Chapter XII (1)

Lansmere was situated in the county adjoining, that which contained the village of Hazeldean. Late at noon the Parson crossed the little stream which divided the two shires, and came to an inn, which was placed at an angle, where the great main road branched off into two directions--the one leading towards Lansmere, the other going more direct to London. At this inn the pad stopped, and put down both ears with the air of a pad who has made up her mind to bait. And the Parson himself, feeling very warm and somewhat sore, said to the pad benignly, "It is just--thou shalt have corn and water!"

Dismounting therefore, and finding himself very stiff, as soon as he had reached _terra firma_, the Parson consigned the pad to the ostler, and walked into the sanded parlour of the inn, to repose himself on a very hard Windsor chair.

He had been alone rather more than half-an-hour, reading a county newspaper which smelt much of tobacco, and trying to keep off the flies that gathered round him in swarms, as if they had never before seen a Parson, and were anxious to ascertain how the flesh of him tasted,--when a stage-coach stopped at the inn. A traveller got out with his carpet-bag in his hand, and was shown into the sanded parlour.

The Parson rose politely, and made a bow.

The traveller touched his hat, without taking it off--looked at Mr Dale from top to toe--then walked to the window, and whistled a lively impatient tune, then strode towards the fire-place and rang the bell; then stared again at the Parson; and that gentleman having courteously laid down the newspaper, the traveller seized it, threw himself on a chair, flung one of his legs over the table, tossed the other up on the mantelpiece, and began reading the paper, while he tilted the chair on its hind legs with so daring a disregard to the ordinary position of chairs and their occupants, that the shuddering Parson expected every moment to see him come down on the back of his skull.

Moved, therefore, to compassion, Mr Dale said mildly--

"Those chairs are very treacherous, sir. I'm afraid you'll be down."

"Eh," said the traveller, looking, up much astonished. "Eh, down?--oh, you're satirical, sir."

"Satirical, sir? upon my word, no!" exclaimed the parson earnestly.

"I think every free-born man has a right to sit as he pleases in his own house," resumed the traveller with warmth; "and an inn is his own house, I guess, so long as he pays his score. Betty, my dear."

For the chambermaid had now replied to the bell.

"I han't Betty, sir; do you want she?"

"No, Sally--cold brandy and water--and a biscuit."

"I han't Sally either," muttered the chambermaid; but the traveller turning round, showed so smart a neckcloth and so comely a face, that she smiled, coloured, and went her way.

The traveller now rose, and flung down the paper. He took out a penknife, and began paring his nails. Suddenly desisting from this elegant occupation, his eye caught sight of the Parson's shovel-hat, which lay on a chair in the corner.

"You're a clergyman, I reckon, sir," said the traveller, with a slight sneer.

Again Mr Dale bowed--bowed in part deprecatingly--in part with dignity. It was a bow that said, "No offence, sir, but I _am_ a clergyman, and I'm not ashamed of it."

"Going far?" asked the traveller.

PARSON.--"Not very."

TRAVELLER.--"In a chaise or fly? If so, and we are going the same way--halves."

PARSON.--"Halves?"

TRAVELLER.--"Yes, I'll pay half the damage--pikes inclusive."

PARSON.--"You are very good, sir. But," (_spoken with pride_) "I am, on horseback."

TRAVELLER.--"On horseback! Well, I should not have guessed that! You don't look like it. Where did you say you were going?"

"I did _not_ say where I was going, sir," said the Parson drily, for he was much offended at that vague and ungrammatical remark applicable to his horsemanship, that "he did not look like it."

"Close!" said the traveller laughing; "an old traveller, I reckon."

The Parson made no reply, but he took up his shovel-hat, and, with a bow more majestic than the previous one, walked out to see if his pad had finished her corn.

The animal had indeed finished all the corn afforded to her, which was not much, and in a few minutes more Mr Dale resumed his journey. He had performed about three miles, when the sound of wheels behind made him turn his head, and he perceived a chaise driven very fast, while out of the windows thereof dangled strangely a pair of human legs. The pad began to curvet as the post horses rattled behind, and the Parson had only an indistinct vision of a human face supplanting these human legs. The traveller peered out at him as he whirled by--saw Mr Dale tossed up and down on the saddle, and cried out, "How's the leather?"

"Leather!" soliloquised the Parson, as the pad recomposed herself. "What does he mean by that? Leather! a very vulgar man. But I got rid of him cleverly."

Mr Dale arrived without farther adventure at Lansmere. He put up at the principal inn--refreshed himself by a general ablution-and sate down with good appetite to his beef-steak and pint of port.

The Parson was a better judge of the physiognomy of man than that of the horse; and after a satisfactory glance at the civil smirking landlord, who removed the cover and set on the wine, he ventured on an attempt at conversation. "Is my lord at the park?"

Landlord, still more civilly than before: "No, sir, his lordship and my lady have gone to town to meet Lord L'Estrange."

"Lord L'Estrange! He is in England, then?"

"Why, so I heard," replied the landlord, "but we never see him here now. I remember him a very pretty young man. Every one was fond of him, and proud of him. But what pranks he did play when he was a lad! We hoped he would come in for our boro' some of these days, but he has taken to foren parts--more's the pity. I am a reg'lar Blue, sir, as I ought to be. The Blue candidate always does me the honour to come to the Lansmere Arms. 'Tis only the low party puts up with The Boar," added the landlord with a look of ineffable disgust. "I hope you like the wine, sir?"

"Very good, and seems old."

"Bottled these eighteen years, sir. I had in the cask for the great election of Dashmore and Egerton. I have little left of it, and I never give it but to old friends like--for, I think, sir, though you be grown stout, and look more grand, I may say that I've had the pleasure of seeing you before.

"That's true, I daresay, though I fear was never a very good customer."

LANDLORD.--"Ah, it _is_ Mr Dale, then! I thought so when you came into the hall. I hope your lady is quite well, and the Squire too; fine pleasant-spoken gentleman; no fault of his if Mr Egerton went wrong. Well, we have never seen him--I mean Mr Egerton--since that time. I don't wonder he stays away; but my lord's son, who was brought up here,--it an't nat'ral like that he should turn his back on us!"

Mr Dale made no reply, and the landlord was about to retire, when the Parson, pouring out another glass of the port, said,--"There must be great changes in the parish. Is Mr Morgan, the medical man, still here?"

"No, indeed; he took out his ploma after you left, and became a real doctor; and a pretty practice he had too, when he took, all of a sudden, to some new-fangled way of physicking--I think they calls it homy-something--"

"Homeopathy!"

"That's it--something against all reason: and so he lost his practice here and went up to Lunnun. I've not heard of him since."

"Do the Avenels keep their old house?"

"Oh yes!--and are pretty well off, I hear say. John is always poorly; though he still goes now and then to the Odd Fellows, and takes his glass; but his wife comes and fetches him away before he can do himself any harm."

"Mrs Avenel is the same as ever?"

"She holds her head higher, I think," said the landlord, smiling. "She was always--not exactly proud like, but what I calls gumptious."

"I never heard that word before," said the Parson, laying down his knife and fork. "Bumptious, indeed, though I believe it is not in the dictionary, has crept into familiar parlance, especially amongst young folks at school and college."

"Bumptious is bumptious, and gumptious is gumptious," said the landlord, delighted to puzzle a Parson. "Now the town beadle is bumptious, and Mrs Avenel is gumptious."

"She is a very respectable woman," said Mr Dale, somewhat rebukingly.

"In course, sir, all gumptious folks are; they value themselves on their respectability, and looks down on their neighbours."

PARSON, still philologically occupied.--"Gumptious--gumptious. I think I remember the substantive at school--not that my master taught it to me. 'Gumption,' it means cleverness."

LANDLORD, (doggedly.)--"There's gumption and gumptious! Gumption is knowing; but when I say that sum un is gumptious, I mean--though that's more vulgar like--sum un who does not think small beer of hisself. You take me, sir?"

"I think I do," said the Parson, half-smiling. "I believe the Avenels have only two of their children alive still--their daughter, who married Mark Fairfield, and a son who went off to America?"

"Ah, but he made his fortune there, and has come back."

"Indeed! I'm very glad to hear it. He has settled at Lansmere?"

"No, sir. I hear as he's bought a property a long way off. But he comes to see his parents pretty often--so John tells me--but I can't say that I ever see him. I fancy Dick doesn't like to be seen by folks who remember him playing in the kennel."

"Not unnatural," said the Parson indulgently; "but he visits his parents: he is a good son, at all events, then?"

"I've nothing to say against him. Dick was a wild chap before he took himself off. I never thought he would make his fortune; but the Avenels are a clever set. Do you remember poor Nora--the Rose of Lansmere, as they called her? Ah, no, I think she went up to Lunnun afore your time, sir."

"Humph!" said the Parson drily. "Well, I think you may take away now. It will be dark soon, and I'll just stroll out and look about me."

"There's a nice tart coming, sir."

"Thank you, I've dined."

The Parson put on his hat and sallied forth into the streets. He eyed the houses on either hand with that melancholy and wistful interest with which, in middle life, we revisit scenes familiar to us in youth--surprised to find either so little change or so much, and recalling, by fits and snatches, old associations and past emotions. The long High Street which he threaded now began to change its bustling character, and slide, as it were gradually, into the high road of a suburb. On the left, the houses gave way to the moss-grown pales of Lansmere Park: to the right, though houses still remained, they were separated from each other by gardens, and took the pleasing appearance of villas--such villas as retired tradesmen or their widows, old maids, and half-pay officers, select for the evening of their days.

Mr Dale looked at these villas with the deliberate attention of a man awakening his power of memory, and at last stopped before one, almost the last on the road, and which faced the broad patch of sward that lay before the lodge of Lansmere Park. An old pollard oak stood near it, and from the oak there came a low discordant sound; it was the hungry cry of young ravens, awaiting the belated return of the parent bird. Mr Dale put his hand to his brow, paused a moment, and then, with a hurried step, passed through the little garden and knocked at the door. A light was burning in the parlour, and Mr Dale's eye caught through the window a vague outline of three forms. There was an evident bustle within at the sound of the knocks. One of the forms rose and disappeared. A very prim, neat, middle-aged maid-servant now appeared at the threshold, and austerely inquired the visitor's business.

"I want to see Mr or Mrs Avenel. Say that I have come many miles to see them; and take in this card."

The maid-servant took the card, and half-closed the door. At least three minutes elapsed before she reappeared.

"Missis says it's late, sir; but walk in."

The Parson accepted the not very gracious invitation, stepped across the little hall, and entered the parlour.

Old John Avenel, a mild-looking man, who seemed slightly paralytic, rose slowly from his arm-chair. Mrs Avenel, in an awfully stiff, clean, and Calvinistical cap, and a gray dress, every fold of which bespoke respectability and staid repute--stood erect on the floor, and, fixing on the Parson a cold and cautious eye, said--

"You do the like of us great honour, Mr Dale--take a chair! You call upon business?"

"Of which I have apprised you by letter, Mr Avenel."

"My husband is very poorly."

"A poor creature!" said John feebly, and as if in compassion of himself. "I can't get about as I used to do. But it ben't near election time, be it, sir?"

"No, John," said Mrs Avenel, placing her husband's arm within her own. "You must lie down a bit, while I talk to the gentleman."

"I'm a real good blue," said poor John; "but I an't quite the man I was;" and, leaning heavily on his wife, he left the room, turning round at the threshold, and saying, with great urbanity--"Anything to oblige, sir?"

Mr Dale was much touched. He had remembered John Avenel the comeliest, the most active, and the most cheerful man in Lansmere; great at glee club and cricket, (though then stricken in years) greater in vestries; reputed greatest in elections.

"Last scene of all," murmured the Parson; "and oh well, turning from the poet, may we cry with the disbelieving philosopher, 'Poor, poor humanity!'"[21]

[21] Mr Dale probably here alludes to Lord Bolingbroke's ejaculation as he stood by the dying Pope; but his memory does not serve him with the exact words.

In a few minutes Mrs Avenel returned. She took a chair at some distance from the Parson's, and, resting one hand on the elbow of the chair, while with the other she stiffly smoothed the stiff gown, she said--

"Now, sir."

That "Now, sir," had in its sound something sinister and warlike. This the shrewd Parson recognised with his usual tact. He edged his chair nearer to Mrs Avenel, and placing his hand on hers--

"Yes, now then, and as friend to friend."

LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, AS REPRESENTED IN THE FINE ARTS.[22]

Lovers of the Fine Arts--and they ought to be the whole civilised world--owe an especial regard and reverence to the Monastic Orders, without whom there would have been, and would be now, no Art at all. Taking the Fine Arts at their lowest value, as a mere source of pleasure, from the love of imitation or representation of agreeable objects--the remembrancer of scenes of interest, the elegant accomplishment by which homes are embellished and made more beautifully homely--surely some little gratitude is due, where it has been the fashion to be sparing of any praise, to those good and pious men who in their convents prepared, improved, and invented colours as well as implements of Art; were themselves the early painters, and by their extensive patronage may be called the Fathers of the Arts. Had the world derived from the monastic orders no other good, that one should have insured them a perpetual respect.

[22] _Legends of the Monastic Orders, as Represented in the Fine Arts._ By Mrs JAMESON. 1 vol. Longman & Co., London. 1850

But the Arts do not stand alone--are themselves a sisterhood, if we may so speak--many orders, but one religion; one bond binding them together--the culture of humanity.

History has unfortunately too often been the work of infidel hands and hearts. Whatever is of religion has been viewed with a prejudice; the vices of mankind at large have been tenderly treated; while such as could with truth or untruth be charged upon religious orders, have met with little mercy, and have been exempted from the common apology of the age. In this, little candour has been shown. It would be fairer, speaking of any class of men, to inquire whether they were worse or better than others--a benefit or a plague-spot on society; and it would be fairer to see what efforts they made for their own and for the general improvement, and rather to estimate their success, where few but themselves struggled for amelioration, than to single out every fault, every corruption, and of every age, and to bring the accumulation to bear upon the head, as it were, of one generation. The monastic orders have been the theme of general abuse by many a flippant writer, as if they lived but at one particular period, and were but examples of ignorance and vice--the encouragers of superstition for their own selfish ends. The "dark ages" have been indeed dark to those who have shut their eyes to the light which, small and glimmering though it appeared from our broad and open way of life, might, if followed with a gentle curiosity, have led into undreamt-of recesses, found to contain great treasures; and as the bodily, so the mental eye would have accommodated its vision to the degree of light given, and would have seen distinctly both form and beauty, which would have burst with a kind of glory upon them through the gloom, and met them as goodness would meet willing seekers.

"Virtue makes herself light, through darkness for to wade."

"I know nothing," says one writer, "of those ages that knew nothing." As it has been justly retorted--how did he, knowing nothing of them, know that they knew nothing? It might be more easy to show that, if he knew anything about anything, he was mainly indebted to those very ages which kept within them the light of knowledge, preserved and cherished from utterly going out with the sanctity of a vestal fire. Turn where we will, we see the monuments of the labour of the monastic orders--wonderful monuments. And surely if any age may be said with truth to be dark, dark were those of the two last centuries which, with the wondrous edifices before their eyes, saw not their beauty mutilated, and with most unwarrantable conceit thought they had improved upon them. Whose was the ignorance? Look at our architecture. Great advancement has been made, and is making daily; and what is the consequence of this revived taste? A proper appreciation of the architecture of the "dark ages." Our best hope is, to imitate successfully. Who were they who designed these miracles of art? Devout men--the monastic orders! Who furnished every species of decoration--the sculpture, the painted glass, the pictures, that were a language? Men who themselves lived humbly and sparingly, that they might devote themselves, their talents, and their possessions to make an exalted and visible religion upon earth, as the one thing needful for future generations of men. Such, undoubtedly, was the one mind of the great religious orders--we speak of their purpose and of their doings. It was their mission over every land: we say not that corruption did not find them out, that there was no canker in their fruit. The enemy knew where to sow his tares; but perverse people tore, uprooted and cast from them the wheat, and loved to lay waste; and, as is ever the case, hating whom they injure, they vilified _per fas et nefas_; and, upon the plea of others' corruption, became themselves robbers, plunderers, and, too often, assassins.

It has been charged against these orders, that from the extreme of poverty they became rich. _Hinc illæ lachrymæ._ But how did they so increase? Because toil and labour were their law: they brought wealth out of lands chosen for their sterility, that their rule of toil might be the more continually exercised. Industry had its natural fruits, and spread its influence: they taught as well as practised; and their object, how they disposed of that which they gained, is now well known. The monuments, long unheeded, are before us. That we may not be unjustly thought, in what we have said, to favour Romish institutions, we would make a distinction, too little observed,--we would not confound the retired, the benevolent, the religious lives of those benefactors in the monastic orders, with the political tyrannical Papacy in Rome itself. _There_ was ambition and avarice--a worldliness, at the instigation of the "Prince of this world," working out a system whose necessities begot the vilest superstitions and idolatries for unholy gain, and disseminated corruption instead of life. The history of the Popes is not the history of the devout and laborious of the monastic orders at all times. They were indeed within the pale of the Church of Rome, for there was then no other; but they who cultivated wastes, taught the people, and preserved and invented arts and literature, were far other men. The evil of Papacy had not reached them at once in their wildernesses. When the corrupt system did reach them, it bore its fruit. But even then, and among such, be it remembered, arose those who were still pure, and above the corruptions--and from them originated the Reformation. In reasoning upon past institutions, consideration must be had of the peculiar phase of the world when they arose. The whole altered condition of society would make that a positive evil which was once a positive good. Monastic institutions have done their work;--they cannot be restored, in a healthy state, in a Protestant country, whose constitution, and the laws that both make and support it, and the habits, manners, and feelings of the people, are entirely repugnant to them. Romanism is antagonistic with everything that is not of it. It demands at all times and everywhere to be the dominant power. To give it more than toleration, is to put into its hands that fulcrum which will be incessantly employed to subvert every institution that cannot be resolved into itself. Neither governments nor homes can escape its snares and its tyranny.

"Inspectum domos venturaque desuper urbi."

And here we would offer a quotation from Mrs Jameson's introduction to this her third volume of the Series on Religious Art; and we cannot but think that the scrutiny her subject has led her to make, into the real character of the religions orders of the middle ages, has given a more serious, we would say solemn, respect for them than was perceptible in the two former volumes. Not that we would charge any levity upon her in them: the reverse; but we do think that the reverence and respect for the subjects generally have fallen advantageously upon the "orders" themselves.

"In the first place, then, monachism in art, taken in a large
sense, is historically interesting, as the expression of a
most important era of human culture. We are outliving the gross
prejudices which once represented the life of the cloister as
being from first to last a life of laziness and imposture.
We know that, but for the monks, the light of liberty and
literature and science had been for ever extinguished, and that
for six centuries there existed for the thoughtful, the gentle,
the inquiring, the devout spirit no peace, no security, no
home but the cloister. There learning trimmed her lamp, there
contemplation 'pruned her wings;' there the traditions of art,
preserved from age to age by lonely studious men, kept alive in
form and colour the idea of a beauty beyond that of earth--of
a might beyond that of the spear and the shield--of a Divine
sympathy with suffering humanity. To this we may add another
and a stronger claim on our respect and moral sympathies.
The protection and the better education given to women in
these early communities--the venerable and distinguished rank
assigned to them when, as governesses of their order, they
became in a manner dignitaries of the church--the introduction
of their beautiful and saintly effigies, clothed with all the
insignia of sanctity and authority, into the decoration of
places of worship and books of devotion--did more, perhaps,
for the general cause of womanhood than all the boasted
institutions of chivalry."

Now, be it remembered that all this was effected in the midst of a hostile and turbulent world, whom they thus subdued by their sanctity to an awe and respect, without which there would have been no peace to them, no shelter to the pure and the weak from injury and wrong. Do we not see here the strongest proof of their earnestness, their piety, their charity, and that they were, under Heaven, the ministers of blessings to mankind? There was a period, however, when the entire seclusion of the cloister ceased to be beneficial--the contemplative life must be succeeded by the active. From that period must we date the promise of all that is great and good in art, science, and every effort of human genius, which burst winged out of darkness into day, with the rise of the Mendicant orders.

"If the three great divisions of the regular ecclesiastics
seem to have had each a distinct vocation, there was at least
one vocation common to all. The Benedictine monks instituted
schools of learning; the Augustines built noble cathedrals;
the Mendicant orders founded hospitals: _all_ became patrons
of the fine arts, on such a scale of munificence that the
protection of the most renowned princes has been mean and
insignificant in comparison. Yet, in their relation to art,
this splendid patronage was the least of their merits. The
earliest artists of the middle ages were the monks of the
Benedictine orders. In their convents were preserved, from
age to age, the traditional treatment of sacred subjects, and
that pure unworldly sentiment which in later times was ill
exchanged for the learning of schools and the competition of
academies; and as they were the only depositories of chemical
and medical knowledge, and the only compounders of drugs, we
owe to them also the discovery and preparation of some of the
finest colours, and the invention or the improvement of the
implements used in painting: for the monks not only prepared
their own colours, but when they employed secular painters in
decorating their convents, the materials furnished from their
own laboratories were consequently of the best and most durable
kind. As architects, as glass-painters, as mosaic workers, as
carvers in wood and metal, they were the precursors of all that
has since been achieved in Christian art; and if so few of
these admirable and gifted men are known to us individually and
by name, it is because they worked for the honour of God and
their community--not for profit, nor for reputation."

Mutability is written upon the face of all earthly things, whether they be good or evil in themselves. We progress and we retrograde according as influences act upon us. If we would judge in candour, we cannot take any class of facts of things or persons by themselves--all are parts of one whole; but how made one, is a speculation of a deep philosophy. It is hard to place upon the map of understanding the hidden causes, and their relation to each other, which make up the general social aspect at any one period. However we may advance, in knowledge, however that knowledge may operate as a check, mankind are in heart intrinsically the same they ever were--they have within them the same passions, the same instincts; and though we are daily pronouncing, as we look back upon past ages, that such and such things never can be again, that we cannot have the same superstitions, nor exercise the same cruelties, whatever we may hope, we do in fact say but this, that the identical facts and identical personages will not come again upon the stage of life. Of this we may be sure, that under certain influences, always within the sphere of our liabilities, the passions of men will lead them to the same excesses, the same fanaticism, the same crimes. The plot of the drama may be somewhat varied, or even new, but tragedy and comedy will still designate the play of human actions. We may have crusades without a Holy Land to recover--as we have had a Bartholomew massacre; we have had, and may have again, in civilised Europe, the political massacres which, in reading history in our closets in our own peaceful homes, we had fondly deemed passed away for ever. Fanaticism in religion and politics is still a human instinct--the sleeping volcano in every man's breast, though he knows it not, believes it not. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Who can answer for himself? It is wiser, far better to bow the head in humility--"Lead us not into temptation." As the times are, as people are, in peace or in suffering, will be their religious hopes or their religious fears--a gloom or a comfort, a wholesome practical virtue or a feverish excitement, a personal selfishness, a frenzy of despair--intolerance and persecution the result. The civil troubles of England made our religion, or that which passes for religion among the masses, gloomy and morose on the one hand, and, on the other, an awful conceit of self-righteousness. There was the asceticism of the early ages, but in a new form: there were no deserts, no dens into which fanatics could fly from worldly pleasure: compelled to live in its sight, they persecuted it to the death, and took their own insane pleasure in denying pleasure to others. General distress will naturally engender unwholesome excitement, and it will infect invariably the religious mind. These remarks are not superfluous--they arise out of the subject. Mrs Jameson herself sees analogies of times, which it may be worth our while to pause and consider.

"It seems to me that in the movement of the thirteenth century
there was something analogous to the times through which
we of this present generation have lived. There had been
nearly a hundred years of desolating wars. The Crusades had
upheaved society from its depths, as a storm upheaves the
ocean, and changed the condition of men and nations.... A
generation sprang up physically predisposed to a sort of morbid
exaltation, and powerfully acted on by the revelation of a
hitherto unseen, unfelt world of woe. In the words of Scripture
'men could not stop their ears from hearing of blood, nor shut
their eyes from seeing of evil.' There was a deep, almost
universal, feeling of the pressure and burden of sorrow--an
awakening of the conscience to wrong, a blind anxious groping
for the right, a sense that what had hitherto sufficed to
humanity, would suffice no longer. But in the uneasy ferment of
men's minds, religious fear took the place of religious hope,
and the religious sympathies and aspirations assumed, in their
excess, a disordered and exaggerated form.... But what was
dark misery and bewilderment in the weak and ignorant, assumed
in the more highly endowed a higher form; and to St Francis
and his order we owe what has been happily called the mystic
school in poetry and painting--that school which so strangely
combined the spiritual with the sensual, the beautiful with the
terrible, and the tender with the inexorable--which first found
utterance in the works of Dante and of the ancient painters
of Tuscany and Umbria. It has been disputed often whether the
suggestions of Dante influenced Giotto, or the creations of
Giotto inspired Dante; but the true influence and inspiration
were around both, and dominant over both, when the two greatest
men of their age united to celebrate a religion of retribution
and suffering--to solemnise the espousals of sanctity with the
self-abnegation which despises all things, rather than with the
love that pardons and the hope that rejoices--and which, in
closing the gates of pleasure, 'would have shut the gates of
mercy on mankind.'"

Dante himself, the great man of his age, the deep in soul and intellect, but individualises the character of an age; and, as far as individual character can portray a general, tends to confirm the observations into which the nature of our subject led us. Dante lived a whole life of injury and wrong, of sorrow, of persecution, which doubtless darkened and embrowned every faculty of his consummate genius. The persecutions of the early Christians drove men into solitudes, where the tumult and fear of the world was exchanged for tumult and fear within; for they were where nature, ordaining every man to work for a common good, never intended them to be, and therefore would not give them peace. No wonder, if, in their bewildered fancies, they were haunted by demons, and took their fevered visions for realities. No wonder if they enacted the extravagant vagaries of insanity, and their faith (still faith) became mixed with a fabulous superstition. The anchorite was sought as a holy man; people believed in his miraculous powers as people have believed since--and people believe now, though no longer in anchorites. There are even Protestant miracle-workers, and thousands who have a kind of belief in their hearts which they will not acknowledge in words; and, while they ridicule the Romish calendar, have their own Protestant saints, and worship them, too, with an idolatry perhaps not less in reality than that which they so vehemently condemn in others. It is well to discountenance seriously and gravely the lying legends of Rome, and to sift from the fables the evil purpose with which they are fabricated or propagated, to expose the hidden design--a dominant power over minds and persons. But, to be candid, there was a time when legends of miracles were household words, and yet had nothing to do with priestcraft and Popery. Such things were before Popery; and that corrupt Church but took advantage of a human propensity, which they could not hope to eradicate. It would indeed be wonderful if there was not at all times a ready belief in them, as long as people believed anything, and that there might be powers above the human. And be it remembered, that many legends of miracles are of that early date which may be said to have begun ere miracles had ceased--ere the belief, not in the possibility, but in the present existence, could be well worn out. The necessity of keeping up the show of them has indeed been the crime, and is the crying disgrace, of the Romish Church. All we mean to assert is, that, considering the contiguity of the true and the false, in point of time, there is at least a great diminution of disparagement of intellect in those who, in the earliest times, took visions and dreams for facts, and events, that happened to be simultaneous, for miracles. Then, again, we know that many of these legends were but repetitions, and in their origin not intended to pass for truth. The lives of saints were the school-themes in convents--the only, schools. The names and a few leading lines of life of saints given, scholars were to fill up, as their imaginations could supply detail; consequently we see many of them to be of a puerile and even infantine fancy, and taken from nursery tales enlarged--a kind of 'raw-head and bloody-bones'--children boiled in a pot, the Thyestean supper, and the children leaping whole out of the dish. And here we would ask the Romish clergy, who certainly in their accredited books propagate fables scarcely less ridiculous, if the being ridiculous is not a test of their falsity? We cannot, while we are reasonable, suppose otherwise than that the Author of miracles would at least guard them from contempt of this kind; that, as they are intended for the conversion of mankind, they should not present themselves in a ridiculous posture, or under ridiculous coincidences. Such was not the pattern of the Scripture miracles. We would, however, make a great distinction between the fraudulent (that is, having a fraudulent purpose) legends, and those which are merely exaggerations or repetitions, readily and naturally applied under congenial circumstances, and for the most part allegorical of the Christian charities, and inculcating Christian virtues. Shall we shock the reader if we add, too, that there may be a very innocent superstition? Since bloody persecution has ceased, superstition in the eyes of this wise-growing age is like the dog that the member of a Peace Society rebuked thus, "Friend, I won't beat thee, but I'll cry mad dog." Should a child, now-a-days, on lying down in bed, say, as children did say in our younger days--

"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on,"

there may be grounds for fear that, should ever the Government inspectors of schools hear of it, the poor innocents would be put to an inconvenient questioning; and it is possible that these inspectors, or multitudes of men equally learned, discreet, and wise, may, after lecturing the school teachers and scholars on superstition, go directly, with as great credulity, to a lecture of another kind, and to witness mesmeric experiments, which assume powers far beyond those of any miracles whatever. Those who would smile at the tale of a holy man healing the sick by a word, will credit a somnambulist who, upon a physician's fee, professes to look blindfolded into the inside of his credulous patient, and, without knowing anything whatever about medicine, say what drug will effect a cure; who advertises to be at home for consultation upon people's most private affairs--to tell them of unknown, unsuspected, important papers and documents--to tell the past, the present, and, more wonderful, _the future_. And, with a wonderful inconsistency, there are men who, having entire faith in these assumptions, and on the infallibility of their science, have no belief whatever in a soul, scoff at spirituality, and boldly pronounce the phenomena of seeing without eyes, travelling without feet, bidding doors, whether of mansion or of cabinets, open to them, and, being obeyed, of knowing all secrets which were never told; of knowing what is passing thousands of miles off with persons never before seen, by holding any person's hand; of entering into that person; of prophesying; of knowing thoughts and their consequences, as to be shown in events;--audaciously, we say, pronouncing these phenomena to arise from materialism.

While such things are, and things as strange, who can hope to expel superstition from the stronghold of man's belief? and who would wish to do it altogether, if the vacant citadel is to be taken possession of by such philosophy as this--the fanaticism of science? And whilst we condemn, as it must be confessed we ought, but duly and discreetly, the greater part of the Romish saintology, their legends and the works of art relating to them, as all belonging to "ages dark" and obsolete, it may not be altogether amiss to turn over some of the old and new pages of the evangelical magazines, where modern saints figure in portraiture and biography--that is, in our enlightened art and literature; and it is more than probable we shall be humbled and disgusted, and be charitably disposed to make some apologies even for the _aurea legenda_. And should any, in their folly or in their wickedness, desire to set up a new idol, to rival or obliterate the memory of St Johanna Southcote the immaculate, or St Huntingdon, for whom the fishes leaped voluntarily from the ponds into his sanctified hands, and for whose sake sudden death came upon the man who would not receive him as a tenant, let such person or persons not despair of collecting a household of "Latter-day Saints" after the authorised manner of Joe Smith the Mormonist. It may be read in modern biographies, that children almost infants have been miraculously converted whilst in idle play, and have gone back to their homes and converted their great-grandfathers. Poor good John Wesley believed many of these absurd things. He assented to the assertion of the profligate who courted his sister, that it was by "the Lord's directions;" and again, that suddenly "the Lord" had told him to transfer his affections to John's other sister. The published _Sancta sanctorum_ of religious sects are nigh forgotten now-a-days; but they still exist, as did other legends, to be collected in form, should a seeming necessity or a cunning purpose require it: for there are multitudes who credit them now, and many more who might, without much difficulty, be made strenuous to establish them for "their Church."

We must not, however, forget, that the subject of Mrs Jameson's book before us is the legends of the monastic orders in their connection with art. And here modern superstition or fanaticism is at a desperate disadvantage. Modern art itself is far too worldly, too material a thing for spirituality, real or assumed. In those evangelical portraits to which we have already alluded, gross, and, as it would almost seem, studiedly ugly similitudes, lest the flesh should boast, shining with an unction too human, and with the conceit of self-applause escaping from every pore, and redolent of congregational adoration, vulgar personifications of peculiar and hostile sectarianism, the material man has been alone the aim of the artist. There is no tale told--no act of devotion represented--no religious procession, no temple spirituality,--but the man alone; not as he might be seen--humble, devout towards God, but, as it were, with his back to sacred things, and his face towards _his_ people, as if he were the sole or chief recipient of worship. How different in character were the works of Angelico, Il Beato, of Giotto, and those great and pious men, who with their wondrous genius adorned the cloisters of the monastic orders--not with the portraiture of the monks of the day, but with devout and holy processions, acts of their founders, and incidents of sacred history! They taught by the eye; and it possessed, in some respects, a charm above that of the being taught by books. Picture, at once, is able to imbue the spectator with a kind of spirituality ere it touches the understanding; whereas, in reading, it is the uninformed and grosser imagination supplies the portraiture from scenes of a narrow experience, and personages of a homely familiarity.

Yet even in very many of the monastic pictures Mrs Jameson finds a defect, in the too human purpose of the painters and their patrons: she ascribes somewhat of a vain-glorious and exclusive, where the chief object was to exalt a St Benedict, a St Francis, or St Dominick, not as men, but as saints of their respective orders, and for those orders. Still, we think this objection is carried too far. The purpose was, at least, no present portraiture; and surely the subjects did often convey precept, and were calculated to touch the heart, and kindle devotion, and encourage human charities. Undoubtedly, far higher in the poetical scale were those themes of an actual Divinity, of which she treated so enthusiastically in the first part of her former volumes--ascending from angels and archangels, from the heavenly host, to the precincts around the throne of the Divine glory. Yet be it duly weighed, in favour of the patronage of the monastic orders, that this exaltation of art in its theme was not altogether ever abandoned; and upon the whole, we doubt if advantages were not in some degree gained by the admixture of things more comprehensible, and more directly appealing to natural sensibilities. Besides, there was a class of paintings which arose out of our human affections, and which, therefore, led to a pious trust, through our common sympathies: we allude to votive pictures, which were of the earliest and latest date--pervading, indeed, the whole religion; for it was, in truth, a practice continued from the heathen worship.

"The pictures, too," says our authoress, "which are suspended
in churches as votive memorials of benefits received, are often
very touching. I recollect such a picture in the gallery of
Vienna. A youth about fifteen, in the character of Tobias,
is led by the hand of his guardian angel Raphael; and on the
other side is St Leonard, the patron of captives, holding his
broken fetters; Christ the Redeemer appears above; and below
in a corner kneels an elderly man, his eyes fixed on the
youth. The arrangement of this group leaves us no doubt of
its purpose. It was the votive offering of a father whose son
had escaped, or had been redeemed from captivity. The picture
is very beautiful, and either by Andrea del Sarto, or one of
his school. If we could discover where it had been originally
placed, we might discover the facts and personages to which
it alludes; but, even on the walls of a gallery, we recognise
its pathetic significance: we read it as a poem--as a hymn of
thanksgiving."

Mrs Jameson makes a very good remark upon a deficiency in catalogues of galleries and collections--the omission of the name of the church or chapel, or the confraternity, whence the pictures were purchased, and such history as might be known respecting them. Our collectors, indeed, are not without their picture-pedigrees; but they are of a curious kind--rather too expressive of a fear of dupery of dealers, and implying but little good foundation of taste in purchasers. Picture-pedigrees refer not to an inherent virtue, visible as the pure blood of the Arabian courser, but to the supposed taste or better known wealth of the last possessor. Few pictures stand on their own merits--they acquire a virtue from the hands or houses they have passed through, more than from the hands that worked them. Indeed, the known collector is generally the only authenticity of the painter, and stamps the value. But to say somewhat of pictures of sacred subjects--and they are by far the finest in known collections--from this deficiency in the catalogues much of their interest is lost; not only so, but we see them in the midst of strange incongruities, as well as injured in their effect by locality, and by light unsuited to them. We cannot judge fairly of their real excellence, nor understand the actual religious power they once possessed. Many of them were painted for private chapels or oratories, and purposely, perhaps, for dim religious light; for an intimate communion of the devout with the one sentiment and with it alone. We have often earnestly wished that, in building national galleries, the large and ostentatious display, at one view, were not the object, and that the particular character of our greatest works were well considered, and fit positions given, and proper lights adjusted. It would be a great thing, for instance, to see the "Raising of Lazarus" of Sebastian del Piombo, in our National Gallery, in a room by itself, and under a studied and arranged light. It is now where it is not all, and at all times, visible; and it is far too important in itself, of too impressive a character, for the look of one passing moment, and the distraction of many things. In the Vatican the Apollo has a room to himself. Picture galleries should not emulate the show-rooms of trade. If the pictures are irrecoverably removed from their own birthplace, from their own home, separated from their local history and interest, much may still be done, in some degree, to preserve for them their general character, and to allow them to make the intended general impression. And it is in fact for this purpose that we highly estimate this work of Mrs Jameson, that, in referring to these legends, we may read the productions to which they have given rise.

"What a lively, living, really religious interest is given
to one of these sacred groups when we know the locality, or
the community for which it was executed; and how it becomes
enriched as a production of mind when it speaks to the mind
through a thousand associations, will be felt, I think, after
reading the legends which follow."

The Benedictine order stands first in point of time and in interest, not as regards art only, but as the great civilising order of the world. The Benedictines were the early missionaries of the north of Europe; they, banished the impure and inhuman rites of heathenism, by conveying, regardless of peril, the light of the gospel into the wilds of Britain, Gaul, Saxony, and Belgium. They gave security to the oppressed, rescued from the spoiler, and were a refuge to the poor in times of tyranny and barbarism. They were the sole depositaries of learning and of the arts; collected and transcribed books--particularly the Scriptures--which were charitably bestowed or deposited as precious gifts. We owe to them not only the diffusion of the Scriptures, but the preservation of classical literature. To them we owe the recovery of the works of Pliny, Sallust, and Cicero.

"They were the fathers of Gothic architecture; they were
the earliest illuminators and limners; and, to crown their
deservings under this head, the inventor of the gamut, and the
first who instituted a school of music, was a Benedictine monk,
Guido d'Arezzo."

They were the great civilisers, by bringing science to bear upon agriculture; the authors of experimental farming and gardening; the cultivators of new fruits and herbs. They cleared and cultivated; science and the plough went with them wherever they planted the cross. We cannot forbear quoting the words of Sir James Stephen:--

"The greatness of the Benedictines did not, however, consist
either in their agricultural skill, their prodigies of
architecture, or their priceless libraries, but in their
parentage of countless men and women illustrious for active
piety, for wisdom in the government of mankind, for profound
learning, and for that contemplative spirit which discovers,
within the soul itself, things beyond the limits of the
perceptible creation."

The Benedictines were introduced into England about fifty years after the death of their founder, in A.D. 543. Augustine the monk, however, was not the first Christian missionary to this country, as it has commonly been represented. The Benedictine order was established here by him. The whole Christian world was then divided upon the question, whether the Eastern or Western Patriarch should be acknowledged head of the universal church. Under him England was subjected to Rome. St Benedict was of a noble family, and born at Norcia, in the duchy of Spoleto, about A.D. 480. Sent to Rome to study literature, and disgusted by the profligacy of his companions, at a period when opinions as to the efficacy of solitude and penance were prevalent, he separated himself from vicious contagion in a hermitage, at fifteen years of age. He would probably have died under suffering and privation had not his nurse, doubting, perhaps, between the idea of his inspiration or his insanity, followed him, begged for him, and administered to his wants. Benedict thought to deny himself this comfort--escaped, and hid himself among the rocks of Subiaco, about forty miles from Rome. He here met with a hermit, and lived three years in a cavern, unknown to his family, and shared with the hermit the scanty fare of bread and water. In this solitude he was not without temptations; visions too earthly, and such as well might assault his age, were rendered vain by increased penance. He is said to have rushed from his cave, and to have thrown himself into a thicket of briars and nettles, until the blood flowed. They still show at Subiaco the rose-bushes propagated from those which wounded the saint.

The scenery about Subiaco has even now a monastic charm; it has its lonely recesses, its silent dells. We have ourselves threaded its deep valley, and laying aside the pencil, been the hermit of an hour by the side of its clear mountain river--and then ascended the rocky heights to visit the convents of St Benedict and Santa Scholastica. We well remember to have taken shelter from a land-storm, such as Poussin has painted, and probably from this spot, in a cave which had heretofore doubtless been the home of more than one follower of St Benedict.