But the old church was built to weather all storms, and so was the French nation. The revolutionists besieged the Louvre and turned it into a public art gallery. The republic has quietly advanced much farther in its right of eminent domain and taken under its enlightened protection all the great monuments of architecture in all fair France. Nothing is more charming than the enthusiasm throughout the land, extending even to the simplest people, over these “national monuments.” As the building of them long ago formed a bond of union with the communes, so the love of them now forms a bond of union with the nation. Fostered in their shadows, French genius was able to bring forth at need architects capable of restoring them almost to their pristine beauty, a beauty which, growing out of mystic relics, seems fraught with a relic’s power through love and awe to lead men on. May its magic transform these Roman Catholic cathedrals of the Age of Faith into Holy Catholic churches of the Age of Doubt!
In the nineteenth century James Russell Lowell wrote a poem containing some lovely lines on the Cathedral of Chartres, but if a twentieth century poet approach the theme he will treat it in a more Catholic spirit, for the messages of these venerable fanes must grow broader and gentler as time goes on. A greater poet than Lowell said: “I never can feel sure of any truth but from a clear perception of its beauty.” From this idea he framed his invocation to beauty, which applies alike to a Grecian urn and to the Cathedral of Chartres:
“Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend[2] to man, to whom thou say’st, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Caen:
An Eleventh Century
Tableau
Two hours from Cherbourg, as the motor flies, lies the old town of Caen, founded by William the Conqueror.
A curious peace reigns in this [old fortress], with the drawbridge down, and the moat a [bower of trees and flowers]: the peace of consummated action; the returns are all in, and you may receive them according to your humor, for the burning questions of other days have faded into dreamy generalities.
Were all those wild centuries of struggle and warfare vain? Or is the old Greek battle-cry, “Now let us go forward, whether we shall give glory to other men, or other men to us,” the normal note of primitive manhood? Were Rollo the Norseman and William the Norman, following the war-gods fiercer than they, commissioned by fate to lead great armies across the great waters, and, sailing under sealed orders, to found two great nations and one great language? Or are all things vanity?