Chapter II: Part 2

"In the centre of Westminster Abbey thus lies its Founder, and such is the story of its foundation. Even apart from the legendary elements in which it is involved, it is impossible not to be struck by the fantastic character of all its circumstances. We seem to be in a world of poetry." (I protest, No.) "Edward is four centuries later than Ethelbert and Augustine; but the origin of Canterbury is commonplace and prosaic compared with the origin of Westminster." (Yes, that's true.) "We can hardly imagine a figure more incongruous to the soberness of later times than the quaint, irresolute, wayward prince whose chief characteristics have just been described. His titles of Confessor and Saint belong not to the general instincts of Christendom but to the most transitory feelings of the age." (I protest, No.) "His opinions, his prevailing motives, were such as in no part of modern Europe would now be shared by any educated teacher or ruler." (That's true enough.) "But in spite of these irreconcilable differences, there was a solid ground for the charm which he exercised over his contemporaries. His childish and eccentric fancies have passed away;" (I protest, No;) "but his innocent faith and his sympathy with his people are qualities which, even in our altered times, may still retain their place in the economy of the world. Westminster Abbey, so we hear it said, sometimes with a cynical sneer, sometimes with a timorous scruple, has admitted within its walls many who have been great without being good, noble with a nobleness of the earth earthy, worldly with the wisdom of this world. But it is a counterbalancing reflection, that the central tomb, round which all those famous names have clustered, contains the ashes of one who, weak and erring as he was, rests his claims of interment here, not on any act of power or fame, but only on his artless piety and simple goodness. He, towards whose dust was attracted the fierce Norman, and the proud Plantagenet, and the grasping Tudor, and the fickle Stuart, even the Independent Oliver, the Dutch William, and the Hanoverian George, was one whose humble graces are within the reach of every man, woman, and child of every time, if we rightly part the immortal substance from the perishable form."

Now I have read you these passages from Dean Stanley as the most accurately investigatory, the most generously sympathetic, the most reverently acceptant account of these days, and their people, which you can yet find in any English history. But consider now, point by point, where it leaves you. You are told, first, that you are living in an age of poetry. But the days of poetry are those of Shakespeare and Milton, not of Bede: nay, for their especial wealth in melodious theology and beautifully rhythmic and pathetic meditation, perhaps the days which have given us 'Hiawatha,' 'In Memoriam,' 'The Christian Year,' and the 'Soul's Diary' of George Macdonald, may be not with disgrace compared with those of Caedmon. And nothing can be farther different from the temper, nothing less conscious of the effort, of a poet, than any finally authentic document to which you can be referred for the relation of a Saxon miracle.

I will read you, for a perfectly typical example, an account of one from Bede's 'Life of St. Cuthbert,' The passage is a favourite one of my own, but I do not in the least anticipate its producing upon you the solemnizing effect which I think I could command from reading, instead, a piece of 'Marmion,' 'Manfred,' or 'Childe Harold.'

... "He had one day left his cell to give advice to some visitors; and when he had finished, he said to them, 'I must now go in again, but do you, as you are inclined to depart, first take food; and when you have cooked and eaten that goose which is hanging on the wall, go on board your vessel in God's name and return home.' He then uttered a prayer, and, having blessed them, went in. But they, as he had bidden them, took some food; but having enough provisions of their own, which they had brought with them, they did not touch the goose.

"But when they had refreshed themselves they tried to go on board their vessel, but a sudden storm utterly prevented them from putting to sea. They were thus detained seven days in the island by the roughness of the waves, and yet they could not call to mind what fault they had committed. They therefore returned to have an interview with the holy father, and to lament to him their detention. He exhorted them to be patient, and on the seventh day came out to console their sorrow, and to give them pious exhortations. When, however, he had entered the house in which they were stopping, and saw that the goose was not eaten, he reproved their disobedience with mild countenance and in gentle language: 'Have you not left the goose still hanging in its place? What wonder is it that the storm has prevented your departure? Put it immediately into the caldron, and boil and eat it, that the sea may become tranquil, and you may return home.'

"They immediately did as he commanded; and it happened most wonderfully that the moment the kettle began to boil the wind began to cease, and the waves to be still Having finished their repast, and seeing that the sea was calm, they went on board, and to their great delight, though with shame for their neglect, reached home with a fair wind. Now this, as I have related, I did not pick up from any chance authority, but I had it from one of those who were present, a most reverend monk and priest of the same monastery, Cynemund, who still lives, known to many in the neighbourhood for his years and the purity of his life."

* * * * *

I hope that the memory of this story, which, thinking it myself an extremely pretty one, I have given you, not only for a type of sincerity and simplicity, but for an illustration of obedience, may at all events quit you, for good and all, of the notion that the believers and witnesses of miracle were poetical persons. Saying no more on the head of that allegation, I proceed to the Dean's second one, which I cannot but interpret as also intended to be injurious,--that they were artless and childish ones; and that because of this rudeness and puerility, their motives and opinions would not be shared by any statesmen of the present day.

It is perfectly true that Edward the Confessor was himself in many respects of really childish temperament; not therefore, perhaps, as I before suggested to you, less venerable. But the age of which we are examining the progress, was by no means represented or governed by men of similar disposition. It was eminently productive of--it was altogether governed, guided, and instructed by--men of the widest and most brilliant faculties, whether constructive or speculative, that the world till then had seen; men whose acts became the romance, whose thoughts the wisdom, and whose arts the treasure, of a thousand years of futurity.

I warned you at the close of last lecture against the too agreeable vanity of supposing that the Evangelization of the world began at St. Martin's, Canterbury. Again and again you will indeed find the stream of the Gospel contracting itself into narrow channels, and appearing, after long-concealed filtration, through veins of unmeasured rock, with the bright resilience of a mountain spring. But you will find it the only candid, and therefore the only wise, way of research, to look in each era of Christendom for the minds of culminating power in all its brotherhood of nations; and, careless of local impulse, momentary zeal, picturesque incident, or vaunted miracle, to fasten your attention upon the force of character in the men, whom, over each newly-converted race, Heaven visibly sets for its shepherds and kings, to bring forth judgment unto victory. Of these I will name to you, as messengers of God and masters of men, five monks and five kings; in whose arms during the range of swiftly gainful centuries which we are following, the life of the world lay as a nursling babe. Remember, in their successive order,--of monks, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Martin, St. Benedict, and St. Gregory; of kings,--and your national vanity may be surely enough appeased in recognizing two of them for Saxon,--Theodoric, Charlemagne, Alfred, Canute, and the Confessor. I will read three passages to you, out of the literal words of three of these ten men, without saying whose they are, that you may compare them with the best and most exalted you have read expressing the philosophy, the religion, and the policy of to-day,--from which I admit, with Dean Stanley, but with a far different meaning from his, that they are indeed separate for evermore. I give you first, for an example of Philosophy, a single sentence, containing all--so far as I can myself discern--that it is possible for us to know, or well for us to believe, respecting the world and its laws.

"OF GOD'S UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE, RULING ALL, AND COMPRISING ALL.

"Wherefore the great and mighty God; He that made man a reasonable creature of soul and body, and He that did neither let him pass unpunished for his sin, nor yet excluded him from mercy; He that gave, both unto good and bad, essence with the stones, power of production with the trees, senses with the beasts of the field, and understanding with the angels; He from whom is all being, beauty, form, and number, weight, and measure; He from whom all nature, mean and excellent, all seeds of form, all forms of seed, all motion, both of forms and seeds, derive and have being; He that gave flesh the original beauty, strength, propagation, form and shape, health and symmetry; He that gave the unreasonable soul, sense, memory, and appetite; the reasonable, besides these, fantasy, understanding, and will; He, I say, having left neither heaven, nor earth, nor angel, nor man, no, nor the most base and contemptible creature, neither the bird's feather, nor the herb's flower, nor the tree's leaf, without the true harmony of their parts, and peaceful concord of composition:--It is in no way credible that He would leave the kingdoms of men and their bondages and freedom loose and uncomprised in the laws of His eternal providence."[5]

[Footnote 5: From St. Augustine's 'Citie of God,' Book V., ch. xi. (English trans., printed by George Eld, 1610.)]

This for the philosophy.[6] Next, I take for example of the Religion of our ancestors, a prayer, personally and passionately offered to the Deity conceived as you have this moment heard.

[Footnote 6: Here one of the "Stones of Westminster" was shown and commented on.]

"O Thou who art the Father of that Son which has awakened us, and yet urgeth us out of the sleep of our sins, and exhorteth us that we become Thine;" (note you that, for apprehension of what Redemption means, against your base and cowardly modern notion of 'scaping whipping. Not to take away the Punishment of Sin, but by His Resurrection to raise us out of the sleep of sin itself! Compare the legend at the feet of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah in the golden Gospel of Charles le Chauve[7]:--

"HIC LEO SURGENDO PORTAS CONFREGIT AVERNI
QUI NUNQUAM DORMIT, NUSQUAM DORMITAT IN ÆVUM;")

"to Thee, Lord, I pray, who art the supreme truth; for all the truth that is, is truth from Thee. Thee I implore, O Lord, who art the highest wisdom. Through Thee are wise all those that are so. Thou art the true life, and through Thee are living all those that are so. Thou art the supreme felicity, and from Thee all have become happy that are so. Thou art the highest good, and from Thee all beauty springs. Thou art the intellectual light, and from Thee man derives his understanding.

[Footnote 7: At Munich: the leaf has been exquisitely drawn and legend communicated to me by Professor Westwood. It is written in gold on purple.]

"To Thee, O God, I call and speak. Hear, O hear me, Lord! for Thou art my God and my Lord; my Father and my Creator; my ruler and my hope; my wealth and my honour my house, my country, my salvation, and my life! Hear, hear me, O Lord! Few of Thy servants comprehend Thee. But Thee alone I _love_,[8] indeed, above all other things. Thee I seek: Thee I will follow: Thee I am ready to serve. Under Thy power I desire to abide, for Thou alone art the Sovereign of all. I pray Thee to command me as Thou wilt."

[Footnote 8: Meaning--not that he is of those few, but that, without comprehending, at least, as a dog, he can love.]

You see this prayer is simply the expansion of that clause of the Lord's Prayer which most men eagerly omit from it,--_Fiat voluntas tua_. In being so, it sums the Christian prayer of all ages. See now, in the third place, how far this king's letter I am going to read to you sums also Christian Policy.

"Wherefore I render high thanks to Almighty God, for the happy
accomplishment of all the desires which I have set before me,
and for the satisfying of my every wish.

"Now therefore, be it known to you all, that to Almighty God
Himself I have, on my knees, devoted my life, to the end that
in all things I may do justice, and with justice and rightness
rule the kingdoms and peoples under me; throughout everything
preserving an impartial judgment. If, heretofore, I have,
through being, as young men are, impulsive or careless, done
anything unjust, I mean, with God's help, to lose no time
in remedying my fault. To which end I call to witness my
counsellors, to whom I have entrusted the counsels of the
kingdom, and I charge them that by no means, be it through
fear of me, or the favour of any other powerful personage, to
consent to any injustice, or to suffer any to shoot out in any
part of my kingdom. I charge all my viscounts and those set
over my whole kingdom, as they wish to keep my friendship or
their own safety, to use no unjust force to any man, rich or
poor; let all men, noble and not noble, rich and poor alike,
be able to obtain their rights under the law's justice; and
from that law let there be no deviation, either to favour the
king or any powerful person, nor to raise money for me. I have
no need of money raised by what is unfair. I also would have
you know that I go now to make peace and firm treaty by the
counsels of all my subjects, with those nations and people who
wished, had it been possible for them to do so, which it was
not, to deprive us alike of kingdom and of life. God brought
down their strength to nought: and may He of His benign love
preserve us on our throne and in honour. Lastly, when I have
made peace with the neighbouring nations, and settled and
pacified all my dominions in the East, so that we may nowhere
have any war or enmity to fear, I mean to come to England this
summer, as soon as I can fit out vessels to sail. My reason,
however, in sending this letter first is to let all the people
of my kingdom share in the joy of my welfare: for as you
yourselves know, I have never spared myself or my labour; nor
will I ever do so, where my people are really in want of some
good that I can do them."

What think you now, in candour and honour, you youth of the latter days,--what think you of these types of the thought, devotion, and government, which not in words, but pregnant and perpetual fact, animated these which you have been accustomed to call the Dark Ages?

The Philosophy is Augustine's; the Prayer Alfred's; and the Letter Canute's.

And, whatever you may feel respecting the beauty or wisdom of these sayings, be assured of one thing above all, that they are sincere; and of another, less often observed, that they are joyful.

Be assured, in the first place, that they are sincere, The ideas of diplomacy and priestcraft are of recent times. No false knight or lying priest ever prospered, I believe, in any age, but certainly not in the dark ones. Men prospered then, only in following openly-declared purposes, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.

And that they did so prosper, in the degree in which they accepted and proclaimed the Christian Gospel, may be seen by any of you in your historical reading, however partial, if only you will admit the idea that it could be so, and was likely to be so. You are all of you in the habit of supposing that temporal prosperity is owing either to worldly chance or to worldly prudence; and is never granted in any visible relation to states of religious temper. Put that treacherous doubt away from you, with disdain; take for basis of reasoning the noble postulate, that the elements of Christian faith are sound,--instead of the base one, that they are deceptive; reread the great story of the world in that light, and see what a vividly real, yet miraculous tenor, it will then bear to you.

Their faith then, I tell you first, was sincere; I tell you secondly that it was, in a degree few of us can now conceive, joyful. We continually hear of the trials, sometimes of the victories, of Faith,--but scarcely ever of its pleasures. Whereas, at this time, you will find that the chief delight of all good men was in the recognition of the goodness and wisdom of the Master, who had come to dwell with them upon earth. It is almost impossible for you to conceive the vividness of this sense in them; it is totally impossible for you to conceive the comfort, peace, and force of it. In everything that you now do or seek, you expose yourselves to countless miseries of shame and disappointment, because in your doing you depend on nothing but your own powers, and in seeking choose only your own gratification. You cannot for the most part conceive of any work but for your own interests, or the interests of others about whom you are anxious in the same faithless way; everything about which passion is excited in you or skill exerted is some object of material life, and the idea of doing anything except for your own praise or profit has narrowed itself into little more than the precentor's invitation to the company with little voice and less practice to "sing to the praise and glory of God."

I have said that you cannot imagine the feeling of the energy of daily life applied in the real meaning of those words. You cannot imagine it, but you _can_ prove it. Are any of you willing, simply as a philosophical experiment in the greatest of sciences, to adopt the principles and feelings of these men of a thousand years ago for a given time, say for a year? It cannot possibly do you any harm to try, and you cannot possibly learn what is true in these things, without trying. If after a year's experience of such method you find yourself no happier than before, at least you will be able to support your present opinions at once with more grace and more modesty; having conceded the trial it asked for, to the opposite side. Nor in acting temporarily on a faith you do not see to be reasonable, do you compromise your own integrity more, than in conducting, under a chemist's directions, an experiment of which he foretells inexplicable consequences. And you need not doubt the power you possess over your own minds to do this. Were faith not voluntary, it could not be praised, and would not be rewarded.

If you are minded thus to try, begin each day with Alfred's prayer,--fiat voluntas tua; resolving that you will stand to it, and that nothing that happens in the course of the day shall displease you. Then set to any work you have in hand with the sifted and purified resolution that ambition shall not mix with it, nor love of gain, nor desire of pleasure more than is appointed for you; and that no anxiety shall touch you as to its issue, nor any impatience nor regret if it fail. Imagine that the thing is being done through you, not by you; that the good of it may never be known, but that at least, unless by your rebellion or foolishness, there can come no evil into it, nor wrong chance to it. Resolve also with steady industry to do what you can for the help of your country and its honour, and the honour of its God; and that you will not join hands in its iniquity, nor turn aside from its misery; and that in all you do and feel you will look frankly for the immediate help and direction, and to your own consciences, expressed approval, of God. Live thus, and believe, and with swiftness of answer proportioned to the frankness of the trust, most surely the God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

But, if you will not do this, if you have not courage nor heart enough to break away the fetters of earth, and take up the sensual bed of it, and walk; if you say that you are _bound_ to win this thing, and become the other thing, and that the wishes of your friends,--and the interests of your family,--and the bias of your genius,--and the expectations of your college,--and all the rest of the bow-wow-wow of the wild dog-world, must be attended to, whether you like it or no,--then, at least, for shame give up talk about being free or independent creatures; recognize yourselves for slaves in whom the thoughts are put in ward with their bodies, and their hearts manacled with their hands: and then at least also, for shame, if you refuse to believe that ever there were men who gave their souls to God,--know and confess how surely there are those who sell them to His adversary.

LECTURE III.

THE PLEASURES OF DEED.

_ALFRED TO CŒUR DE LION._

It was my endeavour, in the preceding lecture, to vindicate the thoughts and arts of our Saxon ancestors from whatever scorn might lie couched under the terms applied to them by Dean Stanley,--'fantastic' and 'childish.' To-day my task must be carried forward, first, in asserting the grace in fantasy, and the force in infancy, of the English mind, before the Conquest, against the allegations contained in the final passage of Dean Stanley's description of the first founded Westminster; a passage which accepts and asserts, more distinctly than any other equally brief statement I have met with, the to my mind extremely disputable theory, that the Norman invasion was in every respect a sanitary, moral, and intellectual blessing to England, and that the arrow which slew her Harold was indeed the Arrow of the Lord's deliverance.

"The Abbey itself," says Dean Stanley,--"the chief work of the Confessor's life,--was the portent of the mighty future. When Harold stood beside his sister Edith, on the day of the dedication, and signed his name with hers as witness to the Charter of the Abbey, he might have seen that he was sealing his own doom, and preparing for his own destruction. The solid pillars, the ponderous arches, the huge edifice, with triple tower and sculptured stones and storied windows, that arose in the place and in the midst of the humble wooden churches and wattled tenements of the Saxon period, might have warned the nobles who were present that the days of their rule were numbered, and that the _avenging, civilizing, stimulating_ hand of another and a mightier race was at work, which would change the whole face of their language, their manners, their Church, and their commonwealth. The Abbey, so far exceeding the demands of the _dull and stagnant_ minds of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, was founded not only in faith, but in hope: in the hope that England had yet a glorious career to run; that the line of her sovereigns would not be broken, even when the race of Alfred had ceased to reign."

There must surely be some among my hearers who are startled, if not offended, at being told in the terms which I emphasized in this sentence, that the minds of our Saxon fathers were, although fantastic, dull, and, although childish, stagnant; that farther, in their fantastic stagnation; they were savage,--and in their innocent dullness, criminal; so that the future character and fortune of the race depended on the critical advent of the didactic and disciplinarian Norman baron, at once to polish them, stimulate, and chastise.

Before I venture to say a word in distinct arrest of this judgment, I will give you a chart, as clear as the facts observed in the two previous lectures allow, of the state and prospects of the Saxons, when this violent benediction of conquest happened to them: and especially I would rescue, in the measure that justice bids, the memory even of their Pagan religion from the general scorn in which I used Carlyle's description of the idol of ancient Prussia as universally exponent of the temper of Northern devotion. That Triglaph, or Triglyph Idol, (derivation of Triglaph wholly unknown to me--I use Triglyph only for my own handiest epithet), last set up, on what is now St. Mary's hill in Brandenburg, in 1023, belonged indeed to a people wonderfully like the Saxons,--geographically their close neighbours,--in habits of life, and aspect of native land, scarcely distinguishable from them,--in Carlyle's words, a "strong-boned, iracund, herdsman and fisher people, highly averse to be interfered with, in their religion especially, and inhabiting a moory flat country, full of lakes and woods, but with plenty also of alluvial mud, grassy, frugiferous, apt for the plough"--in all things like the Saxons, except, as I read the matter, in that 'aversion to be interfered with' which you modern English think an especially Saxon character in you,--but which is, on the contrary, you will find on examination, by no means Saxon; but only Wendisch, Czech, Serbic, Sclavic,--other hard names I could easily find for it among the tribes of that vehemently heathen old Preussen--"resolutely worshipful of places of oak trees, of wooden or stone idols, of Bangputtis, Patkullos, and I know not what diabolic dumb blocks." Your English "dislike to be interfered with" is in absolute fellowship with these, but only gathers itself in its places of Stalks, or chimneys, instead of oak trees, round its idols of iron, instead of wood, diabolically _vocal_ now; strident, and sibilant, instead of dumb.

Far other than these, their neighbour Saxons, Jutes and Angles!--tribes between whom the distinctions are of no moment whatsoever, except that an English boy or girl may with grace remember that 'Old England,' exactly and strictly so called, was the small district in the extreme south of Denmark, totally with its islands estimable at sixty miles square of dead flat land. Directly south of it, the definitely so-called Saxons held the western shore of Holstein, with the estuary of the Elbe, and the sea-mark isle, Heligoland. But since the principal temple of Saxon worship was close to Leipsic,[9] we may include under our general term, Saxons, the inhabitants of the whole level district of North Germany, from the Gulf of Flensburg to the Hartz; and, eastward, all the country watered by the Elbe as far as Saxon Switzerland.

[Footnote 9: Turner, vol. i., p. 223.]

Of the character of this race I will not here speak at any length: only note of it this essential point, that their religion was at once more practical and more imaginative than that of the Norwegian peninsula; the Norse religion being the conception rather of natural than moral powers, but the Saxon, primarily of moral, as the lords of natural--their central divine image, Irminsul,[10] holding the standard of peace in her right hand, a balance in her left. Such a religion may degenerate into mere slaughter and rapine; but it has the making in it of the noblest men.

[Footnote 10: Properly plural 'Images'--Irminsul and Irminsula.]

More practical at all events, whether for good or evil, in this trust in a future reward for courage and purity, than the mere Scandinavian awe of existing Earth and Cloud, the Saxon religion was also more imaginative, in its nearer conception of human feeling in divine creatures. And when this wide hope and high reverence had distinct objects of worship and prayer, offered to them by Christianity, the Saxons easily became pure, passionate, and thoughtful Christians; while the Normans, to the last, had the greatest difficulty in apprehending the Christian teaching of the Franks, and still deny the power of Christianity, even when they have become inveterate in its form.

Quite the deepest-thoughted creatures of the then animate world, it seems to me, these Saxon ploughmen of the sand or the sea, with their worshipped deity of Beauty and Justice, a red rose on her banner, for best of gifts, and in her right hand, instead of a sword, a balance, for due doom, without wrath,--of retribution in her left. Far other than the Wends, though stubborn enough, they too, in battle rank,--seven times rising from defeat against Charlemagne, and unsubdued but by death--yet, by no means in that John Bull's manner of yours, 'averse to be interfered with,' in their opinions, or their religion. Eagerly docile on the contrary--joyfully reverent--instantly and gratefully acceptant of whatever better insight or oversight a stranger could bring them, of the things of God or man.

And let me here ask you especially to take account of that origin of the true bearing of the Flag of England, the Red Rose. Her own madness defiled afterwards alike the white and red, into images of the paleness, or the crimson, of death; but the Saxon Rose was the symbol of heavenly beauty and peace.

I told you in my first lecture that one swift requirement in our school would be to produce a beautiful map of England, including old Northumberland, giving the whole country, in its real geography, between the Frith of Forth and Straits of Dover, and with only six sites of habitation given, besides those of Edinburgh and London,--namely, those of Canterbury and Winchester, York and Lancaster, Holy Island and Melrose; the latter instead of Iona, because, as we have seen, the influence of St. Columba expires with the advance of Christianity, while that of Cuthbert of Melrose connects itself with the most sacred feelings of the entire Northumbrian kingdom, and Scottish border, down to the days of Scott--wreathing also into its circle many of the legends of Arthur. Will you forgive my connecting the personal memory of having once had a wild rose gathered for me, in the glen of Thomas the Rhymer, by the daughter of one of the few remaining Catholic houses of Scotland, with the pleasure I have in reading to you this following true account of the origin of the name of St. Cuthbert's birthplace;--the rather because I owe it to friendship of the same date, with Mr. Cockburn Muir, of Melrose.

"To those who have eyes to read it," says Mr. Muir, "the name 'Melrose' is written full and fair, on the fair face of all this reach of the valley. The name is anciently spelt Mailros, and later, Malros, never Mulros; ('Mul' being the Celtic word taken to mean 'bare'). Ros is Rose; the forms Meal or Mol imply great quantity or number. Thus Malros means the place of many roses.

"This is precisely the notable characteristic of the neighbourhood. The wild rose is indigenous. There is no nook nor cranny, no bank nor brae, which is not, in the time of roses, ablaze with their exuberant loveliness. In gardens, the cultured rose is so prolific that it spreads literally like a weed. But it is worth suggestion that the word may be of the same stock as the Hebrew _rôsh_ (translated rôs by the Septuagint), meaning _chief_, _principal_, while it is also the name of _some_ flower; but of _which_ flower is now unknown. Affinities of _rôsh_ are not far to seek; Sanskrit, _Raj_(a), _Ra_(ja)_ni_; Latin, _Rex_, _Reg_(ina)."

I leave it to Professor Max Muller to certify or correct for you the details of Mr. Cockburn's research,[11]--this main head of it I can positively confirm, that in old Scotch,--that of Bishop Douglas,--the word 'Rois' stands alike for King, and Rose.

[Footnote 11: I had not time to quote it fully in the lecture; and in my ignorance, alike of Keltic and Hebrew, can only submit it here to the reader's examination. "The ancient Cognizance of the town confirms this etymology beyond doubt, with customary heraldic precision. The shield bears a _Rose_; with a _Maul_, as the exact phonetic equivalent for the expletive. If the herald had needed to express 'bare promontory,' quite certainly he would have managed it somehow. Not only this, the Earls of Haddington were first created Earls of _Melrose_ (1619); and their Shield, quarterly, is charged, for Melrose, in 2nd and 3rd (fesse wavy between) three _Roses_ gu.

"Beyond this ground of certainty, we may indulge in a little excursus into lingual affinities of wide range. The root _mol_ is clear enough. It is of the same stock as the Greek _mála_, Latin _mul_(_tum_), and Hebrew _m'la_. But, _Rose_? We call her Queen of Flowers, and since before the Persian poets made much of her, she was everywhere _Regina Florum_. Why should not the name mean simply the Queen, the Chief? Now, so few who know Keltic know also Hebrew, and so few who know Hebrew know also Keltic, that few know the surprising extent of the affinity that exists--clear as day--between the Keltic and the Hebrew vocabularies. That the word _Rose_ may be a case in point is not hazardously speculative."]

Summing now the features I have too shortly specified in the Saxon character,--its imagination, its docility, its love of knowledge, and its love of beauty, you will be prepared to accept my conclusive statement, that they gave rise to a form of Christian faith which appears to me, in the present state of my knowledge, one of the purest and most intellectual ever attained in Christendom;--never yet understood, partly because of the extreme rudeness of its expression in the art of manuscripts, and partly because, on account of its very purity, it sought no expression in architecture, being a religion of daily life, and humble lodging. For these two practical reasons, first;--and for this more weighty third, that the intellectual character of it is at the same time most truly, as Dean Stanley told you, childlike; showing itself in swiftness of imaginative apprehension, and in the fearlessly candid application of great principles to small things. Its character in this kind may be instantly felt by any sympathetic and gentle person who will read carefully the book I have already quoted to you, the Venerable Bede's life of St. Cuthbert; and the intensity and sincerity of it in the highest orders of the laity, by simply counting the members of Saxon Royal families who ended their lives in monasteries.

Now, at the very moment when this faith, innocence, and ingenuity were on the point of springing up into their fruitage, comes the Northern invasion; of the real character of which you can gain a far truer estimate by studying Alfred's former resolute contest with and victory over the native Norman in his paganism, than by your utmost endeavours to conceive the character of the afterwards invading Norman, disguised, but not changed, by Christianity. The Norman could not, in the nature of him, become a _Christian_ at all; and he never did;--he only became, at his best, the enemy of the Saracen. What he was, and what alone he was capable of being, I will try to-day to explain.

And here I must advise you that in all points of history relating to the period between 800 and 1200, you will find M. Viollet le Duc, incidentally throughout his 'Dictionary of Architecture,' the best-informed, most intelligent, and most thoughtful of guides. His knowledge of architecture, carried down into the most minutely practical details,--(which are often the most significant), and embracing, over the entire surface of France, the buildings even of the most secluded villages; his artistic enthusiasm, balanced by the acutest sagacity, and his patriotism, by the frankest candour, render his analysis of history during that active and constructive period the most valuable known to me, and certainly, in its field, exhaustive. Of the later nationality his account is imperfect, owing to his professional interest in the mere _science_ of architecture, and comparative insensibility to the power of sculpture;--but of the time with which we are now concerned, whatever he tells you must be regarded with grateful attention.

I introduce, therefore, the Normans to you, on their first entering France, under his descriptive terms of them.[12]

[Footnote 12: Article "Architecture," vol. i., p. 138.]

"As soon as they were established on the soil, these barbarians became the most hardy and active builders. Within the space of a century and a half, they had covered the country on which they had definitely landed, with religious, monastic, and civil edifices, of an extent and richness then little common. It is difficult to suppose that they had brought from Norway the elements of art,[13] but they were possessed by a persisting and penetrating spirit; their brutal force did not want for grandeur. Conquerors, they raised castles to assure their domination; they soon recognized the Moral force of the clergy, and endowed it richly. Eager always to attain their end, when once they saw it, they _never left one of their enterprises unfinished_, and in that they differed completely from the Southern inhabitants of Gaul. Tenacious extremely, they were perhaps the only ones among the barbarians established in France who had ideas of order; the only ones who knew how to preserve their conquests, and compose a state. They found the remains of the Carthaginian arts on the territory where they planted themselves, they mingled with those their national genius, positive, grand, and yet supple."

[Footnote 13: They _had_ brought some, of a variously Charybdic, Serpentine, and Diabolic character.--J.R.]

Supple, 'Delié,'--capable of change and play of the mental muscle, in the way that savages are not. I do not, myself, grant this suppleness to the Norman, the less because another sentence of M. le Duc's, occurring incidentally in his account of the archivolt, is of extreme counter-significance, and wide application. "The Norman arch," he says, "is _never derived from traditional classic forms_, but only from mathematical arrangement of line." Yes; that is true: the Norman arch is never derived from classic forms. The cathedral,[14] whose aisles you saw or might have seen, yesterday, interpenetrated with light, whose vaults you might have heard prolonging the sweet divisions of majestic sound, would have been built in that stately symmetry by Norman law, though never an arch at Rome had risen round her field of blood,--though never her Sublician bridge had been petrified by her Augustan pontifices. But the _decoration_, though not the structure of those arches, they owed to another race,[15] whose words they stole without understanding, though three centuries before, the Saxon understood, and used, to express the most solemn majesty of his Kinghood,--

"EGO, EDGAR, TOTIVS ALBIONIS"--

not Rex, that would have meant the King of Kent or Mercia, not of England,--no, nor Imperator; that would have meant only the profane power of Rome, but _BASILEVS_, meaning a King who reigned with sacred authority given by Heaven and Christ.

[Footnote 14: Of Oxford, during the afternoon service.]

[Footnote 15: See the concluding section of the lecture.]

With far meaner thoughts, both of themselves and their powers, the Normans set themselves to build impregnable military walls, and sublime religious ones, in the best possible practical ways; but they no more made books of their church fronts than of their bastion flanks; and cared, in the religion they accepted, neither for its sentiments nor its promises, but only for its immediate results on national order.

As I read them, they were men wholly of this world, bent on doing the most in it, and making the best of it that they could;--men, to their death, of _Deed_, never pausing, changing, repenting, or anticipating, more than the completed square, ὰνευ ψογου, of their battle, their keep, and their cloister. Soldiers before and after everything, they learned the lockings and bracings of their stones primarily in defence against the battering-ram and the projectile, and esteemed the pure circular arch for its distributed and equal strength more than for its beauty. "I believe again," says M. le Duc,[16] "that the feudal castle never arrived at its perfectness till after the Norman invasion, and that this race of the North was the first to apply a defensive system under unquestionable laws, soon followed by the nobles of the Continent, after they had, at their own expense, learned their superiority."

[Footnote 16: Article "Château," vol. iii, p. 65.]

The next sentence is a curious one. I pray your attention to it. "The defensive system of the Norman is born of a profound sentiment of _distrust_ and _cunning, foreign to the character of the Frank_." You will find in all my previous notices of the French, continual insistance upon their natural Franchise, and also, if you take the least pains in analysis of their literature down to this day, that the idea of falseness is to them indeed more hateful than to any other European nation. To take a quite cardinal instance. If you compare Lucian's and Shakespeare's Timon with Molière's Alceste, you will find the Greek and English misanthropes dwell only on men's _ingratitude_ to _themselves_, but Alceste, on their _falsehood to each other_.

Now hear M. le Duc farther:

"The castles built between the tenth and twelfth centuries along the Loire, Gironde, and Seine, that is to say, along the lines of the Norman invasions, and in the neighbourhood of their possessions, have a peculiar and uniform character which one finds neither in central France, nor in Burgundy, nor can there be any need for us to throw light on (_faire ressortir_) the superiority of the warrior spirit of the Normans, during the later times of the Carlovingian epoch, over the spirit of the chiefs of Frank descent, established on the Gallo-Roman soil." There's a bit of honesty in a Frenchman for you!

I have just said that they valued religion chiefly for its influence of order in the present world: being in this, observe, as nearly as may be the exact reverse of modern believers, or persons who profess to be such,--of whom it may be generally alleged, too truly, that they value religion with respect to their future bliss rather than their present duty; and are therefore continually careless of its direct commands, with easy excuse to themselves for disobedience to them. Whereas the Norman, finding in his own heart an irresistible impulse to action, and perceiving himself to be set, with entirely strong body, brain, and will, in the midst of a weak and dissolute confusion of all things, takes from the Bible instantly into his conscience every exhortation to Do and to Govern; and becomes, with all his might and understanding, a blunt and rough servant, knecht, or knight of God, liable to much misapprehension, of course, as to the services immediately required of him, but supposing, since the whole make of him, outside and in, is a soldier's, that God meant him for a soldier, and that he is to establish, by main force, the Christian faith and works all over the world so far as he comprehends them; not merely with the Mahometan indignation against spiritual error, but with a sound and honest soul's dislike of material error, and resolution to extinguish _that_, even if perchance found in the spiritual persons to whom, in their office, he yet rendered total reverence.

Which force and faith in him I may best illustrate by merely putting together the broken paragraphs of Sismondi's account of the founding of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily: virtually contemporary with the conquest of England.

"The Normans surpassed all the races of the west in their ardour for pilgrimages. They would not, to go into the Holy Land, submit to the monotony[17] of a long sea voyage--the rather that they found not on the Mediterranean the storms or dangers they had rejoiced to encounter on their own sea. They traversed by land the whole of France and Italy, trusting to their swords to procure the necessary subsistence,[18] if the charity of the faithful did not enough provide for it with alms. The towns of Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta, and Bari, held constant commerce with Syria; and frequent miracles, it was believed, illustrated the Monte Cassino (St. Benedict again!) on the road of Naples, and the Mount of Angels (Garganus) above Bari." (Querceta Gargani--verily, laborant; _now_, et orant.) "The pilgrims wished to visit during their journey the monasteries built on these two mountains, and therefore nearly always, either going or returning to the Holy Land, passed through Magna Græcia.

[Footnote 17: I give Sismondi's idea as it stands, but there was no question in the matter of monotony or of danger. The journey was made on foot because it was the most laborious way, and the most humble.]

[Footnote 18: See farther on, p. 110, the analogies with English arrangements of the same kind.]

"In one of the earliest years of the eleventh century, about forty of these religious travellers, having returned from the Holy Land, chanced to have met together in Salerno at the moment when a small Saracen fleet came to insult the town, and demand of it a military contribution. The inhabitants of South Italy, at this time, abandoned to the delights of their enchanted climate, had lost nearly all military courage. The Salernitani saw with astonishment forty Norman knights, after having demanded horses and arms from the Prince of Salerno, order the gates of the town to be opened, charge the Saracens fearlessly, and put them to flight. The Salernitani followed, however, the example given them by these brave warriors, and those of the Mussulmans who escaped their swords were forced to re-embark in all haste.

"The Prince of Salerno, Guaimar III., tried in vain to keep the warrior-pilgrims at his court: but at his solicitation other companies established themselves on the rocks of Salerno and Amalfi, until, on Christmas Day, 1041, (exactly a quarter of a century before the coronation here at Westminster of the Conqueror,) they gathered their scattered forces at Aversa,[19] twelve groups of them under twelve chosen counts, and all under the Lombard Ardoin, as commander-in-chief." Be so good as to note that,--a marvellous key-note of historical fact about the unjesting Lombards, I cannot find the total Norman number: the chief contingent, under William of the Iron Arm, the son of Tancred of Hauteville, was only of three hundred knights; the Count of Aversa's troop, of the same number, is named as an important part of the little army--admit it for ten times Tancred's, three thousand men in all. At Aversa, these three thousand men form, coolly on Christmas Day, 1041, the design of--well, I told you they didn't _design_ much, only, now we're here, we may as well, while we're about it,--overthrow the Greek empire! That was their little game!--a Christmas mumming to purpose. The following year, the whole of Apulia was divided among them.

[Footnote 19: In Lombardy, south of Pavia.]

I will not spoil, by abstracting, the magnificent following history of Robert Guiscard, the most wonderful soldier of that or any other time: I leave you to finish it for yourselves, only asking you to read together with it, the sketch, in Turner's history of the Anglo-Saxons, of Alfred's long previous war with the Norman Hasting; pointing out to you for foci of character in each contest, the culminating incidents of naval battle. In Guiscard's struggle with the Greeks, he encounters for their chief naval force the Venetian fleet under the Doge Domenico Selvo. The Venetians are at this moment undoubted masters in all naval warfare; the Normans are worsted easily the first day,--the second day, fighting harder, they are defeated again, and so disastrously that the Venetian Doge takes no precautions against them on the third day, thinking them utterly disabled. Guiscard attacks him again on the third day, with the mere wreck of his own ships, and defeats the tired and amazed Italians finally!

The sea-fight between Alfred's ships and those of Hasting, ought to be still more memorable to us. Alfred, as I noticed in last lecture, had built war ships nearly twice as long as the Normans', swifter, and steadier on the waves. Six Norman ships were ravaging the Isle of Wight; Alfred sent nine of his own to take them. The King's fleet found the Northmen's embayed, and three of them aground. The three others _engaged Alfred's nine, twice their size_; two of the Viking ships were taken, but the third escaped, with only five men! A nation which verily took its pleasures in its Deeds.

But before I can illustrate farther either their deeds or their religion, I must for an instant meet the objection which I suppose the extreme probity of the nineteenth century must feel acutely against these men,--that they all lived by thieving.

Without venturing to allude to the _raison d'être_ of the present French and English Stock Exchanges, I will merely ask any of you here, whether of Saxon or Norman blood, to define for himself what he means by the "possession of India." I have no doubt that you all wish to keep India in order, and in like manner I have assured you that Duke William wished to keep England in order. If you will read the lecture on the life of Sir Herbert Edwardes, which I hope to give in London after finishing this course,[20] you will see how a Christian British officer can, and does, verily, and with his whole heart, keep in order such part of India as may be entrusted to him, and in so doing, secure our Empire. But the silent feeling and practice of the nation about India is based on quite other motives than Sir Herbert's. Every mutiny, every danger, every terror, and every crime, occurring under, or paralyzing, our Indian legislation, arises directly out of our national desire to live on the loot of India, and the notion always entertained by English young gentlemen and ladies of good position, falling in love with each other without immediate prospect of establishment in Belgrave Square, that they can find in India, instantly on landing, a bungalow ready furnished with the loveliest fans, china, and shawls,--ices and sherbet at command,--four-and-twenty slaves succeeding each other hourly to swing the punkah, and a regiment with a beautiful band to "keep order" outside, all round the house.

[Footnote 20: This was prevented by the necessity for the re-arrangement of my terminal Oxford lectures: I am now preparing that on Sir Herbert for publication in a somewhat expanded form.]

Entreating your pardon for what may seem rude in these personal remarks, I will further entreat you to read my account of the death of Cœur de Lion in the third number of 'Fors Clavigera'--and also the scenes in 'Ivanhoe' between Cœur de Lion and Locksley; and commending these few passages to your quiet consideration, I proceed to give you another anecdote or two of the Normans in Italy, twelve years later than those given above, and, therefore, only thirteen years before the battle of Hastings.

Their division of South Italy among them especially, and their defeat of Venice, had alarmed everybody considerably,--especially the Pope, Leo IX., who did not understand this manifestation of their piety. He sent to Henry III. of Germany, to whom he owed his Popedom, for some German knights, and got five hundred spears; gathered out of all Apulia, Campania, and the March of Ancona, what Greek and Latin troops were to be had, to join his own army of the patrimony of St. Peter; and the holy Pontiff, with this numerous army, but no general, began the campaign by a pilgrimage with all his troops to Monte Cassino, in order to obtain, if it might be, St. Benedict for general.

Against the Pope's collected masses, with St. Benedict, their contemplative but at first inactive general, stood the little army of Normans,--certainly not more than the third of their number--but with Robert Guiscard for captain, and under him his brother, Humphrey of Hauteville, and Richard of Aversa. Not in fear, but in devotion, they prayed the Pope 'avec instance,'--to say on what conditions they could appease his anger, and live in peace under him. But the Pope would hear of nothing but their evacuation of Italy. Whereupon, they had to settle the question in the Norman manner.