54. I call it a legend only. Whether Heracles ever slew, or St. Jerome ever cherished, the wild or wounded creature, is of no moment to us in learning what the Greeks meant by their vase-outlines of the great contest, or the Christian painters by their fond insistence on the constancy of the Lion-friend. Former tradition, in the story of Samson,—of the disobedient prophet,—of David's first inspired victory, and finally of the miracle wrought in the defence of the [Pg 87] most favoured and most faithful of the greater Prophets, runs always parallel in symbolism with the Dorian fable: but the legend of St. Jerome takes up the prophecy of the Millennium, and foretells, with the Cumæan Sibyl, and with Isaiah, a day when the Fear of Man shall be laid in benediction, not enmity, on inferior beings,—when they shall not hurt nor destroy in all the holy Mountain, and the Peace of the Earth shall be as far removed from its present sorrow, as the present gloriously animate universe from the nascent desert, whose deeps were the place of dragons, and its mountains, domes of fire.
Of that day knoweth no man; but the Kingdom of God is already come to those who have tamed in their own hearts what was rampant of the lower nature, and have learned to cherish what is lovely and human, in the wandering children of the clouds and fields.
Avallon, 28th August, 1882.
Notes to Chapter III:
[3-1] Taking the 'San' branch of upper Vistula.
[3-2] Note, however, generally that the strength of a river, cæteris paribus, is to be estimated by its straight course, windings being almost always caused by flats in which it can receive no tributaries.
[3-3] Sir F. Palgrave, 'Arabia,' vol. ii., p. 155. I gratefully adopt in the next paragraph his division of Asiatic nations, p. 160.
[3-4] Gibbon's fifty-sixth chapter begins with a sentence which may be taken as the epitome of the entire history we have to investigate: "The three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy." I use the more general word, Goths, instead of Franks; and the more accurate word, Arab, for Saracen; but otherwise, the reader will observe that the division is the same as mine. Gibbon does not recognize the Roman people as a nation—but only the Roman power as an empire.
[3-5] Milman, 'Hist., of Christianity,' vol. iii. p. 36.
[3-6] I find the same generalization expressed to the modern student under the term 'Balkan Peninsula,' extinguishing every ray and trace of past history at once.