The Pleasures of England | Page 7

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