rovoke the censor's ire?

* * * * *

During the recent disgraceful squabble and riot of the monks around
Jerusalem there was one incident that should especially pain all lovers
of art. This was the destruction of the two pictures by Murillo in the
Bethlehem church that fell a victim to ecclesiastical fury. They were
true Murillos, and masterpieces; and, what is worse, having been
despatched to the church immediately on their execution, and there
retained, it is believed that they have never been engraved. They were
unusually well preserved, too, for, on being placed in the oratory of La
Creche, both canvases had been covered with glass to protect them from
candle-smoke. One of the subjects was the Nativity, the other the
Adoration of the Magi. In reading with involuntary indignation and
disgust of this barbarous instance of iconoclasm, one is reminded of
what Thackeray wrote on the same scene and topic nearly thirty years
ago. In his _Journey from Cornhill to Cairo_, speaking of the leading
Christian sects in and around Jerusalem, he says: "These three main
sects hate each other; their quarrels are interminable; each bribes and
intrigues with the heathen lords of the soil to the prejudice of his
neighbor. Now it is the Latins who interfere, and allow the common
church to go to ruin, because the Greeks purpose to roof it; now the
Greeks demolish a monastery on Mount Olivet, and leave the ground to the
Turks, rather than allow the Armenians to possess it. On another
occasion, the Greeks having mended the Armenian steps which lead to the
(so-called) Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the latter asked for
permission to destroy the work of the Greeks, and did so. And so round
this sacred spot, the centre of Christendom, the representatives of the
three great sects worship under one roof, and hate each other!" The
church of La Creche is, as its name implies, the church of "The Manger"
(_i. e._, the reputed place of the nativity of Christ); and to this
spot, and the furious wrangles of which it has been the scene, we may
therefore apply the exclamation which Thackeray makes regarding the tomb
of Christ: "What a place to choose for imposture, good God!--to sully
with brutal struggles for self-aggrandizement or shameful schemes of
gain!" The Germans had the grace to try to spare with their bombs the
spire of Strasburg cathedral; religious fanaticism in the Middle Ages
directed itself to the destru