II. PRIDE OF STATE II. ROMAN RENAISSANCE 77

That could not have happened in a Renaissance building. The bird could not have dashed in from the cold into the heat, and from the heat back again into the storm. It would have had to come up a flight of marble stairs, and through seven or eight antechambers; and so, if it had ever made its way into the presence-chamber, out again through loggias and corridors innumerable. And the truth which the bird brought with it, fresh from heaven, has, in like manner, to make its way to the Renaissance mind through many antechambers, hardly, and as a despised thing, if at all.

§ 42. Hear another story of those early times.

The king of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, at the siege of Asshur, or Arsur, gave audience to some emirs from Samaria and Naplous.¹ They found him seated on the ground on a sack of straw. They expressing surprise, Godfrey answered them: “May not the earth, out of which we came, and which is to be our dwelling after death, serve us for a seat during life?”²

It is long since such a throne has been set in the reception-chambers of Christendom, or such an answer heard from the lips of a king.

Thus the Renaissance spirit became base both in its abstinence and its indulgence. Base in its abstinence; curtailing the bright and playful wealth of form and thought which filled the architecture of the earlier ages with sources

¹ [Naplouse, the ancient Sichem, re-named “Flavia Neapolis” by Vespasian.]

² [Another story of Godfrey de Bouillon delighted Ruskin, as he relates in a letter to his father:-

“VENICE, November 17, 1851.-... Effie is reading to me the history of the Crusades, in the evenings. There are many valuable things in it for me; but I was especially delighted with the report given by the servants of Godfrey of Bouillon, when there was scrutiny made into every man’s private character in order to choose a King of Jerusalem. Godfrey’s servants said he had no fault but one-’that whenever he got into a church he would stand looking for hours together, till they were all tired, and that he would often, on such occasions, keep the dinner waiting till the dishes were quite spoiled, and that it was a shame.’

“We have got a French history-but with a nasty sneering Gibbonish way with it. There is unfortunately enough in the Crusades to provoke into such a temper.”

The book was Histoire des Croisades, par M. Michaud, 6 vols.; 1838. The story in the text will be found in vol. ii. p. 5 of that work; the story in the letter, in vol. i. p. 458.]

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