Literary by-paths in old England . Time has stood still in that kitchen as well as else-where in this mediaeval retreat. All the appli-ances for cooking are of a long past time, andwould strike the twentieth-century chef as littlebetter than relics of a barbaric age. In thedining-hall it is still the past rather than thepresent which is in evidence — the black leathernjacks, the candlesticks, the salt-cellars, the pew-ter dishes, and the dinner-bell, all dating fromthe fifteenth century. The church, too, is ofvenerable age, its oldest portions having beenreared in the twelfth century. In wande
Literary by-paths in old England . Time has stood still in that kitchen as well as else-where in this mediaeval retreat. All the appli-ances for cooking are of a long past time, andwould strike the twentieth-century chef as littlebetter than relics of a barbaric age. In thedining-hall it is still the past rather than thepresent which is in evidence — the black leathernjacks, the candlesticks, the salt-cellars, the pew-ter dishes, and the dinner-bell, all dating fromthe fifteenth century. The church, too, is ofvenerable age, its oldest portions having beenreared in the twelfth century. In wandering round the cloisters of this old-world haven, which give witness so mutely of anage so foreign to our own, the memory strives torecall some mellowed passage of prose or poetry392 IN OLD ENGLAND by which to voice the emotions which rise un-bidden in the heart, and perhaps there is no pas-sage so perfectly in harmony with this scene asthat in which Ruskin has so subtly analysed thecharm of ancient buildings. The greatest glory. In the Cloisters St. of a building, he wrote, is not in its stones norin its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in thatdeep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, ofmysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval orcondemnation, which we feel in walls that havelong been washed by the passing waves of hu-manity. It is in their lasting witness against393 LITERARY BY-PATHS men, in their quiet contrast with the transitionalcharacters of all things, in the strength which,through the lapse of seasons and times, and thedecline and birth of dynasties, and the changingof the face of the earth, and of the limits ofthe sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for atime insuperable, connects forgotten and follow-ing ages with each other, and half constitutes theidentity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of na-tions : it is in that golden stain of time thatwe are to look for the real light and colour andpreciousness of architecture ; and it is not untila building
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Keywords: ., bookauthorshelleyh, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1906
