last three hundred years all true principle had been ignored; each man's caprice being his rule in defiance of all laws either of construction or art. The great law at the bottom of all good art is truth, which by no means excludes religion, but is more applicable as a law, and on this all developement must be founded; he would assume therefore, 1st. that in good Architecture whatever is truthful must of necessity be in itself proper and good, though it have no old precedent in its favour; and 2nd, that no developement can be good which does not proceed upon this principle. The absence of a desire to develope, had led men to imagine that our only object was to restore a dead style; whereas had we seized on the principles of that style and worked boldly we should soon have improved. In all Architecture the first principles are constructional, and none could be good, in which this was not the case, and as the Pointed arch is the greatest invention in construction that has ever been achieved, it follows that all imitations of Classic Architecture are barbarous and bad. As long as Greek art was fine it was so because it was constructional.

The opportunities for developement are various: 1st, by examination of foreign examples, the true view of these being that they are so many developements from the one great fact of the Pointed arch, not that they are the developement best suited to the countries in which they are found, though this is often true of mouldings and so forth. Nor should we stop here, but classic buildings should also be examined in order to see whether any beauties existed in them which might be available for all time. He then proceeded to examine this point in detail and after proving how untrue the classic column became directly it had no active work to perform, showed that the cornice gives us a valuable hint as to the use of horizontal lines, and that the decorations of mouldings are, as a rule, strictly Architectural and not Sculptural (as most mediæval carvings were) and these were very important points for consideration. He then argued in favour of the horizontal line, instancing the method of its use in the Italian and Greek Pointed churches, and proving from instances in England that it was not opposed to the principles of the style and that it was eminently constructional: the modern method of quoining dark buildings with light stone being bad because it does not look constructive. Other points to be learnt from foreign examples are the advantage of height, which had never been appreciated in England, and is nevertheless a grander thing than length in theory as in effect. Then the admission of light was never properly studied, but it was shown that this was of great importance, as many wonderful effects may be produced by its proper regulation. Then after an earnest expression of admiration of the foreign Apsidal Ends he proceeded to consider the principles of the arrangement and design of glass. This he thought ought to be quite in the Architect's hands, and he felt that it was absurd to expect high art from glass painters; and this he proved further by the consideration of the condition of manufacture and material under which all stained glass is done. These of necessity involve a very conventional mode of treatment. The arrangement of