"--poor perplexed
little mortal! whose difficulties one could not
even guess at--"we
should be quite sure of things. Miss Catherine tells us from books: He
would tell us from His memory. People would not be so cruel to Him now.
Queen Victoria would not allow any one to crucify Him." I don't think
that W. V., in spite of her
confidence in my good faith, was quite convinced of the existence of
those old forests of which I had told her, until
I explained that they were forests of stone,
which, if men did not mar them, would blossom for centuries unchanged,
though the hands that planted them had long been blown in dust about the
world. She understood all that I meant when we visited York and
Westminster, and walked through the long avenues of stone palms and
pines, with their overarching boughs, and gazed at the marvellous
rose-windows
in which all the jewels of the world seemed to have been set, and saw
the colours streaming through the gorgeous lancets and high many-lighted
casements. After that it was delightful to turn over engravings and
photographs of ruined abbeys and famous old churches at
home and abroad, and to anticipate the good time when
we should visit them together, and perhaps not
only descend into the crypts but go through the
curious galleries which extend over the pillars
of the nave, and even climb up to the leaded roof of the tower, or dare
the
long windy staircases and ladders which mount into the spire, and so
look down
on the quaint map of streets, and houses, and gardens,
and squares, hundreds of feet below. She liked to hear how some of those
miracles of stone had been fashioned and completed--how monks in the
days of old had travelled over the land with the relics of saints,
collecting
treasure of all sorts for the expense of the work; how sometimes
the people came in
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