ealing for common sense.
It is the Greek who defends such childishness as childlike faith
and would rebuke such common sense as common scepticism. I do not
speak of the theological tenets or even the deeper emotions involved,
but only, as I have said, of contrasts visible even in the street.
And the whole difference is sufficiently suggested in two phrases
I heard within a few days. A distinguished Anglo-Catholic,
who has himself much sympathy with the Greek Orthodox traditions,
said to me, "After all, the Romans were the first Puritans."
And I heard that a Franciscan, being told that this Englishman
and perhaps the English generally were disposed to make an alliance
with the Greek Church, had only said by way of comment, "And a good
thing too, the Greeks might do something at last."

Anyhow the first impression is that the Greek is more gorgeous
in black than the Roman in colours. But the Greek of course
can also appear in colours, especially in those eternal
forms of frozen yet fiery colours which we call jewels.
I have seen the Greek Patriarch, that magnificent old gentleman,
walking down the street like an emperor in the _Arabian Nights_,
hung all over with historic jewels as thick as beads or buttons,
with a gigantic cross of solid emeralds that might have been given him
by the green genii of the sea, if any of the genii are Christians.
These things are toys, but I am entirely in favour of toys;
and rubies and emeralds are almost as intoxicating as that sort
of lustrous coloured paper they put inside Christmas crackers.
This beauty has been best achieved in the North in the glory
of coloured glass; and I have seen great Gothic windows
in which one could really believe that the robes of martyrs
were giant rubies or the starry sky a single enormous sapphire.
But the colours of the West are transparent, the colours
of the East opaque. I have spoken of the _Arabian Nights_,
and there is really a touch of them even in the Christian churches,
perhaps increased with a tradition of early Christian secrecy.
There are glimpses of gorgeously tiled walls, of blue curtains and green
doors and golden inner chambers, that are just like the entrance
to an Eastern tale. The Orthodox are at least more oriental
in the sense of being more ornamental; more flat and decorative.
The Romans are more Western, I might even say more modern,
in the sense of having more realism even in their ritualism.
The Greek cross is a cross; the R