far
as any one remembers, the glimpses of fairies or the graver wonders of
saints. In the classes above them the supernatural has been slain by the
supercilious. That is a true and tremendous text in Scripture which says
that "where there is no vision the people perish." But it is equally
true in practice that where there is no people the visions perish.

The idea must be abandoned, then, that this feeling of faint dislike
towards popular sight-seeing is due to any inherent incompatibility
between the idea of special shrines and trophies and the idea of large
masses of ordinary men. On the contrary, these two elements of sanctity
and democracy have been specially connected and allied throughout
history. The shrines and trophies were often put up by ordinary men.
They were always put up for ordinary men. To whatever things the
fastidious modern artist may choose to apply his theory of specialist
judgment, and an aristocracy of taste, he must necessarily find it
difficult really to apply it to such historic and monumental art.
Obviously, a public building is meant to impress the public. The most
aristocratic tomb is a democratic tomb, because it exists to be seen;
the only aristocratic thing is the decaying corpse, not the undecaying
marble; and if the man wanted to be thoroughly aristocratic, he should
be buried in his own back-garden. The chapel of the most narrow and
exclusive sect is universal outside, even if it is limited inside, its
walls and windows confront all points of the compass and all quarters of
the cosmos. It may be small as a dwelling-place, but it is universal
as a monument; if its sectarians had really wished to be private they
should have met in a private house. Whenever and wherever we erect a
national or municipal hall, pillar, or statue, we are speaking to the
crowd like a demagogue.

The statue of every statesman offers itself for election as much as the
statesman himself. Every epitaph on a church slab is put up for the mob
as much as a placard in a General Election. And if we follow this track
of reflection we shall, I think, really find why it is that modern
sight-seeing jars on something in us, something that is not a caddish
contempt for graves nor an equally caddish contempt for cads. For, after
all, there is many a--churchyard which consists mostly of dead cads; but
that does not make it less sacred or less sad.

The real explanation, I fancy, is this: that these cathedrals and
columns o