But to revert to the churches.  The Heavenly Rest is noted for its fine wood carvings and its stained glass windows.  In the tower of the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas hangs a bell, cast in Amsterdam in 1731, which for years hung in the Middle Dutch Church in Nassau Street.  While the British held New York the bell was taken down and secreted.  When the Middle Dutch Church became the Post Office in 1845 the bell was removed, first to the Ninth Street Church, then to the Lafayette Place Church, and later to its present location.  The crocketed spire of the Church of St. Nicholas is two hundred and seventy feet high.  Within the edifice is a tablet to the soldiers and sailors of the Revolution, placed by the Daughters of the Revolution, and oil portraits of all the ministers of the church from Dominie Du Bois, who, in 1699, preached in the old Church in the Fort.

[Illustration:  “O BEAUTIFUL, LONG, LOVED AVENUE, SO FAITHLESS TO TRUTH AND YET SO TRUE”—­JOAQUIN MILLER]

Then St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  It was conceived, in 1850, by Bishop Hughes of the Diocese of New York, the cornerstone was laid in 1858, and the Cathedral dedicated in 1879 by Cardinal McClosky.  It was designed by James Renwick, the architect of Grace Church and St. Bartholomew’s.  The Cathedral is three hundred and thirty-two feet in length and one hundred and seventy-four feet in breadth, the spires rise three hundred and thirty feet above the ground, and the seating capacity of the edifice is two thousand five hundred.  But its full capacity is eighteen thousand, and it is eleventh in point of size among the cathedrals of the world.  Considering St. Patrick’s in its artistic aspect Miss Henderson, in “A Loiterer in New York,” has said:  “Renwick considered it his chief work; and the cathedral holds high rank as an example of the decorated, or geometric, style of Gothic architecture that prevailed in Europe in the thirteenth century, and of which the cathedrals of Rheims, Cologne, and Amiens are typical....  The modern French and Roman windows, which, to the eye of the later criticism, impair the beauty of the simple interior, were considered something most desirable in their day, and their completion was hurried in order that they might be shown at the Centennial Exhibition, of 1876, where they were a feature much admired.  One of them—­the window erected to St. Patrick—­has at least an antiquarian interest.  It was given by the architect, and includes, in the lower section, a picture of Renwick presenting the plans of the Cathedral to Cardinal McClosky.  The rose window is said to be a fac-simile of the rose window at Rheims, recently destroyed by German bombs; a provenance that may be the more securely claimed since the original has been immolated.  As a matter of fact, it too bears the stigma of the Centennial period, of which it is a characteristic example.  The only windows of aesthetic interest in the church are the recent lights in the ambulatory, made by different firms in competition for the windows of the Lady Chapel, which is to be treated in the same rich manner.”