CHAPTER I.

THE INTRODUCTION.

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WE CANNOT BY OUR GIFTS PROFIT THE ALMIGHTY, BUT WE MAY HONOUR HIM, AND PROFIT OURSELVES: FOR, WHILE MAN IS MAN, RELIGION, LIKE MAN, MUST HAVE A BODY AND A SOUL; IT MUST BE EXTERNAL AS WELL AS INTERNAL; AND THE TWO PARTS, IN BOTH CASES, WILL EVER HAVE A MUTUAL INFLUENCE ON EACH OTHER. THE SENSES AND THE IMAGINATION MUST HAVE A CONSIDERABLE SHARE IN PUBLIC WORSHIP; AND DEVOTION WILL ACCORDINGLY BE DEPRESSED OR HEIGHTENED, BY THE MEAN, SORDID, AND DISPIRITING, OR THE FAIR, SPLENDID, AND CHEERFUL, APPEARANCE OF THE OBJECTS AROUND US."-BISHOP HORNE.

B

о

CHURCH NEEDLEWORK.

Chapter the First.

INTRODUCTION.

"And Taste, and Art, rejecting heathen mould,
Shall draw their types from Europe's middle night,

Well pleased if such good darkness be their light."

FABER.

HE revival of the Ecclesiasti

'cal Architecture of the middle ages, has of late years much engrossed the attention of those who interest themselves in the welfare of the An

glican Church. The endowment of new churches, and their erection in accordance with the designs of the medieval architects, added to the restoration of others, after centuries of neglect, or tasteless reparation, prove, at least, that the ecclesiastical antiquities of this country are not, as heretofore, viewed merely in the light of architectural curiosities, but that other and better feelings are disseminating themselves. Having first learnt to

admire, we are now endeavouring to preserve, those splendid memorials of the piety of our ancestors, that have wholly, or in part, escaped the devastating hands of the spoiler and fanatic of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A correct knowledge of the true principles of Ecclesiastical Architecture is again dawning forth, and that style which the Christian Religion claims as her own,-the Gothic, is once more speaking in her symbolical language; exhibiting, however, in sad contrast, those specimens of church building that have recently grown up in many parts of England. And, to quote the words of a writer on this same subject," so long as they are subsidiary to the two great objects, for which Christians assemble in the house of prayer-devotion and instruction-the wise and good can refuse neither their sanction nor support, to any efforts, which are made for the attainment of these most important ends."

With the revival of a more correct taste in Ecclesiastical Architecture, the interior decorations of the sacred edifice, other than those which fall within the province of the architect and sculptor, naturally claim attention: to the consideration of one branch of these,-belonging by right to woman, -it is intended to devote the following pages. Previously, however, to entering on the practical part of the subject, it may be as well, for its better