ruin, that it is hard to conceive how the fine arts
can be cultivated after another century has elapsed; for when children
are taught in infant schools to love accounts from their cradle, and to
study political economy before they have heard of the Red Cross Knight or
the Wild Hunter, the manner and taste of such an age will smother the
sparks of nature." [17] The Church summoned all natural beauty to the
ministry of religion. "Flowers bloomed on the altars; men could behold
the blue heaven through those tall, narrow-pointed eastern windows of the
Gothic choir as they sat at vespers. . . . The cloud of incense breathed
a sweet perfume; the voice of youth was tuned to angelic hymns; and the
golden sun of the morning, shining through the coloured pane, cast its
purple or its verdant beam on the embroidered vestments and marble
pavement." [18] Or read the extended rhapsody which closes the first
volume, where, to counteract the attractions of classic lands, the author
passes in long review the sites and monuments of romance in England,
Germany, Spain, Italy, and France. Aubrey de Vere says that nothing had
been so "impressive, suggestive, and spiritually helpful" to him as
Newman's "Lectures on Anglican Difficulties" (1850), "with the exception
of the 'Divina Commedia' and Kenelm Digby's wholly uncontroversial 'Mores
Catholici'" (1831-40).

THE STUDY OF MEDIAEVAL ART.--The correlation of romantic poetry, Catholic
worship, and mediaeval art has been indicated in the chapter upon the
Pre-Raphaelites, as well as in the foregoing section of the present
chapter. But the three departments have other tangential points which
should not pass without some further mention. The revival of Gothic
architecture which began with Horace Walpole[19] went on in an
unintelligent way through the eighteenth century. One of the queerest
monuments of this new taste--a successor on a larger scale to Strawberry
Hill--was Fonthill Abbey, near Salisbury, that prodigious folly to which
Beckford, the eccentric author of "Vathek," devoted a great share of his
almost fabulous wealth. It was begun in 1796, took nearly thirty years
in building, employed at one time four hundred and sixty men, and cost
over 273,000 pounds. Its most conspicuous feature was an octagonal tower
278 feet high, so ill constructed that it shortly tumbled down into a
heap of ruins.[20]

The growing taste for mediaeval architecture was powerfully reinforced by
the popula