Loveliness at last. It
is here, then, among these deserted vales! Not among men. Those pale,
poverty-struck, or cruel faces;--that multitudinous, marred
humanity--are not the only things that God has made. Here is something
He has made which no one has marred. Pride of purple rocks, and river
pools of blue, and tender wilderness of glittering trees, and misty
lights of evening on immeasurable hills.
Beauty, and freedom, and peace; and yet another teacher, graver than
these. Sound preaching at last here, in Kirkstall crypt, concerning
fate and life. Here, where the dark pool reflects the chancel pillars,
and the cattle lie in unhindered rest, the soft sunshine on their
dappled bodies, instead of priests' vestments; their white furry hair
ruffled a little, fitfully, by the evening wind deep-scented from the
meadow thyme.
Consider deeply the import to him of this, his first sight of ruin, and
compare it with the effect of the architecture that was around
Giorgione. There were indeed aged buildings, at Venice, in his time,
but none in decay. All ruin was removed, and its place filled as
quickly as in our London; but filled always by architecture loftier and
more wonderful than that whose place it took, the boy himself happy to
work upon the walls of it; so that the idea of the passing away of the
strength of men and beauty of their works never could occur to him
sternly.
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