Condemn its errors and excesses, yet, these apart, it was marvelously
adapted to its mission. As an engine of unification it was almost
omnipotent. Through the ups and downs of restless migrations and
invasions,--of feudalisms and governments and the soberer commercial
spirit,--it has kept its hold unbroken upon the mass of European
humanity. Its priests and popes might sink out of respect; the Church
did not sink. In the fiercest civil feuds, its abbeys were held
inviolate. To the most brutal, the Church had an odor of sanctity. Its
threats terrified; its mandates were obeyed; it was the one persistent,
binding principle; it held men in check from a relapse into tribalism.

And its hold is firm to-day. Go into a Romish church, you shall find
worshipers at every hour. Worn housewives, seamed and aged market-women,
a chance workingman, an awed and tiptoeing child,--they are there in
their silence. They kneel, they pray, their eyes are fixed on the altar.
Formalism or not, a sincerity underlies it,--a belief and obedience
absorbed from centuries of environment; implicit and unquestioning, and
making for good.


V.

Beyond the cathedral is the broad square or plaza, and the half-alive
streets wandering from this are even more Fuenterrabian than the one
just past, for they are less well-to-do. The poorer houses may reveal
the traits and traditions of a town far more faithfully than the richer.
The latter can draw their models from a wider field. The former copy
only the local and long-followed pattern.

Here at our right stands the castle. It is stern in its decrepitude; its