The Pleasures of England | Page 8

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