stianity was partially established as the
creed and way of life of a group of diverse nations. The historical
meaning of the word Romance is exact and easy to define. But in common
usage the word means something much vaguer than this. It is a note, an
atmosphere, a kind of feeling that is awakened not only by literature but
by the behavior of men and the disposition of material objects. John
Evelyn, the diarist, enjoys the reputation of having been the first to
speak of a "romantic site,"--a phrase which leads the way to immeasurable
possibilities in the application of the word. Accuracy in the definition
of this larger meaning is unattainable; and would certainly be false, for
the word has taken its meaning from centuries of usage by inaccurate
thinkers. A whole cluster of feelings, impressions, and desires, dimly
recognized as cognate, has grown around the word, which has now been a
centre of critical discussion and controversy for the better part of a
century. Heine, in his dissertation on the Romantic School, takes the
Christianity of the Middle Ages as his starting-point, and relates
everything to that. Perhaps he makes too much of allegory and symbolism,
which have always been dear to the church, but are not conspicuous in
early Romance. Yet no one can go far astray who keeps in touch, as Heine
does, with the facts of history. Goethe, impatient of the wistful
intensities of youth, said that the Classical is health, and the Romantic
disease. Much has been made, by many critics, of the statue and the
picture, as types of ancient and modern art, the one complete in itself,
the other suggesting more than it portrays. Mr. Walter Pater, borrowing
a hint from a sentence of Bacon, finds the essence of Romance in the
addition of strangeness to beauty, of curiosity to desire. It would be
easy to multiply these epigrammatic statements, which are all not
obscurely related to the fundamental changes wrought on the world by
Christian ideas. No single formula can hope to describe and distinguish
two eras, or define two tempers of mind. If I had to choose a single
characteristic of Romance as the most noteworthy, I think I should choose
Distance, and should call Romance the magic of Distance. What is the
most romantic line in Virgil? Surely it is the line which describes the
ghosts, staying for waftage on the banks of the river, and stretching out
their hands in passionate desire to the further shore:

Tendeban