Our Fathers Have Told Us: Part I. The Bible of AmiensRuskin, John
History
Our Fathers Have Told Us: Part I. The Bible of Amiens
Ruskin, John
Cathédrale d'Amiens; France -- History
The seventh, "The Springs of Eure," will be wholly given to the
cathedral of Chartres.
The eighth, "Domremy," to that of Rouen and the schools of
architecture which it represents.
The ninth, "The Bay of Uri," to the pastoral forms of Catholicism,
reaching to our own times.
And the tenth, "The Bells of Cluse," to the pastoral Protestantism of
Savoy, Geneva, and the Scottish Border.
Each part will consist of four sections only; and one of them, the
fourth, will usually be descriptive of some monumental city or
cathedral, the resultant and remnant of the religious power examined
in the preparatory chapters.
One illustration at least will be given with each chapter,[23] and
drawings made for others, which will be placed at once in the
Sheffield museum for public reference, and engraved as I find support,
or opportunity for binding with the completed work.
[Footnote 23: The first plate for the Bible of Amiens, curiously
enough, failed in the engraving; and I shall probably have to etch it
myself. It will be issued with the fourth, in the full-size edition of
the fourth chapter.]
As in the instance of Chapter IV. of this first part, a smaller
edition of the descriptive chapters will commonly be printed in
reduced form for travellers and non-subscribers; but otherwise, I
intend this work to be furnished to subscribers only.
CHAPTER III.
THE LION TAMER.
1. It has been often of late announced as a new discovery, that man is
a creature of circumstances; and the fact has been pressed upon our
notice, in the hope, which appears to some people so pleasing, of
being able at last to resolve into a succession of splashes in mud, or
whirlwinds in air, the circumstances answerable for his creation. But
the more important fact, that his nature is not levelled, like a
mosquito's, to the mists of a marsh, nor reduced, like a mole's,
beneath the crumblings of a burrow, but has been endowed with sense to
discern, and instinct to adopt, the conditions which will make of it
the best that can be, is very necessarily ignored by philosophers who
propose, as a beautiful fulfilment of human destinies, a life
entertained by scientific gossip, in a cellar lighted by electric
sparks, warmed by tubular inflation, drained by buried rivers, and
fed, by the ministry of less learned and better provisioned races,
with extract of beef, and potted crocodile.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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