If There Were No Cathedrals And Masses, They Say,
There Would Be No Religion; If There Were No King, There Would Be No
Law.
But we should not accept too hurriedly this ethnological theory of
necessity, which would reject all principles of progress and positive
good, and condemn half the human race to perpetual childhood.
There was
a time when we Anglo-Saxons built cathedrals and worshipped the king.
Look at Salisbury and Lincoln and Ely; read the history of the growth of
parliaments. There is nothing more beautifully sensuous than the
religious spirit that presided over those master works of English
Gothic; there is nothing in life more abject than the relics of the
English love and fear of princes. But the steady growth of centuries has
left nothing but the outworn shell of the old religion and the old
loyalty. The churches and the castles still exist. The name of the king
still is extant in the constitution. They remain as objects of taste and
tradition, hallowed by a thousand memories of earlier days, but, thanks
be to God who has given us the victory, the English race is now
incapable of making a new cathedral or a new king.
Let us not in our safe egotism deny to others the possibility of a like
improvement.
This summery month of June is rich in saints. The great apostles, John,
Peter, and Paul, have their anniversaries on its closing days, and the
shortest nights of the year are given up to the riotous eating of
fritters in their honor. I am afraid that the progress of luxury and
love of ease has wrought a change in the observance of these festivals.
The feast of midsummer night is called the Verbena of St. John, which
indicates that it was formerly a morning solemnity, as the vervain could
not be hunted by the youths and maidens of Spain with any success or
decorum at midnight. But of late years it may be that this useful and
fragrant herb has disappeared from the tawny hills of Castile. It is
sure that midsummer has grown too warm for any field work. So that the
Madrilenos may be pardoned for spending the day napping, and swarming
into the breezy Prado in the light of moon and stars and gas. The Prado
is ordinarily the promenade of the better classes, but every Spanish
family has its John, Paul, and Peter, and the crowded barrios of Toledo
and the Penue-las pour out their ragged hordes to the popular festival.
The scene has a strange gypsy wildness. From the round point of Atocha
to where Cybele, throned among spouting waters, drives southward her
spanking team of marble lions, the park is filled with the merry
roysterers. At short intervals are the busy groups of fritter merchants;
over the crackling fire a great caldron of boiling oil; beside it a
mighty bowl of dough. The bunolero, with the swift precision of
machinery, dips his hand into the bowl and makes a delicate ring of the
tough dough, which he throws into the bubbling caldron.
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