76 THE STONES OF VENICE II. PRIDE OF STATE

all that was simple and kind; back into its stateliness, out of all that was impulsive, reverent, and gay. But it understood the luxury of the body; the terraced and scented and grottoed garden, with its trickling fountains and slumbrous shades; the spacious hall and lengthened corridor for the summer heat; the well-closed windows, and perfect fittings and furniture, for defence against the cold: and the soft picture, and frescoed wall and roof, covered with the last lasciviousness of Paganism;-this it understood and possessed to the full, and still possesses. This is the kind of domestic architecture on which we pride ourselves, even to this day, as an infinite and honourable advance from the rough habits of our ancestors; from the time when the king’s floor was strewn with rushes, and the tapestries swayed before the searching wind in the baron’s hall.

§ 41. Let us hear two stories of those rougher times.

At the debate of King Edwin with his courtiers and priests, whether he ought to receive the Gospel preached to him by Paulinus,¹ one of his nobles spoke as follows:

“The present life, O king! weighed with the time that is unknown, seems to me like this: When you are sitting at a feast with your earls and thanes in winter time, and the fire is lighted, and the hall is warmed, and it rains and snows, and the storm is loud without, there comes a sparrow, and flies through the house. It comes in at one door, and goes out at the other. While it is within, it is not touched by the winter’s storm; but it is but for the twinkling of an eye, for from winter it comes and to winter it returns. So also this life of man endureth for a little space; what goes before, or what follows after, we know not. Wherefore, if this new lore bring anything more certain, it is fit that we should follow it.”*

* Churton’s Early English Church. London, 1840.

¹ [Paulinus was a missionary sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great in 601. He did much for Christianity in Northumbria, and became Bishop of York in 625, and of Rochester in 633. He died in 644. King Edwin, or Eadwine, was King of Northumbria from 617 till his death (aged 48) in the battle of Heathfield in 633.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]