from the master rather than the sire; and which, in its natural
antagonism to dignities won only by violence, or recorded only by
heraldry, you may think of generally as the race whose bearing is the
Apron, instead of the shield.

73. When, however, these two, or in perfect subdivision three, bodies
of men, lived in harmony,--the knights remaining true to the State, the
clergy to their faith, and the workmen to their craft,--conditions of
national force were arrived at, under which all the great art of the
middle ages was accomplished. The pride of the knights, the avarice of
the priests, and the gradual abasement of character in the craftsman,
changing him from a citizen able to wield either tools in peace or
weapons in war, to a dull tradesman, forced to pay mercenary troops to
defend his shop door, are the direct causes of common ruin towards the
close of the sixteenth century.

74. But the deep underlying cause of the decline in national character
itself, was the exhaustion of the Christian faith. None of its
practical claims were avouched either by reason or experience; and the
imagination grew weary of sustaining them in despite of both. Men could
not, as their powers of reflection became developed, steadily conceive
that the sins of a life might be done away with, by finishing it with
Mary's name on the lips; nor could tradition of miracle for ever resist
the personal discovery, made by each rude disciple by himself, that he
might pray to all the saints for a twelvemonth together, and yet not
get what he asked for.

75. The Reformation succeeded in proclaiming that existing Christianity
was a lie; but substituted no theory of it which could be more
rationally or credibly sustained; and ever since, the religion of