CHAPTER VIII.
It was arranged, during our walk, that Ellesmere should come and stay a day or two with me, and see the neighbouring cathedral, which is nearer my house than Milverton’s. The visit over, I brought him back to Worth-Ashton. Milverton saw us coming, walked down the hill to meet us, and after the usual greetings, began to talk to Ellesmere.
Milverton. So you have been to see our cathedral. I say “our,” for when a cathedral is within ten miles of us, we feel a property in it, and are ready to battle for its architectural merits.
Ellesmere. You know I am not a man to rave about cathedrals.
Milverton. I certainly do not expect you to do so. To me a cathedral is mostly somewhat of a sad sight. You have Grecian monuments, if anything so misplaced can be called Grecian, imbedded against and cutting into Gothic pillars; the doors shut for the greater part of the day; only a little bit of the building used: beadledom predominant; the clink of money here and there; white-wash in vigour; the singing indifferent; the sermons not indifferent but bad; and some visitors from London forming, perhaps, the most important part of the audience; in fact, the thing having become a show. We look about, thinking when piety filled every corner, and feel that the cathedral is too big for the Religion which is a dried-up thing that rattles in this empty space.
Ellesmere. This is the boldest simile I have heard for a long time. My theory about cathedrals is very different, I must confess.
Dunsford. Theory!
Ellesmere. Well, “theory” is not the word I ought to have used—feeling then. My feeling is, how strong this creature was, this worship, how beautiful, how alluring, how complete; but there was something stronger—truth.
Milverton. And more beautiful?
Ellesmere. Yes, and far more beautiful.
Milverton. Doubtless, to the free spirits who brought truth forward.
Ellesmere. You are only saying this, Milverton, to try what I will say; but, despite of all sentimentalities, you sympathise with any emancipation of the human mind, as I do, however much the meagreness of Protestantism may be at times distasteful to you.
Milverton. I did not say I was anxious to go back. Certainly not. But what says Dunsford? Let us sit down on his stile and hear what he has to say.
Dunsford. I cannot talk to you about this subject. If I tell you of all the merits (as they seem to me) of the Church of England, you will both pick what I say to pieces, whereas if I leave you to fight on, one or the other will avail himself of those arguments on which our Church is based.
Milverton. Well, Dunsford, you are very candid, and would make a complete diplomatist: truth-telling being now pronounced (rather late in the day) the very acme of diplomacy. But do you not own that our cathedrals are sadly misused?
Dunsford. Now, very likely, if more were made of them, you, and men who think like you, would begin to cry out “superstition”; and would instantly turn round and inveigh against the uses which you now, perhaps, imagine for cathedrals.
Milverton. Well, one never can answer for oneself; but at any rate, I do not see what is the meaning of building new churches in neighbourhoods where there are already the noblest buildings suitable for the same purposes. Is there a church religion, and is there a cathedral religion?
Ellesmere. You cannot make the present fill the garb of the past, Milverton, any more than you could make the past fill that of the present. Now, as regards the very thing you are about to discuss to-day, if it be the same you told us in our last walk—Education: if you are only going to give us some institution for it, I daresay it may be very good for to-day, or for this generation, but it will have its sere and yellow leaf, and there will be a time when future Milvertons, in sentimental mood, will moan over it, and wish they had it and all that has grown up to take its place at the same time. But all this is what I have often heard you say yourself in other words.
Dunsford. This is very hard doctrine, and not quite sound, I think. In getting the new gain, we always sacrifice something, and we should look with some pious regard to what was good in the things which are past. That good is generally one which, though it may not be equal to the present, would make a most valuable supplement to it.
Milverton. I would try and work in the old good thing with the new, not as patchwork though, but making the new thing grow out in such a way as to embrace the old advantage.
Ellesmere. Well, we must have the essay before we branch out into our philosophy. Pleasure afterwards—I will not say what comes first.