VI. THE CAMPO SANTO 351

that time throughout consistent, and progressing every year to more evident completion.

The full happiness of that time to me cannot be explained except to consistently hard workers; and of those, to the few who can keep their peace and health. For the world appeared to me now exactly right. Hills as high as they should be, rivers as wide, pictures as pretty, and masters and men as wise-as pretty and wise could be. And I expected to bring everybody to be of my opinion, as soon as I could get out my second volume; and drove down to Pisa in much hope and pride, though grave in both.

For now I had read enough of Cary’s Dante,¹ and Sismondi’s Italian Republics, and Lord Lindsay,² to feel what I had to look for in the Campo Santo. Yet at this moment I pause to think what it was that I found.

Briefly, the entire doctrine of Christianity, painted so that a child could understand it. And what a child cannot understand of Christianity, no one need try to.

117. In these days of the religion of this and that,-briefly let us say, the religion of Stocks and Posts-in order to say a clear word of the Campo Santo, one must first say a firm word concerning Christianity itself. I find numbers, even of the most intelligent and amiable people, not knowing what the word means; because they are always asking how much is true, and how much they like, and never ask, first, what was the total meaning of it, whether they like it or not.

The total meaning was, and is, that the God who made earth and its creatures, took at a certain time upon the earth, the flesh and form of man; in that flesh sustained the pain and died the death of the creature He had made; rose again after death into glorious human life, and when the date of the human race is ended, will return in visible human form, and render to every man according to his work.³ Christianity is the belief in, and love of, God thus

¹ [Unread at the time of his former visit: see above, p. 288.]

² [A mistake: see below, p. 421.]

³ [Psalms lxii. 12.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]