Jura, when, after passing through many glades and along a
stony path, I found a kind of gate between two high rocks, and emerged
somewhat suddenly upon a wide down studded with old trees and also
many stunted yews, and this sank down to a noble valley which lay all
before me.
The open down or prairie on which I stood I afterwards found to be
called the 'Pasturage of Common Right', a very fine name; and, as a
gallery will command a great hall, so this field like a platform
commanded the wide and fading valley below.
It was a very glad surprise to see this sight suddenly unrolled as I
stood on the crest of the down. The Jura had hitherto been either
lonely, or somewhat awful, or naked and rocky, but here was a true
vale in which one could imagine a spirit of its own; there were corn
lands and no rocks. The mountains on either side did not rise so high
as three thousand feet. Though of limestone they were rounded in form,
and the slanting sun of the late afternoon (all the storm had left the
sky) took them full and warm. The valley remaining wide and fruitful
went on out eastward till the hills became mixed up with brume and
distance. As I did not know its name I called it after the village
immediately below me for which I was making; and I still remember it
as the Valley of Glovelier, and it lies between the third and fourth
ridges of the Jura.
Before leaving the field I drew what I saw but I was much too tired by
the double and prodigious climb of the past hours to draw definitely
or clearly. Such as it is, there it is. Then I went down over the
smooth field.
There is something that distinguishes the rugged from the gracious in
landscape, and in our Europe this something corresponds to the use and
presence of men, especially in mountainous places. For men's habits
and civilization fill the valleys and wash up the base of the hills,
making, as it were, a tide mark. Into this zone I had already passed.
The turf was trodden fine, and was set firm as it can only become by
thousands of years of pasturing. The moisture that oozed out of the
earth was not the random bog of the high places but a human spring,
caught in a stone trough. Attention had been given to the trees.
Below me stood a wall, which, though rough, was not the haphazard
thing men pile up in the last recesses of the hills, but formed of
chosen stones, and these bound together with mortar. On my right was
a deep little dale with children playing in it - and this' I afterwards
learned was called a 'combe': delightful memory! All our deeper
hollows are called the same at home, and even the Welsh have the word,
but they spell it _cwm_; it is their mountain way. Well, as I was
saying, everything surrounding me was domestic and grateful, and I was
therefore in a mood for charity and companionship when I came down the
last dip and entered Glovelier. But Glovelier is a place of no
excellence whatever, and if the thought did not seem extravagant I
should be for putting it to the sword and burning it all down.
For just as I was going along full of kindly thoughts, and had turned
into the sign of (I think it was) the 'Sun' to drink wine and leave
them my benediction -
LECTOR. Why your benediction?
AUCTOR. Who else can give benedictions if people cannot when they are
on pilgrimage? Learn that there are three avenues by which blessing
can be bestowed, and three kinds of men who can bestow it.
(1) There is the good man, whose goodness makes him of himself a giver
of blessings. His power is not conferred or of office, but is
_inhaerens persona_; part of the stuff of his mind. This kind can
confer the solemn benediction, or _Benedictio major_, if they choose;
but besides this their every kind thought, word, or action is a
_Benedictio generalise_ and even their frowns, curses, angry looks and
irritable gestures may be called _Benedictiones minores vel incerti_.
I believe I am within the definitions. I avoid heresy. All this is
sound theology. I do not smell of the faggot. And this kind of
Benedictory Power is the fount or type or natural origin, as it were,
of all others.
(2) There is the Official of Religion who, in the exercise of his
office -
LECTOR. For Heaven's sake -
AUCTOR. Who began it? You protested my power to give benediction, and
I must now prove it at length; otherwise I should fall under the
accusation of lesser Simony - that is, the false assumption of
particular powers. Well, then, there is the Official who _ex officio_,
and when he makes it quite clear that it is _qua sponsus_ and not
_sicut ut ipse_, can give formal benediction. This power belongs
certainly to all Bishops, mitred Abbots, and Archimandrates; to
Patriarchs of course, and _a fortiori_ to the Pope. In Rome they will
have it that Monsignores also can so bless, and I have heard it
debated whether or no the same were not true in some rustic way of
parish priests. However this may be, all their power proceeds, not
from themselves, but from the accumulation of goodness left as a
deposit by the multitudes of exceptionally good men who have lived in
times past, and who have now no use for it.
(3) Thirdly - and this is my point - any one, good or bad, official or
non-official, who is for the moment engaged in an _opusfaustum_ can
act certainly as a conductor or medium, and the influence of what he
is touching or doing passes to you from him.
