Amours de Voyage [1]
stop, for the carriage, they tell me, is waiting; Mary will finish; and Susan is writing, they say, to Sophia. Adieu, dearest Louise,--evermore your faithful Georgina. Who can a Mr. Claude be whom George has taken to be with? Very stupid, I think, but George says so VERY clever.
IV. Claude to Eustace.
No, the Christian faith, as at any rate I understood it, With its humiliations and exaltations combining, Exaltations sublime, and yet diviner abasements,
Aspirations from something most shameful here upon earth and In our poor selves to something most perfect above in the heavens,-- No, the Christian faith, as I, at least, understood it, Is not here, O Rome, in any of these thy churches; Is not here, but in Freiburg, or Rheims, or Westminster Abbey. What in thy Dome I find, in all thy recenter efforts, Is a something, I think, more RATIONAL far, more earthly, Actual, less ideal, devout not in scorn and refusal, But in a positive, calm, Stoic-Epicurean acceptance. This I begin to detect in St. Peter's and some of the churches, Mostly in all that I see of the sixteenth-century masters; Overlaid of course with infinite gauds and gewgaws, Innocent, playful follies, the toys and trinkets of childhood, Forced on maturer years, as the serious one thing needful, By the barbarian will of the rigid and ignorant Spaniard. Curious work, meantime, re-entering society: how we Walk a livelong day, great Heaven, and watch our shadows! What our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be. Do I look like that? you think me that: then I AM that.
V. Claude to Eustace.
Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance; Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses; Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets, Scholars, and Sculptors, and Painters, were quietly clearing away the Martyrs, and Virgins, and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas: He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs, and Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe: Lo you, for forty days from the windows of heaven it fell; the Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty; Are they abating at last? the doves that are sent to explore are Wearily fain to return, at the best with a leaflet of promise,-- Fain to return, as they went, to the wandering wave-tost vessel,-- Fain to re-enter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean,-- Luther, they say, was unwise; he didn't see how things were going; Luther was foolish,--but, O great God! what call you Ignatius? O my tolerant soul, be still! but you talk of barbarians, Alaric, Attila, Genseric;--why, they came, they killed, they Ravaged, and went on their way; but these vile, tyrannous Spaniards, These are here still,--how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante? These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,-- Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu, Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,-- Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,-- Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing, Michael Angelo's Dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven, Raphael's Joys and Graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo!
VI. Claude to Eustace.
Which of three Misses Trevellyn it is that Vernon shall marry Is not a thing to be known; for our friend is one of those natures Which have their perfect delight in the general tender-domestic, So that he trifles with Mary's shawl, ties Susan's bonnet, Dances with all, but at home is most, they say, with Georgina, Who is, however, TOO silly in my apprehension for Vernon. I, as before when I wrote, continue to see them a little; Not that I like them much or care a bajocco for Vernon, But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance, And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses. Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly Pure
IV. Claude to Eustace.
No, the Christian faith, as at any rate I understood it, With its humiliations and exaltations combining, Exaltations sublime, and yet diviner abasements,
Aspirations from something most shameful here upon earth and In our poor selves to something most perfect above in the heavens,-- No, the Christian faith, as I, at least, understood it, Is not here, O Rome, in any of these thy churches; Is not here, but in Freiburg, or Rheims, or Westminster Abbey. What in thy Dome I find, in all thy recenter efforts, Is a something, I think, more RATIONAL far, more earthly, Actual, less ideal, devout not in scorn and refusal, But in a positive, calm, Stoic-Epicurean acceptance. This I begin to detect in St. Peter's and some of the churches, Mostly in all that I see of the sixteenth-century masters; Overlaid of course with infinite gauds and gewgaws, Innocent, playful follies, the toys and trinkets of childhood, Forced on maturer years, as the serious one thing needful, By the barbarian will of the rigid and ignorant Spaniard. Curious work, meantime, re-entering society: how we Walk a livelong day, great Heaven, and watch our shadows! What our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be. Do I look like that? you think me that: then I AM that.
V. Claude to Eustace.
Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance; Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses; Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets, Scholars, and Sculptors, and Painters, were quietly clearing away the Martyrs, and Virgins, and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas: He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs, and Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe: Lo you, for forty days from the windows of heaven it fell; the Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty; Are they abating at last? the doves that are sent to explore are Wearily fain to return, at the best with a leaflet of promise,-- Fain to return, as they went, to the wandering wave-tost vessel,-- Fain to re-enter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean,-- Luther, they say, was unwise; he didn't see how things were going; Luther was foolish,--but, O great God! what call you Ignatius? O my tolerant soul, be still! but you talk of barbarians, Alaric, Attila, Genseric;--why, they came, they killed, they Ravaged, and went on their way; but these vile, tyrannous Spaniards, These are here still,--how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante? These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,-- Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu, Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,-- Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,-- Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing, Michael Angelo's Dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven, Raphael's Joys and Graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo!
VI. Claude to Eustace.
Which of three Misses Trevellyn it is that Vernon shall marry Is not a thing to be known; for our friend is one of those natures Which have their perfect delight in the general tender-domestic, So that he trifles with Mary's shawl, ties Susan's bonnet, Dances with all, but at home is most, they say, with Georgina, Who is, however, TOO silly in my apprehension for Vernon. I, as before when I wrote, continue to see them a little; Not that I like them much or care a bajocco for Vernon, But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance, And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses. Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly Pure