it may well be called
a relic of civilisation. It has always been most artistic and elaborate
when everything else was most artistic and elaborate. Thus it was
detailed exquisite in the late Roman Empire, in the complex and gorgeous
sixteenth century, in the centralised French monarchy a hundred years
before the Revolution, and in the great Chinese civilisation to this
day. This is, first and last, the frightful thing we must remember.
In so far as we grow instructed and refined we are not (in any sense
whatever) naturally moving away from torture. We may be moving towards
torture. We must know what we are doing, if we are to avoid the enormous
secret cruelty which has crowned every historic civilisation.

The train moves more swiftly through the sunny English fields. They have
taken the prisoners away, and I do not know what they have done with
them.

XXXIII. The Prehistoric Railway Station

A railway station is an admirable place, although Ruskin did not think
so; he did not think so because he himself was even more modern than the
railway station. He did not think so because he was himself feverish,
irritable, and snorting like an engine. He could not value the ancient
silence of the railway station.

"In a railway station," he said, "you are in a hurry, and therefore,
miserable"; but you need not be either unless you are as modern as
Ruskin. The true philosopher does not think of coming just in time for
his train except as a bet or a joke.

The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to be late
for the one before. Do this, and you will find in a railway station
much of the quietude and consolation of a cathedral. It has many of the
characteristics of a great ecclesiastical building; it has vast arches,
void spaces, coloured lights, and, above all, it has recurrence or
ritual. It is dedicated to the celebration of water and fire the two
prime elements of all human ceremonial. Lastly, a station resembles the
old religions rather than the new religions in this point, that people
go there. In connection with this it should also be remembered that all
popular places, all sites, actually used by the people, tend to retain
the best routine of antiquity very much more than any localities or
machines used by any privileged class. Things are not altered so quickly
or completely by common people as they are by fashionable people. Ruskin
could have found more memories of the Middle Ages in the Undergro