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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