the pilgrims, to consider the silence of the old, old battlefields, to
pray in forgotten holy places to almost forgotten deities, is to be
made partakers of a life larger and more wonderful than that of the
individual, is to be made one with England. For in the quietness of
those ancient countrysides was England made by the men who begat us.
And even as a man of the Old Faith when he enters one of his
sanctuaries suddenly steps out of England into a larger world, a
universal country; so we in the earthwork by Thannington or the Close
of Canterbury, or upon the hill where Battle Abbey stood, surely have
something added to us by the genius of the place, indeed pass out of
ourselves into that which is England, a splendour and a holiness
beyond ourselves, which cannot die.

It is in such places we may best face reality, for they lend to
history all its poetry and, as Aristotle knew, there is more truth in
poetry than in history. And this, at least to-day, is perhaps the real
value and delight of our churches; I mean those great sanctuaries we
call Cathedrals which stand about England like half-dismantled castles
and remind us more poignantly than any other thing of all we are fain
to forget. There are the indelible words of our history most clearly
written. Consider the bricks of S. Martin's, the rude stones of the
little church of Bradford, the mighty Norman work of Romsey, the Early
English happiness of Salisbury, the riches and security of the long
nave of Winchester. Do we not there see the truth; can stones lie or
an answer be demanded of them according to folly? And if a man would
know the truth, let us say, of the thirteenth century here in England,
where else will he find any answer? Consider it then, the joy as of
flowers, the happiness as of Spring, in that architecture we call
Early English, which for joy and happiness surpasses any other in the
world. The men who carved those shafts and mouldings and capitals