Long may he live to
show the Pantheon; and when he dies, if so disagreeable an event must
be contemplated, may he have the whole of one of these stone chambers
to himself; for nothing less could possibly contain him.
He regretted
exceedingly that we could not go up into the dome; but I had had
enough of stair climbing at Strasbourg, Antwerp, and Cologne, and not
even the prospect of enjoying his instructions could tempt me.
Now this Pantheon seems to me a monument of the faults and the
weakness of this very agreeable nation. Its history shows their
enthusiasm, their hero worship, and the want of stable religious
convictions. Nowhere has there been such a want of reverence for the
Creator, unless in the American Congress. The great men of France have
always seemed to be in confusion as to whether they made God or he
made them. There is a great resemblance in some points between the
French and the ancient Athenians: there was the same excitability; the
same keen outward life; the same passion for ideas; the same spending
of life in hearing or telling some new thing; the same acuteness of
philosophical research. The old Athenians first worshipped, and then
banished their great men, - buried them and pulled them up, and did
generally a variety of things which we Anglo-Saxons should call
fantastic. There is this difference, that the Athenians had the
advantage of coming first. The French nation, born after this
development, are exposed by their very similarity of conformation, and
their consequent sympathy with the old classic style of feeling, to
become imitators. This betrays itself in their painters and sculptors,
and it is a constant impulse to a kind of idolatry, which is not in
keeping with this age, and necessarily seems absurd. When the Greeks
built altars to Force, Beauty, Victory, and other abstract ideas, they
were doing an original thing. When the French do it, they imitate the
Greeks. Apotheosis and hero worship in the old times had a freshness
to it; it was one of the picturesque effects of the dim and purple
shadows of an early dawning, when objects imperfectly seen are
magnified in their dimensions; but the apotheosis, in modern times, of
a man who has worn a dress coat, wig, and shoes is quite another
affair.
I do not mean either to say, as some do, that the French mind has very
little of the religious element. The very sweetest and softest, as
well as the most austere and rigid type of piety has been given by the
French mind; witness Fenelon and John Calvin - Fenelon standing as the
type of the mystic, and Calvin of the rationalistic style of religion.
Fenelon, with his heart so sweet, so childlike, so simple and tender,
was yet essentially French in his nature, and represented one part of
French mind; and what English devotional writer is at all like him?
John Newton had his simplicity and lovingness, but wanted that element
of gracefulness and classic sweetness which gave so high a tone to the
writings of Fenelon. As to Calvin, his crystalline clearness of mind,
his calm, cold logic, his severe vehemence are French, also. To this
day, a French system of theology is the strongest and most coercive
over the strongest of countries - Scotland and America; and yet shallow
thinkers flippantly say the French are incapable of religious ideas.
After Madame M. and I had finished the Pantheon we drove to the
Conciergerie; for I wanted to see the prison of the hapless Marie
Antoinette. That restless architectural mania, which never lets any
thing alone here, is rapidly modernizing it; the scaffoldings are up,
and workmen busy in making it as little historical as possible.
Nevertheless, the old, gloomy arched gateway, and the characteristic
peaked Norman towers, still remain; and we stopped our carriage the
other side of the Seine, to get a good look at it. We drove to the
door, and tried to go in, but were told that we could not without an
order from somebody or other. (I forget who;) so we were obliged to
content ourselves with an outside view.
So we went to take another view of Notre Dame; the very same Notre
Dame whose bells in the good old days could be rung by the waving of
Michael Scott's wand: -
"Him listed but his wand to wave
The bells should ring in Notre Dame."
I had been over it once before with Mrs. C., and sitting in a dark
corner, with my head against a cold, stone pillar, had heard vespers,
all in the most approved style of the poetic. I went back to it now to
see how it looked after the cathedrals of Germany. The churches of
France have suffered dreadfully by the whirlwind spirit of its
revolutions. At different times the painted glass of this church has
been shattered, and replaced by common, till now there is too much
light in it, though there are exquisite windows yet remaining. These
cathedrals _must_ have painted glass; it is essential; the want
of it is terrible; the dim, religious light is necessary to keep you
from seeing the dirty floors, hanging cobwebs, stacks of little, old
rush-bottomed chairs, and the prints where dirty heads and hands have
approached too near the stone pillars. As I sat hearing vespers in
Notre Dame the first time, seeing these all too plainly, may I be
forgiven, but I could not help thinking of Lucifer's soliloquy in a
cathedral in the Golden Legend: -
"What a darksome and dismal place!
I wonder that any man has the face
To call such a hole the house of the Lord
And the gate of heaven - yet such is the word.
Ceiling, and walls, and windows old,
Covered with cobwebs, blackened with mould;
Dust on the pulpit, dust on the stairs,
Dust on the benches, and stalls, and chairs."
* * * * *
However, Notre Dame is a beautiful church; but I wish it was under as
good care as Cologne Cathedral, and that instead of building
Madeleines and Pantheons, France would restore and preserve her
cathedrals - those grand memorials of the past.
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