centuries passing in long array beneath the lofty towers had not
looked up to them as the holiest of symbols. The font in which
infants were consecrated to God, the sacramental vessels whence
piety received the hallowed draught, were given to the same
destruction. Perhaps it most nearly touched my heart to see among
these devoted relics fragments of the humble communion-tables and
undecorated pulpits which I recognized as having been torn from the
meeting-houses of New England. Those simple edifices might have
been permitted to retain all of sacred embellishment that their
Puritan founders had bestowed, even though the mighty structure of
St. Peter's had sent its spoils to the fire of this terrible
sacrifice. Yet I felt that these were but the externals of
religion, and might most safely be relinquished by spirits that best
knew their deep significance.

"All is well," said I, cheerfully. "The wood-paths shall be the
aisles of our cathedral, the firmament itself shall be its ceiling.
What needs an earthly roof between the Deity and his worshippers?
Our faith can well afford to lose all the drapery that even the
holiest men have thrown around it, and be only the more sublime in
its simplicity."

"True," said my companion; "but will they pause here?"

The doubt implied in his question was well founded. In the general
destruction of books already described, a holy volume, that stood
apart from the catalogue of human literature, and yet, in one sense,
was at its head, had been spared. But the Titan of innovation,--
angel or fiend, double in his nature, and capable of deeds befitting
both characters,--at first shaking down only the old and rotten