|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 6
"A few years before the close of the sixth century, the country was
little more than a wide battle-field, where gallant but rude warriors
fought with each other, or against the neighbouring Welsh or Scots;
unheeding and unheeded by the rest of Europe, or, if they attracted
casual attention, regarded with dread and disgust as the fiercest of
barbarians and the most untameable of pagans. In the eighth century,
England was looked up to with admiration and gratitude, as superior to
all the other countries of Western Europe in piety and learning, and
as the land whence the most zealous and successful saints and teachers
came forth to convert and enlighten the still barbarous regions of the
continent."
This statement is broadly true; yet the correction it needs is a very
important one. England,--under her first Alfred of Northumberland,
and under Ina of Wessex, is indeed during these centuries the most
learned, thoughtful, and progressive of European states. But she is
not a missionary power. The missionaries are always to her, not from
her:--for the very reason that she is learning so eagerly, she does
not take to preaching. Ina founds his Saxon school at Rome not to
teach Rome, nor convert the Pope, but to drink at the source of
knowledge, and to receive laws from direct and unquestioned authority.
The missionary power was wholly Scotch and Irish, and that power was
wholly one of zeal and faith, not of learning. I will ask you, in the
course of my next lecture, to regard it attentively; to-day, I must
rapidly draw to the conclusions I would leave with you.
It is more and more wonderful to me as I think of it, that no effect
whatever was produced on the Saxon, nor on any other healthy race
of the North, either by the luxury of Rome, or by her art, whether
constructive or imitative. The Saxon builds no aqueducts--designs
no roads, rounds no theatres in imitation of her,--envies none of
her vile pleasures,--admires, so far as I can judge, none of her
far-carried realistic art. I suppose that it needs intelligence of
a more advanced kind to see the qualities of complete sculpture: and
that we may think of the Northern intellect as still like that of a
child, who cares to picture its own thoughts in its own way, but does
not care for the thoughts of older people, 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."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|