THE SYNTHESIS OF THE NOUVELLE ATHENES


Two dominant notes in my character--an original hatred of my native
country, and a brutal loathing of the religion I was brought up in. All
the aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I
cannot think of the place I was born in without a sensation akin to
nausea. These feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am
instinctively averse from my own countrymen; they are at once remote and
repulsive; but with Frenchmen I am conscious of a sense of nearness; I
am one with them in their ideas and aspirations, and when I am with
them, I am alive with a keen and penetrating sense of intimacy. Shall I
explain this by atavism? Was there a French man or woman in my family
some half-dozen generations ago? I have not inquired. The English I
love, and with a love that is foolish--mad, limitless; I love them
better than the French, but I am not so near to them. Dear, sweet
Protestant England, the red tiles of the farmhouse, the elms, the great
hedgerows, and all the rich fields adorned with spreading trees, and
the weald and the wold, the very words are passionately beautiful
southern England, not the north,--there is something Celtic in the
north--southern England, with its quiet, steadfast faces--a smock frock
is to me one of the most delightful things in the world; it is so
absolutely English. The villages clustered round the greens, the spires
of the churches pointing between the elm trees.... This is congenial to
me; and this is Protestantism. England is Protestantism, Protestantism
is England. Protestantism is strong, clean, and westernly, Catholicism
is eunuch-like, dirty, and Oriental.... There is something even Chinese
about it. What made England great was Protestantism, and when she ceases
to be Protestant she will fall.... Look at the nations that have clung
to Catholicism, starving moonlighters and starving brigands. The