hen that great front of the Cathedral, with its
forests of towers and pinnacles, its three vast portals, was brand-new
and white, all free from the scaffolding, and fitting on so strangely
to the Norman work behind. I can well imagine that some one who loved
what was old and quiet might have thought it even then a very bustling
modern affair, and heaved a sigh over the progress that had made it
possible.

Moreover, looking closely at that great grey front, with its three
portals, I am almost sure that the design is an essentially vulgar one.
It is much of it a front with no back to it; it is crowded with useless
and restless ornament. The rose-windows, for instance, in the gables,
give light to nothing but the rafters of the roof. The designer was
evidently afraid of leaving any surface plain and unadorned; he felt
impelled to fill every inch with decoration. Indeed, I cannot doubt
that if one saw the West Front reproduced now, the connoisseurs, who
praise it so blandly in its mellow softness, would overwhelm it with
disapproval and stern criticism.

Whatever that front, those soaring towers, may mean to us now, they
stood then for a busy and eager activity. What one does desire to know,
what is really important, is whether the spirit that prompted that
activity was a purer, holier, more gracious spirit than the spirit that
underlies the middle-class prosperity of the present day. Did it all
mean a love of art, a sacrifice of comfort and wealth to a beautiful
idea, a radiant hope? Did the monks or the great nobles that built it,
build it in a humble, ardent, and loving spirit--or was it partly in a
spirit of ostentation, that their church might have a new and
impressive front, partly in the spirit indicated by the hymn:

"Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee,
Repaid a thousand-fold will be"?

Was it an investment, so to speak, made for the sake of improving their
spiritual prosperity?

It is very difficult to say. The monks in their earlier missionary
times were full of enthusiasm and faith, no doubt. But when the Abbeys
were at the full height of their prosperity, when they were vast
landowners and the Abbot had his place in parliament, when the monastic
life was a career for an ambitious man, was the spirit of the place a
pure and holy one? That they submitted themselves to a severe routine
of worship does not go for very, much, because men very easily
accommodate themselves to a traditional and a conventiona