Our Fathers Have Told Us Part 6

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."

6. Fired by Mr. Fox's enthusiasm,--the otherwise seldom fiery--Sir Edward proceeds to tell us that "our island home is the favourite domicile of freedom, empire and glory," without troubling himself, or his readers, to consider how long the nations over whom our freedom is imperious, and in whose shame is our glory, may be satisfied in that arrangement of the globe and its affairs; or may be even at present convinced of their degraded position in it by his method of its delineation.

For, the map being drawn on Mercator's projection, represents therefore the British dominions in North America as twice the size of the States, and considerably larger than all South America put together: while the brilliant crimson with which all our landed property is coloured cannot but impress the innocent reader with the idea of a universal flush of freedom and glory throughout all those acres and lat.i.tudes. So that he is scarcely likely to cavil at results so marvellous by inquiring into the nature and completeness of our government at any particular place,--for instance in Ireland, in the Hebrides, or at the Cape.

7. In the closing chapter of the first volume of 'The Laws of Fesole'

I have laid down the mathematical principles of rightly drawing maps;--principles which for many reasons it is well that my young readers should learn; the fundamental one being that you cannot flatten the skin of an orange without splitting it, and must not, if you draw countries on the unsplit skin, stretch them afterwards to fill the gaps.

The British pride of wealth which does not deny itself the magnificent convenience of penny Walter Scotts and penny Shakespeares, may a.s.suredly, in its future greatness, possess itself also of penny universes, conveniently spinnable on their axes. I shall therefore a.s.sume that my readers can look at a round globe, while I am talking of the world; and at a properly reduced drawing of its surfaces, when I am talking of a country.

8. Which, if my reader can at present do--or at least refer to a fairly drawn double-circle map of the globe with converging meridians--I will pray him next to observe, that, although the old division of the world into four quarters is now nearly effaced by emigration and Atlantic cable, yet the great historic question about the globe is not how it is divided, here and there, by ins and outs of land or sea; but how it is divided into zones all round, by irresistible laws of light and air. It is often a matter of very minor interest to know whether a man is an American or African, a European or an Asiatic. But it is a matter of extreme and final interest to know if he be a Brazilian or a Patagonian, a j.a.panese or a Samoyede.

9. In the course of the last chapter, I asked the reader to hold firmly the conception of the great division of climate, which separated the wandering races of Norway and Siberia from the calmly resident nations of Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Dacia.

Fasten now that division well home in your mind, by drawing, however rudely, the course of the two rivers, little thought of by common geographers, but of quite unspeakable importance in human history, the Vistula and the Dniester.

10. They rise within thirty miles of each other,[24] and each runs, not counting ins and outs, its clear three hundred miles,--the Vistula to the north-east, the Dniester to the south-west: the two of them together cut Europe straight across, at the broad neck of it,--and, more deeply looking at the thing, they divide Europe, properly so called--Europa's own, and Jove's,--the small educationable, civilizable, and more or less mentally rational fragment of the globe, from the great Siberian wilderness, Cis-Ural and Trans-Ural; the inconceivable chaotic s.p.a.ce, occupied datelessly by Scythians, Tartars, Huns, Cossacks, Bears, Ermines, and Mammoths, in various thickness of hide, frost of brain, and woe of abode--or of unabiding. n.o.body's history worth making out, has anything to do with them; for the force of Scandinavia never came round by Finland at all, but always sailed or paddled itself across the Baltic, or down the rocky west coast; and the Siberian and Russian ice-pressure merely drives the really memorable races into greater concentration, and kneads them up in fiercer and more necessitous exploring ma.s.ses. But by those exploring ma.s.ses, of true European birth, our own history was fas.h.i.+oned for ever; and, therefore, these two truncating and guarding rivers are to be marked on your map of Europe with supreme clearness: the Vistula, with Warsaw astride of it half way down, and embouchure in Baltic,--the Dniester, in Euxine, flowing each of them, measured arrow-straight, as far as from Edinburgh to London, with windings,[25] the Vistula six hundred miles, and the Dniester five--count them together for a thousand miles of _moat_, between Europe and the Desert, reaching from Dantzic to Odessa.

[Footnote 24: Taking the 'San' branch of upper Vistula.]

[Footnote 25: Note, however, generally that the strength of a river, caeteris paribus, is to be estimated by its straight course, windings being almost always caused by flats in which it can receive no tributaries.]

11. Having got your Europe moated off into this manageable and comprehensible s.p.a.ce, you are next to fix the limits which divide the four Gothic countries, Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Dacia, from the four Cla.s.sic countries, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Lydia.

There is no other generally opponent term to 'Gothic' but 'Cla.s.sic': and I am content to use it, for the sake of practical breadth and clearness, though its precise meaning for a little while remains unascertained. Only get the geography well into your mind, and the nomenclature will settle itself at its leisure.

12. Broadly, then, you have sea between Britain and Spain--Pyrenees between Gaul and Spain--Alps between Germany and Italy--Danube between Dacia and Greece. You must consider everything south of the Danube as Greek, variously influenced from Athens on one side, Byzantium on the other: then, across the aegean, you have the great country absurdly called Asia Minor, (for we might just as well call Greece, Europe Minor, or Cornwall, England Minor,) but which is properly to be remembered as 'Lydia,' the country which infects with pa.s.sion, and tempts with wealth; which taught the Lydian measure in music and softened the Greek language on its border into Ionic; which gave to ancient history the tale of Troy, and to Christian history, the glow, and the decline, of the Seven Churches.

13. Opposite to these four countries in the south, but separated from them either by sea or desert, are another four, as easily remembered--Morocco, Libya, Egypt, and Arabia.

Morocco, virtually consisting of the chain of Atlas and the coasts depending on it, may be most conveniently thought of as including the modern Morocco and Algeria, with the Canaries as a dependent group of islands.

Libya, in like manner, will include the modern Tunis and Tripoli: it will begin on the west with St. Augustine's town of Hippo; and its coast is colonized from Tyre and Greece, dividing it into the two districts of Carthage and Cyrene. Egypt, the country of the River, and Arabia, the country of _no_ River, are to be thought of as the two great southern powers of separate Religion.

14. You have thus, easily and clearly memorable, twelve countries, distinct evermore by natural laws, and forming three zones from north to south, all healthily habitable--but the races of the northernmost, disciplined in endurance of cold; those of the central zone, perfected by the enjoyable suns alike of summer and winter; those of the southern zone, trained to endurance of heat. Writing them now in tabular view,

Britain Gaul Germany Dacia Spain Italy Greece Lydia Morocco Libya Egypt Arabia,

you have the ground of all useful profane history mapped out in the simplest terms; and then, as the fount of inspiration, for all these countries, with the strength which every soul that has possessed, has held sacred and supernatural, you have last to conceive perfectly the small hill district of the Holy Land, with Philistia and Syria on its flanks, both of them chastising forces; but Syria, in the beginning, herself the origin of the chosen race--"A Syrian ready to perish was my father"--and the Syrian Rachel being thought of always as the true mother of Israel.

15. And remember, in all future study of the relations of these countries, you must never allow your mind to be disturbed by the accidental changes of political limit. No matter who rules a country, no matter what it is officially called, or how it is formally divided, eternal bars and doors are set to it by the mountains and seas, eternal laws enforced over it by the clouds and stars. The people that are born on it are its people, be they a thousand times again and again conquered, exiled, or captive. The stranger cannot be its king, the invader cannot be its possessor; and, although just laws, maintained whether by the people or their conquerors, have always the appointed good and strength of justice, nothing is permanently helpful to any race or condition of men but the spirit that is in their own hearts, kindled by the love of their native land.

16. Of course, in saying that the invader cannot be the possessor of any country, I speak only of invasion such as that by the Vandals of Libya, or by ourselves of India; where the conquering race does not become permanently inhabitant. You are not to call Libya Vandalia, nor India England, because these countries are temporarily under the rule of Vandals and English; neither Italy Gothland under Ostrogoths, nor England Denmark under Canute. National character varies as it fades under invasion or in corruption; but if ever it glows again into a new life, that life must be tempered by the earth and sky of the country itself. Of the twelve names of countries now given in their order, only one will be changed as we advance in our history;--Gaul will properly become France when the Franks become her abiding inhabitants.

The other eleven primary names will serve us to the end.

17. With a moment's more patience, therefore, glancing to the far East, we shall have laid the foundations of all our own needful geography. As the northern kingdoms are moated from the Scythian desert by the Vistula, so the southern are moated from the dynasties properly called 'Oriental' by the Euphrates; which, "partly sunk beneath the Persian Gulf, reaches from the sh.o.r.es of Beloochistan and Oman to the mountains of Armenia, and forms a huge hot-air funnel, the base" (or mouth) "of which is on the tropics, while its extremity reaches thirty-seven degrees of northern lat.i.tude. Hence it comes that the Semoom itself (the specific and gaseous Semoom) pays occasional visits to Mosoul and Djezeerat Omer, while the thermometer at Bagdad attains in summer an elevation capable of staggering the belief of even an old Indian."[26]