Impressions of England; or, Sketches of English Scenery and SocietyCoxe, A. Cleveland (Arthur Cleveland)
History
Impressions of England; or, Sketches of English Scenery and Society
Coxe, A. Cleveland (Arthur Cleveland)
England -- Description and travel
Our road soon brought us to E ——, where a Romish Chapel had been
lately erected, by a man of fortune, in minute and extravagant
reproduction of Mediævalism. It was a thing for a glass case; a piece of
admirable art; a complete Pugin; and no doubt in the middle ages would
have been a very suitable thing for its purposes; but, in our day, it
seemed as little suited to Rome as to Canterbury. The Pope himself never
saw such a place of worship, and would scarcely know how to use it; and
it was chiefly interesting to me as enabling me to see, at a glance,
what the finest old Parish Churches of England had been in the days of
the Plantagenets. At any rate, they were never Tridentine, and they were
always Anglican. This beautiful toy had a frightful Calvary in the
church-yard; but the interior was adorned with the finest carvings in
Caen stone, and brilliant colorings and gildings _à la Froissart_. The
pulpit was adorned with the story of Becket, in very delicate sculpture,
and around the Church were stations, or representations of the different
stages of the Passion, carved elaborately in wood, and beautifully
colored. The Virgin’s Altar and Chapel were gems of art; and, of course,
replenished with striking proofs that they “worship and serve the
creature more than the Creator.” I turned away heart-sick, that such
unrealities of a dead antiquity could be employing the whole soul of any
Englishman, and even tempting some into apostacy from the simple but
always dignified Church of their ancestors. Let taste be the handmaid of
religion, and all is well: but here was religion led captive by
antiquarian fancy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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