18. "A ce point ci." The point, namely, of the labyrinth inlaid in the cathedral floor; a recognized emblem of many things to the people, who knew that the ground they stood on was holy, as the roof over their head. Chiefly, to them, it was an emblem of noble human life--strait-gated, narrow-walled, with infinite darknesses and the "inextricabilis error" on either hand--and in the depth of it, the brutal nature to be conquered. 19. This meaning, from the proudest heroic, and purest legislative, days of Greece, the symbol had borne for all men skilled in her traditions: to the schools of craftsmen the sign meant further their craft's noblesse, and pure descent from the divinely-terrestrial skill of Daedalus, the labyrinth-builder, and the first sculptor of imagery _pathetic_[48] with human life and death. [Footnote 48: "Tu quoque, magnam Partem opere in tanto, sineret dolor, Icare, haberes, Bis conatus erat casus effingere in auro,-- Bis patriae cecidere manus." There is, advisedly, no pathos allowed in primary sculpture. Its heroes conquer without exultation, and die without sorrow.] 20. Quite the most beautiful sign of the power of true Christian-Catholic faith is this continual acknowledgment by it of the brotherhood--nay, more, the fatherhood, of the elder nations who had not seen Christ; but had been filled with the Spirit of God; and obeyed, according to their knowledge, His unwritten law. The pure charity and humility of this temper are seen in all Christian art, according to its strength and purity of race; but best, to the full, seen and interpreted by the three great Christian-Heathen poets, Dante, Douglas of Dunkeld,[49] and George Chapman. The prayer with which the last ends his life's work is, so far as I know, the perfectest and deepest expression of Natural Religion given us in literature; and if you can, pray it here--standing on the spot where the builder once wrote the history of the Parthenon of Christianity. [Footnote 49: See 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter LXI., p. 22.] 21. "I pray thee, Lord, the Father, and the Guide of our reason, that we may remember the nobleness with which Thou hast adorned us; and that Thou wouldst be always on our right hand and on our left,[50] in the motion of our own Wills: that so we may be purged from the contagion of the Body and the Affections of the Brute, and overcome them and rule; and use, as it becomes men to use them, for instruments. And then, that Thou wouldst be in Fellowship with us for the careful correction of our reason, and for its conjunction by the light of truth with the things that truly are. [Footnote 50: Thus, the command to the children of Israel "that they go forward" is to their own wills. They obeying, the sea retreats, _but not before_ they dare to advance into it. _Then_, the waters are a wall unto them, on their right hand and their left.]