I have not referred to the great Pageants when High-Castes are buried who have been famous as Braves, either in distant forays with armed bands upon the Heathen, or among Christian tribes of the Main Land. Or, perhaps, some high chief who has ordered the great Fire-ships in burning and plundering beyond the Seas. I have not referred to these, because they are merely shows, and do not in any sense apply any especial characteristic. One thing I have remarked—there seems to be no respect for the dead, they are immediately forgotten, and the very monuments ordered to be set up probably never appear; or after so long a period, that a new generation wonders who can be meant by the figure which rises in some public place! And when these are once placed on their pedestals, neglect falls upon them in a mantle of indescribable filth. Even royalty cannot have the royal robes of marble so much as washed by the common street hydrant [phi-pi].
It is impossible not to feel that the cold and coarse feelings of the Barbarians are, in respect of the dead, rendered more repulsive by the horrid features of the Idolatry. In this there is so much to brutalise and render callous, that it is only as it is disregarded, that the natural human feelings come into play, and tenderness and delicacy find expression.
OF ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND SOME WORDS ABOUT SCIENCE. [KRI-OTE].
Until recently the Barbarians had no proper style of Architecture, unless in Temples, Castles, and Ships. The dwellings, even in cities, were as ugly and inconvenient as it is possible to conceive.
When the great Roman civilisation disappeared, the barbarous tribes for many ages so slowly improved, that the aspect of common life remained savage. The Priests of the Superstition, however, saved some tincture of Roman learning, and brought from Rome some of the older knowledge. These, however, directed their minds to the erection of Temples, and edifices designed for the objects of Priestcraft.
Then arose those structures, truly wonderful, in stone, which exhibit so clearly the character of the gloomy Superstition: at first like those of Rome, but in time added to and changed, till at length the vast Temples, truly gigantic, called Gothic, arose.
These are like huge phantasms of carved stone, rising into the sky. Huge walls, buttresses, turrets, immense clusters of columns, vaulted and lofty arches, long aisles, lighted by strangely-tinted windows, carved masses of stone in prodigious strength, leaping, flying upwards, upwards, in grand confusion, and yet upon a strange, wild plan!—giving expression to an imagination only known to these dark and strong Barbarians. Externally, on all sides these Temples are monstrous idols in stone, stuck most curiously upon corners, high up in niches, on turrets and battlemented [trit-ti-sy] walls, over the sculptured, grand portals, everywhere—chiefly diabolic, exceeding all the dreams of a mad and dreadful frenzy, yet borrowed from the Superstition and illustrating it! Others surmounting these dreadful things, angelic and serene—as if, after all, the human instinct spurned all the low and horrible intimations of things too foul for expression, and yet so frightfully attempted, in ghastly and grinning stone!