Church, contemplated above, must necessarily be the one, at whose tardiness you were inclined to fret. But it waxes late, and Milan is before us."

We have seen the far-famed cathedral of Milan, the cathedral of St. Charles Borromeo, whose praise is in all the churches. It is indeed a superb edifice, but, from the bad effect of marble for exteriors, much grander in the inside. Not but that the exterior is most beautiful, but it wants, to my eyes, weight and solemnity. Its appearance is too artistical. Yet it is venturesome to blame. But the interior is quite overpowering. It seemed, indeed, a type of the everlasting creed of the Church; for

"What is the long cathedral glade,

But Faith that in the structured shade
Herself embodies to the sense,

Leaning upon Omnipotence,
And holiness, ennobling thought,
Into a living temple wrought?

There strength and beauty spring to life
In contests of harmonious strife;
With blended glories high aloof,
Embracing on the gorgeous roof;
Till, standing neath the giant throng,
The soul expands, and feels her strong
With more than doth to man belong'."

The morning Mass, at the tomb of St. Charles Borromeo, was just finishing, when we descended into the subterranean chapel, at the entrance of the

2 The Cathedral, p. 144.

choir. We did not much regard the splendor of the tomb, for our eyes were riveted on the coffer which stood above the Altar, and contained the mortal remains of that holy Saint and faithful shepherd. The longer we remained in the cathedral, the more its glory, and magnificence, and colored gloom, took possession of our spirits. It is an oppressive thing to be a priest in the city of St. Ambrose and St. Charles Borromeo, and yet a stranger; a gazer,a mere English looker-on,-a tourist, where one should be upon one's knees at home, and in that divine temple a legitimate worshipper. But where rests the blame? Alas! the sour logic of controversy may be as convincing as it usually is to men whose minds were made up, as almost all minds are, independent of it; but, since Eve tempted and Adam fell, has there ever been a strife where both sides were not to blame? In a difference so broad and complicated, so many-veined and intertwisted, as that between Rome and us, never was there so monstrous a faith as that which could believe that all the wrong was with Rome, and all the right with England. Yet men have been seen with the mortal eye, who had the capacity to receive this, and put trust in it. It is distressing, truly, to be in a wonderful church, like this of Milan, to be sure you reverence the memory of St. Ambrose, and have deep affection for the very name of Borromeo, and are not without Christian thought for Saints Gervasius and Protasius, as much as one half of the people

you see there, and yet be shut out from all church offices, to have no home at the Altars of that one Church, at whose Altars, by apostolic ordination, you are privileged to consecrate the Christian Mysteries.

The

Among the numerous sights of Milan, we admired, with the rest of the world, the magnificence of the Simplon Arch, and the disfigured remainder of the celebrated Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci. The convent is now turned from the honor of St. Maria delle Grazie into an Austrian barrack; and the room where the fresco is looks cold and forlorn. Head and Face of our Blessed Lord, in the engravings, fall far short of the painting, and, indeed, present a very different expression. We were very much pleased, also, with the Church of St. Victor. It is full of very tolerable frescoes; but the most interesting part is the oak carving of the stalls, representing the life of St. Benedict.

But by far the most interesting thing in Milan is, of course, the Ambrosian Church. The edifice itself is of the ninth century. The western doors, of old cedar wood, are said, but apparently without truth, to be the identical ones which St. Ambrose closed against Theodosius, when he would have pressed into the church. But the locality is sufficient, without the identity of the doors, to awaken feelings of the deepest kind. A man truly must feel much godly emulation, who is placed in the archiepiscopal chair of Milan, with two such predecessors as St. Ambrose and St. Charles. While on the stirring spot where

the holy Ambrose shone forth, representing to all time the lofty character of a primitive bishop, and where Theodosius exalted his imperial dignity, by submission to the holy Church-let us pass in review, some of the chapters in the very interesting history of the Lombard Church.

The

The Church of Milan was the second in Italy, being inferior to none but that of Rome, except, perhaps, for a short time, when the imperial residence at Ravenna gave additional dignity to that see. life of St. Ambrose is the first important epoch in Milanese church history, to which our attention is called. His extraordinary election to fill the chair of the Arian Auxentius, which seems to have been over-ruled by Providence in a more visible way than it is, for the most part, vouchsafed to us to see,-his contest with Justina and Valentinian, and his introduction of the severe oriental chants, which still remain, under his name, at Milan, while a modification of them, dating from the seventh century, prevails over most of Europe, -his dignified severity to the strong-minded Theodosius, because of the massacre of Thessalonica, and the emperor's eight months' penance are too well known to require detailing here, extremely interesting as they are. I shall select from the Ambrosian epochs two incidents not so universally known, and which have a strong claim to our attention. The first shall be the ecclesiastical legend of Saints Gervasius and Protasius; and the second, the death of St. Ambrose, as related by

Paulinus; as both of them exhibit miraculous manifestations, granted by God to His Church, so late as the close of the fourth century, and resting, in both cases, upon authority as unexceptionable as that upon which the greatest portion of history is received.

3

The legend of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, the primitive martyrs, has been narrated in a recent publication, from which the following narrative, as well as the remarks upon it, is taken :-" St. Ambrose (during the persecution of Valentinian, in behalf of the Arians) was proceeding to the dedication of a certain church at Milan, which remains there to this day, with the name of 'St. Ambrose the Greater;' and was urged by the people to bury relics of Martyrs under the altar, as he had recently done in the case of the Basilica of the Apostles. This was according to the usage of those times, desirous, thereby, both of honoring those who had braved death for Christ's sake, and of hallowing religious places with the mortal instruments of their triumph. Ambrose, in consequence, gave orders to open the ground in the church of St. Nabor, as a spot likely to have been the burying place of martyrs during the heathen persecutions.

66

Augustine, who was in Milan at the time, alleges that Ambrose was directed in his search by a dream. Ambrose himself is evidently reserved on the subject, in his letter to his sister, though he was

The Church of the Fathers.