health." "Car non obstant qu'il soit Anglois, toutesfois il est nostre frere en Jesu Christ, comme saint pol le dit et recite en lune de ses epistres."1 Again, suppose an English scholar at Paris falls sick, and writes to his father in England, to say that he is sick to death. "Adonc quant Et la le pere voit les lettres, il nest pas bien aise, il fait tant par ses journees quil arrive en la cite de Paris, pour venir visiter et veoir son fils, ainsi comme nature de pere le requiert." A knight at Paris knows him, and takes him. prisoner. Ought he so to do? No, he decides. raison est telle, car statut ne guerre raisonnablement ne peut tollir les drois de nature ne le contredire. Et le pere, comme vous savez assez, est tenu de visiter son fils en telle necessitie de maladie I celui ne seroit pas homme naturel ne vray humain qui le yroit prendre et arrester prisonnier." Again, ought a clerk to kill a robber that would take away his goods? Surely not. "Car le scripture dit: Myeulx vault apres la cotte laisser la chappe et les biens vils et transitoires que mettre la main sur la creature de Dieu.” What will our humane enlightened setters of spring-guns in the nineteenth century to preserve their apples, say to this? It was in the dark ages; but we have changed all that. Mark the humanity of Louis IX. when returning from Asia, and in danger of shipwreck off the island of Cyprus. The vessel had struck upon a sand-bank, and the pilots were persuading the king to leave it with the royal family; but the heroic charity, the Christian spirit, of the king refused to countenance a measure which would dishearten and en danger the other passengers. "Il n'y a personne céans,' said he, "qui n'aime autant son corps comme je fais le mien; si une fois je descends, ils descendront aussi, et de long-temps ne reverront leur pays; j'aime mieux mettre moi, la reine et mes enfants en la main de Dieu, que de faire tel dommage à un si grand peuple comme il y a céans." The discipline. and ceremonial of the Church tended to sweeten the temper, and to accustom men to the beauties of humanity they taught men condescension to inferiors, and even respectful and courteous manners. In processions, boys of the first nobility walked with the other youth, 1 Chap. lxxxii. P and the daughters of princely houses were not distinguished from the children of the poor. The excellent and religious King Louis XVI. shewed his son the parish-register of his baptism, and desired him to remark how his name was inserted among the names of the poor, in the same line, and without distinction, as he would have to appear in person before the throne of God. The Church directed her ministers to shew great reverence to each other as they attended at the altar. Hence, no doubt, Dante represents such expressions as not unworthy of the courts of Heaven, when, after addressing the spirit of his ancestor, Cacciaguida, with great ceremony, he says, O slight respect of man's nobility! I never shall account it marvellous That our infirm affection here below Thou mov'st to boasting; when I could not choose E'en in that region of unwarp'd desire, In heaven itself, but make my vaunt in thee.1 Which Milton seems to have remembered when Satan to Uriel Bowing low, As to superior spirits is wont in heaven, Where honour due and reverence none neglects, The imitative disposition of youth would consequently be modelled to a gracious and respectful carriage towards all persons. Thus young Bignon, while at college, is said to have lived with his companions as if they had been sons of kings. In general it may be affirmed, that men in these ages adhered much more closely to nature than those who, in after-time, adopted a new philosophy. If Giordano Bruno had written nothing more contrary to the religion of the Church than these lines, Si cum naturâ sapio et sub numine, Id vere plusquam satis est, he would never have been ranked by her in the list of those who erred. This opens a path for curious inquiry, which, after one suggestion, I shall leave the reader to follow at his leisure. It is well known that a distinguishing charac 1 Paradise, xvi. 2 Paradise Lost, iii. teristic of every thing belonging to the early and middle ages of Christianity, is the picturesque. Those who now struggle to cultivate the fine arts are obliged to have recourse to the despised, and almost forgotten, houses, towns, and dresses, of this period. As soon as men renounced the philosophy of the Church, it was inevitable that their taste, that the form of objects under their control, should change with their religion; for architects had no longer to provide for the love of solitude, of meditation between sombre pillars, of modesty in apartments with the lancet-casement. They were not to study duration and solidity in an age when men were taught to regard the present as their only concern. When nothing but exact knowledge was sought, the undefined sombre arches were to be removed to make way for lines which would proclaim their brevity, and for a blaze of light which might correspond with the mind of those who rejected every proposition that led beyond the reach of the senses, and who wished to believe that there was nothing in the world but what they saw and touched. When money was to be the recognised object of even poetic ambition, no marvel that merchants required a quicker communication by more artificial roads, that citizens were eager to pull down gates and impending studies of Friar Bacon's and Crosses, and whatever might impede the operation of commerce; as men no longer made vows of poverty, or rather as poverty became a disgrace, every object was to affect that neat glaring varnished surface of wealth which is so intractable to the pencil. The revival of the epicurean philosophy, which Cicero thought so unfavourable to eloquence, must quickly appear in the furniture, in the whole plan, and form of life; that of the cynic in the shew of outward hideousness in dress, which purposely sets grace and gentleness at defiance, in the very gait and countenance of men. This was all natural and unavoidable; and so completely is it beyond the skill of the painter or the poet to render bearable the productions of the moderns, after all their pains; for the moderns take great pains to embody their conceptions, such as they are, and they spare no money in the cause; and so fast are the poor neglected works of Christian antiquity falling to ruin, that it is hard 1 Brutus, 35. to conceive how the fine arts can be cultivated after another century has elapsed; men will lose the sense as well as objects to attract it; for when children are taught in infant schools to love accounts from their cradle, and to study political economy before they have heard of the Red-cross Knight or the Wild Hunter, the manner and taste of such an age will smother the sparks of nature, et opinioni confirmatæ natura ipsa cedat." Yet, notwithstanding, we might be led, from a forgetfulness of the oneness of wisdom and of beauty, and from an unwillingness to cling to the mere bones of antiquity, and from hearing the incessant praises which the moderns pass on their own productions and tastes, to concede at last that a love for the picturesque might be a false, or only an artificial passion; but when we find that it is invited by every work of nature,—for no one competent to judge of beauty will deny that it is, we are rather induced to adopt a different conclusion; and, albeit with astonishment, we find ourselves arrived at a fresh perception of the wisdom of our ancestors from having followed this path, which seemed at first so unlikely to terminate any where but in a fanciful and fruitless theory. In concluding these remarks on the humanity and moral graces of this religion, it is essential that we observe how, while men were thus humane and moral, morality was not their religion. The clergy did not preach upon keeping accounts and the way to succeed in life, upon attention to business, and the comfort of having lived decently, and of having a good character; but they preached on the four ends of man, on the delay of conversion, on the sacraments, on the commands of the decalogue, on the laws of the Church, on the mysteries of faith, on deadly sin. This naturally leads to a reflection on the spirituality and wisdom which produced such fruits; nor let it be thought foreign from the design and nature of these wanderings, to dwell upon this object; for, as a famous knight says, "knights were to know all things: there have been such in former ages who have delivered as ingenious and learned a sermon or oration at the head of an army, as if they had taken their degrees at the university of Paris :" from which he infers, "that the lance never dulled the pen, Cicero, Tuscul. iii. 2. nor the pen the lance" and Madame la Baronne de Staël has admitted that the knights were often excellent Christians. At least, there is enough in the examples we have lately seen to suggest some reflections respecting this divine study. In the first place, then, what is the inference to be derived from our late inquiries respecting the chief and distinguishing characteristic of the religion of the Christian chivalry? "If a Christian," said St. Augustine, "doth not aim at perfection, he is in danger to lose himself eternally. Si dixeris sufficit, periisti.” But then," says a religious man to the nobility of France, "God hath, as it were, engrafted perfection with his own hands upon the sweetest stock in the world. Ask, I pray, of all divines, Wherein lies perfection? Ask of religious men where they place it. In sackcloth, or hair shirts? They will answer you, No. In the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience? No. These are most undoubted ways to perfection; but they are not properly perfection. In what then? In the love of God, which St. Irenæus calleth the most eminent of all the gifts of God."2 So said St. Augustine. "Nihil omnino esse virtutem affirmaverim nisi summum amorem Dei."3 So St. Thomas, Henricus, and Scotus, place love as the basis of virtue. The Count of Stolberg quotes St. Paul, "Charitas Dei diffusa est in cordibus nostris per Spiritum sanctum, qui datus est nobis ;" and then says, "This love is that for which man was created. It is the element of the soul. Without a restoration of nature through grace it is not in man, although its shadow in the hearts and intercourse of men with each other moves in various forms. They are shades of the dead. The kind of love in natural men, which pursues after the objects of passion, or which is reflected in the enthusiasm of self-enjoyment, at our pretended inward beauty and perfection, seeks only itself. In course of time, that vision totally vanishes, and leaves us in the darkness of horrible night, in chaotic confusion, or else it gently fades away like a morning dream before the beaming Sun of righteousness, and we find ourselves in perfect harmony, in our element, in love."4 Hence St. Augustine 2 Holy Court, i. 1. 1 De l'Allemagne, i. c. 4. 3 De Moribus Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, i. 2. |