body was received, and buried, by a Roman senator, his
disciple, (a kind of Joseph of Arimathea to St. Firmin,) in the Roman
senator's own garden. Who also built a little oratory over his grave.
The Roman senator's son built a church to replace the oratory,
dedicated it to Our Lady of Martyrs, and established it as an
episcopal seat--the first of the French nation's. A very notable spot
for the French nation, surely? One deserving, perhaps, some little
memory or monument,--cross, tablet, or the like? Where, therefore,
do you suppose this first cathedral of French Christianity stood, and
with what monument has it been honoured?

It stood where we now stand, companion mine, whoever you may be; and
the monument wherewith it has been honoured is this--chimney, whose
gonfalon of smoke overshadows us--the latest effort of modern art in
Amiens, the chimney of St. Acheul.

The first cathedral, you observe, of the _French_ nation; more
accurately, the first germ of cathedral _for_ the French nation--who
are not yet here; only this grave of a martyr is here, and this church
of Our Lady of Martyrs, abiding on the hillside, till the Roman power
pass away.

Falling together with it, and trampled down by savage tribes, alike
the city and the shrine; the grave forgotten,--when at last the Franks
themselves pour from the north, and the utmost wave of them, lapping
along these downs of Somme, is _here_ stayed, and the Frankish
standard planted, and the French kingdom throned.

Here their first capital, here the first footsteps[3] of the Frank in
his France! Think of it. All over the south are Gauls, Burgundians,
Bretons, heavier-hearted nations of sullen mind: at their outmost brim
and border, here at last are the Franks, the source of all Franchise,
for this our Europe. You have heard the word in England, before now,
but English word for it is none! _Honesty_ we have of our own; but
_Frankness_ we must learn of these: nay, all the western nations of us
are in a few centuries more to be known by this name of Frank. Franks,
of Paris that is to be, in time to come; but French of Paris is in
year of grace 500 an unknown tongue in Paris, as much as in
Stratford-att-ye-Bowe. French of Amiens is the kingly and courtly form
of Christian speech, Paris lying yet in Lutetian clay, to develope
into tile-field, perhaps, in due time. Here, by soft-glittering Somme,
reign Clovis and his Clotilde.

[Footnote 3: The first fixed and set-down foots