In our schools of all grades some elementary instruction in art forms is now considered a necessity, and something is being done for “children of a larger growth” by opening to them, at times when the masses can use them, the treasures of our museums and picture galleries; how largely would these attempts at popular instruction have been aided if the people had ever before their eyes the graceful forms that ignorance, carelessness, and bigotry have combined to rob us of! And what an influence might not the continued presence of such examples among us have had upon the building of our towns.
It is at least significant that in the days when these types of art were common in the land, even domestic architecture showed a certain harmoniousness of outline; the gabled roof, the timbered front, the quaintly designed chimney, formed a setting not unbecoming the jewel in our mediæval market-places, and our village streets. It is only since so many different instances of our forefathers’ taste and skill, fair copies each and all for their successors, have been taken from us, that we have learnt to build our towns in a horrid monotony of dullness.
Ruskin, in words of biting force, has defined a town of to-day as “the modern aggregate of bad building, and ill-living held in check by constables, which we call a town, of which the widest streets are devoted by consent to the encouragement of vice, and the narrow ones to the concealment of misery.” May we not hope that the wish now so obvious among us to rebuilt so far as may be, those glorious piles which are instinct with “the beauty of holiness,” is a proof that we are beginning to realize both the squalor and the sin of this condition of things? So far we have seen, it may be, but the little cloud no larger than a man’s hand; may it be indeed the earnest of that refreshing rain for which the land has panted, a reviving influence which shall make English art once more the expression of a sincere and devoted faith.
CHAPTER VIII.
Conclusion.
In our rapid review of the various uses to which the sacred figure of the cross has been put, we have been considering the most widely-spread illustration of a tendency of the human mind, namely, the universal love of emblems. This trait in man’s character, a strange one, perhaps, but a very powerful one, has been forgotten or ignored by the iconoclast and the Puritan, and it is owing to this characteristic that they have never been able to obtain more than a transient victory.
Scarce anything which moves the heart of man, rouses his enthusiasm, or binds him more closely to his fellows, but he has commonly represented it by a symbol.
Amongst the earliest of such influences was the family or tribal bond carrying us back to days of patriarchal simplicity. In the last blessing bestowed by Jacob upon his sons, we find the earliest allusion to the family emblem, in the lion of Judah, the serpent of Dan, the hind of Naphtali, Joseph’s “fruitful bough,” and the other symbols of the twelve ancestors of the chosen race. A striking parallel to this catalogue, in the totems of the North American Indians, will occur to almost everyone. But, indeed, the custom of selecting some natural object to denote the idea of the family was well-nigh universal. The inhabitants of the East Indies are as familiar with the spirit of totemism as their brethren of the west. In Africa, the Hottentot, the Bechuana, and others distinguish their tribes by the figure of some animal; in far off China the flowers serve the same purpose, and in Australia the same practice obtains under the name of Kobong. Not to multiply examples, we may refer only to the ancient Greek tribes as affording another instance, and suggest the parallel supplied by the crests used in mediæval and modern heraldry.