Part 17

The first represents the infidelity of Pride. The cockatrice--king serpent or highest serpent--saying that he _is_ God, and _will be_ God.

The second, the infidelity of Death. The adder (nieder or nether snake) saying that he _is_ mud and _will be_ mud.

Lastly, and above all, set under the feet of the statue of Christ Himself, are the lion and dragon; the images of Carnal sin, or _Human_ sin, as distinguished from the Spiritual and Intellectual sin of Pride, by which the angels also fell.

_The Bible of Amiens_ (_Our Fathers Have Told Us_), (Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1884).

THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOFIA.

EDMONDO DE AMICIS.

The external aspect has nothing worthy of note. The only objects that attract the eye are the four high white minarets that rise at the four corners of the edifice, upon pedestals as big as houses. The famous cupola looks small. It appears impossible that it can be the same dome that swells into the blue air, like the head of a Titan, and is seen from Pera, from the Bosphorus, from the Sea of Marmora, and from the hills of Asia. It is a flattened dome, flanked by two half domes, covered with lead, and perforated with a wreath of windows, supported upon four walls painted in stripes of pink and white, sustained in their turn by enormous bastions, around which rise confusedly a number of small mean buildings, baths, schools, mausoleums, hospitals, etc., which hide the architectural forms of the basilica. You see nothing but a heavy, irregular mass, of a faded colour, naked as a fortress, and not to all appearance large enough to hold within it the immense nave of Santa Sofia’s church. Of the ancient basilica nothing is really visible but the dome, which has lost the silvery splendour that once made it visible, according to the Greeks, from the summit of Olympus. All the rest is Mussulman. One summit was built by Mahomet the Conqueror, one by Selim II., the other two by Amurath III. Of the same Amurath are the buttresses built at the end of the Sixteenth Century to support the walls shaken by an earthquake, and the enormous crescent in bronze planted upon the top of the dome, of which the gilding alone cost fifty thousand ducats.

[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF SANTA-SOFIA.]

On every side the mosque overwhelms and masks the church, of which the head only is free, though over that also the four imperial minarets keep watch and ward. On the eastern side there is a door ornamented by six columns of porphyry and marble; at the southern side another door by which you enter a court, surrounded by low, irregular buildings, in the midst of which bubbles a fountain for ablution, covered by an arched roof with eight columns. Looked at from without, Santa Sofia can scarcely be distinguished from the other mosques of Stamboul, unless by its inferior lightness and whiteness; much less would it pass for the “greatest temple in the world after Saint Peter’s.” ...

Between the four enormous pilasters which form a square in the middle of the basilica, rise, to the right and left as you enter, eight marvellous columns of green _breccia_ from which spring the most graceful arches, sculptured with foliage, forming an elegant portico on either side of the nave, and sustaining at a great height two vast galleries, which present two more ranges of columns and sculptured arches. A third gallery which communicates with the two first, runs along the entire side where the entrance is, and opens upon the nave with three great arches, sustained by twin columns. Other minor galleries, supported by porphyry columns, cross the four temples posted at the extremity of the nave and sustain other columns bearing tribunes. This is the basilica. The mosque is, as it were, planted in its bosom and attached to its walls. The _Mirab_, or niche which indicates the direction of Mecca, is cut in one of the pilasters of the apse. To the right of it and high up is hung one of the four carpets which Mahomet used in prayer. Upon the corner of the apse, nearest the _Mirab_, at the top of a very steep little staircase, flanked by two balustrades of marble sculptured with exquisite delicacy, under an odd conical roof, between two triumphal standards of Mahomet Second, is the pulpit where the _Ratib_ goes up to read the Koran, with a drawn scimetar in his hand, to indicate that Santa Sofia is a mosque acquired by conquest. Opposite the pulpit is the tribune of the Sultan, closed with a gilded lattice. Other pulpits or platforms, furnished with balustrades sculptured in open work, and ornamented with small marble columns and arabesque arches, extend here and there along the walls, or project towards the centre of the nave. To the right and left of the entrance, are two enormous alabaster urns, brought from the ruins of Pergamo, by Amurath III. Upon the pilasters, at a great height are suspended immense green disks, with inscriptions from the Koran in letters of gold. Underneath, attached to the walls, are large cartouches of porphyry inscribed with the names of Allah, Mahomet, and the first four Caliphs. In the angles formed by the four arches that sustain the cupola, may still be seen the gigantic wings of four mosaic cherubim, whose faces are concealed by gilded rosettes. From the vaults of the domes depend innumerable thick silken cords, to which are attached ostrich eggs, bronze lamps, and globes of crystal. Here and there are seen lecterns, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and copper, with manuscript Korans upon them. The pavement is covered with carpets and mats. The walls are bare, whitish, yellowish, or dark grey, still ornamented here and there with faded mosaics. The general aspect is gloomy and sad.

The chief marvel of the mosque is the great dome. Looked at from the nave below, it seems indeed, as Madame de Staël said of the dome of Saint Peter’s, like an abyss suspended over one’s head. It is immensely high, has an enormous circumference, and its depth is only one-sixth of its diameter; which makes it appear still larger. At its base a gallery encircles it, and above the gallery there is a row of forty arched windows. In the top is written the sentence pronounced by Mahomet Second, as he sat on his horse in front of the high altar on the day of the taking of Constantinople: “Allah is the light of heaven and of earth;” and some of the letters, which are white upon a black ground, are nine yards long. As every one knows, this aërial prodigy could not be constructed with the usual materials; and it was built of pumice-stone that floats on water, and with bricks from the island of Rhodes, five of which scarcely weigh as much as one ordinary brick....

When you have visited the nave and the dome, you have only begun to see Santa Sofia. For example, whoever has a shade of historic curiosity may dedicate an hour to the columns. Here are the spoils of all the temples in the world. The columns of green _breccia_ which support the two great galleries, were presented to Justinian by the magistrates of Ephesus, and belonged to the Temple of Diana that was burned by Erostratus. The eight porphyry columns that stand two and two between the pilasters belonged to the Temple of the Sun built by Aurelian at Balbek. Other columns are from the Temple of Jove at Cizicum, from the Temple of Helios of Palmyra, from the temples of Thebes, Athens, Rome, the Troad, the Ciclades, and from Alexandria; and they present an infinite variety of sizes and colours. Among the columns, the balustrades, the pedestals, and the slabs which remain of the ancient lining of the walls, may be seen marbles from all the ruins of the Archipelago; from Asia Minor, from Africa and from Gaul. The marble of the Bosphorus, white spotted with black, contrasts with the black Celtic marble veined with white; the green marble of Laconia is reflected in the azure marble of Lybia; the speckled porphyry of Egypt, the starred granite of Thessaly, the red and white striped stone of Jassy, mingle their colours with the purple of the Phrygian marble, the rose of that of Synada, the gold of the marble of Mauritania, and the snow of the marble of Paros....

From above can be embraced at once with the eye and mind all the life of the mosque. There are to be seen Turks on their knees, with their foreheads touching the pavement; others erect like statues with their hands before their faces, as if they were studying the lines in their palms; some seated cross-legged at the base of columns, as if they were reposing under the shadow of trees; a veiled woman on her knees in a solitary corner; old men seated before the lecterns, reading the Koran; an _imaum_ hearing a group of boys reciting sacred verses; and here and there, under the distant arcades and in the galleries, _imaum_, _ratib_, _muezzin_, servants of the mosque in strange costumes, coming and going silently as if they did not touch the pavement. The vague harmony formed by the low, monotonous voices of those reading or praying, those thousand strange lamps, that clear and equal light, that deserted apse, those vast silent galleries, that immensity, those memories, that peace, leave in the soul an impression of mystery and grandeur which words cannot express, nor time efface.

_Constantinople_ (London, 1878, translation by C. Tilton).

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.

It is said that the line in Heber’s “Palestine” which describes the rise of Solomon’s temple originally ran--

“Like the green grass, the noiseless fabric grew;”

and that, at Sir Walter Scott’s suggestion, it was altered to its present form--

“Like some tall palm, the noiseless fabric sprung.”

Whether we adopt the humbler or the grander image, the comparison of the growth of a fine building to that of a natural product is full of instruction. But the growth of an historical edifice like Westminster Abbey needs a more complex figure to do justice to its formation: a venerable oak, with gnarled and hollow trunk, and spreading roots, and decaying bark, and twisted branches, and green shoots; or a coral reef extending itself with constantly new accretions, creek after creek, and islet after islet. One after another, a fresh nucleus of life is formed, a new combination produced, a larger ramification thrown out. In this respect Westminster Abbey stands alone amongst the edifices of the world. There are, it may be, some which surpass it in beauty or grandeur; there are others, certainly, which surpass it in depth and sublimity of association; but there is none which has been entwined by so many continuous threads with the history of a whole nation....

[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

If the original foundation of the Abbey can be traced back to Sebert, the name, probably, must have been given in recollection of the great Roman sanctuary, whence Augustine, the first missionary, had come. And Sebert was believed to have dedicated his church to St. Peter in the Isle of Thorns, in order to balance the compliment he had paid to St. Paul on Ludgate Hill: a reappearance, in another form, of the counterbalancing claims of the rights of Diana and Apollo--the earliest stage of that rivalry which afterwards expressed itself in the proverb of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

This thin thread of tradition, which connected the ruinous pile in the river-island with the Roman reminiscences of Augustine, was twisted firm and fast round the resolve of Edward; and by the concentration of his mind on this one subject was raised the first distinct idea of an Abbey, which the Kings of England should regard as their peculiar treasure....

The Abbey had been fifteen years in building. The King had spent upon it one-tenth of the property of the kingdom. It was to be a marvel of its kind. As in its origin it bore the traces of the fantastic childish character of the King and of the age, in its architecture it bore the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occupied in English history between Saxon and Norman. By birth he was a Saxon, but in all else he was a foreigner. Accordingly, the Church at Westminster was a wide sweeping innovation on all that had been seen before. “Destroying the old building,” he says in his Charter, “I have built up a new one from the very foundation.” Its fame as “a new style of composition” lingered in the minds of men for generations. It was the first cruciform church in England, from which all the rest of like shape were copied--an expression of the increasing hold which the idea of the Crucifixion in the Tenth Century had laid on the imagination of Europe. Its massive roof and pillars formed a contrast with the rude rafters and beams of the common Saxon churches. Its very size--occupying, as it did, almost the whole area of the present building--was in itself portentous. The deep foundations, of large square blocks of grey stone, were duly laid. The east end was rounded into an apse. A tower rose in the centre crowned by a cupola of wood. At the western end were erected two smaller towers, with five large bells. The hard strong stones were richly sculptured. The windows were filled with stained glass. The roof was covered with lead. The cloisters, chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, the infirmary, with its spacious chapel, if not completed by Edward, were all begun, and finished in the next generation on the same plan. This structure, venerable as it would be if it had lasted to our time, has almost entirely vanished. Possibly one vast dark arch in the southern transept--certainly the substructures of the dormitory, with their huge pillars, “grand and regal at the bases and capitals”--the massive low-browed passage leading from the great cloister to Little Dean’s Yard--and some portions of the refectory and of the infirmary chapel, remain as specimens of the work which astonished the last age of the Anglo-Saxon and the first age of the Norman monarchy....

In the earliest and nearly the only representation which exists of the Confessor’s building--that in the Bayeux Tapestry--there is the figure of a man on the roof, with one hand resting on the tower of the Palace of Westminster, and with the other grasping the weathercock of the Abbey. The probable intention of this figure is to indicate the close contiguity of the two buildings. If so, it is the natural architectural expression of a truth valuable everywhere, but especially dear to Englishmen. The close incorporation of the Palace and the Abbey from its earliest days is a likeness of the whole English Constitution--a combination of things sacred and things common--a union of the regal, legal, lay element of the nation with its religious, clerical, ecclesiastical tendencies, such as can be found hardly elsewhere in Christendom. The Abbey is secular because it is sacred, and sacred because it is secular. It is secular in the common English sense, because it is “sæcular” in the far higher French and Latin sense: a “sæcular” edifice, a “sæcular” institution--an edifice and an institution which has grown with the growth of ages, which has been furrowed with the scars and cares of each succeeding century.

A million wrinkles carve its skin; A thousand winters snow’d upon its breast, From cheek, and throat, and chin.

The vast political pageants of which it has been the theatre, the dust of the most worldly laid side by side with the dust of the most saintly, the wrangles of divines or statesmen which have disturbed its sacred peace, the clash of arms which has pursued fugitive warriors and princes into the shades of its sanctuary--even the traces of Westminster boys who have played in its cloisters and inscribed their names on its walls--belong to the story of the Abbey no less than its venerable beauty, its solemn services, and its lofty aspirations....

The Chapel of Henry VII. is indeed well called by his name, for it breathes of himself through every part. It is the most signal example of the contrast between his closeness in life, and his “magnificence in the structures he had left to posterity”--King’s College Chapel, the Savoy, Westminster. Its very style was believed to have been a reminiscence of his exile, being “learned in France,” by himself and his companion Fox. His pride in its grandeur was commemorated by the ship, vast for those times, which he built, “of equal cost with his Chapel,” “which afterwards, in the reign of Queen Mary, sank in the sea and vanished in a moment.”

It was to be his chantry as well as his tomb, for he was determined not to be behind the Lancastrian princes in devotion; and this unusual anxiety for the sake of a soul not too heavenward in its affections expended itself in the immense apparatus of services which he provided. Almost a second Abbey was needed to contain the new establishment of monks, who were to sing in their stalls “as long as the world shall endure.” Almost a second Shrine, surrounded by its blazing tapers, and shining like gold with its glittering bronze, was to contain his remains.

To the Virgin Mary, to whom the chapel was dedicated he had a special devotion. Her “in all his necessities he had made his continual refuge;” and her figure, accordingly, looks down upon his grave from the east end, between the apostolic patrons of the Abbey, Peter and Paul, with “the holy company of heaven--that is to say, angels, archangels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors and virgins,” to “whose singular mediation and prayers he also trusted,” including the royal saints of Britain, St. Edward, St. Edmund, St. Oswald, St. Margaret of Scotland, who stand, as he directed, sculptured, tier above tier, on every side of the Chapel; some retained from the ancient Lady Chapel; the greater part the work of his own age. Around his tomb stand his “accustomed Avours or guardian saints” to whom “he calls and cries”--“St. Michael, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, St. George, St. Anthony, St. Edward, St. Vincent, St. Anne, St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Barbara,” each with their peculiar emblems,--“so to aid, succour, and defend him, that the ancient and ghostly enemy, nor none other evil or damnable spirit, have no power to invade him, nor with their wickedness to annoy him, but with holy prayers to be intercessors to his Maker and Redeemer.” These were the adjurations of the last mediæval King, as the Chapel was the climax of the latest mediæval architecture. In the very urgency of the King’s anxiety for the perpetuity of these funeral ceremonies, we seem to discern an unconscious presentiment lest their days were numbered.

But, although in this sense the Chapel hangs on tenaciously to the skirts of the ancient Abbey and the ancient Church, yet that solemn architectural pause between the two--which arrests the most careless observer, and renders it a separate structure, a foundation “adjoining the Abbey” rather than forming part of it--corresponds with marvellous fidelity to the pause and break in English history of which Henry VII.’s reign is the expression. It is the close of the Middle Ages: the apple of Granada in its ornaments shows that the last Crusade was over; its flowing draperies and classical attitudes indicate that the Renaissance had already begun. It is the end of the Wars of the Roses, combining Henry’s right of conquest with his fragile claim of hereditary descent. On the one hand, it is the glorification of the victory of Bosworth. The angels, at the four corners of the tomb, held or hold the likeness of the crown which he won on that famous day. In the stained-glass we see the same crown hanging on the green bush in the fields of Leicestershire. On the other hand, like the Chapel of King’s College at Cambridge, it asserts everywhere the memory of the “holy Henry’s shade”; the Red Rose of Lancaster appears in every pane of glass: and in every corner is the Portcullis--the “Alters securitas,” as he termed it, with an allusion to its own meaning, and the double safeguard of his succession--which he derived through John of Gaunt from the Beaufort Castle in Anjou, inherited from Blanche of Navarre by Edmund Crouchback; whilst Edward IV. and Elizabeth of York are commemorated by intertwining these Lancastrian symbols with the Greyhound of Cecilia Neville, wife of Richard, Duke of York, with the Rose in the Sun, which scattered the mists at Barnet, and the Falcon on the Fetterlock, by which the first Duke of York expressed to his descendants that “he was locked up from the hope of the kingdom, but advising them to be quiet and silent, as God knoweth what may come to pass.”

It is also the revival of the ancient, Celtic, British element in the English monarchy, after centuries of eclipse. It is a strange and striking thought, as we mount the steps of Henry VII.’s Chapel, that we enter there a mausoleum of princes, whose boast it was to be descended, not from the Confessor or the Conqueror, but from Arthur and Llewellyn; and that round about the tomb, side by side with the emblems of the great English Houses, is to be seen the Red Dragon of the last British king, Cadwallader--“the dragon of the great Pendragonship” of Wales, thrust forward by the Tudor king in every direction, to supplant the hated White Boar of his departed enemy--the fulfilment, in another sense than the old Welsh bards had dreamt, of their prediction that the progeny of Cadwallader should reign again....

We have seen how, by a gradual but certain instinct, the main groups have formed themselves round particular centres of death: how the Kings ranged themselves round the Confessor; how the Prince and Courtiers clung to the skirts of Kings; how out of the graves of the Courtiers were developed the graves of the Heroes; how Chatham became the centre of the Statesmen, Chaucer of the Poets, Purcell of the Musicians, Casaubon of the Scholars, Newton of the Men of Science: how, even in the exceptional details, natural affinities may be traced; how Addison was buried apart from his brethren in letters, in the royal shades of Henry VII.’s Chapel, because he clung to the vault of his own loved Montague; how Ussher lay beside his earliest instructor, Sir James Fullerton, and Garrick at the foot of Shakespeare, and Spelman opposite his revered Camden, and South close to his master Busby, and Stephenson to his fellow-craftsman Telford, and Grattan to his hero Fox, and Macaulay beneath the statue of his favourite Addison.

These special attractions towards particular graves and monuments may interfere with the general uniformity of the Abbey, but they make us feel that it is not a mere dead museum, that its cold stones are warmed with the life-blood of human affections and personal partiality. It is said that the celebrated French sculptor of the monument of Peter the Great at St. Petersburg, after showing its superiority in detail to the famous equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, ended by the candid avowal, “_Et cependant cette mauvaise bête est vivante, et la mienne est morte._” Perhaps we may be allowed to reverse the saying, and when we contrast the irregularities of Westminster Abbey with the uniform congruity of Salisbury or the Valhalla, may reflect, “_Cette belle bête est morte, mais la mienne est vivante._”

_Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey_ (London, 1866).

THE PARTHENON.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.