52. France, all surge and foam of pious chivalry, lifts herself in
fitful rage of devotion, of avarice, and of pride. She is the natural
ally of the church; makes her own monks the proudest of the Popes;
raises Avignon into another Rome; prays and pillages insatiably; pipes
pastoral songs of innocence, and invents grotesque variations of crime;
gives grace to the rudeness of England, and venom to the cunning of
Italy. She is a chimera among nations, and one knows not whether to
admire most the valour of Guiscard, the virtue of St. Louis or the
villany of his brother.

53. The Eastern powers--Greek, Israelite, Saracen--are at once the
enemies of the Western, their prey, and their tutors.

They bring them methods of ornament and of merchandise, and stimulate
in them the worst conditions of pugnacity, bigotry, and rapine. That is
the broad geographical and political relation of races. Next, you must
consider the conditions of their time.

54. I told you, in my second lecture on Engraving, that before the
twelfth century the nations were too savage to be Christian, and after
the fifteenth too carnal to be Christian.

The delicacy of sensation and refinements of imagination necessary to
understand Christianity belong to the mid period when men risen from a
life of brutal hardship are not yet fallen to one of brutal luxury. You
can neither comprehend the character of Christ while you are chopping
flints for tools, and gnawing raw bones for food; nor when you have
ceased to do anything with either tools or hands, and dine on gilded
capons. In Dante's lines, beginning