IV. PRE-RAPHAELITISM 141

be richly decorated at all, examine what that decoration consists of. You will find Cupids, Graces, Floras, Dianas, Jupiters, Junos. But you will not find, except in the form of an engraving, bought principally for its artistic beauty, either Christ, or the Virgin, or Lazarus and Dives. And if a thousand years hence, any curious investigator were to dig up the ruins of Edinburgh, and not know your history, he would think you had all been born heathens. Now that, so far as it goes, is denying Christ; it is pure Modernism.

“No,” you will answer me, “you misunderstand and calumniate us. We do not, indeed, choose to have Dives and Lazarus on our windows; but that is not because we are moderns, but because we are Protestants, and do not like religious imagery.” Pardon me: that is not the reason. Go into any fashionable lady’s boudoir in Paris, and see if you will find Dives and Lazarus there. You will find, indeed, either that she has her private chapel, or that she has a crucifix in her dressing-room; but for the general decoration of the house, it is all composed of Apollos and Muses, just as it is here.¹

118. Again. What do you suppose was the substance of good education, the education of a knight, in the Middle Ages? What was taught to a boy as soon as he was able to learn anything? First, to keep under his body, and bring it into subjection and perfect strength; then to take Christ for his captain,² to live as always in His presence, and finally, to do his devoir-mark the word-to all men. Now consider, first, the difference in their influence over the

¹ [Compare Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. X. p. 325).]

² [The MS. inserts:”Do you recollect the words of Shakespeare of the Duke of Norfolk, then at Venice?” the reference being to the Bishop of Carlisle’s reply to Bolingbroke’s declaration that Norfolk shall be repealed: “That honourable day shall ne’er be seen,” for “banished Norfolk”

“there at Venice gave

His body to that pleasant country’s earth,

And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,

Under whose colours he had fought so long.”

Richard II., iv. 1.) Cf. Vol. IX. p. 420 n., Vol. X. p. xxvii.]

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