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Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams
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itself in which we are merged. We forgather with the Abbot and his
monks, and the crusaders and pilgrims in the Shrine of the
Archangel: we pay our devoirs to the fair French Queens,--Blanche of
Castile, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mary of Champagne,--fighting their
battles for them as liege servants: we dispute with Abelard, Thomas
of Aquino, Duns the Scotsman: we take our parts in the Court of
Love, or sing the sublime and sounding praises of God with the
Canons of Saint Victor: our eyes opened at last, and after many days
we kneel before Our Lady of Pity, asking her intercession for her
lax but loyal devotees. Seven centuries dissolve and vanish away,
being as they were not, and the thirteenth century lives less for us
than we live in it and are a part of its gaiety and light-
heartedness, its youthful ardour and abounding action, its childlike
simplicity and frankness, its normal and healthy and all-embracing
devotion.

And it is well for us to have this experience. Apart from the
desirable transformation it effects in preconceived and curiously
erroneous superstitions as to one of the greatest eras in all
history, it is vastly heartening and exhilarating. If it gives new
and not always flattering standards for the judgment of contemporary
men and things, so does it establish new ideals, new goals for
attainment. To live for a day in a world that built Chartres
Cathedral, even if it makes the living in a world that creates the
"Black Country" of England or an Iron City of America less a thing
of joy and gladness than before, equally opens up the far prospect
of another thirteenth century in the times that are to come and
urges to ardent action toward its attainment.

But apart from this, the deepest value of Mont-Saint-Michel and
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