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diff --git a/15947-0.txt b/15947-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cf99ed6 --- /dev/null +++ b/15947-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3567 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pleasures of England, by John Ruskin + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Pleasures of England + Lectures given in Oxford + +Author: John Ruskin + +Release Date: May 30, 2005 [EBook #15947] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, William Flis, and Distributed Proofreaders +Europe, http://dp.rastko.net + + + + + +THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. + +LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD. + +BY + +JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., + +HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF +CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLEGE. + +DURING HIS + +_SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP._ + + + +NEW YORK: JOHN WILEY AND SONS. 1888. + + * * * * * + + + +CONTENTS + + +LECTURE I. + +THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. _Bertha to Osburga_ 5 + + +LECTURE II. + +THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. _Alfred to the Confessor_ 31 + + +LECTURE III. + +THE PLEASURES OF DEED. _Alfred to Cœur de Lion_ 61 + + +LECTURE IV. + +THE PLEASURES OF FANCY. _Cœur de Lion to Elizabeth_ 91 + + * * * * * + + + + +LECTURE I. + +THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. + +_BERTHA TO OSBURGA._ + + +In the short review of the present state of English Art, given you +last year, I left necessarily many points untouched, and others +unexplained. The seventh lecture, which I did not think it necessary +to read aloud, furnished you with some of the corrective statements +of which, whether spoken or not, it was extremely desirable that you +should estimate the balancing weight. These I propose in the present +course farther to illustrate, and to arrive with you at, I hope, +a just--you would not wish it to be a flattering--estimate of the +conditions of our English artistic life, past and present, in order +that with due allowance for them we may determine, with some security, +what those of us who have faculty ought to do, and those who have +sensibility, to admire. + +2. In thus rightly doing and feeling, you will find summed a wider +duty, and granted a greater power, than the moral philosophy at this +moment current with you has ever conceived; and a prospect opened to +you besides, of such a Future for England as you may both hopefully +and proudly labour for with your hands, and those of you who are +spared to the ordinary term of human life, even see with your eyes, +when all this tumult of vain avarice and idle pleasure, into which +you have been plunged at birth, shall have passed into its appointed +perdition. + +3. I wish that you would read for introduction to the lectures I have +this year arranged for you, that on the Future of England, which I +gave to the cadets at Woolwich in the first year of my Professorship +here, 1869; and which is now placed as the main conclusion of the +"Crown of Wild Olive": and with it, very attentively, the close of +my inaugural lecture given here; for the matter, no less than the +tenor of which, I was reproved by all my friends, as irrelevant and +ill-judged;--which, nevertheless, is of all the pieces of teaching I +have ever given from this chair, the most pregnant and essential to +whatever studies, whether of Art or Science, you may pursue, in this +place or elsewhere, during your lives. + +The opening words of that passage I will take leave to read to you +again,--for they must still be the ground of whatever help I can give +you, worth your acceptance. + +"There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a +nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race: +a race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in +temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. +We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now +finally betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in +an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years +of noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with +splendid avarice; so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, +should be the most offending souls alive. Within the last few years +we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity +which has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit and +communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the +habitable globe. + +"One kingdom;--but who is to be its king? Is there to be no king in +it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in his own +eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires of Mammon and +Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your country again a +royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle; for all the world a source +of light, a centre of peace; mistress of Learning and of the +Arts;--faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent +and ephemeral visions--faithful servant of time-tried principles, +under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and +amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped +in her strange valour, of goodwill towards men?" + +The fifteen years that have passed since I spoke these words must, I +think, have convinced some of my immediate hearers that the need for +such an appeal was more pressing than they then imagined;--while they +have also more and more convinced me myself that the ground I took +for it was secure, and that the youths and girls now entering on the +duties of active life are able to accept and fulfil the hope I then +held out to them. + +In which assurance I ask them to-day to begin the examination with +me, very earnestly, of the question laid before you in that seventh +of my last year's lectures, whether London, as it is now, be indeed +the natural, and therefore the heaven-appointed outgrowth of the +inhabitation, these 1800 years, of the valley of the Thames by a +progressively instructed and disciplined people; or if not, in what +measure and manner the aspect and spirit of the great city may be +possibly altered by your acts and thoughts. + +In my introduction to the Economist of Xenophon I said that every +fairly educated European boy or girl ought to learn the history of +five cities,--Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, and London; that of +London including, or at least compelling in parallel study, knowledge +also of the history of Paris. + +A few words are enough to explain the reasons for this choice. The +history of Athens, rightly told, includes all that need be known of +Greek religion and arts; that of Rome, the victory of Christianity +over Paganism; those of Venice and Florence sum the essential facts +respecting the Christian arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Music; +and that of London, in her sisterhood with Paris, the development of +Christian Chivalry and Philosophy, with their exponent art of Gothic +architecture. + +Without the presumption of forming a distinct design, I yet hoped at +the time when this division of study was suggested, with the help of +my pupils, to give the outlines of their several histories during +my work in Oxford. Variously disappointed and arrested, alike by +difficulties of investigation and failure of strength, I may yet hope +to lay down for you, beginning with your own metropolis, some of the +lines of thought in following out which such a task might be most +effectively accomplished. + +You observe that I speak of architecture as the chief exponent of +the feelings both of the French and English races. Together with +it, however, most important evidence of character is given by the +illumination of manuscripts, and by some forms of jewellery and +metallurgy: and my purpose in this course of lectures is to illustrate +by all these arts the phases of national character which it is +impossible that historians should estimate, or even observe, with +accuracy, unless they are cognizant of excellence in the aforesaid +modes of structural and ornamental craftsmanship. + +In one respect, as indicated by the title chosen for this course, I +have varied the treatment of their subject from that adopted in all +my former books. Hitherto, I have always endeavoured to illustrate the +personal temper and skill of the artist; holding the wishes or taste +of his spectators at small account, and saying of Turner you ought to +like him, and of Salvator, you ought not, etc., etc., without in the +least considering what the genius or instinct of the spectator might +otherwise demand, or approve. But in the now attempted sketch of +Christian history, I have approached every question from the people's +side, and examined the nature, not of the special faculties by which +the work was produced, but of the general instinct by which it was +asked for, and enjoyed. Therefore I thought the proper heading for +these papers should represent them as descriptive of the _Pleasures_ +of England, rather than of its _Arts_. + +And of these pleasures, necessarily, the leading one was that of +Learning, in the sense of receiving instruction;--a pleasure totally +separate from that of finding out things for yourself,--and an +extremely sweet and sacred pleasure, when you know how to seek it, and +receive. + +On which I am the more disposed, and even compelled, here to insist, +because your modern ideas of Development imply that you must all +turn out what you are to be, and find out what you are to know, for +yourselves, by the inevitable operation of your anterior affinities +and inner consciences:--whereas the old idea of education was that the +baby material of you, however accidentally or inevitably born, was +at least to be by external force, and ancestral knowledge, bred; and +treated by its Fathers and Tutors as a plastic vase, to be shaped or +mannered as _they_ chose, not as _it_ chose, and filled, when its form +was well finished and baked, with sweetness of sound doctrine, as with +Hybla honey, or Arabian spikenard. + +Without debating how far these two modes of acquiring +knowledge--finding out, and being told--may severally be good, and +in perfect instruction combined, I have to point out to you that, +broadly, Athens, Rome, and Florence are self-taught, and internally +developed; while all the Gothic races, without any exception, but +especially those of London and Paris, are afterwards taught by these; +and had, therefore, when they chose to accept it, the delight of being +instructed, without trouble or doubt, as fast as they could read or +imitate; and brought forward to the point where their own northern +instincts might wholesomely superimpose or graft some national ideas +upon these sound instructions. Read over what I said on this subject +in the third of my lectures last year (page 79), and simplify that +already brief statement further, by fastening in your mind Carlyle's +general symbol of the best attainments of northern religious +sculpture,--"three whalecubs combined by boiling," and reflecting that +the mental history of all northern European art is the modification +of that graceful type, under the orders of the Athena of Homer and +Phidias. + +And this being quite indisputably the broad fact of the matter, I +greatly marvel that your historians never, so far as I have read, +think of proposing to you the question--what you might have made +of yourselves _without_ the help of Homer and Phidias: what sort of +beings the Saxon and the Celt, the Frank and the Dane, might have been +by this time, untouched by the spear of Pallas, unruled by the rod of +Agricola, and sincerely the native growth, pure of root, and ungrafted +in fruit of the clay of Isis, rock of Dovrefeldt, and sands of Elbe? +Think of it, and think chiefly what form the ideas, and images, +of your natural religion might probably have taken, if no Roman +missionary had ever passed the Alps in charity, and no English king in +pilgrimage. + +I have been of late indebted more than I can express to the friend who +has honoured me by the dedication of his recently published lectures +on 'Older England;' and whose eager enthusiasm and far collected +learning have enabled me for the first time to assign their just +meaning and value to the ritual and imagery of Saxon devotion. But +while every page of Mr. Hodgett's book, and, I may gratefully say +also, every sentence of his teaching, has increased and justified the +respect in which I have always been by my own feeling disposed to +hold the mythologies founded on the love and knowledge of the natural +world, I have also been led by them to conceive, far more forcibly +than hitherto, the power which the story of Christianity possessed, +first heard through the wreaths of that cloudy superstition, in the +substitution, for its vaporescent allegory, of a positive and literal +account of a real Creation, and an instantly present, omnipresent, and +compassionate God. + +Observe, there is no question whatever in examining this influence, +how far Christianity itself is true, or the transcendental doctrines +of it intelligible. Those who brought you the story of it believed it +with all their souls to be true,--and the effect of it on the hearts +of your ancestors was that of an unquestionable, infinitely lucid +message straight from God, doing away with all difficulties, grief, +and fears for those who willingly received it, nor by any, except +wilfully and obstinately vile persons, to be, by any possibility, +denied or refused. + +And it was precisely, observe, the vivacity and joy with which the +main fact of Christ's life was accepted which gave the force and wrath +to the controversies instantly arising about its nature. + +Those controversies vexed and shook, but never undermined, the faith +they strove to purify, and the miraculous presence, errorless precept, +and loving promises of their Lord were alike undoubted, alike rejoiced +in, by every nation that heard the word of Apostles. The Pelagian's +assertion that immortality could be won by man's will, and the +Arian's that Christ possessed no more than man's nature, never for +an instant--or in any country--hindered the advance of the moral law +and intellectual hope of Christianity. Far the contrary; the British +heresy concerning Free Will, though it brought bishop after bishop +into England to extinguish it, remained an extremely healthy and +active element in the British mind down to the days of John Bunyan +and the guide Great Heart, and the calmly Christian justice and simple +human virtue of Theodoric were the very roots and first burgeons +of the regeneration of Italy.[1] But of the degrees in which it was +possible for any barbarous nation to receive during the first five +centuries, either the spiritual power of Christianity itself, or +the instruction in classic art and science which accompanied it, you +cannot rightly judge, without taking the pains, and they will not, I +think, be irksome, of noticing carefully, and fixing permanently in +your minds, the separating characteristics of the greater races, both +in those who learned and those who taught. + +[Footnote 1: Gibbon, in his 37th chapter, makes Ulphilas also an +Arian, but might have forborne, with grace, his own definition of +orthodoxy:--and you are to observe generally that at this time the +teachers who admitted the inferiority of Christ to the Father as +touching his Manhood, were often counted among Arians, but quite +falsely. Christ's own words, "My Father is greater than I," end that +controversy at once. Arianism consists not in asserting the subjection +of the Son to the Father, but in denying the subjected Divinity.] + +Of the Huns and Vandals we need not speak. They are merely forms of +Punishment and Destruction. Put them out of your minds altogether, and +remember only the names of the immortal nations, which abide on their +native rocks, and plough their unconquered plains, at this hour. + +Briefly, in the north,--Briton, Norman, Frank, Saxon, Ostrogoth, +Lombard; briefly, in the south,--Tuscan, Roman, Greek, Syrian, +Egyptian, Arabian. + +Now of these races, the British (I avoid the word Celtic, because you +would expect me to say Keltic; and I don't mean to, lest you should +be wanting me next to call the patroness of music St. Kekilia), the +British, including Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scot, and Pict, are, +I believe, of all the northern races, the one which has deepest love +of external nature;--and the richest inherent gift of pure music and +song, as such; separated from the intellectual gift which raises song +into poetry. They are naturally also religious, and for some centuries +after their own conversion are one of the chief evangelizing powers +in Christendom. But they are neither apprehensive nor receptive;--they +cannot understand the classic races, and learn scarcely anything from +them; perhaps better so, if the classic races had been more careful to +understand _them_. + +Next, the Norman is scarcely more apprehensive than the Celt, but he +is more constructive, and uses to good advantage what he learns from +the Frank. His main characteristic is an energy, which never exhausts +itself in vain anger, desire, or sorrow, but abides and rules, like a +living rock:--where he wanders, he flows like lava, and congeals like +granite. + +Next, I take in this first sketch the Saxon and Frank together, both +pre-eminently apprehensive, both docile exceedingly, imaginative in +the highest, but in life active more than pensive, eager in desire, +swift of invention, keenly sensitive to animal beauty, but with +difficulty rational, and rarely, for the future, wise. Under the +conclusive name of Ostrogoth, you may class whatever tribes are native +to Central Germany, and develope themselves, as time goes on, into +that power of the German Cæsars which still asserts itself as an +empire against the licence and insolence of modern republicanism,--of +which races, though this general name, no description can be given in +rapid terms. + +And lastly, the Lombards, who, at the time we have to deal with, were +sternly indocile, gloomily imaginative,--of almost Norman energy, +and differing from all the other western nations chiefly in this +notable particular, that while the Celt is capable of bright wit and +happy play, and the Norman, Saxon, and Frank all alike delight in +caricature, the Lombards, like the Arabians, never jest. + +These, briefly, are the six barbaric nations who are to be taught: and +of whose native arts and faculties, before they receive any tutorship +from the south, I find no well-sifted account in any history:--but +thus much of them, collecting your own thoughts and knowledge, you +may easily discern--they were all, with the exception of the Scots, +practical workers and builders in wood; and those of them who had +coasts, first rate sea-boat builders, with fine mathematical +instincts and practice in that kind far developed, necessarily good +sail-weaving, and sound fur-stitching, with stout iron-work of nail +and rivet; rich copper and some silver work in decoration--the Celts +developing peculiar gifts in linear design, but wholly incapable +of drawing animals or figures;--the Saxons and Franks having enough +capacity in that kind, but no thought of attempting it; the Normans +and Lombards still farther remote from any such skill. More and more, +it seems to me wonderful that under your British block-temple, grimly +extant on its pastoral plain, or beside the first crosses engraved on +the rock at Whithorn--you English and Scots do not oftener consider +what you might or could have come to, left to yourselves. + +Next, let us form the list of your tutor nations, in whom, it +generally pleases you to look at nothing but the corruptions. If we +could get into the habit of thinking more of our own corruptions and +more of _their_ virtues, we should have a better chance of learning +the true laws alike of art and destiny. But, the safest way of all, is +to assure ourselves that true knowledge of any thing or any creature +is only of the good of it; that its nature and life are in that, and +that what is diseased,--that is to say, unnatural and mortal,--you +must cut away from it in contemplation, as you would in surgery. + +Of the six tutor nations, two, the Tuscan and Arab, have no effect on +early Christian England. But the Roman, Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian +act together from the earliest times; you are to study the influence +of Rome upon England in Agricola, Constantius, St. Benedict, and +St. Gregory; of Greece upon England in the artists of Byzantium and +Ravenna; of Syria and Egypt upon England in St. Jerome, St. Augustine, +St. Chrysostom, and St. Athanase. + +St. Jerome, in central Bethlehem; St. Augustine, Carthaginian by +birth, in truth a converted Tyrian, Athanase, Egyptian, symmetric +and fixed as an Egyptian aisle; Chrysostom, golden mouth of all; +these are, indeed, every one teachers of all the western world, but +St. Augustine especially of lay, as distinguished from monastic, +Christianity to the Franks, and finally to us. His rule, expanded into +the treatise of the City of God, is taken for guide of life and policy +by Charlemagne, and becomes certainly the fountain of Evangelical +Christianity, distinctively so called, (and broadly the lay +Christianity of Europe, since, in the purest form of it, that is +to say, the most merciful, charitable, variously applicable, kindly +wise.) The greatest type of it, as far as I know, St. Martin of Tours, +whose character is sketched, I think in the main rightly, in the Bible +of Amiens; and you may bind together your thoughts of its course +by remembering that Alcuin, born at York, dies in the Abbey of +St. Martin, at Tours; that as St. Augustine was in his writings +Charlemagne's Evangelist in faith, Alcuin was, in living presence, +his master in rhetoric, logic, and astronomy, with the other physical +sciences. + +A hundred years later than St. Augustine, comes the rule of St. +Benedict--the Monastic rule, virtually, of European Christianity, ever +since--and theologically the Law of Works, as distinguished from the +Law of Faith. St. Augustine and all the disciples of St. Augustine +tell Christians what they should feel and think: St. Benedict and all +the disciples of St. Benedict tell Christians what they should say and +do. + +In the briefest, but also the perfectest distinction, the disciples +of St. Augustine are those who open the door to Christ--"If any man +hear my voice"; but the Benedictines those to whom Christ opens the +door--"To him that knocketh it shall be opened." + +Now, note broadly the course and action of this rule, as it combines +with the older one. St. Augustine's, accepted heartily by Clovis, +and, with various degrees of understanding, by the kings and queens +of the Merovingian dynasty, makes seemingly little difference in +their conduct, so that their profession of it remains a scandal to +Christianity to this day; and yet it lives, in the true hearts among +them, down from St. Clotilde to her great grand-daughter Bertha, who +in becoming Queen of Kent, builds under its chalk downs her own little +chapel to St. Martin, and is the first effectively and permanently +useful missionary to the Saxons, the beginner of English +Erudition,--the first laid corner stone of beautiful English +character. + +I think henceforward you will find the memorandum of dates which I +have here set down for my own guidance more simply useful than those +confused by record of unimportant persons and inconsequent events, +which form the indices of common history. + +From the year of the Saxon invasion 449, there are exactly 400 years +to the birth of Alfred, 849. You have no difficulty in remembering +those cardinal years. Then, you have Four great men and great events +to remember, at the close of the fifth century. Clovis, and the +founding of Frank Kingdom; Theodoric and the founding of the Gothic +Kingdom; Justinian and the founding of Civil law; St. Benedict and the +founding of Religious law. + +Of, Justinian, and his work, I am not able myself to form any +opinion--and it is, I think, unnecessary for students of history to +form any, until they are able to estimate clearly the benefits, and +mischief, of the civil law of Europe in its present state. But to +Clovis, Theodoric, and St. Benedict, without any question, we owe more +than any English historian has yet ascribed,--and they are easily held +in mind together, for Clovis ascended the Frank throne in the year of +St. Benedict's birth, 481. Theodoric fought the battle of Verona, and +founded the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy twelve years later, in 493, +and thereupon married the sister of Clovis. That marriage is always +passed in a casual sentence, as if a merely political one, and while +page after page is spent in following the alternations of furious +crime and fatal chance, in the contests between Fredegonde and +Brunehaut, no historian ever considers whether the great Ostrogoth who +wore in the battle of Verona the dress which his mother had woven for +him, was likely to have chosen a wife without love!--or how far the +perfectness, justice, and temperate wisdom of every ordinance of his +reign was owing to the sympathy and counsel of his Frankish queen. + +You have to recollect, then, thus far, only three cardinal dates:-- + + 449. Saxon invasion. + 481. Clovis reigns and St. Benedict is born. + 493. Theodoric conquers at Verona. + +Then, roughly, a hundred years later, in 590, Ethelbert, the fifth +from Hengist, and Bertha, the third from Clotilde, are king and queen +of Kent. I cannot find the date of their marriage, but the date, 590, +which you must recollect for cardinal, is that of Gregory's accession +to the pontificate, and I believe Bertha was then in middle life, +having persevered in her religion firmly, but inoffensively, and +made herself beloved by her husband and people. She, in England, +Theodolinda in Lombardy, and St. Gregory in Rome:--in their hands, +virtually lay the destiny of Europe. + +Then the period from Bertha to Osburga, 590 to 849--say 250 years--is +passed by the Saxon people in the daily more reverent learning of the +Christian faith, and daily more peaceful and skilful practice of the +humane arts and duties which it invented and inculcated. + +The statement given by Sir Edward Creasy of the result of these 250 +years of lesson is, with one correction, the most simple and just that +I can find. + +"A few years before the close of the sixth century, the country was +little more than a wide battle-field, where gallant but rude warriors +fought with each other, or against the neighbouring Welsh or Scots; +unheeding and unheeded by the rest of Europe, or, if they attracted +casual attention, regarded with dread and disgust as the fiercest of +barbarians and the most untameable of pagans. In the eighth century, +England was looked up to with admiration and gratitude, as superior to +all the other countries of Western Europe in piety and learning, and +as the land whence the most zealous and successful saints and teachers +came forth to convert and enlighten the still barbarous regions of the +continent." + +This statement is broadly true; yet the correction it needs is a very +important one. England,--under her first Alfred of Northumberland, +and under Ina of Wessex, is indeed during these centuries the most +learned, thoughtful, and progressive of European states. But she is +not a missionary power. The missionaries are always to her, not from +her:--for the very reason that she is learning so eagerly, she does +not take to preaching. Ina founds his Saxon school at Rome not to +teach Rome, nor convert the Pope, but to drink at the source of +knowledge, and to receive laws from direct and unquestioned authority. +The missionary power was wholly Scotch and Irish, and that power was +wholly one of zeal and faith, not of learning. I will ask you, in the +course of my next lecture, to regard it attentively; to-day, I must +rapidly draw to the conclusions I would leave with you. + +It is more and more wonderful to me as I think of it, that no effect +whatever was produced on the Saxon, nor on any other healthy race +of the North, either by the luxury of Rome, or by her art, whether +constructive or imitative. The Saxon builds no aqueducts--designs +no roads, rounds no theatres in imitation of her,--envies none of +her vile pleasures,--admires, so far as I can judge, none of her +far-carried realistic art. I suppose that it needs intelligence of +a more advanced kind to see the qualities of complete sculpture: and +that we may think of the Northern intellect as still like that of a +child, who cares to picture its own thoughts in its own way, but does +not care for the thoughts of older people, or attempt to copy what it +feels too difficult. This much at least is certain, that for one cause +or another, everything that now at Paris or London our painters most +care for and try to realize, of ancient Rome, was utterly innocuous +and unattractive to the Saxon: while his mind was frankly open to +the direct teaching of Greece and to the methods of bright decoration +employed in the Byzantine Empire: for these alone seemed to his +fancy suggestive of the glories of the brighter world promised by +Christianity. Jewellery, vessels of gold and silver, beautifully +written books, and music, are the gifts of St. Gregory alike to the +Saxon and Lombard; all these beautiful things being used, not for the +pleasure of the present life, but as the symbols of another; while +the drawings in Saxon manuscripts, in which, better than in any other +remains of their life, we can read the people's character, are rapid +endeavours to express for themselves, and convey to others, some +likeness of the realities of sacred event in which they had been +instructed. They differ from every archaic school of former design +in this evident correspondence with an imagined reality. All previous +archaic art whatsoever is symbolic and decorative--not realistic. The +contest of Herakles with the Hydra on a Greek vase is a mere sign that +such a contest took place, not a picture of it, and in drawing that +sign the potter is always thinking of the effect of the engraved +lines on the curves of his pot, and taking care to keep out of the +way of the handle;--but a Saxon monk would scratch his idea of the +Fall of the angels or the Temptation of Christ over a whole page of +his manuscript in variously explanatory scenes, evidently full of +inexpressible vision, and eager to explain and illustrate all that he +felt or believed. + +Of the progress and arrest of these gifts, I shall have to speak in my +next address; but I must regretfully conclude to-day with some brief +warning against the complacency which might lead you to regard them +as either at that time entirely original in the Saxon race, or at the +present day as signally characteristic of it. That form of complacency +is exhibited in its most amiable but, therefore, most deceptive guise, +in the passage with which the late Dean of Westminster concluded his +lecture at Canterbury in April, 1854, on the subject of the landing of +Augustine. I will not spoil the emphasis of the passage by comment as +I read, but must take leave afterwards to intimate some grounds for +abatement in the fervour of its self-gratulatory ecstasy. + +"Let any one sit on the hill of the little church of St. Martin, and +look on the view which is there spread before his eyes. Immediately +below are the towers of the great abbey of St. Augustine, where +Christian learning and civilization first struck root in the +Anglo-Saxon race; and within which now, after a lapse of many +centuries, a new institution has arisen, intended to carry far and +wide, to countries of which Gregory and Augustine never heard, the +blessings which they gave to us. Carry your view on--and there +rises high above all the magnificent pile of our cathedral, equal +in splendour and state to any, the noblest temple or church that +Augustine could have seen in ancient Rome, rising on the very ground +which derives its consecration from him. And still more than the +grandeur of the outward buildings that rose from the little church +of Augustine and the little palace of Ethelbert have been the +institutions of all kinds of which these were the earliest cradle. +From Canterbury, the first English Christian city,--from Kent, the +first English Christian kingdom--has by degrees arisen the whole +constitution of Church and State in England which now binds together +the whole British Empire. And from the Christianity here established +in England has flowed, by direct consequence, first the Christianity +of Germany; then, after a long interval, of North America; and lastly, +we may trust, in time, of all India and all Australasia. The view from +St. Martin's Church is indeed one of the most inspiriting that can be +found in the world; there is none to which I would more willingly take +any one who doubted whether a small beginning could lead to a great +and lasting good;--none which carries us more vividly back into the +past, or more hopefully forward into the future." + +To this Gregorian canticle in praise of the British constitution, +I grieve, but am compelled, to take these following historical +objections. The first missionary to Germany was Ulphilas, and what she +owes to these islands she owes to Iona, not to Thanet. Our missionary +offices to America as to Africa, consist I believe principally in +the stealing of land, and the extermination of its proprietors by +intoxication. Our rule in India has introduced there, Paisley instead +of Cashmere shawls: in Australasia our Christian aid supplies, I +suppose, the pious farmer with convict labour. And although, when +the Dean wrote the above passage, St. Augustine's and the cathedral +were--I take it on trust from his description--the principal +objects in the prospect from St. Martin's Hill, I believe even the +cheerfullest of my audience would not now think the scene one of +the most inspiriting in the world. For recent progress has entirely +accommodated the architecture of the scene to the convenience of the +missionary workers above enumerated; to the peculiar necessities +of the civilization they have achieved. For the sake of which the +cathedral, the monastery, the temple, and the tomb, of Bertha, +contract themselves in distant or despised subservience under the +colossal walls of the county gaol. + + + + +LECTURE II. + +THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. + +_ALFRED TO THE CONFESSOR._ + + +I was forced in my last lecture to pass by altogether, and to-day +can only with momentary definition notice, the part taken by Scottish +missionaries in the Christianizing of England and Burgundy. I would +pray you therefore, in order to fill the gap which I think it better +to leave distinctly, than close confusedly, to read the histories of +St. Patrick, St. Columba, and St. Columban, as they are given you by +Montalembert in his 'Moines d'Occident.' You will find in his pages +all the essential facts that are known, encircled with a nimbus of +enthusiastic sympathy which I hope you will like better to see them +through, than distorted by blackening fog of contemptuous rationalism. +But although I ask you thus to make yourselves aware of the greatness +of my omission, I must also certify you that it does not break the +unity of our own immediate subject. The influence of Celtic passion +and art both on Northumbria and the Continent, beneficent in all +respects while it lasted, expired without any permanent share in the +work or emotion of the Saxon and Frank. The book of Kells, and the +bell of St. Patrick, represent sufficiently the peculiar character +of Celtic design; and long since, in the first lecture of the 'Two +Paths,' I explained both the modes of skill, and points of weakness, +which rendered such design unprogressive. Perfect in its peculiar +manner, and exulting in the faultless practice of a narrow skill, it +remained century after century incapable alike of inner growth, or +foreign instruction; inimitable, yet incorrigible; marvellous, yet +despicable, to its death. Despicable, I mean, only in the limitation +of its capacity, not in its quality or nature. If you make a +Christian of a lamb or a squirrel--what can you expect of the lamb +but jumping--what of the squirrel, but pretty spirals, traced with +his tail? He won't steal your nuts any more, and he'll say his prayers +like this--[2]; but you cannot make a Beatrice's griffin, and emblem +of all the Catholic Church, out of him. + +[Footnote 2: Making a sign.] + +You will have observed, also, that the plan of these lectures does +not include any reference to the Roman Period in England; of which +you will find all I think necessary to say, in the part called _Valle +Crucis_ of 'Our Fathers have told us.' But I must here warn you, with +reference to it, of one gravely false prejudice of Montalembert. He is +entirely blind to the conditions of Roman virtue, which existed in the +midst of the corruptions of the Empire, forming the characters of such +Emperors as Pertinax, Carus, Probus, the second Claudius, Aurelian, +and our own Constantius; and he denies, with abusive violence, the +power for good, of Roman Law, over the Gauls and Britons. + +Respecting Roman national character, I will simply beg you to +remember, that both St. Benedict and St. Gregory are Roman patricians, +before they are either monk or pope; respecting its influence on +Britain, I think you may rest content with Shakespeare's estimate of +it. Both Lear and Cymbeline belong to this time, so difficult to our +apprehension, when the Briton accepted both Roman laws and Roman gods. +There is indeed the born Kentish gentleman's protest against them in +Kent's-- + + "Now, by Apollo, king, + Thou swear'st thy gods in vain"; + +but both Cordelia and Imogen are just as thoroughly Roman ladies, as +Virgilia or Calphurnia. + +Of British Christianity and the Arthurian Legends, I shall have a word +or two to say in my lecture on "Fancy," in connection with the similar +romance which surrounds Theodoric and Charlemagne: only the worst of +it is, that while both Dietrich and Karl are themselves more wonderful +than the legends of them, Arthur fades into intangible vision:--this +much, however, remains to this day, of Arthurian blood in us, that +the richest fighting element in the British army and navy is British +native,--that is to say, Highlander, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish. + +Content, therefore, (means being now given you for filling gaps,) +with the estimates given you in the preceding lecture of the sources +of instruction possessed by the Saxon capital, I pursue to-day our +question originally proposed, what London might have been by this +time, if the nature of the flowers, trees, and children, born at the +Thames-side, had been rightly understood and cultivated. + +Many of my hearers can imagine far better than I, the look that London +must have had in Alfred's and Canute's days.[3] I have not, indeed, +the least idea myself what its buildings were like, but certainly +the groups of its shipping must have been superb; small, but +entirely seaworthy vessels, manned by the best seamen in the then +world. Of course, now, at Chatham and Portsmouth we have our +ironclads,--extremely beautiful and beautifully manageable things, no +doubt--to set against this Saxon and Danish shipping; but the Saxon +war-ships lay here at London shore--bright with banner and shield +and dragon prow,--instead of these you may be happier, but are not +handsomer, in having, now, the coal-barge, the penny steamer, and the +wherry full of shop boys and girls. I dwell however for a moment only +on the naval aspect of the tidal waters in the days of Alfred, because +I can refer you for all detail on this part of our subject to the +wonderful opening chapter of Dean Stanley's History of Westminster +Abbey, where you will find the origin of the name of London given as +"The City of Ships." He does not, however, tell you, that there were +built, then and there, the biggest war-ships in the world. I have +often said to friends who praised my own books that I would rather +have written that chapter than any one of them; yet if I _had_ been +able to write the historical part of it, the conclusions drawn would +have been extremely different. The Dean indeed describes with a +poet's joy the River of wells, which rose from those "once consecrated +springs which now lie choked in Holywell and Clerkenwell, and the +rivulet of Ulebrig which crossed the Strand under the Ivy bridge"; +but it is only in the spirit of a modern citizen of Belgravia that he +exults in the fact that "the great arteries of our crowded streets, +the vast sewers which cleanse our habitations, are fed by the +life-blood of those old and living streams; that underneath our tread +the Tyburn, and the Holborn, and the Fleet, and the Wall Brook, are +still pursuing their ceaseless course, still ministering to the good +of man, though in a far different fashion than when Druids drank +of their sacred springs, and Saxons were baptized in their rushing +waters, ages ago." + +[Footnote 3: Here Alfred's Silver Penny was shown and commented on, +thus:--Of what London was like in the days of faith, I can show you +one piece of artistic evidence. It is Alfred's silver penny struck in +London mint. The character of a coinage is quite conclusive evidence +in national history, and there is no great empire in progress, but +tells its story in beautiful coins. Here in Alfred's penny, a round +coin with L.O.N.D.I.N.I.A. struck on it, you have just the same +beauty of design, the same enigmatical arrangement of letters, as in +the early inscription, which it is "the pride of my life" to have +discovered at Venice. This inscription ("the first words that Venice +ever speaks aloud") is, it will be remembered, on the Church of St. +Giacomo di Rialto, and runs, being interpreted--"Around this temple, +let the merchant's law be just, his weights true, and his covenants +faithful."] + +Whatever sympathy you may feel with these eloquent expressions of that +entire complacency in the present, past, and future, which peculiarly +animates Dean Stanley's writings, I must, in this case, pray you +to observe that the transmutation of holy wells into sewers has, +at least, destroyed the charm and utility of the Thames as a salmon +stream, and I must ask you to read with attention the succeeding +portions of the chapter which record the legends of the river +fisheries in their relation to the first Abbey of Westminster; +dedicated by its builders to St. Peter, not merely in his office of +cornerstone of the Church, nor even figuratively as a fisher of men, +but directly as a fisher of fish:--and which maintained themselves, +you will see, in actual ceremony down to 1382, when a fisherman still +annually took his place beside the Prior, after having brought in a +salmon for St. Peter, which was carried in state down the middle of +the refectory. + +But as I refer to this page for the exact word, my eye is caught by +one of the sentences of Londonian[4] thought which constantly pervert +the well-meant books of pious England. "We see also," says the Dean, +"the union of innocent fiction with worldly craft, which marks so +many of the legends both of Pagan and Christian times." I might simply +reply to this insinuation that times which have no legends differ +from the legendary ones merely by uniting guilty, instead of innocent, +fiction, with worldly craft; but I must farther advise you that the +legends of these passionate times are in no wise, and in no sense, +fiction at all; but the true record of impressions made on the minds +of persons in a state of eager spiritual excitement, brought into +bright focus by acting steadily and frankly under its impulses. I +could tell you a great deal more about such things than you would +believe, and therefore, a great deal more than it would do you the +least good to hear;--but this much any who care to use their common +sense modestly, cannot but admit, that unless they choose to try the +rough life of the Christian ages, they cannot understand its practical +consequences. You have all been taught by Lord Macaulay and his school +that because you have Carpets instead of rushes for your feet; and +Feather-beds instead of fern for your backs; and Kickshaws instead +of beef for your eating; and Drains instead of Holy Wells for your +drinking;--that, therefore, you are the Cream of Creation, and +every one of you a seven-headed Solomon. Stay in those pleasant +circumstances and convictions if you please; but don't accuse your +roughly bred and fed fathers of telling lies about the aspect the +earth and sky bore to _them_,--till you have trodden the earth as +they, barefoot, and seen the heavens as they, face to face. If you +care to see and to know for yourselves, you may do it with little +pains; you need not do any great thing, you needn't keep one eye open +and the other shut for ten years over a microscope, nor fight your way +through icebergs and darkness to knowledge of the _celestial_ pole. +Simply, do as much as king after king of the Saxons did,--put rough +shoes on your feet and a rough cloak on your shoulders, and walk to +Rome and back. Sleep by the roadside, when it is fine,--in the first +outhouse you can find, when it is wet; and live on bread and water, +with an onion or two, all the way; and if the experiences which you +will have to relate on your return do not, as may well be, deserve the +name of spiritual; at all events you will not be disposed to let other +people regard them either as Poetry or Fiction. + +[Footnote 4: Not _Londinian_.] + +With this warning, presently to be at greater length insisted on, +I trace for you, in Dean Stanley's words, which cannot be bettered +except in the collection of their more earnest passages from among +his interludes of graceful but dangerous qualification,--I trace, with +only such omission, the story he has told us of the foundation of that +Abbey, which, he tells you, was the Mother of London, and has ever +been the shrine and the throne of English faith and truth. + +"The gradual formation of a monastic body, indicated in the charters +of Offa and Edgar, marks the spread of the Benedictine order +throughout England, under the influence of Dunstan. The 'terror' of +the spot, which had still been its chief characteristic in the charter +of the wild Offa, had, in the days of the more peaceful Edgar, given +way to a dubious 'renown.' Twelve monks is the number traditionally +said to have been established by Dunstan. A few acres further up the +river formed their chief property, and their monastic character was +sufficiently recognized to have given to the old locality of the +'terrible place' the name of the 'Western Monastery,' or 'Minster of +the West.'" + +The Benedictines then--twelve Benedictine monks--thus begin the +building of existent Christian London. You know I told you the +Benedictines are the Doing people, as the disciples of St. Augustine +the Sentimental people. The Benedictines find no terror in their +own thoughts--face the terror of places--change it into beauty of +places,--make this terrible place, a Motherly Place--Mother of London. + +This first Westminster, however, the Dean goes on to say, "seems to +have been overrun by the Danes," and it would have had no further +history but for the combination of circumstances which directed hither +the notice of Edward the Confessor. + +I haven't time to read you all the combination of circumstances. The +last clinching circumstance was this-- + +"There was in the neighbourhood of Worcester, 'far from men in the +wilderness, on the slope of a wood, in a cave deep down in the grey +rock,' a holy hermit 'of great age, living on fruits and roots.' One +night when, after reading in the Scriptures 'how hard are the pains of +hell, and how the enduring life of Heaven is sweet and to be desired,' +he could neither sleep nor repose, St. Peter appeared to him, +'bright and beautiful, like to a clerk,' and warned him to tell the +King that he was released from his vow; that on that very day his +messengers would return from Rome;" (that is the combination of +circumstances--bringing Pope's order to build a church to release +the King from his vow of pilgrimage); "that 'at Thorney, two leagues +from the city,' was the spot marked out where, in an ancient church, +'situated low,' he was to establish a perfect Benedictine monastery, +which should be 'the gate of heaven, the ladder of prayer, whence +those who serve St. Peter there, shall by him be admitted into +Paradise.' The hermit writes the account of the vision on parchment, +seals it with wax, and brings it to the King, who compares it with the +answer of the messengers, just arrived from Rome, and determines on +carrying out the design as the Apostle had ordered. + +"The ancient church, 'situated low,' indicated in this vision the +one whose attached monastery had been destroyed by the Danes, but its +little church remained, and was already dear to the Confessor, not +only from the lovely tradition of its dedication by the spirit of St. +Peter;" (you must read that for yourselves;) "but also because of two +miracles happening there to the King himself. + +"The first was the cure of a cripple, who sat in the road between +the Palace and 'the Chapel of St. Peter,' which was 'near,' and who +explained to the Chamberlain Hugolin that, after six pilgrimages to +Rome in vain, St. Peter had promised his cure if the King would, on +his own royal neck, carry him to the Monastery. The King immediately +consented; and, amidst the scoffs of the court, bore the poor man to +the steps of the High Altar. There the cripple was received by Godric +the sacristan, and walked away on his own restored feet, hanging his +stool on the wall for a trophy. + +"Before that same High Altar was also believed to have been seen +one of the Eucharistical portents, so frequent in the Middle Ages. A +child, 'pure and bright like a spirit,' appeared to the King in the +sacramental elements. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who, with his famous +countess, Godiva, was present, saw it also. + +"Such as these were the motives of Edward. Under their influence +was fixed what has ever since been the local centre of the English +monarchy." + +"Such as these were the _motives_ of Edward," says the Dean. Yes, +certainly; but such as these also, first, were the acts and visions +of Edward. Take care that you don't slip away, by the help of the +glycerine of the word "motives," into fancying that all these tales +are only the after colours and pictorial metaphors of sentimental +piety. They are either plain truth or black lies; take your +choice,--but don't tickle and treat yourselves with the prettiness or +the grotesqueness of them, as if they were Anderssen's fairy tales. +Either the King did carry the beggar on his back, or he didn't; either +Godiva rode through Coventry, or she didn't; either the Earl Leofric +saw the vision of the bright child at the altar--or he lied like a +knave. Judge, as you will; but do not Doubt. + +"The Abbey was fifteen years in building. The King spent upon it +one-tenth of the property of the kingdom. It was to be a marvel of +its kind. As in its origin it bore the traces of the fantastic and +childish" (I must pause, to ask you to substitute for these blameful +terms, 'fantastic and childish,' the better ones of 'imaginative and +pure') "character of the King and of the age; in its architecture +it bore the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occupied in +English history between Saxon and Norman. By birth he was a Saxon, but +in all else he was a foreigner. Accordingly the Church at Westminster +was a wide-sweeping innovation on all that had been seen before. +'Destroying the old building,' he says in his charter, 'I have built +up a new one from the very foundation.' Its fame as a 'new style of +composition' lingered in the minds of men for generations. It was the +first cruciform church in England, from which all the rest of like +shape were copied--an expression of the increasing hold which, in the +tenth century, the idea of the Crucifixion had laid on the imagination +of Europe. The massive roof and pillars formed a contrast with the +rude wooden rafters and beams of the common Saxon churches. Its very +size--occupying, as it did, almost the whole area of the present +building--was in itself portentous. The deep foundations, of large +square blocks of grey stone, were duly laid; the east end was rounded +into an apse; a tower rose in the centre, crowned by a cupola of wood. +At the western end were erected two smaller towers, with five large +bells. The hard strong stones were richly sculptured; the windows +were filled with stained glass; the roof was covered with lead. The +cloisters, chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, the infirmary, with +its spacious chapel, if not completed by Edward, were all begun, and +finished in the next generation on the same plan. This structure, +venerable as it would be if it had lasted to our time, has almost +entirely vanished. Possibly one vast dark arch in the southern +transept, certainly the substructures of the dormitory, with their +huge pillars, 'grand and regal at the bases and capitals,' the +massive, low-browed passage leading from the great cloister to Little +Dean's Yard, and some portions of the refectory and of the infirmary +chapel, remain as specimens of the work which astonished the last age +of the Anglo-Saxon and the first age of the Norman monarchy." + +Hitherto I have read to you with only supplemental comment. But in +the next following passage, with which I close my series of extracts, +sentence after sentence occurs, at which as I read, I must raise my +hand, to mark it for following deprecation, or denial. + +"In the centre of Westminster Abbey thus lies its Founder, and such is +the story of its foundation. Even apart from the legendary elements +in which it is involved, it is impossible not to be struck by the +fantastic character of all its circumstances. We seem to be in a world +of poetry." (I protest, No.) "Edward is four centuries later than +Ethelbert and Augustine; but the origin of Canterbury is commonplace +and prosaic compared with the origin of Westminster." (Yes, that's +true.) "We can hardly imagine a figure more incongruous to the +soberness of later times than the quaint, irresolute, wayward prince +whose chief characteristics have just been described. His titles of +Confessor and Saint belong not to the general instincts of Christendom +but to the most transitory feelings of the age." (I protest, No.) "His +opinions, his prevailing motives, were such as in no part of modern +Europe would now be shared by any educated teacher or ruler." (That's +true enough.) "But in spite of these irreconcilable differences, +there was a solid ground for the charm which he exercised over his +contemporaries. His childish and eccentric fancies have passed away;" +(I protest, No;) "but his innocent faith and his sympathy with his +people are qualities which, even in our altered times, may still +retain their place in the economy of the world. Westminster Abbey, +so we hear it said, sometimes with a cynical sneer, sometimes with +a timorous scruple, has admitted within its walls many who have been +great without being good, noble with a nobleness of the earth earthy, +worldly with the wisdom of this world. But it is a counterbalancing +reflection, that the central tomb, round which all those famous names +have clustered, contains the ashes of one who, weak and erring as he +was, rests his claims of interment here, not on any act of power or +fame, but only on his artless piety and simple goodness. He, towards +whose dust was attracted the fierce Norman, and the proud Plantagenet, +and the grasping Tudor, and the fickle Stuart, even the Independent +Oliver, the Dutch William, and the Hanoverian George, was one whose +humble graces are within the reach of every man, woman, and child +of every time, if we rightly part the immortal substance from the +perishable form." + +Now I have read you these passages from Dean Stanley as the most +accurately investigatory, the most generously sympathetic, the most +reverently acceptant account of these days, and their people, which +you can yet find in any English history. But consider now, point by +point, where it leaves you. You are told, first, that you are living +in an age of poetry. But the days of poetry are those of Shakespeare +and Milton, not of Bede: nay, for their especial wealth in melodious +theology and beautifully rhythmic and pathetic meditation, perhaps +the days which have given us 'Hiawatha,' 'In Memoriam,' 'The Christian +Year,' and the 'Soul's Diary' of George Macdonald, may be not with +disgrace compared with those of Caedmon. And nothing can be farther +different from the temper, nothing less conscious of the effort, of a +poet, than any finally authentic document to which you can be referred +for the relation of a Saxon miracle. + +I will read you, for a perfectly typical example, an account of one +from Bede's 'Life of St. Cuthbert,' The passage is a favourite one of +my own, but I do not in the least anticipate its producing upon you +the solemnizing effect which I think I could command from reading, +instead, a piece of 'Marmion,' 'Manfred,' or 'Childe Harold.' + +... "He had one day left his cell to give advice to some visitors; and +when he had finished, he said to them, 'I must now go in again, but do +you, as you are inclined to depart, first take food; and when you have +cooked and eaten that goose which is hanging on the wall, go on board +your vessel in God's name and return home.' He then uttered a prayer, +and, having blessed them, went in. But they, as he had bidden them, +took some food; but having enough provisions of their own, which they +had brought with them, they did not touch the goose. + +"But when they had refreshed themselves they tried to go on board +their vessel, but a sudden storm utterly prevented them from putting +to sea. They were thus detained seven days in the island by the +roughness of the waves, and yet they could not call to mind what fault +they had committed. They therefore returned to have an interview with +the holy father, and to lament to him their detention. He exhorted +them to be patient, and on the seventh day came out to console their +sorrow, and to give them pious exhortations. When, however, he had +entered the house in which they were stopping, and saw that the goose +was not eaten, he reproved their disobedience with mild countenance +and in gentle language: 'Have you not left the goose still hanging +in its place? What wonder is it that the storm has prevented your +departure? Put it immediately into the caldron, and boil and eat it, +that the sea may become tranquil, and you may return home.' + +"They immediately did as he commanded; and it happened most +wonderfully that the moment the kettle began to boil the wind began +to cease, and the waves to be still Having finished their repast, and +seeing that the sea was calm, they went on board, and to their great +delight, though with shame for their neglect, reached home with a fair +wind. Now this, as I have related, I did not pick up from any chance +authority, but I had it from one of those who were present, a most +reverend monk and priest of the same monastery, Cynemund, who still +lives, known to many in the neighbourhood for his years and the purity +of his life." + + * * * * * + +I hope that the memory of this story, which, thinking it myself +an extremely pretty one, I have given you, not only for a type of +sincerity and simplicity, but for an illustration of obedience, may +at all events quit you, for good and all, of the notion that the +believers and witnesses of miracle were poetical persons. Saying +no more on the head of that allegation, I proceed to the Dean's +second one, which I cannot but interpret as also intended to be +injurious,--that they were artless and childish ones; and that because +of this rudeness and puerility, their motives and opinions would not +be shared by any statesmen of the present day. + +It is perfectly true that Edward the Confessor was himself in many +respects of really childish temperament; not therefore, perhaps, as I +before suggested to you, less venerable. But the age of which we are +examining the progress, was by no means represented or governed by +men of similar disposition. It was eminently productive of--it was +altogether governed, guided, and instructed by--men of the widest and +most brilliant faculties, whether constructive or speculative, that +the world till then had seen; men whose acts became the romance, whose +thoughts the wisdom, and whose arts the treasure, of a thousand years +of futurity. + +I warned you at the close of last lecture against the too agreeable +vanity of supposing that the Evangelization of the world began at St. +Martin's, Canterbury. Again and again you will indeed find the stream +of the Gospel contracting itself into narrow channels, and appearing, +after long-concealed filtration, through veins of unmeasured rock, +with the bright resilience of a mountain spring. But you will find it +the only candid, and therefore the only wise, way of research, to look +in each era of Christendom for the minds of culminating power in all +its brotherhood of nations; and, careless of local impulse, momentary +zeal, picturesque incident, or vaunted miracle, to fasten your +attention upon the force of character in the men, whom, over each +newly-converted race, Heaven visibly sets for its shepherds and kings, +to bring forth judgment unto victory. Of these I will name to you, as +messengers of God and masters of men, five monks and five kings; in +whose arms during the range of swiftly gainful centuries which we are +following, the life of the world lay as a nursling babe. Remember, +in their successive order,--of monks, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. +Martin, St. Benedict, and St. Gregory; of kings,--and your national +vanity may be surely enough appeased in recognizing two of them for +Saxon,--Theodoric, Charlemagne, Alfred, Canute, and the Confessor. I +will read three passages to you, out of the literal words of three +of these ten men, without saying whose they are, that you may compare +them with the best and most exalted you have read expressing the +philosophy, the religion, and the policy of to-day,--from which I +admit, with Dean Stanley, but with a far different meaning from his, +that they are indeed separate for evermore. I give you first, for an +example of Philosophy, a single sentence, containing all--so far as I +can myself discern--that it is possible for us to know, or well for us +to believe, respecting the world and its laws. + + +"OF GOD'S UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE, RULING ALL, AND COMPRISING ALL. + +"Wherefore the great and mighty God; He that made man a reasonable +creature of soul and body, and He that did neither let him pass +unpunished for his sin, nor yet excluded him from mercy; He that gave, +both unto good and bad, essence with the stones, power of production +with the trees, senses with the beasts of the field, and understanding +with the angels; He from whom is all being, beauty, form, and number, +weight, and measure; He from whom all nature, mean and excellent, +all seeds of form, all forms of seed, all motion, both of forms and +seeds, derive and have being; He that gave flesh the original beauty, +strength, propagation, form and shape, health and symmetry; He +that gave the unreasonable soul, sense, memory, and appetite; the +reasonable, besides these, fantasy, understanding, and will; He, +I say, having left neither heaven, nor earth, nor angel, nor man, +no, nor the most base and contemptible creature, neither the bird's +feather, nor the herb's flower, nor the tree's leaf, without the true +harmony of their parts, and peaceful concord of composition:--It is +in no way credible that He would leave the kingdoms of men and their +bondages and freedom loose and uncomprised in the laws of His eternal +providence."[5] + +[Footnote 5: From St. Augustine's 'Citie of God,' Book V., ch. xi. +(English trans., printed by George Eld, 1610.)] + +This for the philosophy.[6] Next, I take for example of the Religion +of our ancestors, a prayer, personally and passionately offered to the +Deity conceived as you have this moment heard. + +[Footnote 6: Here one of the "Stones of Westminster" was shown and +commented on.] + +"O Thou who art the Father of that Son which has awakened us, and +yet urgeth us out of the sleep of our sins, and exhorteth us that we +become Thine;" (note you that, for apprehension of what Redemption +means, against your base and cowardly modern notion of 'scaping +whipping. Not to take away the Punishment of Sin, but by His +Resurrection to raise us out of the sleep of sin itself! Compare the +legend at the feet of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah in the golden +Gospel of Charles le Chauve[7]:-- + + "HIC LEO SURGENDO PORTAS CONFREGIT AVERNI + QUI NUNQUAM DORMIT, NUSQUAM DORMITAT IN ÆVUM;") + +"to Thee, Lord, I pray, who art the supreme truth; for all the truth +that is, is truth from Thee. Thee I implore, O Lord, who art the +highest wisdom. Through Thee are wise all those that are so. Thou art +the true life, and through Thee are living all those that are so. Thou +art the supreme felicity, and from Thee all have become happy that +are so. Thou art the highest good, and from Thee all beauty springs. +Thou art the intellectual light, and from Thee man derives his +understanding. + +[Footnote 7: At Munich: the leaf has been exquisitely drawn and legend +communicated to me by Professor Westwood. It is written in gold on +purple.] + +"To Thee, O God, I call and speak. Hear, O hear me, Lord! for Thou art +my God and my Lord; my Father and my Creator; my ruler and my hope; my +wealth and my honour my house, my country, my salvation, and my life! +Hear, hear me, O Lord! Few of Thy servants comprehend Thee. But Thee +alone I _love_,[8] indeed, above all other things. Thee I seek: Thee +I will follow: Thee I am ready to serve. Under Thy power I desire to +abide, for Thou alone art the Sovereign of all. I pray Thee to command +me as Thou wilt." + +[Footnote 8: Meaning--not that he is of those few, but that, without +comprehending, at least, as a dog, he can love.] + +You see this prayer is simply the expansion of that clause of the +Lord's Prayer which most men eagerly omit from it,--_Fiat voluntas +tua_. In being so, it sums the Christian prayer of all ages. See now, +in the third place, how far this king's letter I am going to read to +you sums also Christian Policy. + + "Wherefore I render high thanks to Almighty God, for the happy + accomplishment of all the desires which I have set before me, + and for the satisfying of my every wish. + + "Now therefore, be it known to you all, that to Almighty God + Himself I have, on my knees, devoted my life, to the end that + in all things I may do justice, and with justice and rightness + rule the kingdoms and peoples under me; throughout everything + preserving an impartial judgment. If, heretofore, I have, + through being, as young men are, impulsive or careless, done + anything unjust, I mean, with God's help, to lose no time + in remedying my fault. To which end I call to witness my + counsellors, to whom I have entrusted the counsels of the + kingdom, and I charge them that by no means, be it through + fear of me, or the favour of any other powerful personage, to + consent to any injustice, or to suffer any to shoot out in any + part of my kingdom. I charge all my viscounts and those set + over my whole kingdom, as they wish to keep my friendship or + their own safety, to use no unjust force to any man, rich or + poor; let all men, noble and not noble, rich and poor alike, + be able to obtain their rights under the law's justice; and + from that law let there be no deviation, either to favour the + king or any powerful person, nor to raise money for me. I have + no need of money raised by what is unfair. I also would have + you know that I go now to make peace and firm treaty by the + counsels of all my subjects, with those nations and people who + wished, had it been possible for them to do so, which it was + not, to deprive us alike of kingdom and of life. God brought + down their strength to nought: and may He of His benign love + preserve us on our throne and in honour. Lastly, when I have + made peace with the neighbouring nations, and settled and + pacified all my dominions in the East, so that we may nowhere + have any war or enmity to fear, I mean to come to England this + summer, as soon as I can fit out vessels to sail. My reason, + however, in sending this letter first is to let all the people + of my kingdom share in the joy of my welfare: for as you + yourselves know, I have never spared myself or my labour; nor + will I ever do so, where my people are really in want of some + good that I can do them." + +What think you now, in candour and honour, you youth of the latter +days,--what think you of these types of the thought, devotion, and +government, which not in words, but pregnant and perpetual fact, +animated these which you have been accustomed to call the Dark Ages? + +The Philosophy is Augustine's; the Prayer Alfred's; and the Letter +Canute's. + +And, whatever you may feel respecting the beauty or wisdom of these +sayings, be assured of one thing above all, that they are sincere; and +of another, less often observed, that they are joyful. + +Be assured, in the first place, that they are sincere, The ideas of +diplomacy and priestcraft are of recent times. No false knight or +lying priest ever prospered, I believe, in any age, but certainly +not in the dark ones. Men prospered then, only in following +openly-declared purposes, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted +creeds. + +And that they did so prosper, in the degree in which they accepted +and proclaimed the Christian Gospel, may be seen by any of you in your +historical reading, however partial, if only you will admit the idea +that it could be so, and was likely to be so. You are all of you in +the habit of supposing that temporal prosperity is owing either to +worldly chance or to worldly prudence; and is never granted in any +visible relation to states of religious temper. Put that treacherous +doubt away from you, with disdain; take for basis of reasoning +the noble postulate, that the elements of Christian faith are +sound,--instead of the base one, that they are deceptive; reread the +great story of the world in that light, and see what a vividly real, +yet miraculous tenor, it will then bear to you. + +Their faith then, I tell you first, was sincere; I tell you secondly +that it was, in a degree few of us can now conceive, joyful. We +continually hear of the trials, sometimes of the victories, of +Faith,--but scarcely ever of its pleasures. Whereas, at this time, +you will find that the chief delight of all good men was in the +recognition of the goodness and wisdom of the Master, who had come +to dwell with them upon earth. It is almost impossible for you to +conceive the vividness of this sense in them; it is totally impossible +for you to conceive the comfort, peace, and force of it. In everything +that you now do or seek, you expose yourselves to countless miseries +of shame and disappointment, because in your doing you depend on +nothing but your own powers, and in seeking choose only your own +gratification. You cannot for the most part conceive of any work but +for your own interests, or the interests of others about whom you are +anxious in the same faithless way; everything about which passion is +excited in you or skill exerted is some object of material life, and +the idea of doing anything except for your own praise or profit has +narrowed itself into little more than the precentor's invitation to +the company with little voice and less practice to "sing to the praise +and glory of God." + +I have said that you cannot imagine the feeling of the energy of daily +life applied in the real meaning of those words. You cannot imagine +it, but you _can_ prove it. Are any of you willing, simply as a +philosophical experiment in the greatest of sciences, to adopt the +principles and feelings of these men of a thousand years ago for a +given time, say for a year? It cannot possibly do you any harm to try, +and you cannot possibly learn what is true in these things, without +trying. If after a year's experience of such method you find yourself +no happier than before, at least you will be able to support your +present opinions at once with more grace and more modesty; having +conceded the trial it asked for, to the opposite side. Nor in acting +temporarily on a faith you do not see to be reasonable, do you +compromise your own integrity more, than in conducting, under a +chemist's directions, an experiment of which he foretells inexplicable +consequences. And you need not doubt the power you possess over +your own minds to do this. Were faith not voluntary, it could not be +praised, and would not be rewarded. + +If you are minded thus to try, begin each day with Alfred's +prayer,--fiat voluntas tua; resolving that you will stand to it, and +that nothing that happens in the course of the day shall displease +you. Then set to any work you have in hand with the sifted and +purified resolution that ambition shall not mix with it, nor love of +gain, nor desire of pleasure more than is appointed for you; and that +no anxiety shall touch you as to its issue, nor any impatience nor +regret if it fail. Imagine that the thing is being done through you, +not by you; that the good of it may never be known, but that at least, +unless by your rebellion or foolishness, there can come no evil into +it, nor wrong chance to it. Resolve also with steady industry to do +what you can for the help of your country and its honour, and the +honour of its God; and that you will not join hands in its iniquity, +nor turn aside from its misery; and that in all you do and feel you +will look frankly for the immediate help and direction, and to your +own consciences, expressed approval, of God. Live thus, and believe, +and with swiftness of answer proportioned to the frankness of the +trust, most surely the God of hope will fill you with all joy and +peace in believing. + +But, if you will not do this, if you have not courage nor heart enough +to break away the fetters of earth, and take up the sensual bed of +it, and walk; if you say that you are _bound_ to win this thing, and +become the other thing, and that the wishes of your friends,--and +the interests of your family,--and the bias of your genius,--and the +expectations of your college,--and all the rest of the bow-wow-wow +of the wild dog-world, must be attended to, whether you like it +or no,--then, at least, for shame give up talk about being free or +independent creatures; recognize yourselves for slaves in whom the +thoughts are put in ward with their bodies, and their hearts manacled +with their hands: and then at least also, for shame, if you refuse to +believe that ever there were men who gave their souls to God,--know +and confess how surely there are those who sell them to His adversary. + + + + +LECTURE III. + +THE PLEASURES OF DEED. + +_ALFRED TO CŒUR DE LION._ + + +It was my endeavour, in the preceding lecture, to vindicate the +thoughts and arts of our Saxon ancestors from whatever scorn might lie +couched under the terms applied to them by Dean Stanley,--'fantastic' +and 'childish.' To-day my task must be carried forward, first, in +asserting the grace in fantasy, and the force in infancy, of the +English mind, before the Conquest, against the allegations contained +in the final passage of Dean Stanley's description of the first +founded Westminster; a passage which accepts and asserts, more +distinctly than any other equally brief statement I have met with, +the to my mind extremely disputable theory, that the Norman invasion +was in every respect a sanitary, moral, and intellectual blessing to +England, and that the arrow which slew her Harold was indeed the Arrow +of the Lord's deliverance. + +"The Abbey itself," says Dean Stanley,--"the chief work of the +Confessor's life,--was the portent of the mighty future. When Harold +stood beside his sister Edith, on the day of the dedication, and +signed his name with hers as witness to the Charter of the Abbey, he +might have seen that he was sealing his own doom, and preparing for +his own destruction. The solid pillars, the ponderous arches, the huge +edifice, with triple tower and sculptured stones and storied windows, +that arose in the place and in the midst of the humble wooden churches +and wattled tenements of the Saxon period, might have warned the +nobles who were present that the days of their rule were numbered, +and that the _avenging, civilizing, stimulating_ hand of another and a +mightier race was at work, which would change the whole face of their +language, their manners, their Church, and their commonwealth. The +Abbey, so far exceeding the demands of the _dull and stagnant_ minds +of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, was founded not only in faith, but in +hope: in the hope that England had yet a glorious career to run; that +the line of her sovereigns would not be broken, even when the race of +Alfred had ceased to reign." + +There must surely be some among my hearers who are startled, if +not offended, at being told in the terms which I emphasized in +this sentence, that the minds of our Saxon fathers were, although +fantastic, dull, and, although childish, stagnant; that farther, in +their fantastic stagnation; they were savage,--and in their innocent +dullness, criminal; so that the future character and fortune of +the race depended on the critical advent of the didactic and +disciplinarian Norman baron, at once to polish them, stimulate, and +chastise. + +Before I venture to say a word in distinct arrest of this judgment, +I will give you a chart, as clear as the facts observed in the two +previous lectures allow, of the state and prospects of the Saxons, +when this violent benediction of conquest happened to them: and +especially I would rescue, in the measure that justice bids, the +memory even of their Pagan religion from the general scorn in +which I used Carlyle's description of the idol of ancient Prussia +as universally exponent of the temper of Northern devotion. That +Triglaph, or Triglyph Idol, (derivation of Triglaph wholly unknown to +me--I use Triglyph only for my own handiest epithet), last set up, on +what is now St. Mary's hill in Brandenburg, in 1023, belonged indeed +to a people wonderfully like the Saxons,--geographically their close +neighbours,--in habits of life, and aspect of native land, scarcely +distinguishable from them,--in Carlyle's words, a "strong-boned, +iracund, herdsman and fisher people, highly averse to be interfered +with, in their religion especially, and inhabiting a moory flat +country, full of lakes and woods, but with plenty also of alluvial +mud, grassy, frugiferous, apt for the plough"--in all things like +the Saxons, except, as I read the matter, in that 'aversion to be +interfered with' which you modern English think an especially Saxon +character in you,--but which is, on the contrary, you will find on +examination, by no means Saxon; but only Wendisch, Czech, Serbic, +Sclavic,--other hard names I could easily find for it among the tribes +of that vehemently heathen old Preussen--"resolutely worshipful +of places of oak trees, of wooden or stone idols, of Bangputtis, +Patkullos, and I know not what diabolic dumb blocks." Your English +"dislike to be interfered with" is in absolute fellowship with these, +but only gathers itself in its places of Stalks, or chimneys, instead +of oak trees, round its idols of iron, instead of wood, diabolically +_vocal_ now; strident, and sibilant, instead of dumb. + +Far other than these, their neighbour Saxons, Jutes and +Angles!--tribes between whom the distinctions are of no moment +whatsoever, except that an English boy or girl may with grace remember +that 'Old England,' exactly and strictly so called, was the small +district in the extreme south of Denmark, totally with its islands +estimable at sixty miles square of dead flat land. Directly south +of it, the definitely so-called Saxons held the western shore of +Holstein, with the estuary of the Elbe, and the sea-mark isle, +Heligoland. But since the principal temple of Saxon worship was close +to Leipsic,[9] we may include under our general term, Saxons, the +inhabitants of the whole level district of North Germany, from the +Gulf of Flensburg to the Hartz; and, eastward, all the country watered +by the Elbe as far as Saxon Switzerland. + +[Footnote 9: Turner, vol. i., p. 223.] + +Of the character of this race I will not here speak at any length: +only note of it this essential point, that their religion was at +once more practical and more imaginative than that of the Norwegian +peninsula; the Norse religion being the conception rather of natural +than moral powers, but the Saxon, primarily of moral, as the lords +of natural--their central divine image, Irminsul,[10] holding the +standard of peace in her right hand, a balance in her left. Such a +religion may degenerate into mere slaughter and rapine; but it has the +making in it of the noblest men. + +[Footnote 10: Properly plural 'Images'--Irminsul and Irminsula.] + +More practical at all events, whether for good or evil, in this trust +in a future reward for courage and purity, than the mere Scandinavian +awe of existing Earth and Cloud, the Saxon religion was also more +imaginative, in its nearer conception of human feeling in divine +creatures. And when this wide hope and high reverence had distinct +objects of worship and prayer, offered to them by Christianity, the +Saxons easily became pure, passionate, and thoughtful Christians; +while the Normans, to the last, had the greatest difficulty in +apprehending the Christian teaching of the Franks, and still deny the +power of Christianity, even when they have become inveterate in its +form. + +Quite the deepest-thoughted creatures of the then animate world, it +seems to me, these Saxon ploughmen of the sand or the sea, with their +worshipped deity of Beauty and Justice, a red rose on her banner, for +best of gifts, and in her right hand, instead of a sword, a balance, +for due doom, without wrath,--of retribution in her left. Far +other than the Wends, though stubborn enough, they too, in battle +rank,--seven times rising from defeat against Charlemagne, and +unsubdued but by death--yet, by no means in that John Bull's manner +of yours, 'averse to be interfered with,' in their opinions, or their +religion. Eagerly docile on the contrary--joyfully reverent--instantly +and gratefully acceptant of whatever better insight or oversight a +stranger could bring them, of the things of God or man. + +And let me here ask you especially to take account of that origin of +the true bearing of the Flag of England, the Red Rose. Her own +madness defiled afterwards alike the white and red, into images of the +paleness, or the crimson, of death; but the Saxon Rose was the symbol +of heavenly beauty and peace. + +I told you in my first lecture that one swift requirement in our +school would be to produce a beautiful map of England, including +old Northumberland, giving the whole country, in its real geography, +between the Frith of Forth and Straits of Dover, and with only +six sites of habitation given, besides those of Edinburgh and +London,--namely, those of Canterbury and Winchester, York and +Lancaster, Holy Island and Melrose; the latter instead of Iona, +because, as we have seen, the influence of St. Columba expires +with the advance of Christianity, while that of Cuthbert of +Melrose connects itself with the most sacred feelings of the entire +Northumbrian kingdom, and Scottish border, down to the days of +Scott--wreathing also into its circle many of the legends of Arthur. +Will you forgive my connecting the personal memory of having once had +a wild rose gathered for me, in the glen of Thomas the Rhymer, by the +daughter of one of the few remaining Catholic houses of Scotland, with +the pleasure I have in reading to you this following true account +of the origin of the name of St. Cuthbert's birthplace;--the rather +because I owe it to friendship of the same date, with Mr. Cockburn +Muir, of Melrose. + +"To those who have eyes to read it," says Mr. Muir, "the name +'Melrose' is written full and fair, on the fair face of all this reach +of the valley. The name is anciently spelt Mailros, and later, Malros, +never Mulros; ('Mul' being the Celtic word taken to mean 'bare'). Ros +is Rose; the forms Meal or Mol imply great quantity or number. Thus +Malros means the place of many roses. + +"This is precisely the notable characteristic of the neighbourhood. +The wild rose is indigenous. There is no nook nor cranny, no bank nor +brae, which is not, in the time of roses, ablaze with their exuberant +loveliness. In gardens, the cultured rose is so prolific that it +spreads literally like a weed. But it is worth suggestion that the +word may be of the same stock as the Hebrew _rôsh_ (translated rôs +by the Septuagint), meaning _chief_, _principal_, while it is also +the name of _some_ flower; but of _which_ flower is now unknown. +Affinities of _rôsh_ are not far to seek; Sanskrit, _Raj_(a), +_Ra_(ja)_ni_; Latin, _Rex_, _Reg_(ina)." + +I leave it to Professor Max Muller to certify or correct for you the +details of Mr. Cockburn's research,[11]--this main head of it I can +positively confirm, that in old Scotch,--that of Bishop Douglas,--the +word 'Rois' stands alike for King, and Rose. + +[Footnote 11: I had not time to quote it fully in the lecture; and in +my ignorance, alike of Keltic and Hebrew, can only submit it here to +the reader's examination. "The ancient Cognizance of the town confirms +this etymology beyond doubt, with customary heraldic precision. The +shield bears a _Rose_; with a _Maul_, as the exact phonetic equivalent +for the expletive. If the herald had needed to express 'bare +promontory,' quite certainly he would have managed it somehow. +Not only this, the Earls of Haddington were first created Earls +of _Melrose_ (1619); and their Shield, quarterly, is charged, for +Melrose, in 2nd and 3rd (fesse wavy between) three _Roses_ gu. + +"Beyond this ground of certainty, we may indulge in a little excursus +into lingual affinities of wide range. The root _mol_ is clear enough. +It is of the same stock as the Greek _mála_, Latin _mul_(_tum_), and +Hebrew _m'la_. But, _Rose_? We call her Queen of Flowers, and since +before the Persian poets made much of her, she was everywhere _Regina +Florum_. Why should not the name mean simply the Queen, the Chief? +Now, so few who know Keltic know also Hebrew, and so few who know +Hebrew know also Keltic, that few know the surprising extent of the +affinity that exists--clear as day--between the Keltic and the Hebrew +vocabularies. That the word _Rose_ may be a case in point is not +hazardously speculative."] + +Summing now the features I have too shortly specified in the Saxon +character,--its imagination, its docility, its love of knowledge, +and its love of beauty, you will be prepared to accept my conclusive +statement, that they gave rise to a form of Christian faith which +appears to me, in the present state of my knowledge, one of the +purest and most intellectual ever attained in Christendom;--never yet +understood, partly because of the extreme rudeness of its expression +in the art of manuscripts, and partly because, on account of its very +purity, it sought no expression in architecture, being a religion +of daily life, and humble lodging. For these two practical reasons, +first;--and for this more weighty third, that the intellectual +character of it is at the same time most truly, as Dean Stanley +told you, childlike; showing itself in swiftness of imaginative +apprehension, and in the fearlessly candid application of great +principles to small things. Its character in this kind may be +instantly felt by any sympathetic and gentle person who will read +carefully the book I have already quoted to you, the Venerable Bede's +life of St. Cuthbert; and the intensity and sincerity of it in the +highest orders of the laity, by simply counting the members of Saxon +Royal families who ended their lives in monasteries. + +Now, at the very moment when this faith, innocence, and ingenuity were +on the point of springing up into their fruitage, comes the Northern +invasion; of the real character of which you can gain a far truer +estimate by studying Alfred's former resolute contest with and victory +over the native Norman in his paganism, than by your utmost endeavours +to conceive the character of the afterwards invading Norman, +disguised, but not changed, by Christianity. The Norman could not, in +the nature of him, become a _Christian_ at all; and he never did;--he +only became, at his best, the enemy of the Saracen. What he was, and +what alone he was capable of being, I will try to-day to explain. + +And here I must advise you that in all points of history relating +to the period between 800 and 1200, you will find M. Viollet le +Duc, incidentally throughout his 'Dictionary of Architecture,' the +best-informed, most intelligent, and most thoughtful of guides. +His knowledge of architecture, carried down into the most minutely +practical details,--(which are often the most significant), and +embracing, over the entire surface of France, the buildings even of +the most secluded villages; his artistic enthusiasm, balanced by the +acutest sagacity, and his patriotism, by the frankest candour, render +his analysis of history during that active and constructive period the +most valuable known to me, and certainly, in its field, exhaustive. +Of the later nationality his account is imperfect, owing to his +professional interest in the mere _science_ of architecture, and +comparative insensibility to the power of sculpture;--but of the +time with which we are now concerned, whatever he tells you must be +regarded with grateful attention. + +I introduce, therefore, the Normans to you, on their first entering +France, under his descriptive terms of them.[12] + +[Footnote 12: Article "Architecture," vol. i., p. 138.] + +"As soon as they were established on the soil, these barbarians became +the most hardy and active builders. Within the space of a century +and a half, they had covered the country on which they had definitely +landed, with religious, monastic, and civil edifices, of an extent and +richness then little common. It is difficult to suppose that they had +brought from Norway the elements of art,[13] but they were possessed +by a persisting and penetrating spirit; their brutal force did not +want for grandeur. Conquerors, they raised castles to assure their +domination; they soon recognized the Moral force of the clergy, and +endowed it richly. Eager always to attain their end, when once they +saw it, they _never left one of their enterprises unfinished_, and +in that they differed completely from the Southern inhabitants of +Gaul. Tenacious extremely, they were perhaps the only ones among the +barbarians established in France who had ideas of order; the only ones +who knew how to preserve their conquests, and compose a state. They +found the remains of the Carthaginian arts on the territory where they +planted themselves, they mingled with those their national genius, +positive, grand, and yet supple." + +[Footnote 13: They _had_ brought some, of a variously Charybdic, +Serpentine, and Diabolic character.--J.R.] + +Supple, 'Delié,'--capable of change and play of the mental muscle, in +the way that savages are not. I do not, myself, grant this suppleness +to the Norman, the less because another sentence of M. le Duc's, +occurring incidentally in his account of the archivolt, is of extreme +counter-significance, and wide application. "The Norman arch," he +says, "is _never derived from traditional classic forms_, but only +from mathematical arrangement of line." Yes; that is true: the Norman +arch is never derived from classic forms. The cathedral,[14] whose +aisles you saw or might have seen, yesterday, interpenetrated +with light, whose vaults you might have heard prolonging the sweet +divisions of majestic sound, would have been built in that stately +symmetry by Norman law, though never an arch at Rome had risen round +her field of blood,--though never her Sublician bridge had been +petrified by her Augustan pontifices. But the _decoration_, though not +the structure of those arches, they owed to another race,[15] whose +words they stole without understanding, though three centuries before, +the Saxon understood, and used, to express the most solemn majesty of +his Kinghood,-- + + "EGO, EDGAR, TOTIVS ALBIONIS"-- + +not Rex, that would have meant the King of Kent or Mercia, not of +England,--no, nor Imperator; that would have meant only the profane +power of Rome, but _BASILEVS_, meaning a King who reigned with sacred +authority given by Heaven and Christ. + +[Footnote 14: Of Oxford, during the afternoon service.] + +[Footnote 15: See the concluding section of the lecture.] + +With far meaner thoughts, both of themselves and their powers, the +Normans set themselves to build impregnable military walls, and +sublime religious ones, in the best possible practical ways; but +they no more made books of their church fronts than of their bastion +flanks; and cared, in the religion they accepted, neither for its +sentiments nor its promises, but only for its immediate results on +national order. + +As I read them, they were men wholly of this world, bent on doing the +most in it, and making the best of it that they could;--men, to their +death, of _Deed_, never pausing, changing, repenting, or anticipating, +more than the completed square, ὰνευ ψογου, of their battle, their +keep, and their cloister. Soldiers before and after everything, they +learned the lockings and bracings of their stones primarily in defence +against the battering-ram and the projectile, and esteemed the pure +circular arch for its distributed and equal strength more than for its +beauty. "I believe again," says M. le Duc,[16] "that the feudal castle +never arrived at its perfectness till after the Norman invasion, +and that this race of the North was the first to apply a defensive +system under unquestionable laws, soon followed by the nobles of the +Continent, after they had, at their own expense, learned their +superiority." + +[Footnote 16: Article "Château," vol. iii, p. 65.] + +The next sentence is a curious one. I pray your attention to it. "The +defensive system of the Norman is born of a profound sentiment of +_distrust_ and _cunning, foreign to the character of the Frank_." +You will find in all my previous notices of the French, continual +insistance upon their natural Franchise, and also, if you take the +least pains in analysis of their literature down to this day, that +the idea of falseness is to them indeed more hateful than to any other +European nation. To take a quite cardinal instance. If you compare +Lucian's and Shakespeare's Timon with Molière's Alceste, you +will find the Greek and English misanthropes dwell only on men's +_ingratitude_ to _themselves_, but Alceste, on their _falsehood to +each other_. + +Now hear M. le Duc farther: + +"The castles built between the tenth and twelfth centuries along the +Loire, Gironde, and Seine, that is to say, along the lines of the +Norman invasions, and in the neighbourhood of their possessions, have +a peculiar and uniform character which one finds neither in central +France, nor in Burgundy, nor can there be any need for us to throw +light on (_faire ressortir_) the superiority of the warrior spirit +of the Normans, during the later times of the Carlovingian epoch, +over the spirit of the chiefs of Frank descent, established on the +Gallo-Roman soil." There's a bit of honesty in a Frenchman for you! + +I have just said that they valued religion chiefly for its influence +of order in the present world: being in this, observe, as nearly as +may be the exact reverse of modern believers, or persons who profess +to be such,--of whom it may be generally alleged, too truly, that they +value religion with respect to their future bliss rather than their +present duty; and are therefore continually careless of its direct +commands, with easy excuse to themselves for disobedience to them. +Whereas the Norman, finding in his own heart an irresistible impulse +to action, and perceiving himself to be set, with entirely strong +body, brain, and will, in the midst of a weak and dissolute confusion +of all things, takes from the Bible instantly into his conscience +every exhortation to Do and to Govern; and becomes, with all his might +and understanding, a blunt and rough servant, knecht, or knight of +God, liable to much misapprehension, of course, as to the services +immediately required of him, but supposing, since the whole make of +him, outside and in, is a soldier's, that God meant him for a soldier, +and that he is to establish, by main force, the Christian faith and +works all over the world so far as he comprehends them; not merely +with the Mahometan indignation against spiritual error, but with a +sound and honest soul's dislike of material error, and resolution to +extinguish _that_, even if perchance found in the spiritual persons to +whom, in their office, he yet rendered total reverence. + +Which force and faith in him I may best illustrate by merely putting +together the broken paragraphs of Sismondi's account of the founding +of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily: virtually contemporary with the +conquest of England. + +"The Normans surpassed all the races of the west in their ardour for +pilgrimages. They would not, to go into the Holy Land, submit to the +monotony[17] of a long sea voyage--the rather that they found not +on the Mediterranean the storms or dangers they had rejoiced to +encounter on their own sea. They traversed by land the whole of +France and Italy, trusting to their swords to procure the necessary +subsistence,[18] if the charity of the faithful did not enough provide +for it with alms. The towns of Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta, and Bari, held +constant commerce with Syria; and frequent miracles, it was believed, +illustrated the Monte Cassino (St. Benedict again!) on the road of +Naples, and the Mount of Angels (Garganus) above Bari." (Querceta +Gargani--verily, laborant; _now_, et orant.) "The pilgrims wished +to visit during their journey the monasteries built on these two +mountains, and therefore nearly always, either going or returning to +the Holy Land, passed through Magna Græcia. + +[Footnote 17: I give Sismondi's idea as it stands, but there was no +question in the matter of monotony or of danger. The journey was made +on foot because it was the most laborious way, and the most humble.] + +[Footnote 18: See farther on, p. 110, the analogies with English +arrangements of the same kind.] + +"In one of the earliest years of the eleventh century, about forty +of these religious travellers, having returned from the Holy Land, +chanced to have met together in Salerno at the moment when a small +Saracen fleet came to insult the town, and demand of it a military +contribution. The inhabitants of South Italy, at this time, abandoned +to the delights of their enchanted climate, had lost nearly all +military courage. The Salernitani saw with astonishment forty Norman +knights, after having demanded horses and arms from the Prince of +Salerno, order the gates of the town to be opened, charge the Saracens +fearlessly, and put them to flight. The Salernitani followed, however, +the example given them by these brave warriors, and those of the +Mussulmans who escaped their swords were forced to re-embark in all +haste. + +"The Prince of Salerno, Guaimar III., tried in vain to keep the +warrior-pilgrims at his court: but at his solicitation other companies +established themselves on the rocks of Salerno and Amalfi, until, +on Christmas Day, 1041, (exactly a quarter of a century before the +coronation here at Westminster of the Conqueror,) they gathered +their scattered forces at Aversa,[19] twelve groups of them +under twelve chosen counts, and all under the Lombard Ardoin, as +commander-in-chief." Be so good as to note that,--a marvellous +key-note of historical fact about the unjesting Lombards, I cannot +find the total Norman number: the chief contingent, under William +of the Iron Arm, the son of Tancred of Hauteville, was only of three +hundred knights; the Count of Aversa's troop, of the same number, is +named as an important part of the little army--admit it for ten times +Tancred's, three thousand men in all. At Aversa, these three thousand +men form, coolly on Christmas Day, 1041, the design of--well, I told +you they didn't _design_ much, only, now we're here, we may as well, +while we're about it,--overthrow the Greek empire! That was their +little game!--a Christmas mumming to purpose. The following year, the +whole of Apulia was divided among them. + +[Footnote 19: In Lombardy, south of Pavia.] + +I will not spoil, by abstracting, the magnificent following history +of Robert Guiscard, the most wonderful soldier of that or any other +time: I leave you to finish it for yourselves, only asking you to read +together with it, the sketch, in Turner's history of the Anglo-Saxons, +of Alfred's long previous war with the Norman Hasting; pointing out to +you for foci of character in each contest, the culminating incidents +of naval battle. In Guiscard's struggle with the Greeks, he encounters +for their chief naval force the Venetian fleet under the Doge Domenico +Selvo. The Venetians are at this moment undoubted masters in all naval +warfare; the Normans are worsted easily the first day,--the second +day, fighting harder, they are defeated again, and so disastrously +that the Venetian Doge takes no precautions against them on the third +day, thinking them utterly disabled. Guiscard attacks him again on the +third day, with the mere wreck of his own ships, and defeats the tired +and amazed Italians finally! + +The sea-fight between Alfred's ships and those of Hasting, ought to be +still more memorable to us. Alfred, as I noticed in last lecture, had +built war ships nearly twice as long as the Normans', swifter, and +steadier on the waves. Six Norman ships were ravaging the Isle of +Wight; Alfred sent nine of his own to take them. The King's fleet +found the Northmen's embayed, and three of them aground. The three +others _engaged Alfred's nine, twice their size_; two of the Viking +ships were taken, but the third escaped, with only five men! A nation +which verily took its pleasures in its Deeds. + +But before I can illustrate farther either their deeds or their +religion, I must for an instant meet the objection which I suppose the +extreme probity of the nineteenth century must feel acutely against +these men,--that they all lived by thieving. + +Without venturing to allude to the _raison d'être_ of the present +French and English Stock Exchanges, I will merely ask any of you here, +whether of Saxon or Norman blood, to define for himself what he means +by the "possession of India." I have no doubt that you all wish to +keep India in order, and in like manner I have assured you that Duke +William wished to keep England in order. If you will read the lecture +on the life of Sir Herbert Edwardes, which I hope to give in London +after finishing this course,[20] you will see how a Christian British +officer can, and does, verily, and with his whole heart, keep in order +such part of India as may be entrusted to him, and in so doing, secure +our Empire. But the silent feeling and practice of the nation about +India is based on quite other motives than Sir Herbert's. Every +mutiny, every danger, every terror, and every crime, occurring under, +or paralyzing, our Indian legislation, arises directly out of our +national desire to live on the loot of India, and the notion always +entertained by English young gentlemen and ladies of good position, +falling in love with each other without immediate prospect of +establishment in Belgrave Square, that they can find in India, +instantly on landing, a bungalow ready furnished with the +loveliest fans, china, and shawls,--ices and sherbet at +command,--four-and-twenty slaves succeeding each other hourly to +swing the punkah, and a regiment with a beautiful band to "keep order" +outside, all round the house. + +[Footnote 20: This was prevented by the necessity for the +re-arrangement of my terminal Oxford lectures: I am now preparing that +on Sir Herbert for publication in a somewhat expanded form.] + +Entreating your pardon for what may seem rude in these personal +remarks, I will further entreat you to read my account of the death +of Cœur de Lion in the third number of 'Fors Clavigera'--and also the +scenes in 'Ivanhoe' between Cœur de Lion and Locksley; and commending +these few passages to your quiet consideration, I proceed to give you +another anecdote or two of the Normans in Italy, twelve years later +than those given above, and, therefore, only thirteen years before the +battle of Hastings. + +Their division of South Italy among them especially, and their defeat +of Venice, had alarmed everybody considerably,--especially the Pope, +Leo IX., who did not understand this manifestation of their piety. He +sent to Henry III. of Germany, to whom he owed his Popedom, for some +German knights, and got five hundred spears; gathered out of all +Apulia, Campania, and the March of Ancona, what Greek and Latin troops +were to be had, to join his own army of the patrimony of St. Peter; +and the holy Pontiff, with this numerous army, but no general, began +the campaign by a pilgrimage with all his troops to Monte Cassino, in +order to obtain, if it might be, St. Benedict for general. + +Against the Pope's collected masses, with St. Benedict, their +contemplative but at first inactive general, stood the little army of +Normans,--certainly not more than the third of their number--but with +Robert Guiscard for captain, and under him his brother, Humphrey of +Hauteville, and Richard of Aversa. Not in fear, but in devotion, they +prayed the Pope 'avec instance,'--to say on what conditions they could +appease his anger, and live in peace under him. But the Pope would +hear of nothing but their evacuation of Italy. Whereupon, they had to +settle the question in the Norman manner. + +The two armies met in front of Civitella, on Waterloo day, 18th June, +thirteen years, as I said, before the battle of Hastings. The German +knights were the heart of the Pope's army, but they were only five +hundred; the Normans surrounded _them_ first, and slew them, nearly +to a man--and then made extremely short work with the Italians and +Greeks. The Pope, with the wreck of them, fled into Civitella; but the +townspeople dared not defend their walls, and thrust the Pope himself +out of their gates--to meet, alone, the Norman army. + +He met it, _not_ alone, St. Benedict being with him now, when he had +no longer the strength of man to trust in. + +The Normans, as they approached him, threw themselves on their +knees,--covered themselves with dust, and implored his pardon and his +blessing. + +There's a bit of poetry--if you like,--but a piece of steel-clad fact +also, compared to which the battle of Hastings and Waterloo both, were +mere boys' squabbles. + +You don't suppose, you British schoolboys, that _you_ overthrew +Napoleon--_you?_ Your prime Minister folded up the map of Europe at +the thought of him. Not you, but the snows of Heaven, and the hand of +Him who dasheth in pieces with a rod of iron. He casteth forth His ice +like morsels,--who can stand before His cold? + +But, so far as you have indeed the right to trust in the courage of +your own hearts, remember also--it is not in Norman nor Saxon, but in +Celtic race that your real strength lies. The battles both of Waterloo +and Alma were won by Irish and Scots--by the terrible Scots Greys, and +by Sir Colin's Highlanders. Your 'thin red line,' was kept steady at +Alma only by Colonel Yea's swearing at them. + +But the old Pope, alone against a Norman army, wanted nobody to swear +at him. Steady enough he, having somebody to bless him, instead of +swear at him. St. Benedict, namely; whose (memory shall we say?) +helped him now at his pinch in a singular manner,--for the Normans, +having got the old man's forgiveness, vowed themselves his feudal +servants; and for seven centuries afterwards the whole kingdom of +Naples remained a fief of St. Peter,--won for him thus by a single +man, unarmed, against three thousand Norman knights, captained by +Robert Guiscard! + +A day of deeds, gentlemen, to some purpose,--_that_ 18th of June, +anyhow. + +Here, in the historical account of Norman character, I must +unwillingly stop for to-day--because, as you choose to spend your +University money in building ball-rooms instead of lecture-rooms, I +dare not keep you much longer in this black hole, with its nineteenth +century ventilation. I try your patience--and tax your breath--only +for a few minutes more in drawing the necessary corollaries respecting +Norman art.[21] + +[Footnote 21: Given at much greater length in the lecture, with +diagrams from Iffley and Poictiers, without which the text of them +would be unintelligible. The sum of what I said was a strong assertion +of the incapacity of the Normans for any but the rudest and most +grotesque sculpture,--Poictiers being, on the contrary, examined and +praised as Gallic-French--not Norman.] + +How far the existing British nation owes its military prowess to +the blood of Normandy and Anjou, I have never examined its genealogy +enough to tell you;--but this I can tell you positively, that whatever +constitutional order or personal valour the Normans enforced or taught +among the nations they conquered, they did not at first attempt with +their own hands to rival them in any of their finer arts, but used +both Greek and Saxon sculptors, either as slaves, or hired workmen, +and more or less therefore chilled and degraded the hearts of the men +thus set to servile, or at best, hireling, labour. + +In 1874, I went to see Etna, Scylla, Charybdis, and the tombs of the +Norman Kings at Palermo; surprised, as you may imagine, to find that +there wasn't a stroke nor a notion of Norman work in them. They are, +every atom, done by Greeks, and are as pure Greek as the temple of +Ægina; but more rich and refined. I drew with accurate care, and +with measured profile of every moulding, the tomb built for Roger +II. (afterwards Frederick II. was laid in its dark porphyry). And it +is a perfect type of the Greek-Christian form of tomb--temple over +sarcophagus, in which the pediments rise gradually, as time goes on, +into acute angles--get pierced in the gable with foils, and their +sculptures thrown outside on their flanks, and become at last in the +fourteenth century, the tombs of Verona. But what is the meaning of +the Normans employing these Greek slaves for their work in Sicily +(within thirty miles of the field of Himera)? Well, the main meaning +is that though the Normans could build, they couldn't carve, and were +wise enough not to try to, when they couldn't, as you do now all over +this intensely comic and tragic town: but, here in England, they only +employed the Saxon with a grudge, and therefore being more and more +driven to use barren mouldings without sculpture, gradually developed +the structural forms of archivolt, which breaking into the lancet, +brighten and balance themselves into the symmetry of early English +Gothic. + +But even for the first decoration of the archivolt itself, they were +probably indebted to the Greeks in a degree I never apprehended, until +by pure happy chance, a friend gave me the clue to it just as I was +writing the last pages of this lecture. + +In the generalization of ornament attempted in the first volume of +the 'Stones of Venice,' I supposed the Norman _zigzag_ (and with some +practical truth) to be derived from the angular notches with which the +blow of an axe can most easily decorate, or at least vary, the solid +edge of a square fillet. My good friend, and supporter, and for some +time back the single trustee of St. George's Guild, Mr. George Baker, +having come to Oxford on Guild business, I happened to show him the +photographs of the front of Iffley church, which had been collected +for this lecture; and immediately afterwards, in taking him through +the schools, stopped to show him the Athena of Ægina as one of +the most important of the Greek examples lately obtained for us by +Professor Richmond. The statue is (rightly) so placed that in looking +up to it, the plait of hair across the forehead is seen in a steeply +curved arch. "Why," says Mr. Baker, pointing to it, "there's the +Norman arch of Iffley." Sure enough, there it exactly was: and a +moment's reflection showed me how easily, and with what instinctive +fitness, the Norman builders, looking to the Greeks as their absolute +masters in sculpture, and recognizing also, during the Crusades, the +hieroglyphic use of the zigzag, for water, by the Egyptians, might +have adopted this easily attained decoration at once as the sign of +the element over which they reigned, and of the power of the Greek +goddess who ruled both it and them. + +I do not in the least press your acceptance of such a tradition, +nor for the rest, do I care myself whence any method of ornament is +derived, if only, as a stranger, you bid it reverent welcome. But much +probability is added to the conjecture by the indisputable transition +of the Greek egg and arrow moulding into the floral cornices of Saxon +and other twelfth century cathedrals in Central France. These and +other such transitions and exaltations I will give you the materials +to study at your leisure, after illustrating in my next lecture the +forces of religious imagination by which all that was most beautiful +in them was inspired. + + + + +LECTURE IV. + +(_NOV. 8, 1884._) + +THE PLEASURES OF FANCY. + +_CŒUR DE LION TO ELIZABETH_ + +(1189 TO 1558). + + +In using the word "Fancy," for the mental faculties of which I am to +speak to-day, I trust you, at your leisure, to read the Introductory +Note to the second volume of 'Modern Painters' in the small new +edition, which gives sufficient reason for practically including +under the single term Fancy, or Fantasy, all the energies of the +Imagination,--in the terms of the last sentence of that preface,--"the +healthy, voluntary, and necessary,[22] action of the highest powers +of the human mind, on subjects properly demanding and justifying their +exertion." + +[Footnote 22: Meaning that all healthy minds possess imagination, and +use it at will, under fixed laws of truthful perception and memory.] + +I must farther ask you to read, in the same volume, the close of the +chapter 'Of Imagination Penetrative,' pp. 120 to 130, of which the +gist, which I must give as the first principle from which we start in +our to-day's inquiry, is that "Imagination, rightly so called, has no +food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is for +ever looking under masks, and burning up mists; no fairness of form, +no majesty of seeming, will satisfy it; the first condition of its +existence is incapability of being deceived."[23] In that sentence, +which is a part, and a very valuable part, of the original book, I +still adopted and used unnecessarily the ordinary distinction between +Fancy and Imagination--Fancy concerned with lighter things, creating +fairies or centaurs, and Imagination creating men; and I was in +the habit always of implying by the meaner word Fancy, a voluntary +Fallacy, as Wordsworth does in those lines to his wife, making of her +a mere lay figure for the drapery of his fancy-- + + Such if thou wert, in all men's view + An universal show, + What would my Fancy have to do, + My feelings to bestow. + +But you will at once understand the higher and more universal power +which I now wish you to understand by the Fancy, including all +imaginative energy, correcting these lines of Wordsworth's to a more +worthy description of a true lover's happiness. When a boy falls in +love with a girl, you say he has taken a fancy for her; but if he love +her rightly, that is to say for her noble qualities, you ought to say +he has taken an imagination for her; for then he is endued with the +new light of love which sees and tells of the mind in her,--and this +neither falsely nor vainly. His love does not bestow, it discovers, +what is indeed most precious in his mistress, and most needful for +his own life and happiness. Day by day, as he loves her better, he +discerns her more truly; and it is only the truth of his love that +does so. Falsehood to her, would at once disenchant and blind him. + +[Footnote 23: Vide pp. 124-5.] + +In my first lecture of this year, I pointed out to you with what +extreme simplicity and reality the Christian faith must have presented +itself to the Northern Pagan's mind, in its distinction from +his former confused and monstrous mythology. It was also in that +simplicity and tangible reality of conception, that this Faith became +to them, and to the other savage nations of Europe, Tutress of the +real power of their imagination and it became so, only in so far as +it indeed conveyed to them statements which, however in some respects +mysterious, were yet most literally and brightly _true_, as compared +with their former conceptions. So that while the blind cunning of +the savage had produced only misshapen logs or scrawls; the _seeing_ +imagination of the Christian painters created, for them and for all +the world, the perfect types of the Virgin and of her Son; which +became, indeed, Divine, by being, with the most affectionate truth, +human. + +And the association of this truth in loving conception, with the +general honesty and truth of the character, is again conclusively +shown in the feelings of the lover to his mistress; which we recognize +as first reaching their height in the days of chivalry. The truth and +faith of the lover, and his piety to Heaven, are the foundation, in +his character, of all the joy in imagination which he can receive +from the conception of his lady's--now no more mortal--beauty. She is +indeed transfigured before him; but the truth of the transfiguration +is greater than that of the lightless aspect she bears to others. When +therefore, in my next lecture, I speak of the Pleasures of Truth, +as distinct from those of the Imagination,--if either the limits +or clearness of brief title had permitted me, I should have said, +_untransfigured_ truth;--meaning on the one side, truth which we have +not heart enough to transfigure, and on the other, truth of the lower +kind which is incapable of transfiguration. One may look at a girl +till one believes she is an angel; because, in the best of her, she +_is_ one; but one can't look at a cockchafer till one believes it is a +girl. + +With this warning of the connection which exists between the honest +intellect and the healthy imagination; and using henceforward the +shorter word 'Fancy' for all inventive vision, I proceed to consider +with you the meaning and consequences of the frank and eager exertion +of the fancy on Religious subjects, between the twelfth and sixteenth +centuries. + +Its first, and admittedly most questionable action, the promotion +of the group of martyr saints of the third century to thrones of +uncontested dominion in heaven, had better be distinctly understood, +before we debate of it, either with the Iconoclast or the Rationalist. +This apotheosis by the Imagination is the subject of my present +lecture. To-day I only describe it,--in my next lecture I will discuss +it. + +Observe, however, that in giving such a history of the mental +constitution of nascent Christianity, we have to deal with, and +carefully to distinguish, two entirely different orders in its +accepted hierarchy:--one, scarcely founded at all on personal +characters or acts, but mythic or symbolic; often merely the revival, +the baptized resuscitation of a Pagan deity, or the personified +omnipresence of a Christian virtue;--the other, a senate of Patres +Conscripti of real persons, great in genius, and perfect, humanly +speaking, in holiness; who by their personal force and inspired +wisdom, wrought the plastic body of the Church into such noble form +as in each of their epochs it was able to receive; and on the right +understanding of whose lives, nor less of the affectionate traditions +which magnified and illumined their memories, must absolutely depend +the value of every estimate we form, whether of the nature of the +Christian Church herself, or of the directness of spiritual agency by +which she was guided.[24] + +[Footnote 24: If the reader believes in no spiritual agency, still his +understanding of the first letters in the Alphabet of History depends +on his comprehending rightly the tempers of the people who _did_.] + +An important distinction, therefore, is to be noted at the outset, +in the objects of this Apotheosis, according as they are, or are not, +real persons. + +Of these two great orders of Saints, the first; or mythic, +belongs--speaking broadly--to the southern or Greek Church alone. + +The Gothic Christians, once detached from the worship of Odin and +Thor, abjure from their hearts all trust in the elements, and all +worship of ideas. They will have their Saints in flesh and blood, +their Angels in plume and armour; and nothing incorporeal or +invisible. In all the Religious sculpture beside Loire and Seine, you +will not find either of the great rivers personified; the dress of the +highest seraph is of true steel or sound broadcloth, neither flecked +by hail, nor fringed by thunder; and while the ideal Charity of Giotto +at Padua presents her heart in her hand to God, and tramples at the +same instant on bags of gold, the treasures of the world, and gives +only corn and flowers; that on the west porch of Amiens is content to +clothe a beggar with a piece of the staple manufacture of the town. + +On the contrary, it is nearly impossible to find in the imagery of +the Greek Church, under the former exercise of the Imagination, a +representation either of man or beast which purports to represent +_only_ the person, or the brute. Every mortal creature stands for an +Immortal Intelligence or Influence: a Lamb means an Apostle, a Lion an +Evangelist, an Angel the Eternal justice or benevolence; and the most +historical and indubitable of Saints are compelled to set forth, in +their vulgarly apparent persons, a Platonic myth or an Athanasian +article. + +I therefore take note first of the mythic saints in succession, whom +this treatment of them by the Byzantine Church made afterwards the +favourite idols of all Christendom. + +I. The most mythic is of course St. Sophia; the shade of the Greek +Athena, passing into the 'Wisdom' of the Jewish Proverbs and Psalms, +and the Apocryphal 'Wisdom of Solomon.' She always remains understood +as a personification only; and has no direct influence on the mind +of the unlearned multitude of Western Christendom, except as a +godmother,--in which kindly function she is more and more accepted as +times go on; her healthy influence being perhaps greater over sweet +vicars' daughters in Wakefield--when Wakefield _was_,--than over the +prudentest of the rarely prudent Empresses of Byzantium. + +II. Of St. Catharine of Egypt there are vestiges of personal tradition +which may perhaps permit the supposition of her having really once +existed, as a very lovely, witty, proud, and 'fanciful' girl. She +afterwards becomes the Christian type of the Bride, in the 'Song of +Solomon,' involved with an ideal of all that is purest in the life of +a nun, and brightest in the death of a martyr. It is scarcely possible +to overrate the influence of the conceptions formed of her, in +ennobling the sentiments of Christian women of the higher orders;--to +their practical common sense, as the mistresses of a household or a +nation, her example may have been less conducive. + +III. St. Barbara, also an Egyptian, and St. Catharine's contemporary, +though the most practical of the mythic saints, is also, after St. +Sophia, the least corporeal: she vanishes far away into the 'Inclusa +Danae,' and her "Tunis aenea" becomes a myth of Christian safety, of +which the Scriptural significance may be enough felt by merely looking +out the texts under the word "Tower," in your concordance; and whose +effectual power, in the fortitudes alike of matter and spirit, was in +all probability made impressive enough to all Christendom, both by +the fortifications and persecutions of Diocletian. I have endeavoured +to mark her general relations to St. Sophia in the little imaginary +dialogue between them, given in the eighth lecture of the 'Ethics of +the Dust.' + +Afterwards, as Gothic architecture becomes dominant, and at last +beyond question the most wonderful of all temple-building, St. +Barbara's Tower is, of course, its perfected symbol and utmost +achievement; and whether in the coronets of countless battlements worn +on the brows of the noblest cities, or in the Lombard bell-tower on +the mountains, and the English spire on Sarum plain, the geometric +majesty of the Egyptian maid became glorious in harmony of defence, +and sacred with precision of symbol. + +As the buildings which showed her utmost skill were chiefly exposed +to lightning, she is invoked in defence from it; and our petition +in the Litany, against sudden death, was written originally to her. +The blasphemous corruptions of her into a patroness of cannon and +gunpowder, are among the most ludicrous, (because precisely contrary +to the original tradition,) as well as the most deadly, insolences and +stupidities of Renaissance Art. + +IV. St. Margaret of Antioch was a shepherdess; the St. Geneviève of +the East; the type of feminine gentleness and simplicity. Traditions +of the resurrection of Alcestis perhaps mingle in those of her contest +with the dragon; but at all events, she differs from the other three +great mythic saints, in expressing the soul's victory over temptation +or affliction, by Christ's miraculous help, and without any special +power of its own. She is the saint of the meek and of the poor; her +virtue and her victory are those of all gracious and lowly womanhood; +and her memory is consecrated among the gentle households of Europe; +no other name, except those of Jeanne and Jeanie, seems so gifted with +a baptismal fairy power of giving grace and peace. + +I must be forgiven for thinking, even on this canonical ground, +not only of Jeanie Deans, and Margaret of Branksome; but of +Meg--Merrilies. My readers will, I fear, choose rather to think of the +more doubtful victory over the Dragon, won by the great Margaret of +German literature. + +V. With much more clearness and historic comfort we may approach the +shrine of St. Cecilia; and even on the most prosaic and realistic +minds--such as my own--a visit to her house in Rome has a comforting +and establishing effect, which reminds one of the carter in 'Harry +and Lucy,' who is convinced of the truth of a plaustral catastrophe at +first incredible to him, as soon as he hears the name of the hill on +which it happened. The ruling conception of her is deepened gradually +by the enlarged study of Religious music; and is at its best and +highest in the thirteenth century, when she rather resists than +complies with the already tempting and distracting powers of sound; +and we are told that "cantantibus organis, Cecilia virgo in corde suo +soli Domino decantabat, dicens, 'Fiat, Domine, cor meum et corpus meum +immaculatum, ut non confundar.'" + +("While the instruments played, Cecilia the virgin sang in her +heart only to the Lord, saying, Oh Lord, be my heart and body made +stainless, that I be not confounded.") + +This sentence occurs in my great Service-book of the convent of +Beau-pré, written in 1290, and it is illustrated with a miniature of +Cecilia sitting silent at a banquet, where all manner of musicians are +playing. I need not point out to you how the law, not of sacred music +only, so called, but of _all_ music, is determined by this sentence; +which means in effect that unless music exalt and purify, it is not +under St. Cecilia's ordinance, and it is not, virtually, music at all. + +Her confessed power at last expires amidst a hubbub of odes and +sonatas; and I suppose her presence at a Morning Popular is as little +anticipated as desired. Unconfessed, she is of all the mythic saints +for ever the greatest; and the child in its nurse's arms, and every +tender and gentle spirit which resolves to purify in itself,--as the +eye for seeing, so the ear for hearing,--may still, whether behind the +Temple veil,[25] or at the fireside, and by the wayside, hear Cecilia +sing. + + [Footnote 25:"But, standing in the lowest place, + And mingled with the work-day crowd, + A poor man looks, with lifted face, + And hears the Angels cry aloud. + + "He seeks not how each instant flies, + One moment is Eternity; + His spirit with the Angels cries + To Thee, to Thee, continually. + + "What if, Isaiah-like, he know + His heart be weak, his lips unclean, + His nature vile, his office low, + His dwelling and his people mean? + + "To such the Angels spake of old-- + To such of yore, the glory came; + These altar fires can ne'er grow cold: + Then be it his, that cleansing flame." + +These verses, part of a very lovely poem, "To Thee all Angels cry +aloud," in the 'Monthly Packet' for September 1873, are only signed +'Veritas.' The volume for that year (the 16th) is well worth getting, +for the sake of the admirable papers in it by Miss Sewell, on +questions of the day; by Miss A.C. Owen, on Christian Art; and the +unsigned Cameos from English History.] + +It would delay me too long just now to trace in specialty farther the +functions of the mythic, or, as in another sense they may be truly +called, the universal, Saints: the next greatest of them, St. Ursula, +is essentially British,--and you will find enough about her in +'Fors Clavigera'; the others, I will simply give you in entirely +authoritative order from the St. Louis' Psalter, as he read and +thought of them. + +The proper Service-book of the thirteenth century consists first +of the pure Psalter; then of certain essential passages of the Old +Testament--invariably the Song of Miriam at the Red Sea and the last +song of Moses;--ordinarily also the 12th of Isaiah and the prayer of +Habakkuk; while St. Louis' Psalter has also the prayer of Hannah, +and that of Hezekiah (Isaiah xxxviii. 10-20); the Song of the Three +Children; then the Benedictus, the Magnificat, and the Nunc Dimittis. +Then follows the Athanasian Creed; and then, as in all Psalters after +their chosen Scripture passages, the collects to the Virgin, the +Te Deum, and Service to Christ, beginning with the Psalm 'The Lord +reigneth'; and then the collects to the greater individual saints, +closing with the Litany, or constant prayer for mercy to Christ, and +all saints; of whom the order is,--Archangels, Patriarchs, Apostles, +Disciples, Innocents, Martyrs, Confessors, Monks, and Virgins. Of +women the Magdalen _always_ leads; St. Mary of Egypt usually follows, +but _may_ be the last. Then the order varies in every place, and +prayer-book, no recognizable supremacy being traceable; except in +relation to the place, or person, for whom the book was written. In +St. Louis', St. Geneviève (the last saint to whom he prayed on his +death-bed) follows the two Maries; then come--memorable for you best, +as easiest, in this six-foil group,--Saints Catharine, Margaret, and +Scolastica, Agatha, Cecilia, and Agnes; and then ten more, whom +you may learn or not as you like: I note them now only for future +reference,--more lively and easy for your learning,--by their French +names, + +Felicité, + +Colombe, + +Christine, + + * * * * * + +Aurée, Honorine, + + * * * * * + +Radegonde, + +Praxède, + +Euphémie, + + * * * * * + +Bathilde, Eugénie. + +Such was the system of Theology into which the Imaginative Religion of +Europe was crystallized, by the growth of its own best faculties, and +the influence of all accessible and credible authorities, during the +period between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries inclusive. Its +spiritual power is completely represented by the angelic and apostolic +dynasties, and the women-saints in Paradise; for of the men-saints, +beneath the apostles and prophets, none but St. Christopher, St. +Nicholas, St. Anthony, St. James, and St. George, attained anything +like the influence of Catharine or Cecilia; for the very curious +reason, that the men-saints were much more true, real, and numerous. +St. Martin was reverenced all over Europe, but definitely, as a man, +and the Bishop of Tours. So St. Ambrose at Milan, and St. Gregory at +Rome, and hundreds of good men more, all over the world; while the +really good women remained, though not rare, inconspicuous. The +virtues of French Clotilde, and Swiss Berthe, were painfully borne +down in the balance of visible judgment, by the guilt of the Gonerils, +Regans, and Lady Macbeths, whose spectral procession closes only +with the figure of Eleanor in Woodstock maze; and in dearth of +nearer objects, the daily brighter powers of fancy dwelt with +more concentrated devotion on the stainless ideals of the earlier +maid-martyrs. And observe, even the loftier fame of the men-saints +above named, as compared with the rest, depends on precisely the same +character of indefinite personality; and on the representation, by +each of them, of a moral idea which may be embodied and painted in +a miraculous legend; credible, as history, even then, only to the +vulgar; but powerful over them, nevertheless, exactly in proportion +to the degree in which it can be pictured and fancied as a living +creature. Consider even yet in these days of mechanism, how the +dullest John Bull cannot with perfect complacency adore _himself_, +except under the figure of Britannia or the British Lion; and how the +existence of the popular jest-book, which might have seemed secure in +its necessity to our weekly recreation, is yet virtually centred on +the imaginary animation of a puppet, and the imaginary elevation to +reason of a dog. But in the Middle Ages, this action of the Fancy, +now distorted and despised, was the happy and sacred tutress of every +faculty of the body and soul; and the works and thoughts of art, the +joys and toils of men, rose and flowed on in the bright air of it, +with the aspiration of a flame, and the beneficence of a fountain. + +And now, in the rest of my lecture, I had intended to give you a broad +summary of the rise and fall of English art, born under this code of +theology, and this enthusiasm of duty;--of its rise, from the rude +vaults of Westminster, to the finished majesty of Wells;--and of its +fall, from that brief hour of the thirteenth century, through the wars +of the Bolingbroke, and the pride of the Tudor, and the lust of the +Stewart, to expire under the mocking snarl and ruthless blow of the +Puritan. But you know that I have always, in my most serious work, +allowed myself to be influenced by those Chances, as they are now +called,--but to my own feeling and belief, guidances, and even, if +rightly understood, commands,--which, as far as I have read history, +the best and sincerest men think providential. Had this lecture been +on common principles of art, I should have finished it as I intended, +without fear of its being the worse for my consistency. But it deals, +on the contrary, with a subject, respecting which every sentence I +write, or speak, is of importance in its issue; and I allowed, as you +heard, the momentary observation of a friend, to give an entirely new +cast to the close of my last lecture. Much more, I feel it incumbent +upon me in this one, to take advantage of the most opportune help, +though in an unexpected direction, given me by my constant tutor, +Professor Westwood. I went to dine with him, a day or two ago, +mainly--being neither of us, I am thankful to say, blue-ribanded--to +drink his health on his recovery from his recent accident. Whereupon +he gave me a feast of good talk, old wine, and purple manuscripts. And +having had as much of all as I could well carry, just as it came to +the good-night, out he brings, for a finish, this leaf of manuscript +in my hand, which he has lent me to show you,--a leaf of the Bible of +Charles the Bald! + +A leaf of it, at least, as far as you or I could tell, for Professor +Westwood's copy is just as good, in all the parts finished, as the +original: and, for all practical purpose, I show you here in my hand +a leaf of the Bible which your own King Alfred saw with his own bright +eyes, and from which he learned his child-faith in the days of dawning +thought! + +There are few English children who do not know the story of Alfred, +the king, letting the cakes burn, and being chidden by his peasant +hostess. How few English children--nay, how few perhaps of their +educated, not to say learned, elders--reflect upon, if even they know, +the far different scenes through which he had passed when a child! + +Concerning his father, his mother, and his own childhood, suppose you +were to teach your children first these following main facts, before +you come to the toasting of the muffin? + +His father, educated by Helmstan, Bishop of Winchester, had been +offered the throne of the great Saxon kingdom of Mercia in his early +youth; had refused it, and entered, as a novice under St. Swithin the +monastery at Winchester. From St. Swithin, he received the monastic +habit, and was appointed by Bishop Helmstan one of his sub-deacons! + +"The quiet seclusion which Ethelwulph's slow[26] capacity and meek +temper coveted" was not permitted to him by fate. The death of his +elder brother left him the only living representative of the line of +the West Saxon princes. His accession to the throne became the desire +of the people. He obtained a dispensation from the Pope to leave the +cloister; assumed the crown of Egbert; and retained Egbert's prime +minister, Alstan, Bishop of Sherborne, who was the Minister in peace +and war, the Treasurer, and the Counsellor, of the kings of England, +over a space, from first to last, of fifty years. + +[Footnote 26: Turner, quoting William of Malmesbury, "Crassioris et +hebetis ingenii,"--meaning that he had neither ardour for war, nor +ambition for kinghood.] + +Alfred's mother, Osburga, must have been married for love. She was the +daughter of Oslac, the king's cup-bearer. Extolled for her piety and +understanding, she bore the king four sons; dying before the last, +Alfred, was five years old, but leaving him St. Swithin for his tutor. +How little do any of us think, in idle talk of rain or no rain on St. +Swithin's day, that we speak of the man whom Alfred's father obeyed as +a monk, and whom his mother chose for his guardian! + +Alfred, both to father and mother, was the best beloved of their +children. On his mother's death, his father sent him, being then five +years old, with a great retinue through France and across the Alps +to Rome; and there the Pope anointed him King, (heir-apparent to the +English throne), at the request of his father. + +Think of it, you travellers through the Alps by tunnels, that you +may go to balls at Rome or hells at Monaco. Here is another manner +of journey, another goal for it, appointed for your little king. At +twelve, he was already the best hunter among the Saxon youths. Be sure +he could sit his horse at five. Fancy the child, with his keen genius, +and holy heart, riding with his Saxon chiefs beside him, by the Alpine +flowers under Velan or Sempione, and down among the olives to Pavia, +to Perugia, to Rome; there, like the little fabled Virgin, ascending +the Temple steps, and consecrated to be King of England by the great +Leo, Leo of the Leonine city, the saviour of Rome from the Saracen. + +Two years afterwards, he rode again to Rome beside his father; the +West Saxon king bringing presents to the Pope, a crown of pure gold +weighing four pounds, a sword adorned with pure gold, two golden +images,[27] four Saxon silver dishes; and giving a gift of gold to all +the Roman clergy and nobles,[28] and of silver to the people. + +[Footnote 27: Turner, Book IV.,--not a vestige of hint from the stupid +Englishman, what the Pope wanted with crown, sword, or image! My own +guess would be, that it meant an offering of the entire household +strength, in war and peace, of the Saxon nation,--their crown, their +sword, their household gods, Irminsul and Irminsula, their feasting, +and their robes.] + +[Footnote 28: Again, what does this mean? Gifts of honour to the +Pope's immediate attendants--silver to all Rome? Does the modern +reader think this is buying little Alfred's consecration too dear, or +that Leo is selling the Holy Ghost?] + +No idle sacrifices or symbols, these gifts of courtesy! The Saxon King +rebuilt on the highest hill that is bathed by Tiber, the Saxon street +and school, the Borgo,[29] of whose miraculously arrested burning +Raphael's fresco preserves the story to this day. And further +he obtained from Leo the liberty of all Saxon men from bonds +in penance;--a first phase this of Magna Charta, obtained more +honourably, from a more honourable person, than that document, by +which Englishmen of this day, suppose they live, move, and have being. + +[Footnote 29: "Quæ in eorum lingua Burgus dicitur,--the place +where it was situated was called the Saxon street, Saxonum vicum" +(Anastasius, quoted by Turner). There seems to me some evidence in the +scattered passages I have not time to collate, that at this time the +Saxon Burg, or tower, of a village, included the idea of its school.] + +How far into Alfred's soul, at seven years old, sank any true image of +what Rome was, and had been; of what her Lion Lord was, who had saved +her from the Saracen, and her Lion Lord had been, who had saved her +from the Hun; and what this Spiritual Dominion was, and was to be, +which could make and unmake kings, and save nations, and put armies to +flight; I leave those to say, who have learned to reverence childhood. +This, at least, is sure, that the days of Alfred were bound each to +each, not only by their natural piety, but by the actual presence and +appeal to his heart, of all that was then in the world most noble, +beautiful, and strong against Death. + +In this living Book of God he had learned to read, thus early; and +with perhaps nobler ambition than of getting the prize of a gilded +psalm-book at his mother's knee, as you are commonly told of him. What +sort of psalm-book it was, however, you may see from this leaf in my +hand. For, as his father and he returned from Rome that year, they +stayed again at the Court of Charlemagne's grandson, whose daughter, +the Princess Judith, Ethelwolf was wooing for Queen of England, (not +queen-consort, merely, but crowned queen, of authority equal to his +own.) From whom Alfred was like enough to have had a reading lesson or +two out of her father's Bible; and like enough, the little prince, to +have stayed her hand at this bright leaf of it, the Lion-leaf, bearing +the symbol of the Lion of the tribe of Judah. + +You cannot, of course, see anything but the glittering from where +you sit; nor even if you afterwards look at it near, will you find +a figure the least admirable or impressive to you. It is not like +Landseer's Lions in Trafalgar Square; nor like Tenniel's in 'Punch'; +still less like the real ones in Regent's Park. Neither do I show it +you as admirable in any respect of art, other than that of skilfullest +illumination. I show it you, as the most interesting Gothic type of +the imagination of Lion; which, after the Roman Eagle, possessed the +minds of all European warriors; until, as they themselves grew selfish +and cruel, the symbols which at first meant heaven-sent victory, or +the strength and presence of some Divine spirit, became to them only +the signs of their own pride or rage: the victor raven of Corvus sinks +into the shamed falcon of Marmion, and the lion-heartedness which gave +the glory and the peace of the gods to Leonidas, casts the glory and +the might of kinghood to the dust before Chalus.[30] + +[Footnote 30: 'Fors Clavigera,' March, 1871, p. 19. Yet read the +preceding pages, and learn the truth of the lion heart, while you +mourn its pride. Note especially his absolute law against usury.] + +That death, 6th April, 1199, ended the advance of England begun +by Alfred, under the pure law of Religious Imagination. She began, +already, in the thirteenth century, to be decoratively, instead of +vitally, religious. The history of the Religious Imagination expressed +between Alfred's time and that of Cœur de Lion, in this symbol of the +Lion only, has material in it rather for all my seven lectures than +for the closing section of one; but I must briefly specify to you the +main sections of it. I will keep clear of my favourite number seven, +and ask you to recollect the meaning of only Five, Mythic Lions. + +First of all, in Greek art, remember to keep yourselves clear about +the difference between the Lion and the Gorgon. + +The Gorgon is the power of evil in heaven, conquered by Athena, and +thenceforward becoming her ægis, when she is herself the inflictor of +evil. Her helmet is then the helmet of Orcus. + +But the Lion is the power of death on earth, conquered by Heracles, +and becoming thenceforward both his helmet and ægis. All ordinary +architectural lion sculpture is derived from the Heraclean. + +Then the Christian Lions are, first, the Lion of the Tribe of +Judah--Christ Himself as Captain and Judge: "He shall rule the +nations with a rod of iron," (the opposite power of His adversary, +is rarely intended in sculpture unless in association with the +serpent--"inculcabis supra leonem et aspidem"); secondly, the Lion of +St. Mark, the power of the Gospel going out to conquest; thirdly, the +Lion of St. Jerome, the wrath of the brute creation changed into love +by the kindness of man; and, fourthly, the Lion of the Zodiac, which +is the Lion of Egypt and of the Lombardic pillar-supports in +Italy; these four, if you remember, with the Nemean Greek one, five +altogether, will give you, broadly, interpretation of nearly all +Lion symbolism in great art. How they degenerate into the British +door knocker, I leave you to determine for yourselves, with such +assistances as I may be able to suggest to you in my next lecture; +but, as the grotesqueness of human history plans it, there is actually +a connection between that last degradation of the Leonine symbol, and +its first and noblest significance. + +You see there are letters round this golden Lion of Alfred's +spelling-book, which his princess friend was likely enough to spell +for him. They are two Latin hexameters:-- + + Hic Leo, surgendo, portas confregit Averni + Qui nunquam dormit, nusquam dormitat, in ævum. + (This Lion, rising, burst the gates of Death: + This, who sleeps not, nor shall sleep, for ever.) + +Now here is the Christian change of the Heraclean conquest of Death +into Christ's Resurrection. Samson's bearing away the gates of Gaza is +another like symbol, and to the mind of Alfred, taught, whether by +the Pope Leo for his schoolmaster, or by the great-granddaughter of +Charlemagne for his schoolmistress, it represented, as it did to all +the intelligence of Christendom, Christ in His own first and last, +Alpha and Omega, description of Himself,-- + +"I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, +and _have the keys_ of Hell and of Death." And in His servant St. +John's description of Him-- + +"Who is the Faithful Witness and the First-begotten of the dead, and +the Prince of the kings of the earth." + +All this assuredly, so far as the young child, consecrated like David, +the youngest of his brethren, conceived his own new life in Earth and +Heaven,--he understood already in the Lion symbol. But of all this I +had no thought[31] when I chose the prayer of Alfred as the type of +the Religion of his era, in its dwelling, not on the deliverance from +the punishment of sin, but from the poisonous sleep and death of it. +Will you ever learn that prayer again,--youths who are to be priests, +and knights, and kings of England, in these the latter days? when +the gospel of Eternal Death is preached here in Oxford to you for the +Pride of Truth? and "the mountain of the Lord's House" has become a +Golgotha, and the "new song before the throne" sunk into the rolling +thunder of the death rattle of the Nations, crying, "O Christ, where +is Thy Victory!" + +[Footnote 31: The reference to the Bible of Charles le Chauve was +added to my second lecture (page 54), in correcting the press, +mistakenly put into the text instead of the notes.] + + +NOTES. + +1. _The Five Christmas Days_. (These were drawn out on a large and +conspicuous diagram.) + +These days, as it happens, sum up the History of their Five Centuries. + + Christmas Day, 496. Clovis baptized. + " " 800. Charlemagne crowned. + " " 1041. Vow of the Count of Aversa (Page 80). + " " 1066. The Conqueror crowned. + " " 1130. Roger II. crowned King of the Two Sicilies. + +2. For conclusion of the whole matter two pictures were shown and +commented on--the two most perfect pictures in the world. + +(1) A small piece from Tintoret's Paradiso in the Ducal Palace, +representing the group of St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. +Augustine, and behind St. Augustine his mother watching him, her chief +joy even in Paradise. + +(2) The Arundel Society's reproduction of the Altar-piece by Giorgione +in his native hamlet of Castel Franco. The Arundel Society has done +more for us than we have any notion of. + + * * * * * + + + + +THE WORKS + +OF + +JOHN RUSKIN, + +(SEPARATELY AND IN SETS.) + + * * * * * + + + AN INQUIRY INTO SOME OF THE CONDITIONS + AFFECTING "THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE" IN + OUR SCHOOLS. 12mo, paper. $ 10 + + ARATRA PENTELICI. Six Lectures on the + Elements of Sculpture, given before the University + of Oxford, with cuts. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + DITTO, With 21 full-page plates (two colored), + printed separately. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + + ARIADNE FLORENTINA. Six Lectures on Wood + and Metal Engraving, given before the University + of Oxford, 12mo, cloth. Complete with + Appendix. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + DITTO. With 12 full-page plates, printed separately. + 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + + ARROWS OF THE CHACE. A Collection + of Letters from 1840 to 1880. Edited by an Oxford + Pupil. 2 vols. bound in one. Plate. 12mo, cloth. 1 00 + + ART CULTURE. A Hand-Book of Art Technicalities + and Criticisms, selected from the Works of John + Ruskin, and arranged and supplemented by Rev. W.H. + Platt, for the use of the Intelligent Traveler and + Art Student, with a new Glossary of Art Terms and + an Alphabetical and Chronological List of Artists. + With illustrations. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 50 + +"Mr. Platt has worked out an idea so striking for its attractiveness +and utility that, perceiving it, we at once go to work wondering that +somebody else had not executed it before him. He has gone over the +vast and superb areas of John Ruskin's Writings, and cutting out one +block here and another there, as it has suited his purpose, has put +all these parts together again into a literary mosaic, constituting a +clear and harmonious system of art principles, wherein Ruskin all the +while is the teacher. He has reduced Ruskin to a code. On the whole, +we see not what this book lacks of being a complete text-book of the +Gospel of Art according to St. John Ruskin."--_Christian Union_. + + ART OF ENGLAND. Lectures given in Oxford + during the second tenure of the Slade Professorship. + Parts I. to VI. complete, 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + ART OF ENGLAND. 12mo, cloth extra. 1 00 + + AUTOBIOGRAPHY--PRÆTERITA. + OUTLINES OF SCENES AND THOUGHTS, perhaps + worthy of memory, in MY PAST LIFE. By John Ruskin, LL.D. + + Vol. I. (Chapters 1 to 12.) 8vo, cloth extra. 3 00 + Vol. II. (Chapters 1 to 10.) 8vo, paper, each. 25 + Vol. I. (Chapters 1 to 12.) 12mo, cloth. 1 50 + + BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RUSKIN. A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL + LIST, arranged in chronological order of the + published writings in Prose and Verse of John + Ruskin, from 1834 to the present time + (October, 1878.) 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + BIRTHDAY BOOK. A Selection of Thoughts, + Mottoes and Aphorisms for Every Day to the Tear, + from the works of JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D. Collected + and arranged by M.A.B. and G.A. With a new + and fine portrait of Mr. Ruskin. Square 12mo, + cloth, extra beveled boards, gilt edges. 1 50 + + CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, THE. Three Lectures + on Work, Traffic, and War. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + DEUCALION. Collected Studies on the Lapse + of Waves and Life of Stones. Vol. I. (Parts 1 to + 6.) Plates. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 25 + + DITTO. Vol. II. (Parts 7 and 8) Plates. 12mo, + russet cloth. 75 + + EAGLE'S NEST, THE. Ten Lectures on the + Relation of Natural Science to Art, given before + the University of Oxford. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, THE. In Three + Letters to Beginners. With illustrations + drawn by the author, 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + ELEMENTS OF PERSPECTIVE, THE. + Arranged for the use of Schools, 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + ETHICS OF THE DUST, THE. Ten Lectures + to Little Housewives on the Elements of + Crystallization. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + FORS CLAVIGERA. Letters to the Workmen + and Laborers of Great Britain--Complete. + + Vols. 1 and 2.--2 vols. in one. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + Vols. 3 and 4.--2 vols. in one, 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + Vols. 5 and 6.--2 vols. in one. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + Vols. 7 and 8.--2 vols. in one. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + DITTO. 8 vols. in four, 11 full-page plates. 12mo, + russet cloth. 5 00 + + FRONDES AGRESTES. Headings on "Modern + Painters." Chosen at her pleasure by the + author's friend, the Younger Lady of the Thwaite, + Coniston. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER, THE. + Or, The Black Brothers. A Legend of Stiria. A + Fairy Tale. Illustrated. 12mo, cloth extra. 50 + + LAWS OF FESOLE, THE. A Familiar Treatise + on the Elementary Principles and Practice of + Drawing and Painting as determined by the Tuscan + Masters, with numerous plates. Arranged for the + use of Schools. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + DITTO, With 12 plates. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + + LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING. + Delivered at Edinburgh. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + DITTO. With 15 plates, full-page, printed + separately. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + + LECTURES ON ART. Delivered before the + University of Oxford in Hilary Term. 12mo, russet + cloth. 50 + + LETTERS AND ADVICE TO YOUNG GIRLS AND YOUNG + LADIES ON DRESS, EDUCATION, MARRIAGE. THEIR SPHERE, + INFLUENCE, WOMEN'S WORK, WOMEN'S RIGHTS, ETC., ETC. + 12mo, extra gilt, cloth. 50 + + LOVE'S MEINE. Lectures on Greek and English + Birds, given before the University of Oxford. + 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + MISCELLANEA. Containing Catalogue of Turner's + Drawings as revised and cast up into progressive + groups, etc. Notes on some of the Principal Pictures + in Royal Academy--Guide to the Principal Pictures + of the Academy of Venice--Michael Angelo and + Tintoret--Inaugural Address at Cambridge--Opening of + Crystal Palace--Fiction, Fair and Foul--Giotto and + His Works--Pront and Hunt--Studies of Mountain and + Cloud Form--King of Golden River--Sheepfolds. 2 vols. + Russet cloth, each 1 00 + + MODERN PAINTERS. 5 vols. Bound in 4 + vols. Complete with all Plates and Wood Cuts. + + Vol. 1.--Part 1. General Principles. Part 2. Truth. + Vol. 2.--Part 3. Of Ideas of Beauty. + Vol. 3.--Part 4. Of Many Things. + Vol. 4.--Part 5. Of Mountain Beauty, + Vol. 5.--Part 6. Leaf Beauty. Part 7. Of Cloud + Beauty. Part 8. Ideas of Relation of Invention, + Formal. Part 9, Ideas of Relation of Invention, + Spiritual. 4 vols., russet cloth. $6 00 + DITTO. With all the Plates and Woodcuts, in box, + 5 vols., 12mo, extra cloth. 10 00 + DITTO. With all the Plates and Woodcuts, in box, + 5 vols., 12mo, half calf. 17 00 + DITTO. With all the Woodcuts, 5 vols. bound in + 8 vols., 12mo, russet cloth. 3 50 + + MODERN PAINTERS. People's edition. 5 + vols. in 2. Neat blue cloth. 2 00 + + MODERN PAINTERS. EXTRA VOL. + Being the reissue of Volume II. of this work. Revised + and rearranged with critical notes by the + author. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + DITTO. 12mo, extra cloth. 75 + DITTO. 12mo, green cloth. 50 + + MORNINGS IN FLORENCE. Being simple + studies on Christian Art for English Travelers. + Santa Croce--The Golden Gate--Before the Soldan--The + Vaulted Roof--The Strait Gate. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + MUNERA PULVERIS. Six Essays on the Elements + of Political Economy. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + NOTES ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS: or, + Visible Churches. (_See Miscellanea_.) + + OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. + Sketches of the History of Christendom for Boys + and Girls who have been held at its Fonts. Four + full-page plates. Russet cloth, each. 1 00 + + PEARLS FOR YOUNG LADIES. From the + later works of John Ruskin. Selected and arranged + by Louisa C. Tuthill. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + DITTO. Extra gilt cloth. 1 25 + + PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. Lectures + given at Oxford by John Ruskin, viz.: Pleasures + of Learning; Pleasures of Faith; Pleasures of + Deed; Pleasures of Fancy. 12mo, boards. 50 + + POEMS, THE OLD WATER WHEEL AND OTHER POEMS. + By John Ruskin, Collected and edited from their + original "Annual" publication. 12mo, russet cloth. $ 50 + DITTO, ditto, with an etched frontispiece. Extra + gilt, cloth. 1 25 + + POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE, THE. + Cottage, Villa, etc., to which is added Suggestions + on Works of Art. With numerous illustrations. + By Kata Phusin. (Nom de Plume of John Ruskin.) + 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART, THE + OR, A JOY FOREVER. Being the substance + of two lectures (with additions) delivered + at Manchester. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + PRECIOUS THOUGHTS: Moral and Religious. + Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, + A.M. By Mrs. L.C. Tuthill. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + DITTO, ditto. Extra gilt, cloth. 1 25 + + PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + PRAETERITA. See Ruskin's Autobiography. + Vol. 1. 8vo, cloth. 3 00 + + PROSERPINA. Studies of Wayside Flowers + while the air was yet pure among the Alps and in + the Scotland and England which my father knew. + Vol. I. (Parts I to 6.) Plates. 12mo, russet cloth 1 25 + Vol. II. (Parts 7, 8, and 9.) Plates. 12mo, russet + cloth. 1 00 + + QUEEN OF THE AIR, THE. Being a Study of the + Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + ST. MARK'S REST. THE HISTORY OF VENICE. + Written for the help of the Few Travelers who still + care for her Monuments. Parts I., II., and III., + with two Supplements. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF JOHN + RUSKIN. 12mo, russet cloth. 75 + DITTO, ditto. 12mo, extra cloth. 1 00 + + SESAME AND LILIES. Three Lectures (on + Books, Women, etc.) 1. Of Kings' Treasuries. 2. + Of Queens' Gardens. 3. Of the Mystery of Life. + 12mo, blue cloth. 50 + New Edition. 12mo, thick paper, russet cloth. 75 + New Edition. 12mo, thick paper, ex. cloth. 1 00 + + SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE. + With copies of illustrations drawn by the author. + 14 full-page plates, 12mo, ex. cloth. $1 25 + DITTO, ditto. 12mo, russet cloth. 75 + DITTO. Cheap edition, without plates. 12mo, + green-cloth. 50 + DITTO. People's edition. Neat blue cloth. 50 + + STONES OF VENICE. Vol. 1. Foundations. + Vol. 2. Sea Stories. Vol. 8. The Fall. 3 vols. in + two. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 50 + DITTO, ditto. 3 vols. in two. 54 Plates. 3 00 + 3 vols. in box. Plates, 12mo, ex. cloth. 4 50 + DITTO. 3 vols. Plates, 12mo, ½ calf. 7 50 + DITTO. People's edition. 3 vols. in one. Neat + blue cloth. 1 25 + + STORM CLOUD OF THE 19TH CENTURY. + By John Ruskin. 12mo, bds. 50 + + THE TRUE AND THE BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE. ART, + MORALS AND RELIGION. Selected from the Works + of John Ruskin, A.M. With a notice of the author + by Mrs. L.C. Tuthill. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + DITTO, ditto, with Portrait. 12mo, extra cloth. 1 25 + + THE TWO PATHS. Being Lectures on Art, and + its Application to Decoration and Manufacture. + With steel plates and cuts. 12mo, russet cloth. 75 + DITTO. Without plates. 50 + + TIME AND TIDE BY WEARE AND TYNE. + Twenty-five Letters to a Workingman of Sunderland + on the Laws of work. 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + "UNTO THIS LAST." Four Essays on the First + Principles of Political Economy, 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + + VAL D'ARNO. Ten Lectures on the Tuscan + Art directly Antecedent to Florentine year of + Victories. 13 plates. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + + + + +RUSKIN'S COMPLETE WORKS. + + + With all the Wood Engravings, and With and Without Plates. + There are 277 FULL PAGE PLATES in the complete edition. + Printed on plate paper. Some of them in colors, as follows: + + RUSKIN'S WORKS. Uniformly bound in 13 volumes. + Elegant style. 223 full-page Plates, colored and + plain, on plate paper. 12mo, extra cloth. $18 00 + DITTO, ditto, with all the plates. 12mo, ½ calf. 36 00 + Ditto, ditto, without plates. 12 vols. 12mo, extra + cloth. 12 00 + + RUSKIN'S WORKS. (Second Series). Additional + Writings, completing his Works. Uniform + in size and binding with the 12-volume edition. + 6 vols., 12mo, cloth extra. 7 50 + 6 vols., with all the plates, 12mo, cloth extra. 10 50 + 6 vols., with all the plates, 12mo, ½ calf, 21 00 + DITTO, including both series. Wood engravings, + 18 vols., extra cloth. 19 50 + DITTO, including both series. Plates and Wood + engravings, 18 vols., extra cloth. 28 50 + DITTO, including both series. Plates and Wood + engravings. 20 vols., extra cloth. 30 00 + DITTO, including both series. Plates and Wood + engravings. 19 vols., ½ calf. 58 00 + DITTO, including both series. Plates and Wood + engravings. 20 vols., ½ calf. 60 00 + + * * * * * + +CHOICE WORKS OF JOHN RUSKIN + + An elegant octavo edition, including Modern Painters, 5 vols., + Stones of Venice, 3 vols., and Seven Lamps, 1 vol. With very + fine copies of all the Plates and Wood engravings of the + earliest London editions. + + 9 vols., 8vo, cloth, 45 00 + 9 vols., ½ calf, 63 00 + 9 vols., full calf, 72 00 + +_SUITABLE FOR PRESENTS._ + +Ruskin's Beauties. + + THE TRUE AND BEAUTIFUL. } 3 vols. + PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. } in box. 3 50 + CHOICE SELECTIONS. } ex. clo. + DITTO, 3 vols. in box, ½ calf, 7 50 + +Ruskin's Popular Volumes. + + CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. } 4 vols. + SESAME AND LILIES. } in box, + QUEEN OF THE AIR. } extra $8 50 + ETHICS OF THE DUST. } cloth. + +Ruskin on Art. + + LECTURES ON ART. } 4 vols. + TWO PATHS.--PLATES. } in box, + EAGLE'S NEST. } extra 3 50 + POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. } cloth. + DITTO, 2 vols. in box, ½ calf 7 00 + +Ruskin on Architecture. + + POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE--PLATES. } 4 vols. + SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE--PLATES. } in + LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND } box, 4 00 + PAINTING--PLATES. } ex. + STONES OF VENICE (Selections.) } cloth. + 2 vols. in box, ½ calf. 7 50 + +Ruskin on Drawing, Etc. + + ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. } 4 vols. + ELEMENTS OF PERSPECTIVE. } in box, + LAWS OF FESOLE--PLATES. } extra 3 50 + FRONDES AGRESTES. } cloth. + 2 vols. in box, ½ calf. 7 00 + +_THE FOLLOWING BEAUTIFUL VOLUMES BEING SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN'S +WORKS._ + +In Neat 12mo. Volumes. Cloth, Gilt Extra. + + ART CULTURE. With Illustrations, cloth extra. 2 50 + LETTERS AND ADVICE TO YOUNG LADIES. Cloth extra. 50 + PEARLS FOR YOUNG LADIES. Cloth extra. 1 25 + PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. Cloth extra. 1 25 + CHOICE SELECTIONS. Cloth extra. $ 1 00 + TRUE AND BEAUTIFUL. Cloth extra. 1 25 + RUSKIN'S BIRTHDAY BOOK. Cloth extra. 1 50 + RUSKIN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY (PRAETERITA.) + Vol. 1. Plate, 8vo, cloth extra. 3 00 + +ALSO--WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. + + RUSKIN'S ALEXANDER'S ROADSIDE SONGS OF TUSCANY. + 30 Full Page Plates. 8vo, cloth extra. 3 50 + RUSKIN'S ALEXANDER'S STORY OF IDA. + With a Beautiful Portrait. 12mo, cloth extra. 75 + DITTO, Ditto. With Portrait. 4to, cloth extra. 1 50 + +The following volumes are valuable as + +_READING BOOKS,_ + +and are specially recommended for use to HIGH SCHOOLS AND LADIES' +SEMINARIES. + + THE TRUE AND BEAUTIFUL. Selected + from Ruskin's Works. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + ART CULTURE. Selected from Ruskin's + Works. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 50 + PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. Selected + from Ruskin's Works. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 + CHOICE SELECTIONS. Selected from + Ruskin's Works. 12mo, russet cloth. 75 + SESAME AND LILIES. 12mo, russet cloth. 75 + LECTURES TO LITTLE HOUSEWIVES. + Ethics of the Dust). 12mo, russet cloth. 50 + +*** _Copies of these volumes will be sent for examination, with +reference to introduction,_ FREE, _by mail, on receipt of two-thirds +of the printed price._ + +ELEGANT 8VO EDITION + +OF + +RUSKIN'S CHOICE WORKS, + +(_BUT FEW COPIES REMAIN OF THIS EDITION._) + + MODERN PAINTERS. By John Ruskin. New and + beautiful edition. Containing fine copies of all + the plates, (87) and wood engravings of the original + London edition. + Vol. 1.--Part 1. General Principles. Part 2. Truth. + Vol. 2.--Part 3. Of Ideas of Beauty. + Vol. 3.--Part 4. Of Many Things. + Vol. 4.--Part 5. Of Mountain Beauty. + Vol. 5.--Part 6. Leaf Beauty. Part 7. Of Cloud + Beauty. Part 8. Ideas of Relation of Invention, + Formal. Part 9. Ideas of Relation of Invention, + Spiritual. + 5 vols., 8vo, extra cloth. 30 00 + 6 vols., 8vo, ½ calf. 40 00 + 5 vols., 8vo, full calf. 45 00 + + STONES OF VENICE. By John Ruskin. + New and beautiful edition, Containing fine copies + of all the plates, (54) colored and plain, and wood + engravings of the original London edition. + Vol. 1.--The Foundations. + Vol. 2.--The Sea Stories. + Vol. 3.--The Fall. + 3 vols., 8vo, extra cloth. 18 00 + 3 vols., 8vo, ½ calf. 4 00 + 3 vols., 8vo, full calf. 27 00 + PLATES to ditto separately, including fine copies + of all the plates in London edition. (54) colored + and plain. 8vo, extra cloth. 6 00 + + SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE. By John Ruskin. + New and beautiful edition, containing fine copies + of all the plates (14) of the original London + edition. Lamp of Sacrifice. Lamp of Truth. Lamp of + Power. Lamp of Beauty. Lamp of Life. Lamp of + Memory. Lamp of Obedience, + extra cloth. 6 00 + ½ calf. 8 00 + full calf. 9 00 + + MISS ALEXANDER'S WORKS. + + ROADSIDE SONGS OF TUSCANY. By Miss Francesca + Alexander, with 20 full page plates, from drawings + of the author. Edited by John Ruskin. + 8vo, cloth extra. 3 50 + DITTO, DITTO. 20 Plates, ½ morocco. 6 50 + + THE STORY OF IDA. EPITAPH ON AN ETRURIAN TOMB. + By Francesca Alexander, with Preface by John Ruskin. + Illustrated, with a Beautiful Portrait. + 12mo, laid paper, cloth extra. 0 75 + 4to, heavy paper, cloth extra. 1 50 + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pleasures of England, by John Ruskin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND *** + +***** This file should be named 15947-0.txt or 15947-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/9/4/15947/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, William Flis, and Distributed Proofreaders +Europe, http://dp.rastko.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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