Alarms and Discursions | Page 3

them to worship. Paganism was in art a pure beauty; that was the dawn.
Christianity was a beauty created by controlling a million monsters of
ugliness; and that in my belief was the zenith and the noon. Modern art
and science practically mean having the million monsters and being
unable to control them; and I will venture to call that the disruption and
the decay. The finest lengths of the Elgin marbles consist splendid
houses going to the temple of a virgin. Christianity, with its gargoyles
and grotesques, really amounted to saying this: that a donkey could go
before all the horses of the world when it was really going to the temple.
Romance means a holy donkey going to the temple. Realism means a

lost donkey going nowhere.
The fragments of futile journalism or fleeting impression which are
here collected are very like the wrecks and riven blocks that were piled
in a heap round my imaginary priest of the sun. They are very like that
grey and gaping head of stone that I found overgrown with the grass.
Yet I will venture to make even of these trivial fragments the high
boast that I am a medievalist and not a modern. That is, I really have a
notion of why I have collected all the nonsensical things there are. I
have not the patience nor perhaps the constructive intelligence to state
the connecting link between all these chaotic papers. But it could be
stated. This row of shapeless and ungainly monsters which I now set
before the reader does not consist of separate idols cut out capriciously
in lonely valleys or various islands. These monsters are meant for the
gargoyles of a definite cathedral. I have to carve the gargoyles, because
I can carve nothing else; I leave to others the angels and the arches and
the spires. But I am very sure of the style of the architecture, and of the
consecration of the church.

The Surrender of a Cockney
Evert man, though he were born in the very belfry of Bow and spent his
infancy climbing among chimneys, has waiting for him somewhere a
country house which he has never seen; but which was built for him in
the very shape of his soul. It stands patiently waiting to be found,
knee-deep in orchards of Kent or mirrored in pools of Lincoln; and
when the man sees it he remembers it, though he has never seen it
before. Even I have been forced to confess this at last, who am a
Cockney, if ever there was one, a Cockney not only on principle, but
with savage pride. I have always maintained, quite seriously, that the
Lord is not in the wind or thunder of the waste, but if anywhere in the
still small voice of Fleet Street. I sincerely maintain that
Nature-worship is more morally dangerous than the most vulgar
man-worship of the cities; since it can easily be perverted into the
worship of an impersonal mystery, carelessness, or cruelty. Thoreau
would have been a jollier fellow if he had devoted himself to a

greengrocer instead of to greens. Swinburne would have been a better
moralist if he had worshipped a fishmonger instead of worshipping the
sea. I prefer the philosophy of bricks and mortar to the philosophy of
turnips. To call a man a turnip may be playful, but is seldom respectful.
But when we wish to pay emphatic honour to a man, to praise the
firmness of his nature, the squareness of his conduct, the strong
humility with which he is interlocked with his equals in silent mutual
support, then we invoke the nobler Cockney metaphor, and call him a
brick.
But, despite all these theories, I have surrendered; I have struck my
colours at sight; at a mere glimpse through the opening of a hedge. I
shall come down to living in the country, like any common Socialist or
Simple Lifer. I shall end my days in a village, in the character of the
Village Idiot, and be a spectacle and a judgment to mankind. I have
already learnt the rustic manner of leaning upon a gate; and I was thus
gymnastically occupied at the moment when my eye caught the house
that was made for me. It stood well back from the road, and was built
of a good yellow brick; it was narrow for its height, like the tower of
some Border robber; and over the front door was carved in large letters,
"1908." That last burst of sincerity, that superb scorn of antiquarian
sentiment, overwhelmed me finally. I closed my eyes in a kind of
ecstasy. My friend (who was helping me to lean on the gate) asked me
with some curiosity what I was doing.
"My dear fellow," I said,