passes, with that placid
dilettante simper, the Heaven's-Watchtower of our Fathers, the fallen
God's-Houses, the Golgotha of true Souls departed!

Their architecture, belfries, land-carucates? Yes,--and that is but a
small item of the matter. Does it never give thee pause, this other
strange item of it, that men then had a _soul_,--not by hearsay alone,
and as a figure of speech; but as a truth that they _knew_, and
practically went upon! Verily it was another world then. Their
Missals have become incredible, a sheer platitude, sayest thou? Yes, a
most poor platitude; and even, if thou wilt, an idolatry and
blasphemy, should any one persuade _thee_ to believe them, to pretend
praying by them. But yet it is pity we had lost tidings of our
souls:--actually we shall have to go in quest of them again, or worse
in all ways will befall! A certain degree of soul, as Ben Jonson
reminds us, is indispensable to keep the very body from destruction of
the frightfulest sort; to 'save us,' says he, 'the expense of _salt_.'
Ben has known men who had soul enough to keep their body and five
senses from becoming carrion, and save salt:--men, and also Nations.
You may look in Manchester Hunger-mobs and Corn-law Commons Houses,
and various other quarters, and say whether either soul or else salt
is not somewhat wanted at present!--

Another world, truly: and this present poor distressed world might get
some profit by looking wisely into it, instead of foolishly. But at
lowest, O dilettante friend, let us know always that it _was_ a world,
and not a void infinite of gray haze with fantasms swimming in it.
These old St. Edmundsbury walls, I say, were not peopled with
fantasms; but with men of flesh and blood, made altogether as we are.
Had thou and I then been, who knows but we ourselves had taken refuge
from an evil Time, and fled to dwell here, and meditate on an
Eternity, in such fashion as we could? Alas, how like an old osseous
fragment, a broken blackened shin-bone of the old dead Ages, this
black ruin looks out, not yet covered by the soil; still indicating
what a once gigantic Life lies buried there! It is dead now, and dumb;
but was alive once, and spake. For twenty generations, here was the
earthly arena where painful living men worked out their
life-wrestle,--looked at by Earth, by Heaven and Hell. Bells tolled
to prayers; and men, of many humours, various thoughts, chanted
vespers, matins;--and round the little islet of their l