If S. Apollinare Nuovo had been allowed to fall, nothing that we possess in the world would have compensated us for its loss.  For not only have we here a beautiful interior very largely of the sixth century, but the great mosaics of the nave which cover the walls above the arcade under the windows are, I suppose, at once the largest and the most remarkable works of that time which ever existed.  They are also of an extraordinary and exceptional beauty.  They represent upon both sides, through the whole length of the nave, as it were two long processions of saints.  Upon the Epistle side are the martyrs issuing out of the city of Ravenna to lay their crowns at the feet of Our Lord on His throne, guarded by four angels.  Upon the Gospel side are the virgins headed by the three kings, who offer gifts to Our Lord in his Mother’s arms enthroned between four angels.  There is nothing in Christendom to compare with these mosaics.  They are unique and, as I like to think, in their wonderful significance are the key to a mystery that has for long remained unsolved.  For these long processions of saints, representing that great crowd of witnesses of which S. Paul speaks, stand there above the arcade and under the clerestory where in a Gothic church the triforium is set.  But the triforium is the one inexplicable and seemingly useless feature of a Gothic building.  It seems to us, in our ignorance of the mind of the Middle Age, of what it took for granted, to be there simply for the sake of beauty, to have no use at all.  But what if this church in Ravenna, the work indeed of a very different school and time, but springing out of the same spiritual tradition, should hold the key?  What if the triforium of a Gothic church should have been built as it were for a great crowd of witnesses—­the invisible witnesses of the Everlasting Sacrifice, the sacrifice of Calvary, the sacrifice of the Mass?  It is not only in the presence of the living, devout or half indifferent, that that great sacrifice is offered through the world, yesterday, to-day, and for ever, but be sure in the midst of the chivalry of heaven, a multitude that no man can number, none the less real because invisible, among whom one day we too are to be numbered.  Not for the living only, but for the whole Church men offer that sacrifice pro redemptione animarum suarum, pro spe salutis et incolumitatis suae.  Memento etiam Domine famulorum famularumque tuarum qui nos praecesserunt cum signo fidei et dormiunt in somno pacis....  Here in S. Apollinare at any rate for ever they await the renewal of that moment.

Those marvellous figures that appear in ghostly procession upon the walls of S. Apollinare here in Ravenna are really indescribable, they must be seen if the lovely significance of their beauty is to be understood.  What can one say of them?