is not play to the small birds of
State neither; and for the black eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking
shots at them, if I mistake not.

I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, without
farther instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation's
vice, or virtue, was written in its art: the soldiership of early
Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of Tuscany;
the splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no time to do
this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now); but I proceed to
apply the principle to ourselves in a more searching manner.

I notice that among all the new buildings that cover your once wild
hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large
proportion, with your mills and mansions and I notice also that the
churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and
mills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaning
of this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When
Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when
the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well
as houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, there
is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo Jones
builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an Italian St.
Paul's. But now you live under one school of architecture, and worship
under another. What do you mean by doing this? Am I to understand that
you are thinking of changing your architecture back to Gothic; and that
you treat your churches experimentally, because it does not matter what
mistakes you make in a church? Or am I to understand that you consider
Gothic a pre-eminently sacred and beautiful mode of building, which you
think, like the fine frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle
only, and reserved for your religious services? For if this be the
feeling, though it may seem at first as if it were graceful and
reverent, you will find that, at the root of the matter, it signifies
neither more nor less than that you have separated your religion from
your life.

For consider what a wide significance this fact has; and remember that
it is not you only, but all the people of England, who are behaving thus
just now.

You have all got into the habit of calling the church 'the house of
God.' I have seen, over the doors of many churches, the legend actua