ON THE ARRANGEMENT OF CHAPELS EAST OF TRANSEPTS.

The grouii(l-|)]an of religious edifices must in every age be sensibly aiicctetl by the nature of the ^vorship to be conducted in them, and, througli the ground-plan, the effect becomes hardly less sensible upon the architecture of the building. The primitive basilica, all whose arrangements had reference to a single altai-, the great mediaeval minster, with its multiplicity of centres of devotion, the thoroughly modern temple with the pulpit as the life and soul of every thing, each expresses the sentiments of its own age, and in each the ritual arrangement directly modifies the architec- tural character. The first idea produces a long, narrow, and comparatively unbroken structure ; the second tends to the erection of a building full of breaks and projections ; every possible position is seized upon for the erection of an altar, ami where ritual and architecture go thoroughly hand in hand, each altar is marked by a separate chapel, forming a distinct portion of the building. The third ideal, when allowed its full and fair development, is nowhere so con- sistently carried out as in a semicircular preaching-room. I will not advance further in a direction leading towards the forbidden arena of ritual contr(jversy, but I may make one remark. In adapting ancient ecclesiastical models to modern uses, we should be careful to imitate no feature which is directly and solely connected with some j)ortion of I'itual which we do not mean to reproduce. And this I hold to b(; most distinctly the case with long transepts. I say lon<] transepts, because it is on the hii-lh df the transej)t that the gist of the matter turns.^ The cross form of (churches Mas ddiihllcss ;i(lo|)lt'd in mediaeval times on two very j)al|)al)lt' grounds ; first, its direct synd)()hcal mcnning, tliis being one of the extremely few cases in which I can bring nivsi'll" to bchcvc in any synd^olism of tli<; kiml ; secondly, its cxhcinc majesty and ' Tliin Ik m 11 |.iit ill tin- " Kciirnioln^iHt " lor Aii'^'iint, ill."i;i, p. 'J.'t.V