It converts the prince's palace into a stable or an inn; it pulls down
the cathedral and the abbey to use the materials for the roads on which
it tramples. It is good to sanctify language by setting some of its
portions apart for holy uses,--at least, by preserving intact the high
religious association which rests upon it. The same silver may be
moulded to the altar-chalice or the Bacchic goblet; but we touch the one
with reverent and clean hands, while the other is tossed aside in the
madness of the revel. Men clamor for a new version of the Sacred
Scriptures, and profess to be shocked at its plain outspokenness,
forgetting that to the pure all things are pure, and that to the
prurient all things are foul. It was a reverent and a worshipping age
that gave us that treasure, and so long as we have the temper of
reverence and worship we shall not ask to change it.
And to return once more to our original illustration. We have the two
nations also in us, the Norman and the Saxon, the dominant and the
aspiring, the patrician and the _proletaire_. The one rules only by
right of rule, the other rises only by right of rising. The power of
conservatism perishes, when there is no longer anything to keep; the
might of radicalism overflows into excess, when the proper check is
taken away or degraded.
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