Our Fathers Have Told Us Part 1

Our Fathers Have Told Us.

by John Ruskin.

PREFACE.

The long abandoned purpose, of which the following pages begin some attempt at fulfilment, has been resumed at the request of a young English governess, that I would write some pieces of history which her pupils could gather some good out of;--the fruit of historical doc.u.ments placed by modern educational systems at her disposal, being to them labour only, and sorrow.

What else may be said for the book, if it ever become one, it must say for itself: preface, more than this, I do not care to write: and the less, because some pa.s.sages of British history, at this hour under record, call for instant, though brief, comment.

I am told that the Queen's Guards have gone to Ireland; playing "G.o.d save the Queen." And being, (as I have declared myself in the course of some letters to which public attention has been lately more than enough directed,) to the best of my knowledge, the staunchest Conservative in England, I am disposed gravely to question the propriety of the mission of the Queen's Guards on the employment commanded them. My own Conservative notion of the function of the Guards is that they should guard the Queen's throne and life, when threatened either by domestic or foreign enemy: but not that they should become a subst.i.tute for her inefficient police force, in the execution of her domiciliary laws.

And still less so, if the domiciliary laws which they are sent to execute, playing "G.o.d save the Queen," be perchance precisely contrary to that G.o.d the Saviour's law; and therefore, such as, in the long run, no quant.i.ty either of Queens, or Queen's men, _could_ execute. Which is a question I have for these ten years been endeavouring to get the British public to consider--vainly enough hitherto; and will not at present add to my own many words on the matter. But a book has just been published by a British officer, who, if he had not been otherwise and more actively employed, could not only have written all my books about landscape and picture, but is very singularly also of one mind with me, (G.o.d knows of how few Englishmen I can now say so,) on matters regarding the Queen's safety, and the Nation's honour. Of whose book ("Far out: Rovings retold"), since various pa.s.sages will be given in my subsequent terminal notes, I will content myself with quoting for the end of my Preface, the memorable words which Colonel Butler himself quotes, as spoken to the British Parliament by its last Conservative leader, a British officer who had also served with honour and success.

The Duke of Wellington said: "It is already well known to your Lordships that of the troops which our gracious Sovereign did me the honour to entrust to my command at various periods during the war--a war undertaken for the express purpose of securing the happy inst.i.tutions and independence of the country--at least one half were Roman Catholics. My Lords, when I call your recollection to this fact, I am sure all further eulogy is unnecessary. Your Lordships are well aware for what length of period and under what difficult circ.u.mstances they maintained the Empire buoyant upon the flood which overwhelmed the thrones and wrecked the inst.i.tutions of every other people;--how they kept alive the only spark of freedom which was left unextinguished in Europe.... My Lords, it is mainly to the Irish Catholics that we all owe our proud predominance in our military career, and that I personally am indebted for the laurels with which you have been pleased to decorate my brow.... We must confess, my Lords, that without Catholic blood and Catholic valour no victory could ever have been obtained, and the first military talents might have been exerted in vain."

Let these n.o.ble words of tender Justice be the first example to my young readers of what all History ought to be. It has been told them, in the Laws of Fesole, that all great Art is Praise. So is all faithful History, and all high Philosophy. For these three, Art, History, and Philosophy, are each but one part of the Heavenly Wisdom, which sees not as man seeth, but with Eternal Charity; and because she rejoices not in Iniquity, _therefore_ rejoices in the Truth.

For true knowledge is of Virtues only; of poisons and vices, it is Hecate who teaches, not Athena. And of all wisdom, chiefly the Politician's must consist in this divine Prudence; it is not, indeed, always necessary for men to know the virtues of their friends, or their masters; since the friend will still manifest, and the master use. But woe to the Nation which is too cruel to cherish the virtue of its subjects, and too cowardly to recognize that of its enemies!

THE BIBLE OF AMIENS.

CHAPTER I.

BY THE RIVERS OF WATERS.

The intelligent English traveller, in this fortunate age for him, is aware that, half-way between Boulogne and Paris, there is a complex railway-station, into which his train, in its relaxing speed, rolls him with many more than the average number of bangs and b.u.mps prepared, in the access of every important French _gare_, to startle the drowsy or distrait pa.s.senger into a sense of his situation.

He probably also remembers that at this halting-place in mid-journey there is a well-served buffet, at which he has the privilege of "Dix minutes d'arret."

He is not, however, always so distinctly conscious that these ten minutes of arrest are granted to him within not so many minutes' walk of the central square of a city which was once the Venice of France.

Putting the lagoon islands out of question, the French River-Queen was nearly as large in compa.s.s as Venice herself; and divided, not by slow currents of ebbing and returning tide, but by eleven beautiful trout streams, of which some four or five are as large, each separately, as our Surrey Wandle, or as Isaac Walton's Dove; and which, branching out of one strong current above the city, and uniting again after they have eddied through its streets, are bordered, as they flow down, (fordless except where the two Edwards rode them, the day before Crecy,) to the sands of St. Valery, by groves of aspen, and glades of poplar, whose grace and gladness seem to spring in every stately avenue instinct with the image of the just man's life,--"Erit tanquam lignum quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum."

But the Venice of Picardy owed her name, not to the beauty of her streams merely, but to their burden. She was a worker, like the Adriatic princes, in gold and gla.s.s, in stone, wood, and ivory; she was skilled like an Egyptian in the weaving of fine linen; dainty as the maids of Judah in divers colours of needlework. And of these, the fruits of her hands, praising her in her own gates, she sent also portions to stranger nations, and her fame went out into all lands.

"Un reglement de l'echevinage, du 12^me avril 1566, fait voir qu'on fabriquait a cette epoque, des velours de toutes couleurs pour meubles, des colombettes a grands et pet.i.ts carreaux, des burailles croises, qu'on expediait en Allemagne--en Espagne, en Turquie, et en Barbarie!"[1]

All-coloured velvets, pearl-iridescent colombettes! (I wonder what they may be?) and sent to vie with the variegated carpet of the Turk, and glow upon the arabesque towers of Barbary![2] Was not this a phase of provincial Picard life which an intelligent English traveller might do well to inquire into? Why should this fountain of rainbows leap up suddenly here by Somme; and a little Frankish maid write herself the sister of Venice, and the servant of Carthage and of Tyre?

[Footnote 1: M. H. Dusevel, Histoire de la Ville d'Amiens. Amiens, Caron et Lambert, 1848; p. 305.]

[Footnote 2: Carpaccio trusts for the chief splendour of any festa in cities to the patterns of the draperies hung out of windows.]

And if she, why not others also of our northern villages? Has the intelligent traveller discerned anything, in the country, or in its sh.o.r.es, on his way from the gate of Calais to the _gare_ of Amiens, of special advantage for artistic design, or for commercial enterprise? He has seen league after league of sandy dunes. We also, we, have our sands by Severn, by Lune, by Solway. He has seen extensive plains of useful and not unfragrant peat,--an article sufficiently accessible also to our Scotch and Irish industries. He has seen many a broad down and jutting cliff of purest chalk; but, opposite, the perfide Albion gleams no whit less blanche beyond the blue. Pure waters he has seen, issuing out of the snowy rock; but are ours less bright at Croydon, at Guildford, or at Winchester? And yet one never heard of treasures sent from Solway sands to African; nor that the builders at Romsey could give lessons in colour to the builders at Granada? What can it be, in the air or the earth--in her stars or in her sunlight--that fires the heart and quickens the eyes of the little white-capped Amienoise soubrette, till she can match herself against Penelope?

The intelligent English traveller has of course no time to waste on any of these questions. But if he has bought his ham-sandwich, and is ready for the "En voiture, messieurs," he may perhaps condescend for an instant to hear what a lounger about the place, neither wasteful of his time, nor sparing of it, can suggest as worth looking at, when his train glides out of the station.

He will see first, and doubtless with the respectful admiration which an Englishman is bound to bestow upon such objects, the coal-sheds and carriage-sheds of the station itself, extending in their ashy and oily splendours for about a quarter of a mile out of the town; and then, just as the train gets into speed, under a large chimney tower, which he cannot see to nearly the top of, but will feel overcast by the shadow of its smoke, he _may_ see, if he will trust his intelligent head out of the window, and look back, fifty or fifty-one (I am not sure of my count to a unit) similar chimneys, all similarly smoking, all with similar works attached, oblongs of brown brick wall, with portholes numberless of black square window. But in the midst of these fifty tall things that smoke, he will see one, a little taller than any, and more delicate, that does not smoke; and in the midst of these fifty ma.s.ses of blank wall enclosing 'works'--and doubtless producing works profitable and honourable to France and the world--he will see _one_ ma.s.s of wall--not blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of foolish men of long ago, for the purpose of enclosing or producing no manner of profitable work whatsoever, but one--

"This is the work of G.o.d; that ye should believe on Him whom He hath sent"!

Leaving the intelligent traveller now to fulfil his vow of pilgrimage to Paris,--or wherever else G.o.d may be sending him,--I will suppose that an intelligent Eton boy or two, or thoughtful English girl, may care quietly to walk with me as far as this same spot of commanding view, and to consider what the workless--shall we say also worthless?--building, and its unshadowed minaret, may perhaps farther mean.

Minaret I have called it, for want of better English word.

Fleche--arrow--is its proper name; vanishing into the air you know not where, by the mere fineness of it. Flameless--motionless--hurtless--the fine arrow; unplumed, unpoisoned, and unbarbed; aimless--shall we say also, readers young and old, travelling or abiding? It, and the walls it rises from--what have they once meant? What meaning have they left in them yet, for you, or for the people that live round them, and never look up as they pa.s.s by?

Suppose we set ourselves first to learn how they came there.

At the birth of Christ, all this hillside, and the brightly-watered plain below, with the corn-yellow champaign above, were inhabited by a Druid-taught race, wild enough in thoughts and ways, but under Roman government, and gradually becoming accustomed to hear the names, and partly to confess the power, of Roman G.o.ds. For three hundred years after the birth of Christ they heard the name of no other G.o.d.

Three hundred years! and neither apostles nor inheritors of apostleship had yet gone into all the world and preached the gospel to every creature. Here, on their peaty ground, the wild people, still trusting in Pomona for apples, in Silva.n.u.s for acorns, in Ceres for bread, and in Proserpina for rest, hoped but the season's blessing from the G.o.ds of Harvest, and feared no eternal anger from the Queen of Death.

But at last, three hundred years being past and gone, in the year of Christ 301, there came to this hillside of Amiens, on the sixth day of the Ides of October, the Messenger of a new Life.

His name, Firminius (I suppose) in Latin, Firmin in French,--so to be remembered here in Picardy. Firmin, not Firminius; as Denis, not Dionysius; coming out of s.p.a.ce--no one tells what part of s.p.a.ce. But received by the pagan Amienois with surprised welcome, and seen of them--forty days--many days, we may read--preaching acceptably, and binding with baptismal vows even persons in good society: and that in such numbers, that at last he is accused to the Roman governor, by the priests of Jupiter and Mercury, as one turning the world upside-down.

And in the last day of the Forty--or of the indefinite many meant by Forty--he is beheaded, as martyrs ought to be, and his ministrations in a mortal body ended.

The old, old story, you say? Be it so; you will the more easily remember it. The Amienois remembered it so carefully, that, twelve hundred years afterwards, in the sixteenth century, they thought good to carve and paint the four stone pictures Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 of our first choice photographs. (N. B.--This series is not yet arranged, but is distinct from that referred to in Chapter IV. See Appendix II.).

Scene 1st, St. Firmin arriving; scene 2nd, St. Firmin preaching; scene 3rd, St. Firmin baptizing; and scene 4th, St. Firmin beheaded, by an executioner with very red legs, and an attendant dog of the character of the dog in 'Faust,' of whom we may have more to say presently.

Following in the meantime the tale of St. Firmin, as of old time known, his body was received, and buried, by a Roman senator, his disciple, (a kind of Joseph of Arimathea to St. Firmin,) in the Roman senator's own garden. Who also built a little oratory over his grave.

The Roman senator's son built a church to replace the oratory, dedicated it to Our Lady of Martyrs, and established it as an episcopal seat--the first of the French nation's. A very notable spot for the French nation, surely? One deserving, perhaps, some little memory or monument,--cross, tablet, or the like? Where, therefore, do you suppose this first cathedral of French Christianity stood, and with what monument has it been honoured?

It stood where we now stand, companion mine, whoever you may be; and the monument wherewith it has been honoured is this--chimney, whose gonfalon of smoke overshadows us--the latest effort of modern art in Amiens, the chimney of St. Acheul.

The first cathedral, you observe, of the _French_ nation; more accurately, the first germ of cathedral _for_ the French nation--who are not yet here; only this grave of a martyr is here, and this church of Our Lady of Martyrs, abiding on the hillside, till the Roman power pa.s.s away.

Falling together with it, and trampled down by savage tribes, alike the city and the shrine; the grave forgotten,--when at last the Franks themselves pour from the north, and the utmost wave of them, lapping along these downs of Somme, is _here_ stayed, and the Frankish standard planted, and the French kingdom throned.

Here their first capital, here the first footsteps[3] of the Frank in his France! Think of it. All over the south are Gauls, Burgundians, Bretons, heavier-hearted nations of sullen mind: at their outmost brim and border, here at last are the Franks, the source of all Franchise, for this our Europe. You have heard the word in England, before now, but English word for it is none! _Honesty_ we have of our own; but _Frankness_ we must learn of these: nay, all the western nations of us are in a few centuries more to be known by this name of Frank. Franks, of Paris that is to be, in time to come; but French of Paris is in year of grace 500 an unknown tongue in Paris, as much as in Stratford-att-ye-Bowe. French of Amiens is the kingly and courtly form of Christian speech, Paris lying yet in Lutetian clay, to develope into tile-field, perhaps, in due time. Here, by soft-glittering Somme, reign Clovis and his Clotilde.

[Footnote 3: The first fixed and set-down footsteps; wandering tribes called Franks, had overswept the country, and recoiled, again and again. But _this_ invasion of the so-called Salian Franks, never retreats again.]

And by St. Firmin's grave speaks now another gentle evangelist, and the first Frank king's prayer to the King of kings is made to Him, known only as "the G.o.d of Clotilde."

I must ask the reader's patience now with a date or two, and stern facts--two--three--or more.

Clodion, the leader of the first Franks who reach irrevocably beyond the Rhine, fights his way through desultory Roman cohorts as far as Amiens, and takes it, in 445.[4]

[Footnote 4: See note at end of chapter, as also for the allusions in p. 8, to the battle of Soissons.]

Two years afterwards, at his death, the scarcely a.s.serted throne is seized--perhaps inevitably--by the tutor of his children, Merovee, whose dynasty is founded on the defeat of Attila at Chalons.