File:American architecture (1892) (14588044119).jpg

Identifier: americanarchitec92schu (find matches)
Title: American architecture
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Schuyler, Montgomery, 1843-1914
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: New York, Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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he apse of Noyon, observes: I couldnever fathom how any man dares to lift up his voicein a cathedral. What has he to say that will not bean anticlimax ? For though I have heard a considera-ble variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that wasso expressive as a cathedral. Tis the best preacheritself, and preaches day and night, not only telling youof mans art and aspirations in the past, but convictingyour own soul of ardent sympathies. At all events,a cathedral is much more and other than a place topreach in. If that alone were its purpose, it would bebest fulfilled by an enclosed and unobstructed space,extending to the limits of the carrying power of thehuman voice. But such an erection would resemblea mediaeval cathedral much less than it would resemblea modern rink. In truth, the justification of a modern and Protestantcathedral is not to be looked for in its usefulness.The altar, and not the pulpit, is the centre and culmi-nation of its interior design, as it can scarcely be said
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n- fur WEST ELEVATION. AN AMERICAN CATHEDRAL ^-, to be the centre of congregational worship. The oldcathedrals are most admirably adapted to be the thea-tres of ecclesiastical processions and pageants; and al-though the Episcopal Church has a more highly devel-oped ritual than any other Protestant body, it does notprovide for these on a cathedral scale. The Church ofEngland cannot be said really to employ the minstersit has inherited. An eminent architect, who was notonly an Englishman, but an Anglo-Catholic, wascompelled to describe an ancient cathedral in its mod-ern English use as merely a museum of antiquities,with a free sacred concert on Sunday. Even amongCatholic countries Spain is almost, if not quite, alonein fully using her medieval cathedrals as modernchurches of the people, instead of secluding them ashistorical monuments from the ordinary life of thenation. In a country in which the arts of reading andwriting have been acquired by but a small fraction ofthe people, the sa

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