A
religion towering over all the city--many-buttressed--luminous in
marble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety[125] shines over
the sea; many-voiced also, giving, over all the eastern seas, to the
sentinel his watchword, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips of
all who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death.
I suppose the boy Turner to have regarded the religion of his city also
from an external intellectual standing-point.
What did he see in Maiden Lane?
Let not the reader be offended with me; I am willing to let him
describe, at his own pleasure, what Turner saw there; but to me, it
seems to have been this. A religion maintained occasionally, even the
whole length of the lane, at point of constable's staff; but, at other
times, placed under the custody of the beadle, within certain black and
unstately iron railings of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Among the
wheelbarrows and over the vegetables, no perceptible dominance of
religion; in the narrow, disquieted streets, none; in the tongues,
deeds, daily ways of Maiden Lane, little. Some honesty, indeed, and
English industry, and kindness of heart, and general idea of justice;
but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next,
not artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions; its
paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and cold
grimness of behaviour.
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