thoughts, and hands, and powers of labouring
citizens and warrior kings. By the monk it was used as an instrument
for the aid of his superstition; when that superstition became a
beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly dreamed and
pined in the cloister, and vainly raged and perished in the
crusade,--through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the
Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most
foolish dreams; and in those dreams, was lost.

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding me when I
come to the gist of what I want to say to-night;--when I repeat, that
every great national architecture has been the result and exponent of
a great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits
there--you must have it everywhere or nowhere. It is not the monopoly
of a clerical company--it is not the exponent of a theological
dogma--it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood;
it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common
purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible
laws of an undoubted God.

Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of European
architecture. I say, European, because Asiatic and African
architectures belong so entirely to other races and climates, that
there is no question of them here; only, in passing, I will simply
assure you that whatever is good or great in Egypt, and Syria, and
India, is just good or great for the same reasons as the buildings on
our side of the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, have had three great
religions: the Greek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom and
Power; the Mediaeval, which was the worship of the God of Judgment and
Consolation; the Renaissance, which was the worship of the God of
Pride and Beauty: these three we have had--they are past,--and now, at
last, we English have got a fourth religion, and a God of our own,
about which I want to ask you. But I must explain these three old ones
first.

I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom;
so that whatever contended against their religion,--to the Jews a
stumbling-block,--was, to the Greeks--_Foolishness_.[212]

The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in the word, of which
we keep the remnant in our words "_Di_-urnal" and "_Di_-vine"--the god
of _Day_, Jupiter the revealer. Athena is his daughter, but especially
daughter of the Intellect, spring