es. So when they landed they found that which is
hardly to be believed but which is nevertheless true: for about the quays
and about the streets lay many people dead, or stood, but quite without
motion, and they were all white or about the colour of new-hewn
freestone, yet were they not statues but real men, for they had, some of
them, ghastly wounds which showed their entrails, and the structure of
their flesh, and veins, and bones.

'Moreover the streets were red and wet with blood, and the harbour waves
were red with it, because it dipped in great drops slowly from the quays.

'Then when the good knights saw this, they doubted not but that it was a
fearful punishment on this people for sins of theirs; thereupon they
entered into a church of that city and prayed God to pardon them;
afterwards, going back to their ships, sailed away marvelling.

'And I John who wrote this history saw all this with mine own eyes.'

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

I--SHADOWS OF AMIENS

Not long ago I saw for the first time some of the churches of North
France; still more recently I saw them for the second time; and,
remembering the love I have for them and the longing that was in me to
see them, during the time that came between the first and second visit, I
thought I should like to tell people of some of those things I felt when
I was there;--there among those mighty tombs of the long-dead ages.

And I thought that even if I could say nothing else about these grand
churches, I could at least tell men how much I loved them; so that though
they might laugh at me for my foolish and confused words, they might yet
be moved to see what there was that made me speak my love, though I could
give no reason for it.

For I will say here that I think those same churches of North France the
grandest, the most beautiful, the kindest and most loving of all the
buildings that the earth has ever borne; and, thinking of their past-away
builders, can I see through them, very faintly, dimly, some little of the
mediaeval times, else dead, and gone from me for ever--voiceless for
ever.

And those same builders, still surely living, still real men, and capable
of receiving love, I love no less than the great men, poets and painters
and such like, who are on earth now, no less than my breathing friends
whom I can see looking kindly on me now. Ah! do I not love them with
just cause, who certainly loved me, thinking of me sometimes between the