The Temple towards which we directed our steps on leaving the avenue of the Temple of Hatchiman, immediately diverted our thoughts from the grandeur of this picture. It is admirably situated on the summit of a promontory, whence we overlook the whole Bay of Kamakoura; but it is always sad to come, in the midst of beautiful nature, upon a so-called holy place which inspires nothing but disgust. The principal sanctuary, at first sight, did not strike us as remarkable. Insignificant golden idols stand upon the high altar; and in a side chapel there is an image of the God of Wealth, armed with a miner’s hammer. But when the bonzes who received us conducted us behind the high altar, and thence into a sort of cage as dark as a prison and as high as a tower, they lighted two lanterns, and stuck them at the end of a long pole. Then, by this glimmering light, which entirely failed to disperse the shades of the roof, we perceived that we were standing in front of an enormous idol of gilt wood, about twelve yards high, holding in its right hand a sceptre, in its left a lotus, and wearing a tiara composed of three rows of heads representing the inferior divinities. This gigantic idol belongs to the religion of the auxiliary gods of the Buddhist mythology: the Amidas and the Quannons, intercessors who collect the prayers of men and transmit them to heaven. By means of similar religious conceptions, the bonzes strike a superstitious terror into the imaginations of their followers and succeed in keeping them in a state of perpetual fear and folly.
We then went to see the Daïboudhs, which is the wonder of Kamakoura. This building is dedicated to the Daïboudhs, that is to say, to the great Buddha, and may be regarded as the most finished work of Japanese genius, from the double points of view of art and religious sentiment. The Temple of Hatchiman had already given us a remarkable example of the use which native art makes of nature in producing that impression of religious majesty which in our northern climates is effected by Gothic architecture. The Temple of Daïboudhs differs considerably from the first which we had seen. Instead of the great dimensions, instead of the illimitable space which seemed to stretch from portal to portal down to the sea, a solitary and mysterious retreat prepares the mind for some supernatural revelation. The road leads far away from every habitation; in the direction of the mountain it winds about between hedges of tall shrubs. Finally, we see nothing before us but the high road, going up and up in the midst of foliage and flowers; then it turns in a totally different direction, and all of a sudden, at the end of the alley, we perceive a gigantic brazen Divinity, squatting with joined hands, and the head slightly bent forward in an attitude of contemplative ecstasy. The involuntary amazement produced by the aspect of this great image soon gives place to admiration. There is an irresistible charm in the attitude of the Daïboudhs, as well as in the harmony of its proportions. The noble simplicity of its garments and the calm purity of its features are in perfect accord with the sentiment of serenity inspired by its presence. A grove, consisting of some beautiful groups of trees, forms the enclosure of the sacred place, whose silence and solitude are never disturbed. The small cell of the attendant priest can hardly be discerned among the foliage. The altar, on which a little incense is burning at the feet of the Divinity, is composed of a small brass table ornamented by two lotus vases of the same metal, and beautifully wrought. The steps of the altar are composed of large slabs forming regular lines. The blue of the sky, the deep shadow of the statue, the sombre colour of the brass, the brilliancy of the flowers, the varied verdure of the hedges and the groves, fill this solemn retreat with the richest effect of light and colour. The idol of the Daïboudhs, with the platform that supports it, is twenty yards high; it is far from equal in elevation to the statue of St. Charles Borromeo, which may be seen from Arona on the borders of Lake Maggiore, but which effects the spectator no more than a trigonometrical signal-post. The interiors of these two colossal statues have been utilized. The European tourists seat themselves in the nose of the holy cardinal. The Japanese descend by a secret staircase into the foundations of their Daïboudhs, and there they find a peaceful oratory, whose altar is lighted by a ray of sunshine admitted through an opening in the folds of the mantle at the back of the idol’s neck. It would be idle to discuss to what extent the Buddha of Kamakoura resembles the Buddha of history, but it is important to remark that he is conformable to the Buddha of tradition.
CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
In every place which boasts of a cathedral church, that cathedral church is commonly the chief object of interest, alike as its present ornament and as the chief centre of its past history. But in Wells the cathedral church and its appurtenances are yet more. Their interest is not only primary, but absorbing. They are not only the chief ornament of the place; they are the place itself. They are not only the centre of the past history of the city; their history is the history of the city. Of our other cities some can trace up a long history as cities independent of their ecclesiastical foundations. Some were the dwelling-places of Kings in days before England became one kingdom. Some have been for ages seats of commerce or manufactures; their history is the history of burghers striving for and obtaining their freedom, a history which repeats in small that same tale of early struggles and later abuses which forms the history of so many greater commonwealths. Others have a long military history; their name at once suggests the memory of battles and sieges, and they can still show walls and castles as the living memorials of the stirring scenes of bygone times. In others even the ecclesiastical pre-eminence of the cathedral church may be disputed by some other ecclesiastical building. The bishoprick and its church may be comparatively modern institutions, and they may be altogether eclipsed by some other institution more ancient in date of foundation, perhaps more ancient in its actual fabric. Thus at Oxford the cathedral church is well-nigh lost among the buildings of the University and its greatest college. At Chester its rank may be disputed by the majestic fragments of the older minster of Saint John. At Bristol the cathedral church, even when restored to its old proportions, will still have at least an equal rival in the stateliest parish church in England. In these cities the bishoprick, its church and its chapter, are institutions of yesterday; the cities themselves were great and famous for ages before they were founded. So at Exeter, though the bishoprick is of far earlier date, yet Exeter was a famous city, which had played its part in history, long before Bishops of Exeter were heard of. Even at Winchester the overwhelming greatness of the old minster has to compete with the earlier and later interests of the royal palace, of the fallen Abbey, of the unique home of noble poverty and of the oldest of the great and still living schools of England. Salisbury alone in our own part of England, and Durham in the far north, have a history which in some measure resembles that of Wells. Like Wells, Salisbury and Durham are cities which have grown up around the cathedral church. Wells stands alone among the cities of England proper as a city which exists only in and through its cathedral church, whose whole history is that of its cathedral church. The bishoprick has been to us what the Abbey has been to our neighbours at Glastonbury, which the church first of Abbots and then of Bishops has been elsewhere to Ely and Peterborough. The whole history of Wells is, I say, the history of the bishoprick and of its church. Of the origin and foundation of the city, as distinguished from that of the church, nothing is known. The name of Wells is first heard of as the place where the church of St. Andrew was standing and its name seldom appears in later history except in connection with the affairs of its church. It was never a royal dwelling-place; it was never a place of commercial importance; it was never a place of military strength. Like other cities, it has its municipal history, but its municipal history is simply an appendage to its ecclesiastical history; the franchises of the borough were simply held as grants from the Bishop. It has its parochial church, a church standing as high among the buildings of its own class as the cathedral church itself. This parochial church has a parochial constitution which is in some points unique. But the parochial church is simply an appendage to the cathedral church; it is the church of the burghers who had come to dwell under the shadow of the minster and the protection of its spiritual lord. And it has ever retained a close, sometimes perhaps a too close, connexion with the cathedral and its Chapter. Thus the history of the church is the history of the city; no battles, no sieges, no parliaments, break the quiet tenor of its way; the name of the city has hardly found its way into our civil and military history. Its name does appear among the troubles of the Seventeenth Century, in the pages of Clarendon and Macaulay, but it appears in connexion with events whose importance was mainly local. And even here the ecclesiastical interest comes in; the most striking event connected with Wells in the story of Monmouth’s rebellion is the mischief done to the cathedral, and the way in which further damage and desecration was hindered by Lord Grey. And in our own times, when the parliamentary existence of this city became the subject of an animated parliamentary discussion, even then the ecclesiastical interest was still uppermost. The old battle of the regulars and seculars was fought again over the bodies of two small parliamentary boroughs. I need not remind you that the claims of the old secular foundation were stoutly pressed by one of our own members. But the monastic influence was too strong for us; the mantle of Dunstan and Æthelwald had fallen on the shoulders of Sir John Pakington, and the claims of the fallen Abbey of Evesham were preferred to those of the existing Cathedral of Wells.
CATHEDRAL OF WELLS, ENGLAND.
The whole interest, then, of the city is ecclesiastical; but its ecclesiastical interest in one point of view surpasses that of every church in England,—I am strongly tempted to say, every church in Europe. The traveller who comes down the hill from Shepton Mallet looks down, as he draws near the city, on a group of buildings which, as far as I know, has no rival either in our island or beyond the sea. To most of these objects, taken singly, it would be easy to find rivals which would equal or surpass them. The church itself, seen even from that most favourable point of view, cannot, from mere lack of bulk, hold its ground against the soaring apse of Amiens, or against the windows ranging, tier above tier, in the mighty eastern gable of Ely. The cloister cannot measure itself with Gloucester or Salisbury; the chapter-house lacks the soaring roofs of York and Lincoln; the palace itself finds its rival in the ruined pile of St. David’s. The peculiar charm and glory of Wells lies in the union and harmonious grouping of all. The church does not stand alone; it is neither crowded by incongruous buildings, nor yet isolated from those buildings which are its natural and necessary complement. Palace, cloister, lady chapel, choir, chapter-house, all join to form one indivisible unique bridge which by a marvel of ingenuity connects the church itself with the most perfect of buildings of its class, the matchless Vicars’ close. Scattered around we see here and there an ancient house, its gable, its window, or its turret falling in with the style and group of greater buildings, and bearing its part in producing the general harmony of all. The whole history of the place is legibly written on that matchless group of buildings. If we could fancy an ecclesiastical historian to have dropped from the clouds, the aspect of the place would at once tell him that he was looking on an English cathedral church, on a cathedral church which had always been served by secular canons, on a church of secular canons which had preserved its ancient buildings and ancient arrangements more perfectly than any other in the island.
The whole history of Wells before the time of Edward the Elder is excessively obscure, and much of it is undoubtedly fabulous. There is a story about King Ine planting a Bishoprick at Congresbury, which was presently moved to Wells, and a list of Bishops is given between Ine and Edward. There is also a document which professes to be a charter of King Cynewulf in 766, which does not speak of any Bishop at Wells, but which implies the existence of an ecclesiastical establishment of some kind. But unluckily the Congresbury story rests on no good authority, and the charter of Cynewulf is undoubtedly spurious. But because a charter is spurious in form, it does not always follow that its matter is unhistorical and I am the more inclined to attach some value to it, because, while implying the existence of some ecclesiastical establishment, it does not imply the existence of a bishoprick. Putting all things together, and remembering the strong and consistent tradition which connects the name of Ine with the church of Wells, I am inclined to think that there must have been some body of priests, probably of Ine’s foundation, existing at Wells before the foundation of the bishoprick by Edward. If then Ine did, somewhere about the year 705, found a church at Wells with a body of priests attached to it, we can well understand why Wells should be chosen as the seat of the new bishoprick in 909.
We have here in Wells the finest collection of domestic buildings surrounding a cathedral church to be seen anywhere. There is no place where so many ancient houses are preserved and are mainly applied to their original uses. The Bishop still lives in the Palace; the Dean still lives in the Deanery; the Canons, Vicars, and other officers still live very largely in the houses in which they were meant to live. But this is because at Wells there always were secular priests, each man living in his own house. In a monastery I need hardly say it was quite different. The monks did not live each man in his own house; they lived in common, with a common refectory to dine in and a common dormitory to sleep in. Thus when, in Henry the Eighth’s time, the monks were put out and secular canons put in again, the monastic buildings were no longer of any use, while there were no houses for the new canons. They had therefore to make houses how they could out of the common buildings of the monastery. But of course this could be done without greatly spoiling them as works of architecture. Thus while at Ely, Peterborough, and other churches which were served by monks, there are still very fine fragments of the monastic buildings, there is not the same series of buildings each still applied to its original use which we have at Wells. I wish that this wonderful series was better understood and more valued than it is. I can remember, if nobody else does, how a fine prebendal hall was wantonly pulled down in the North Liberty not many years ago. Some of those whose duty it was to keep it up said that they had never seen it. I had seen it, anybody who went by could see it, and every man of taste knew and regretted it. Well, that is gone, and I suppose the organist’s house, so often threatened will soon be gone too. Thus it is that the historical monuments of our country perish day by day. We must keep a sharp eye about us or this city of ours may lose, almost without anybody knowing it, the distinctive character which makes it unique among the cities of England.
It is then in this way that Wells became, what it still is, the seat of the Somersetshire Bishoprick. The Bishop had his throne in the church of St. Andrew, and the clergy attached to church were his special companions and advisers, in a word his Chapter. We have thus the church and its ministers, but the church had not yet assumed its present form, and its ministers had not yet assumed their present constitution. Of the fabric, as it stood in the Tenth Century, I can tell you nothing. There is not a trace of building of anything like such early date remaining: while in other places we have grand buildings of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, at Wells we have little or nothing earlier than the Thirteenth. But it is quite a mistake to fancy that our forefathers in the Tenth Century were wholly incapable of building, or that their buildings were always of wood. We have accounts of churches of that and of still earlier date which show that we then had buildings of considerable size and elaboration of plan. And we know that in the course of the same century Saint Dunstan built a stone church at Glastonbury to the east of the old wooden church of British times. The churches both of Wells and Glastonbury must have been built in the old Romanesque style of England which prevailed before the great improvements of Norman Romanesque were brought in in the Eleventh Century. You must conceive this old church of Saint Andrew as very much smaller, lower, and plainer than the church we now have, with massive round arches and small round-headed windows, but with one or more tall, slender, unbuttressed towers, imitating the bell-towers of Italy. I do not think that we have a single tower of this kind in Somersetshire, but in other parts of England there are a good many. There is a noble one at Earls Barton in Northamptonshire, and more than one in the city of Lincoln.