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.
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