Within sight of the Mediterranean and of the Pyrenees, towering above the brown plains of Catalonia, this shrine is the greatest in Christendom that bases its greatness on nothing but tradition.

The shrines of the bells of the Irish saints are interesting examples of Irish metal work.

The shrine of the apostle was its centre and glory.

The body in both is but the shrine of an indwelling soul, the instrument and agent of a faith-directed will; and the crown of their conflict is no wreath of laurel or of parsley.

The house in question is that in Gough Square, where Dr. JOHNSON lived, and two of the chief characters are George Constant, the curator, and his sister, to whom the shrine is the most precious object in life ("housemaid to a ghost," one of the other personages rather prettily calls her).

This really belongs to the hamlet of Lestelle, which adjoins Bétharram, and is so picturesque that the villagers ought to be proud of it; doubtless in the old days, when Notre Dame de Bétharram's shrine was the cherished pilgrimagenow superseded by the attractions of N. D. de Lourdesmany thousand "holy" feet crossed and recrossed this ancient bridge!

These lesser shrines were also sacred places, doorways to the hidden world, entrance-gates to the Land of the Ever Young.

The office of [Greek: neokoros] is a comparatively humble one in itself, but it is honourable enough when the shrine is at once the work and the monument of two such masters of English as Scott and Dryden.

And thou, thou other royal bird, that watchest Lest the white mother wandering feet molest: Shrined are your offspring in a chrystal cradle, Brighter than Helen's ere she yet had burst Her shelly prison.

Father Petit hoped to see this rough shrine become a religious seminary, and strings of women led there every day to take, like contagion, from an abbess the instruction they took so slowly from a priest.

[Footnote R: The shrine of St. James, at Compostella, (contracted from Giacomo Apostolo,) in Galicia, was a great resort of pilgrims during the Middle Ages,and Santiago, the military patron of Spain, was one of the most popular saints of Christendom.

The dark inner shrine must have once been a Buddhist cave, carved out of the wall of rock; and to it later generations added the outer hall, with its carved pillars of teakwood, which hangs over the very edge of a precipitous descent.