1. I suppose that in the choirs of our English cathedrals no piece of their furniture is looked upon by persons trained in the disciplines of the Church more reverently than the gilded eagle which supports the reading-desk for the lessons. And no pieces of mediæval sculpture are more valuable than the marble eagles supporting the desks of the great pulpits on which the masters of the Pisan school, who restored the arts in Italy, spent, as we shall see hereafter, their best thought and skill.

2. We are so accustomed to the use of this symbol of the power of preaching that it hardly excites us to a momentary question as to the reason of the choice, which, however, if we do think of it more than a moment, will surely appear strange, and the longer we think of it, the more strange. That the spirit of the gospel of Christianity should be thought well represented by a creature of prey—entirely voracious and cruel, solitary and gloomy in its life, and foul in its habits—is singular enough at first; and that this ravenous creature should be farther imagined to be especially the expression of the Spirit of the Apostle St. John, and that by the united heart and intellect of long ecclesiastical ages, is assuredly one of the most curious phenomena recorded in the history of human mind.