240. The incident which I have related in my fourth lecture on sculpture, seen by me last year on the bridge of Wallingford, is a sufficient example of the courtesies in which we are now bringing up our peasant children. Do you think that any science or art we can teach them will make them happy under such conditions? Nay, in what courtesy or in what affection are we even now carefully training ourselves;--above all, in what form of duty or reverence to those to whom we owe all our power of understanding even what duty or reverence means? I warned you in my former lecture against the base curiosity of seeking for the origin of life in the dust; in earth instead of heaven: how much more must I warn you against forgetting the true origin of the life that is in your own souls, of that good which you have heard with your ears, and your fathers have told you. You buy the picture of the Virgin as furniture for your rooms; but you despise the religion, and you reject the memory, of those who have taught you to love the aspect of whatsoever things and creatures are good and pure: and too many of you, entering into life, are ready to think, to feel, to act, as the men bid you who are incapable of worship, as they are of creation;--whose power is only in destruction: whose gladness only in disdain; whose glorying is in their shame. You know well, I should think, by this time, that I am not one to seek to conceal from you any truth of nature, or superstitiously decorate for you any form of faith; but I trust deeply--(and I will strive, for my poor part, wholly, so to help you in steadfastness of heart)--that you, the children of the Christian chivalry which was led in England by the Lion-Heart, and in France by Roland, and in Spain by the Cid, may not stoop to become as these, whose thoughts are but to invent new foulness with which to blaspheme the story of Christ, and to destroy the noble works and laws that have been founded in His name. Will you not rather go round about this England and tell the towers thereof, and mark well her bulwarks, and consider her palaces, that you may tell it to the generation following? Will you not rather honour with all your strength, with all your obedience, with all your holy love and never-ending worship, the princely sires, and pure maids, and nursing mothers, who have bequeathed and blest your life?--that so, for you also, and for your children, the days of strength, and the light of memory, may be long in this lovely land which the Lord your God has given you. INDEX. INDEX. [_The references are not to the page, but to the numbered paragraphs, common to all the editions of this work_]. Abbeville, house at, 91. Academy, London, and village architecture, 93. " Royal, 6. Achilles, 168. Acland, Dr., 159. " his dog "Bustle," 151. Actions and aims, 214. Advance and contentment in knowledge, 81. Æschylus, Prom. Vinct., 1022, quoted, 157.