Loe raamatut: «Journal in France in 1845 and 1848 with Letters from Italy in 1847», lehekülg 5
Wednesday, July 23. – At 5 o'clock the bell of the cathedral sounded long and loud over our heads, leaving no excuse for those who chose to slumber on. I got up, and found two places by the diligence for Laon. M. was in a great hurry, so I exercised a piece of self-denial and woke him, and we hurried off. It was, indeed, with great regret I departed from under the shadow of that noble church, feeling that I left so much of its beauty undiscerned, or rather so few of its forms impressed on the mind. We were four hours and a half reaching Laon, from 6 to 10½, in the intérieur; two fat women and a child made it latterly very uncomfortable. The country flat for some way, then hills and fine prospects. But the position of Laon is very remarkable indeed, a triangular hill rising out of a great plain: in short, another Enna, though not so lofty. The resemblance is very marked indeed, and presented itself to me again and again. Near to one corner of the triangle rises the cathedral, with its four lofty towers, two at the west end, and one at each end of the transept; there are the beginnings of two others, and all six were intended to have had spires as lofty as themselves; the south-west had one, which was taken down. Their present height is, the S.W. 220 feet each, (French,) the N. and S. 235. They are very striking, but want their crown of spires, and are in the most splendid situation for such a building which I ever saw. The view is accordingly very extensive, to the north flat, but to the south terminated by fine hills. We viewed these towers in a great number of positions, on the promenades, and from another corner of the triangle, to the south. The church within is very stately; early English, 400 feet long, and quite uniform in style, or at least with only here and there a decorated window, as in the S. transept. The curve of the roof is very beautiful; after Reims it struck us as low, though at least 80 feet high. The west front is fine, though the portals require more work to conceal their vast depth. I could not but greatly admire the skill of the architect of Reims, who had evidently studied and adopted the towers and western front of this church, which is said in its time (1130) to have been the finest in France, and yet has produced a work incomparably more beautiful, and quite original. Laon has a double triforium, making four stages in its interior.
We walked about here a great deal. The situation is one of the finest I have ever seen; it inspires a sort of elevation in the mind. Beyond the church a caserne is building, and a fort already made – a bad exchange for the tower of Louis d'Outremer. The church of St. Martin is very disappointing inside, being very low. As the diligence was full for the night, we hired a cab, to take us to St. Quentin. It took us from 5½ to 11½, stopping half an hour at La Fère. Road generally flat, and very bad indeed, having no pavé to La Fère. We saw a village church or two, Norman in style. Our conveyance was one of the most uncomfortable I ever experienced; besides that we were overwhelmed with bags and coats. Our driver served at eighteen in one of Napoleon's battles, and had carried off a token in a sabre cut on the cheek; it was the battle of Fleury, where, he said, "L'Empereur était trahi." So the French guide-book says of the battle of Crecy: "Les Français perdirent 30,000 par la faute du Comte d'Alençon."
Thursday, July 24. – We are at l'Hôtel du Cygne: comfortable enough. The church is of first-rate beauty; the nave, from its great height and purity of style, even more striking than that of Reims inside; and so the transept: but the choir and many parts of the church have swerved from the perpendicular, and are braced with iron, – a sad drawback. The architect has raised his central building, with extreme boldness, to an enormous height; but he has not thrown strength and breadth enough into his aisles to resist the pressure. The windows throughout of geometric tracery, remarkably beautiful; and the pillars of the nave spring from the ground to the roof without capital at the lower arches, and are of great beauty, an advance certainly on Reims, and in one respect on Amiens, in that they are not merely cylinders, with columns at the four corners, but have two colonnettes introduced again between these, which produces an effect of great lightness. Beautiful end of north transept, a decorated window below, an open triforium of eight lights, and a vast decorated window terminating in a great rosace above – stained glass. The apse of seven windows, with most brilliant stained glass, beginning from a second transept of great beauty, making a double cross, the southern part flamboyant. I think the nave of this church, and the apse and arrangements of its chapels might be profitably studied as an almost perfect specimen; it may compete with Amiens and St. Ouen, and undoubtedly surpasses Reims. Height, 128 English feet; vaulting of roof very beautiful. We went in at 11 o'clock, and found preparations for a funeral of some importance: presently all the choir was filled with well dressed persons; and the body being deposited under a catafalque, surrounded with burning tapers, in the centre of the nave and transept, mass was chanted. The black velvet chasuble, and the copes and other robes to match, like all the dresses of the Roman clergy, are very handsome. We went into the upper part of the choir, but I could not avoid noticing with what indifference most of the attendants on the funeral treated the holiest rite of the Church; they were, no doubt, unbelievers; and some ragged boys close beside me were a serious annoyance, incessantly spitting, laughing, and talking. The west end of this church has been barbarized in the style of 1681, most ugly to behold; it seems to have been intended to have two towers, but no part of them at present exists. We went through the roof of the church, and caught a view from the strange-looking steeple which rises over the croisée. The country round is not remarkable – flat, and in parts wooded. Rest of the day spent in writing. Found some common prints of details in the life of the Holy Family which pleased us.
Friday, July 25. – At 6 o'clock we started by the diligence to Amiens by Peronne – had the coupé with an English woman, who got in a few miles on the road. The country not remarkable – some hills and a fertile succession of corn-fields. Reached Peronne a little before nine, and breakfasted there. Several fortifications and drawbridges both entering and going, but they did not seem kept up with much care. The Church, de la Renaissance, not remarkable. The rest of the road to Amiens a fine broad country, with occasional hills, of average beauty. No view of Amiens cathedral but from the last hill, a few miles off, and then it looked small, I suppose from the vastness of the plain in which it stands. We did not reach Amiens, a distance of only 82 kiloms. from St. Quentin, till after three o'clock. At the last stage some young seminarists got out of the rotonde, and were met by their mother and sisters, as it seemed: they were apparently peasants, very humbly clad, and of the most ordinary demeanour. I saw what education had done for the young men (who had not received the tonsure): even the retired life and poor salary of a country curé would be a great elevation in the scale of society to them. I would not mention this invidiously, but the lot of the French Curé de Campagne has sometimes appeared to me so painful, that it was a relief to see its bright side even in a material point of view.
I went to my old quarters at the Hôtel de France, and we were shown into the same room I had occupied two years before. We got a light dinner and set off to the cathedral. The first sight of its west front was almost painful after that of Reims, there being certainly a confusion and want of harmony in its parts; while the southern tower being left twenty feet lower than the northern combines to spoil the effect. But I was no sooner in the interior than a full sense of its prodigious superiority to every other building we had seen established itself on my mind; and the impression my first visit two years ago made was more than repeated. Only St. Ouen may enter at all into competition; but the vast proportions of Amiens, combined with the great purity of its style, more than counterbalance the, if any, superior grace and lightness of the other. In the evening we walked out to the west, in the hope of catching a good view of the cathedral, but we could not find the right place. Amiens has nothing else remarkable which fell under our observation.
Saturday, July 26. – After breakfast we went to the cathedral, and passed over all the galleries inside and outside, and the roofs. The best external view from the building itself is on the north tower; the arcs boutants of the choir and the whole arrangement are much more striking than those of the nave. The guide, a very intelligent man, assured us there was no danger apprehended within or without to any part of the building. As far as M. and I could judge, we thought it would last as easily for the next 500 years as it had gone through the last. The view through the eight compartments of the upper chamber of the central clocher is pretty; it seems to fit into so many frames the city and the vast plain in which it stands. We saw the towers of Corbie. In the inside I noticed four particulars of its great superiority, over and above the unequalled proportions of the whole.
1st, The triforium and its windows, especially of the choir; these windows commence on the east side of the transept. In the rest there are arches, which have been filled up with masonry from the beginning. I think this triforium superior to that of St. Ouen, chiefly from the geometric character of its forms; whereas those of St. Ouen approach to the perpendicular. Each bay has six divisions, save the five of the apse, which have four.
2nd, The windows of the clerestory, all of pure geometric tracery. I measured one on the south side of the nave, nineteen feet three inches wide, clear light.
3rd, The north transept end. A rosace above, of most brilliant glass, thirty-six feet in diameter; open gallery of fifteen divisions.
4th, The whole arrangement of the aisles round the choir. There are open chapels north and south, extending the whole four bays of the choir, which give great lightness to it; while the seven arches of the apse correspond to as many chapels. The Lady Chapel is beautiful, though not so much developed as that of St. Ouen.
By the advice of the guide we went down to the river, immediately to the north of the cathedral; from the other side of which, by a little tree in front of a house painted green, is, perhaps, the best external view of the whole mass from east to west. Even here, however, almost all the windows of the aisles are covered by houses; on another branch of the river, a little further north, rather more of these is discovered. The near view from the extreme corner of the bishop's garden is good; and the corresponding one to the south-east, as far back as the street will allow, rather better. This gives the beauty of the east end. But no complete view of this wonderful building outside can be obtained, from the closeness of the houses; and that which would be the grandest ornament of the finest city in the world cannot even be seen in its full proportions.
The vaulting of Amiens is 140 feet (English) high; the ridge of the roof outside reaches to nigh 200. Its internal and external galleries must be traversed before the spectator can estimate the enormous pile of masonry which that fabric contains. It can only be matched, I think, by Milan. Amiens is only 442 feet in length, including the Lady Chapel. In this also the French architects have shown great skill, for an excess in this respect would have diminished the great effect produced by their stupendous height. York or Canterbury would be dwarfed beside Amiens, though the former exceeds it by 82 feet, and the latter by 88 feet in length. But the height of the vaulting of Canterbury nave is 80 feet, of York 99, of Amiens 140. It is a sad result of a visit to the French cathedrals, that the Englishman must be content to recognise ever after the immense inferiority of his own in the one characteristic feature of Christian architecture, elevation. A noble race of men they must have been, and not of the tiger-monkey kind, who had hearts to conceive and hands to execute such works as these. Overflowing with inward life must the Church have been, who could impress such a character on her sons. Here, indeed, may the Churchman feel, "He built His sanctuary like high palaces; like the earth which He hath established for ever." Those were the ages of faith, hope, and love; it would be well if the life which glowed in those mediæval bosoms manifested itself by works in ours.
"Amiens. Feast of St. James, 1845. – I do not intend to say much about things in general, but as you have touched on them, I do say a few words. I am, I may say, fully convinced that neither the worship of saints, nor the use of images, nor the withholding of the cup, at all affect the life of the Roman Church. What I have seen has led me to reflect bitterly on Mr. Bowdler's 'Quid Romæ faciam?' The answer is, all that you try in vain to do in England. For, in sober truth, he has only told us that what exists there in practice exists with us in theory. However, I agree with him that it is our duty to put it in practice at home. But, how to get ecclesiastics to live in primitive brotherhood and in primitive poverty? How to bring people to confession? How to induce candidates for holy orders to submit to education? How to get the opportunity of restoring the daily sacrifice? How to warm our churches with devotion, so that people may come in, and be cheered and helped in their prayers, &c.? These are questions to which he has supplied no answer, and the answer is not easy. It requires every allowance for the reserved and retiring character of the English to hope that we are not, even in comparison with the French, a fallen people. Still, were it not for one person who thinks otherwise, I should view our failings calmly, as a mere hindrance to be surmounted, and even take easily the painful separation there is between us and so much that I must admire, considering it as the result of an over-technical system on the one side, and an unformed one on the other – a result that would vanish as the one grew in life and the other in consistency." – M.
We determined to leave this evening, that we might secure an early passage from Boulogne on Monday morning. So at half-past-five we took the diligence to Abbeville. It is an unusually pleasant drive thither, partly by the river side, well wooded, a good road, and occasionally diversified. We even went by one country house which had a fine flower garden and lawn, and might have passed for English. It was so unusually neat and nicely kept, that I inquired if it was a private house. We had the coupé with a French gentleman, with whom I had considerable talk. He was a fair representant of the tone of mind produced by the first revolution; spoke with enthusiasm of the military and naval establishments of France, the accomplishments required of all officers, the preference given to pure merit, the equality which subsisted in all the relations of Frenchmen; contrasted his own country in these respects with ours. He claimed the full possession of liberty, which I denied to them; but I fully admitted the passion for equality and the existence of it. I observed that, by their law of inheritance, they had destroyed all equilibrium in the state, all power but the central power of the government, which was continually increasing. He spoke with passionate fondness of the late Duke of Orleans, that he had a marvellous gift of speaking, attached every body to him, was exceedingly brave and able every way. I asked if he thought Louis Philippe had contrived the revolution. He said he could not acquit him as to that. The whole of his family were patterns to France, whereas, he said, the Duke de Berri was a beast, an animal. He seemed to think there would be attempts on Louis Philippe's death, but they would not succeed; the country generally was well satisfied with his rule. He defended the system of passports as admirable, but when at Abbeville his own was kept some time being deciphered he waxed impatient. He defended the conscription too, and abused the construction of our army; nothing but the firmness of the English character produced good soldiers out of such materials. He seemed to think all property in England descended to the eldest son, and abused our horrible aristocracy. I said the old Saxon blood loved an aristocracy and would always have it.
We reached Abbeville just after dark, got some coffee, and rested a few hours at the Hotel d'Angleterre. At half-past-two the diligence from Paris took us up, and landed us at Boulogne between nine and ten. A fine rich country all along, but with nothing remarkable, except perhaps the site of Montreuil, a brow something like Windsor.
Sunday, July 27. – Went to the British Chapel, in the Rue du Temple – a miserable meeting-house begalleried all round, with one pulpit for the prayers and another for the sermon, flanking a table in the midst. The reading and the preaching quite in correspondence. Indeed the sermon, which was without book, was one of the most extraordinary productions I ever heard: its tone may be imagined, from the speaker calling our Lord "King of Kings, and Lord of Lords – and Emperor of Emperors." "What was half an hour to speak of immortal things to an immortal soul!" The chapel was very full of well-dressed people, whose demeanour was as little religious as can be conceived; but they were bidden to beware of the superstition of the Roman Church, and of the seductions to the animal nature which it afforded. Later we walked into the upper town, and, after dinner, along the sands, and over the cliffs home. But the view of Boulogne on every side is dreary and wretched; and I should never stay there an hour longer than was necessary. We were at l'Hôtel de l'Europe – civil people, and excellent table d'hôte.
Monday, July 28. – At six this morning we left Boulogne, and crossed to Folkstone in two hours and five minutes; a very fast vessel. We breakfasted at the hotel near the beach, got through the custom house rather quickly, were ready for the half-past-nine train, and in London shortly after one o'clock. M. and I called on E. Hawkins and Acland, and then went down to Eton, and I home to Launton.
LETTERS FROM FRANCE AND ITALY. – 1847
Hotel Windsor, Rue de Rivoli,7th July, 1847.
My dear – .
*** The weather for the last three or four days has been melting. We have had plenty to do, and have been well occupied, instructed, and pleased. Last evening we dined with M. Defresne, a very clever, able, and energetic talker. He is a great friend of the old Royal Family, and calls Louis Philippe the greatest scoundrel under the sun. We met l'Abbé Pététot, curé of St. Louis d'Antin, one of the parishes of Paris, with 18,000 inhabitants; he has eight curates, besides occasional assistance. They give the most astonishing account of the change which has taken place in France in the last fifteen years in religious matters. Formerly a young man dared not confess that he was a Christian, or show himself in a church; now the bitter sarcasm and ridicule with which all religious subjects were treated have passed away; earnestness has laid hold of the mind of the nation, and even those who are not Christians appear to be searching for the truth, and treat Christianity as a reality, and conviction with respect. Even now, not one young man in a hundred is a Christian. I asked l'Abbé Pététot particularly, if he felt sure of this proportion, and he confirmed it. Out of the thirty-two millions of French, they reckon two millions who are really Christians, practising confession; many of the others send for a priest in their last illness, confess, and receive the sacraments; but M. Defresne thought this very unsatisfactory, as we should. They are making great exertions to christianise the class of workmen, the great majority of whom are not even nominally believers. You may judge of their life by the fact that they live with many different women in common, sometimes after a time selecting one of these, and confining themselves to her, but without legitimate marriage. The Church has gained about 15,000 of this class out of a hundred thousand in Paris, and worked a great reformation. At St. Sulpice they have every other Sunday a meeting of these, called conférences, at which they are addressed by different persons, clergy or lay, on religious, moral, or instructive subjects. We went to the meeting on Sunday night, and were much pleased with what we saw and heard. Their minds are laid hold of and interested; by drawing together they get a sense of union and the force of numbers, and are encouraged by each other's progress; they see their superiors in knowledge and station exerting themselves for their improvement. L'Abbé Pététot told us he had preached eighty times last Lent, seven times in one day. This is entirely without note. Their labour must be very great. His manner of speaking is very pleasing, and I think the priests generally speak with great propriety, and with an abundance and arrangement of matter which is not common with us. We have just returned from a visit to M. Martin Noirlieu, once sub-preceptor of the Duke de Bordeaux, and now a curé at Paris. He has been in England, and speaks favourably of us. He thinks there is much good and real religion in the people of England, though very defective, and though the Church is suffering under many abuses. He said they computed that the Bishop of London received as much as all the French Bishops put together. The state of things here is totally different from what it is with us. There is no state religion, no temptation whatever to pretend to be a Christian if you are not. The consequence is, that there is little hypocrisy; infidelity is openly professed by a great number. On the other hand, the believers are so from real conviction, and generally after a personal conversion; there are comparatively few hereditary Christians.
The Church is gradually gaining, but much more in the higher than in the lower ranks. There are 800 priests in Paris; they want 400 more: before the great Revolution there were 5000.
On Monday we were taken to see the house of the Priests for foreign Missions. They count many martyrs in late times in China, &c. There are the bones of several in their museum; Chinese pictures of the mode in which they were tortured, expressed to the life with a frightful reality. The mother of one of these martyrs is living now, and had sent to her the original picture of her son's martyrdom, drawn by Christians in China. There is a long frame of wood, which they were forced to carry round the neck, and which prevented them from taking any rest. Young men are regularly trained here for missionary work; their disposition and talents attentively considered; above all their vocation, and without this is very decided, they are not allowed to attempt so perilous a task. Indeed, where the reverse of honour, or ease, or wealth, or leisure, or anything that delights the natural man, is all that they can expect in this life, they are not likely to have any hypocritical aspirants for the work of a missionary. As for sending out a man with a wife and children to convert the heathen, the idea would appear to them too ridiculous. Near adjoining to these we saw the central establishment of the Sœurs de Charité; they have six hundred sisters here, many novices. They count about 6000 all over the world, and are increasing rapidly. They were entirely put down at the great Revolution, so that this is all since 1801. They renew their vows annually; there are instances, though very rare, of sisters retiring. Every sister passes one week of the year in what is called a retreat; that is, a complete self-examination and inquiry into the past year, progress made in things spiritual, &c. This is likewise the case with every monk, nun, or priest. These retreats are productive of great effects.
July 8. – We dine to-day with M. Defresne again, to meet M. Martin Noirlieu.
We have had l'Abbé Labbé here three hours this morning. We are going a round with l'Abbé Carron at two. We have the dinner in the evening, so do pretty well.
Yours sincerely,T. W. Allies.
Genoa, July 20, 1847.
My dear – .
* * * The last six days we have spent, as well as the heat would allow us, in enjoying the different views which this most superb city presents. My companions, who have both seen Constantinople, seem to reckon it only inferior to that. To begin with the beginning: we presented on Wednesday our letter to the Père Jourdain, a Jesuit; and no sooner was it delivered, than, without reading it, or any sort of preface, except W's reply in the affirmative to the question whether he was a Catholic, he began a most furious attack on us as rebels outside of the Church, Protestants, and what not. It so happened, however, that the points he took were just those which I had most at command; so he did not get much by his assault, was obliged to beat a retreat several times, and finally left us all three convinced that reasoning was not his forte, and that at least in his case the Jesuits were not employing gentle insinuation as a means of converting, He has, however, never renewed the battle since, but been very obliging, and given us every assistance in his power. Among the sights he directed us to was St. Anne's, a house of barefooted Carmelites, on the back of the hills some few hundred feet aloft, commanding the most delicious views of the city, the bay, the sea, and the mountains round. A straggling and precipitous garden was covered with vines festooned on trellis work, through which one caught the blue sky, and water, and towers and domes brought out against them with full effect. Then, after seeing the long, cool corridors inside, each of which had a window opening on this gorgeous scene, and the little chamber of each brother, furnished with a poor bed, some little pictures, a crucifix, and the most necessary furniture; and on hearing the quiet tenor of every day's life, the only fear was, whether there was enough of the cross in it. But doubtless the being under obedience, the having every day's work portioned out for one, supplies all that is wanted; and however calm it seemed, every chamber, as it had the figure of the Crucified, so it was conscious of the secret cross borne by its occupant. They are occupied in instruction, and have a school of novices. Genoa is particularly rich in charitable foundations; her merchant princes cannot be accused of neglecting the poor and suffering, nor of so assisting them as to show that they thought poverty a crime and an offence. We have seen three great buildings which have moved our admiration in this way. The Ospitaletto contains 444 sick men and women: it is served by six Capucins and fifteen sisters of charity. Mass is said every day at half-past-five and six o'clock, at altars so placed in the different wards that every person can see. They are confessed by the Capucins, and communicate every fortnight. All Genoese are received freely here, others pay a small sum. Again, the hospital called Pammatone, endowed by various noble Genoese, can receive 1000 sick; it had more this last winter. It is served by eighteen Capucins and thirty-four sisters. We saw here, in a shrine over the altar, the body of St. Catherine of Genoa, who died in 1510, after serving thirty-two years as a sister here. It is apparently solid and quite uncorrupt. The other great building, which we saw yesterday, is the Albergo dei Poveri – a poor house in fact, but as unlike an English poor house, as poverty in the person of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord is unlike poverty as treated by a board of guardians, and kept alive on the smallest pittance they can devise. It is a most magnificent building, with four huge courts, the chapel in the centre, of which the altar is commanded on one side by a great chamber for the men, and on the other side by one for the women; while in front it is open to the public, and behind to an infirmary for the sick.
In all these buildings what most pleases one is the bringing home the entire offices, hopes, and consolations of religion to every individual soul. I do not see how this can be done without sisters of charity, and the system of confession. Everything I see impresses on me more and more our own need of a complete renovation and restoration, if we would rise as a communion to be a reality and not a sham. Yesterday we visited the Fieschine, an institution for educating orphan girls, of which it now holds 187. They are taught reading and writing and work of all kinds, the most beautiful embroidery, artificial flowers, &c. It was founded by the Count Fieschi, and is in the patronage of his family, directed by a chaplain, and a superior, with the rules of a convent, but without any vows, as a great many marry out of it. The full recognition of the ascetic and monastic life, as a Christian state, and the highest in its kind, is of incalculable importance. For want of this, all our great institutions, whether for the maintenance of learning, or the direction of youth, or the care of the sick, fail just where they ought to be strong; they have no authority; the world, its views, and principles, and measures, rule in them as in ordinary life; and the reason why is, that the very life which alone is above the world, its wants, and its measures, is excluded and condemned. We have men, we have minds, we have money; but how are we to get back principles which we have in practice given up? The under-valuing celibacy, the not possessing religious orders, seems a system of christianity without the cross.
