Part 6 (1/2)

edition of Chapter IV.]

I do not recognize, in the present state of my health, any reason to fear more loss of general power, whether in conception or industry, than is the proper and appointed check of an old man's enthusiasm: of which, however, enough remains in me, to warrant my readers against the abandonment of a purpose entertained already for twenty years.

The work, if I live to complete it, will consist of ten parts, each taking up some local division of Christian history, and gathering, towards their close, into united ill.u.s.tration of the power of the Church in the Thirteenth Century.

The next chapter, which I hope to issue soon after Christmas, completes the first part, descriptive of the early Frank power, and of its final skill, in the Cathedral of Amiens.

The second part, ”Ponte della Pietra,” will, I hope, do more for Theodoric and Verona than I have been able to do for Clovis and the first capital of France.

The third, ”Ara Celi,” will trace the foundations of the Papal power.

The fourth, ”Ponte-a-Mare,” and fifth, ”Ponte Vecchio,” will only with much difficulty gather into brief form what I have by me of scattered materials respecting Pisa and Florence.

The sixth, ”Valle Crucis,” will be occupied with the monastic architecture of England and Wales.

The seventh, ”The Springs of Eure,” will be wholly given to the cathedral of Chartres.

The eighth, ”Domremy,” to that of Rouen and the schools of architecture which it represents.

The ninth, ”The Bay of Uri,” to the pastoral forms of Catholicism, reaching to our own times.

And the tenth, ”The Bells of Cluse,” to the pastoral Protestantism of Savoy, Geneva, and the Scottish Border.

Each part will consist of four sections only; and one of them, the fourth, will usually be descriptive of some monumental city or cathedral, the resultant and remnant of the religious power examined in the preparatory chapters.

One ill.u.s.tration at least will be given with each chapter,[23] and drawings made for others, which will be placed at once in the Sheffield museum for public reference, and engraved as I find support, or opportunity for binding with the completed work.

[Footnote 23: The first plate for the Bible of Amiens, curiously enough, failed in the engraving; and I shall probably have to etch it myself. It will be issued with the fourth, in the full-size edition of the fourth chapter.]

As in the instance of Chapter IV. of this first part, a smaller edition of the descriptive chapters will commonly be printed in reduced form for travellers and non-subscribers; but otherwise, I intend this work to be furnished to subscribers only.

CHAPTER III.

THE LION TAMER.

1. It has been often of late announced as a new discovery, that man is a creature of circ.u.mstances; and the fact has been pressed upon our notice, in the hope, which appears to some people so pleasing, of being able at last to resolve into a succession of splashes in mud, or whirlwinds in air, the circ.u.mstances answerable for his creation. But the more important fact, that his nature is not levelled, like a mosquito's, to the mists of a marsh, nor reduced, like a mole's, beneath the crumblings of a burrow, but has been endowed with sense to discern, and instinct to adopt, the conditions which will make of it the best that can be, is very necessarily ignored by philosophers who propose, as a beautiful fulfilment of human destinies, a life entertained by scientific gossip, in a cellar lighted by electric sparks, warmed by tubular inflation, drained by buried rivers, and fed, by the ministry of less learned and better provisioned races, with extract of beef, and potted crocodile.

2. From these chemically a.n.a.lytic conceptions of a Paradise in catacombs, undisturbed in its alkaline or acid virtues by the dread of Deity, or hope of futurity, I know not how far the modern reader may willingly withdraw himself for a little time, to hear of men who, in their darkest and most foolish day, sought by their labour to make the desert as the garden of the Lord, and by their love to become worthy of permission to live with Him for ever. It has nevertheless been only by such toil, and in such hope, that, hitherto, the happiness, skill, or virtue of man have been possible: and even on the verge of the new dispensation, and promised Canaan, rich in beat.i.tudes of iron, steam, and fire, there are some of us, here and there, who may pause in filial piety to look back towards that wilderness of Sinai in which their fathers wors.h.i.+pped and died.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate III.--AMIENS. JOUR DES TRePa.s.seS. 1880.]

3. Admitting then, for the moment, that the main streets of Manchester, the district immediately surrounding the Bank in London, and the Bourse and Boulevards of Paris, are already part of the future kingdom of Heaven, when Earth shall be all Bourse and Boulevard,--the world of which our fathers tell us was divided to them, as you already know, partly by climates, partly by races, partly by times; and the 'circ.u.mstances' under which a man's soul was given to him, had to be considered under these three heads:--In what climate is he? Of what race? At what time?

He can only be what these conditions permit. With appeal to these, he is to be heard;--understood, if it may be;--judged, by our love, first--by our pity, if he need it--by our humility, finally and always.

4. To this end, it is needful evidently that we should have truthful maps of the world to begin with, and truthful maps of our own hearts to end with; neither of these maps being easily drawn at any time, and perhaps least of all now--when the use of a map is chiefly to exhibit hotels and railroads; and humility is held the disagreeablest and meanest of the Seven mortal Sins.

5. Thus, in the beginning of Sir Edward Creasy's History of England, you find a map purporting to exhibit the possessions of the British Nation--ill.u.s.trating the extremely wise and courteous behaviour of Mr.

Fox to a Frenchman of Napoleon's suite, in ”advancing to a terrestrial globe of unusual magnitude and distinctness, spreading his arms round it, over both the oceans and both the Indies,” and observing, in this impressive att.i.tude, that ”while Englishmen live, they overspread the whole world, and clasp it in the circle of their power.”