 section 11 on anything this is a LibraVox recording all LibraVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org on anything by Hill Air Baylock section 11 on believing whenever one studies even superficially any generation of men who have acted in the past and of whose actions there is some considerable record that I think which most strikes the curious student is the nature of the things which were taken for granted during the period very much might be written whole books upon the effects which this has upon history innumerable points arise as one considers it for instance there is no case I can remember of the things which were taken for granted existing in the same plentitude of record as the other things of history the man of the ninth century did not sit down formally and tell us that they looked at the world in such and such a fashion we have to glean and to pick out their standpoint by working parallel noting unconscious expressions and side effects it is like watching a man speaking on some matter of minor interest and trying to define through his tone and gesture the standpoint from which not only that minor interest but every other is regarded by his mind perhaps nothing is more subject to close scrutiny today is more suspected and has more difficulty in establishing itself than an unusual physical experience especially if there be about it a suspicion of connection with the nature and destiny of the human soul there are certain periods in human history the end of the Roman Empire is one of them the beginning or at least the very early dawn of the Middle Ages was another when marvels of this kind were sought after and met as it were halfway by the mind of the time the marvelous ran through the spirit of those generations very much as the accumulation of the ascertained common and often unimportant fact runs through the spirit of our time they accumulated legend and what must in the vast majority of cases have been even falsehood with the same readiness with which we accumulate columns of statistics they believe certain types of things to be true and that belief led them to accept very much of the same nature on which they had no proof a very excellent example of the changes which take place from one generation to another in this respect they be discovered by anyone who will set himself out to answer this question what did Englishman in the middle and end of the 12th century think about property in land note the condition of the problem land was the all important thing of the time it was the one thing on which men left records which they were determined should be minute accurate and permanent yet there is no scholar at once so learned and so wise that he can with any exactitude answer the question and it is evident that the fascination of the subject chiefly lies in the limitless field which it opens for discussion there are those excellent scholars who will have it that the Englishman of that time thought of land fundamentally as something common to the community there are others scholars of perhaps equal standing who will have it that the Roman conception of absolute ownership had survived in nearly all its original simplicity between these two extremes scholarship may range it will and however certain one may be individually that one's own point of view is right one will never be able to marshal proof which shall certainly convince and finally convince the whole of the learned world the men of that time believe something about land they never set it down they took it for granted and we can only judge of what that belief was by its secondary effects it sounds amazing but it is true another character of this unceasable spirit of the time is the distortion it appears to produce in morals when one is looking at it through the medium of another spirit belonging to another time our own no one can read the history of the French revolution without perceiving that certain doctrines of comparatively little effect upon the material circumstances of men so entirely filled the whole mental atmosphere of the great bulk of the French people and certainly of a very large proportion of Western Europe in general as to mold the whole of thought we can name those doctrines we can talk of equality a dogma which may be true or false but it's certainly transcendental we may talk as they talked about liberty but that does not give us any conception of the color smell atmosphere of the thing that drove them and unless the reader is in touch with that evasive and central thing in the period it will become an inexplicable welter the inexplicable welter which so many of our school and university textbooks make of it a man apparently a poor orator moves men to frenzy ropes be air another a somewhat over refined scientist of good birth and excellent balance of mind is the first to propose the total dissolution of all the most ancient organs of the state and the destruction of the monarchy a third and honest little lawyer anxious to keep his little family appears like a tiger ravening for blood a fourth a linen draper in limosius is put at the head of an army of eighty five thousand men and wins one victory after another it is an amazing dance of impossible results following upon incredible causes unless one has the spirit and if one has it as michelette had it the whole thing can be presented not only in proportion any orders but actually with splendor you have something of the same kind in the contemplation of what are to us the atrocious cruelties of the fifteenth century you do not find those cruelty striking the imagination of the time you find injustice denounced approaching chastisement prophesied all the symptoms of a disease society in the rulers and great vitality that perceived that disease among the oppressed but what you do not get specifically mentioned or at any rate not mentioned with reiteration is the cruelty which to us as we read of it seems something quite remote from human habit or experience men and women are burnt alive in numbers which steadily increase from that time to the first generation of the 17th century they are not thus tortured by the ferocity of the mob the thing is done quite quietly by process of law exactly as one might destrain for death you will perpetually hear vigorous protests against the justice of some particular sentence but you will very rarely but for the fear of such a negative i should say never find men saying just or unjust the cruelty of the execution is so rivulting that i protest against it men believe something with regard to the whole doctrine of expiation of penal arrangements which they have not described to us and which we cannot understand save through glimpses side lights and careful deductions from or guesses through what they might imagine to be their plainest statements thus in the particular case of burning alive a thing we can scarcely bear to contemplate even in words the framers of the statutes seem to have thought not of the thing as a horror but as a particular type of execution symbolic of the total destruction of the culprit it is quite easy to prove from numerous instances seven arola is one in point that the judges often appeared indifferent whether the body consumed were alive or dead the chance pity of the spectators in some cases the sentence of the court in others is permitted to release the sufferer long before the flames to us it is amazing that such an attitude towards such a pain could have existed but it did exist now the moral of such suggestions and they crop up innumerable all over the surface of historical study is that our own time lives in such an atmosphere and cannot define it one would imagine in the torrent of printing and a record that everything concerning our time would be fixed and known the most fundamental thing of all will not be fixed and known it will have to be imperfectly guessed at some chance student in some particular era of posterity will say these people were more concerned with questions of property apparently than with religion that is madness but let us see what kind of madness it was and work out its nature since they never clearly set down how they got into such a frame of mind nor even what that frame of mind was or another student will say in another epoch these people hesitated before personal combat the most rational and commonplace of daily happenings it is amazing but it is true let me ferret out the state of mind which can it produce such an abnormal result and so forth our time like all those pastimes will be watched curiously and this mysterious thing will be sought and hardly found the irony lies in this that the spirit posterity will so seek is in us here today and we cannot express it the end of section 11 section 12 on anything this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org on anything by Hilaire Velak section 12 on the air of the Dordene all countries are built in vast inclined planes which lean up against one another and have ridges between the great rivers run in the hollows where these planes meet at their lowest and the watersheds are the lines along which their top edges come together and there you might think was the end of it but there is much more you must not only say I have left the valley of the Thames I have found the valley of the Itchen nor only I have come over St. Leonard's forest I am no longer among the Surrey rivers I am on the headwaters of the Sussex Weald nor only I have left the great fields of the Yon and the Sain and have come down into the plain of Burgundy and the eastern rivers it is much more than that the slope that looks northward is one thing the slope that looks southward another the slope that has been conquered or ordered by a foreigner or civilized from without or in any way rearranged may march with but will contrast violently against the slope that has been protected or isolated or left desert the very storms of nature treat one and the other differently the rivers do a different work according to the treatment of forests by men within their watershed the soil sometimes the air always change above all the houses of men change the accent of speech changes if not the form of speech may in the transition from one such region to another I can believe that the daylight seems to change in all those subtle permanent and masterly things which we cannot measure but which are infinitely important compared to what we can measure are grouped in groups in those great depressions which look out to the sea or to one city and the regions of Europe and its patriotisms run ultimately with the valleys so it is with the Leor and the Dordany whatever feeds the Leor is one there are large uncultivated heats the size of a country there are very quiet pastures very rich and silent stretching for a hundred miles and as broad as a man would care to walk in a day and in the highlands of the watershed there are rocks and the trees of rocks and at last sterile and savage mountains and the upper courses of all the rivers of the Leor are torrents foaming in glens nevertheless whatever feeds the Leor has a unity the allier the vied the crues the Leor itself which is only one stream out of many are bound together well you go up into the sources of the watershed you cross a confused land of rounded hills and knobs of crested rock and short sturdy sparse wood and heather and groom and at last you see it's your feet trickling southward not northwards a stream that knows its way and this at last when it has worked its way through a little waterfalls and past the gates it knows it will be the river Isle if you knew it only from a map you would think of a stream like any other stream but when you go downwards with it upon your feet and when you see it with your eyes tumbling and hurrying there you know that everything has changed you are in the air of the door to knee there is a louder noise in the village streets the habit of summer clings to them late into the wintertime and rearises in them early with the spring though the cold is sharp in all the hills of the limousine whether in the north or to the south of that watershed yet the south of it has a tradition very different from the north and the sun is more kind or more worship here are lodges built beside or over the humblest houses the vine is not so disciplined it has a simpler and more natural growth it is an ornament and a shade the churches have flat roofs such as Italy and Spain will use their gothic is an attempt their romanesque is native the children and the birds are careless wealth is not spent in luxury but in externals and poverty is contented all this is the air of the door to knee you feel what you have come to when you drink your first cup of wine on the southward slope of the hill for the wine of every country is the soul of it no romans caught these men to plant the vine it was surely native here here the vine grudges nothing the god who inhabits it is not here a guest or a prisoner its juice is full and admirable it needs no age in burgundy where an iron works in the earth they need nine years to breed perfection in their wine but here in the air of the door to knee though so far south they need not seven within 12 months of the vintage a stranger can hardly tell his age and for my part i would drink it gladly in november with the people there god forbid that any one should blaspheme the wines of the l'or the cherished and difficult vineyards of terrain great care and many friends protect them and an infinite labor brings them to maturity the wine of shinan which made rabbalay the wine of revay which is good for the study of mathematics the wine of simour which teaches men how to leap horses over gates all these wines are of the north and yet it would be treason to malign them i will not be tempted to such a treason but could i be tempted i should be tempted by the generous invitation which when one comes down the southward slope and feels the air of the door to knee proceeds and gathers from the vineyards of that delightful land you may have seen on bottles the word saint amion if what was within was from saint amion indeed then you saw a great name upon the label for you must know that saint amion is built in a sacred hollow their gaudet who could not forgive was born thence the noblest blood of the revolution proceeded in its vineyard died by their own hand the best of the republicans and this place still keeps as in a kind of chalice the spirit of giorand if you doubt it drink the wine and saint amion as it were the center and naval of the country of the door to knee here there stands or stood a church built all out of one rock saint martin or some such person beginning the monastic habit was pestered i have heard by the grand nobles whom he had persuaded to monkishness in a fit of piety before they said this life of yours is all very well but what is there to do then saint martin lifting up his eyes saw a large rock and said to the youngest of them here is a great rock hack it about and chisel it until it has the shape of a church outside and then cut doors and windows and hack away into it until it has the shape of a church inside and you will have plenty to do the story as it was told to me goes on to say that they lived to be so old and so very old at their labor that they saw charlemagne go riding by before the first mass was sung in that rock church and that the great soldier coming into their first mass thought the workers in their extreme old age to be the spirits of another world now the church of saint emion is a symbol of the air of the door to knee on account of its strength its homogeneity its legend and its virtue of delicate but profound age you have drunk bar sec and in so drinking you drank you thought april woods and the first flowers far sec would not be bar sec but for the door to knee which helps to make the great year on and you have drunk entremere which is the name for a host of wines but the kernel of the whole thing is the full blood that dreams and ripens and as it were procreates where the slope of the door to knee is most the door to knee although the door to knee is not there at saint emion the pen has the power to describe not general but particular things though it may define what is general it can call up only what is particular and in that extended province which is ruled by the door to knee saint emion has moved me to a particular description the end of section 12 section 13 on anything this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org on anything by hilaire bellach section 13 on the sites of the revolution there is not in travel an interest more fascinating than that of noting with the eyes and proving by the memory and by the books the exact place of great or decisive actions so i have just done in many places here i have said to myself abdul el ramen went up aragon until he came to the head of the pass here he first saw the planes of gall from a height and promised himself the conquest of all europe for islam here where the two rivers meet somewhat north of portiers the two hosts watched each other for a week and that which was not ours was defeated then again in tulus it was amazing to collect as one wandered through the memories of so many centuries here were the shrine where the body of saturninius was found dead dragged to death by a bull through the streets of the city the quarter from which the populace saw advancing the northern army that was to defeat the vizgoths the site of the wall once the retreat of the serison was noted a flood of men pouring back towards the wall of the pyrenees that flat heights beyond the city to the east where the english army came up from spain in the defeat of napoleon and drove back the resistance of the defense all these and many more a man notes and travel of but a few days for all europe and no province more than this is crammed with the story of its own past but perhaps that which in such reminiscence or resurrections most moves one is to observe the obliteration of the last and most immediate of our efforts the sites of the revolution have disappeared one may walk about paris as i have walked today and see stones and windows that are still alive with the long business of the city there is the rome where madame de sevignet wrote there is the long alley where sully paced recognizing the new power of artillery and planning the greatness of his master you may stand on the very floor where the priest stood when st louis held the crown of thorns above them more than six hundred years ago you may stand on the stone that covers jeffrey plantagenet before the altar of the cathedral you may touch the altar that the boatman raised under tiberias to their gods when our lord was preaching in gallilee and as you marvel at that stone you may note around you the little roman bricks that stood in the same arches when julians saw them sitting at the council to save the faith for the west all these old things remain in this moving and yet unchanging town except the things of its principle and most memorable feat of will the revolution is even now not old its effects are still in movement they are not yet accomplished of the fundamental corals which it raised some five or six one at least that of religion is by no means resolved it is not even olden time i who write this have known some who saw it many who remember its soldiers or his victims i have but today visited a room where a daughter of the montgolf years would tell me in her extreme old age how the mob poured on the best deal and her companion near to me in blood had seen and in my boyhood talked to me of napoleon how many all around me today or yesterday were filled with the light or fire of that time saying my father died in such and such a battle in spain or in idly or beyond the vestula at the ends of the world it is not so very long ago it was much the chief business for good or evil that europe has known since the empire accepted the faith and what visible relics of it remain where the national assembly said it for sigh the cell is de menus pleasures there are a few houses or barracks a place in building where they said in paris they and the first days of the convention wrestling with and throwing necessity the riding school that vast oval cavern in which they forged the modern world has utterly gone i never passed the place even hurriedly and on a business to some work or other but i pause a moment to consider so great a change it is where the rue castiglione comes now to the rue de rivoli two streets whose very names are those of battles fought long after the atlantian work was done not a trace remains a drinking shop for foreign jockeys a cosmopolitan hotel a milleners where the rich of all nations the women of the rich that is go in and buy these hold the place here meribos spoke his last words with effort and went home to die here very young thundered here louis and mary antoinette took refuge in the oven of the august days here the long vote a day and a night and yet another day dragged on and ended with the end of the capetians after a thousand years the tullary saw more they saw the outlawing of thermidor the quarrels that ended in the dictatorship the hard scuffle to kill the monarchy they've wholly disappeared at the end of them still stands the room where the committee made war on the whole world and imposed upon the nation that led in law of armies which we still call the terror but for that room all has gone the town hall has gone it was the focus of the revolt it led the fever of the war against the kings from it came the massacres of september by order i believe into it retreated and was defeated the last effort of extreme equality this building at least one might have hope might have been spared for history it had sprung from the renaissance whole and beautiful it had seen all the growths of the bourbons and of their power all the growing consciousness of paras it held half the documents of the city and more than half its destiny it was the head and its italian front was the face of paris it has gone altogether it was burned when the tullaris was burned the room where dancin pleaded so that his voice was heard beyond the river the room where the queen in a voice low and firm replied to the questions of her judges the room where marat was acquitted and where the gerondon sang all that has gone in fire the house where desmelans first conspired is pulled down the house where dancin sat in his last hours watching the fire and carrying little for life or death has also gone the jacobans are a marketplace the temple was pulled down by the order of napoleon that furious business seems to have burnt out the very stones of its origin or to have burst the confines wherein it was conceived perhaps a fate rested upon them all i went today through the woods that were quiet lonely twenty years ago they stood near my home here in the midst of the trees and in a deserted place reached by a dismantled and neglected road rose the country house regular and outline monotonous and faded the windows were open to the night the floors rotten green moss grew on the plaster of the walls the roof was runeous it was the house to which the daughter of marie antonette had come reserved and perhaps with terrors in her mind to find silence while the restoration still endured it was her refuge years after it stood as i have recalled it i saw it i say again today or rather i saw it no longer the woods are felled in regular great roads there are villas built and new ends and pleasure places a new paris has spread out towards it and killed it here also the memory of the revolution the physical memory has disappeared i know of no wave like it in europe or in the history of europe of no such attempt so great so full of man of creation whose outward garment in building has been so thrust away by the irony of time the end of section 13 section 14 on anything this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org on anything by hilare bellach section 14 on a secret letter i had promised your excellency in my last dispatch to let him know with the least delay both the consequences of my appeal to the king in this country and the events that might flow from his attitude it is with profound sorrow that i communicate to your excellency the whole of this passage upon wednesday st james day i was granted an audience by his majesty at seven in the morning which is his usual hour for receiving foreign envoys and all those accredited with public or secret powers from another court his majesty whom i had not met before is a man tall in stature but stooping somewhat at the shoulders his age is not apparent in his features his hair and beard which is scanty are still black and his eyes though they betray an expression of weariness are lively he was good enough to bid certain officials near him to go out into the anti-room where i trust my words could not be heard though there is no door separating the king's closet from that passage but only a german tapestry presented i think at the time of the king's marriage by the elector his father-in-law the king would first have me set before him what i had to say which i did as briefly as possible and following exactly the instructions given me by your excellency i made no attempt to diminish still less to deny the crime of which my lord had been guilty nay i even exaggerated it if that were possible in order to prepare his sovereign for my plea which was that my lord's youth and the manner in which the adventure was presented to him excused him in some part for the action which he had been guilty i briefly spoke of the campaigns in which he had fought since his 16th year and i showed how easily to a soldier the expedition which has had so disastrous an ending might have appeared as a just and loyal war i was careful to admit any whisper of what the emperor had threatened in case of a refusal for such were your instructions and finally i laid at the feet of his majesty the plea of common mercy dwelling upon my lord's household the future of his young and innocent children and all else that would follow upon the sacrifice of such a life his majesty listened to me gravely and replied that he had fully reviled my lord's action and its nature and consequences in his mind as also the effect of the determination he himself had taken which determination could not be shaken by any argument that i or another might put before him it was he said a necessary example to others and the more highly placed the culprit the stronger the necessity of the sentence appeared to him he said further that in the matter of rebellion and treason which as holy writ discovered was among the most detestable of crimes and compared even to witchcraft against which enormity his majesty is especially watchful it was a thing which must be ended once and for all and could not be dealt with in any manner saved by the extirpation of its authors and the total suppression and extinction of the originators and begotters thereof to be brief his majesty would not be moved in any manner but told me speaking as a man will who has no more to say the date and hour were already fixed and had been communicated to me with this his majesty dismissed me and i left him upon the thursday therefore the morrow which they reckoned in this country as the fifteenth of the month i bade charles my attendant go warn my lord that i would see him at his convenience and my lord answered very graciously that my convenience was his own or upon i said i would come at once and did so it being about an hour after noon and my lord sitting at wine after his meal which he had eaten alone in the room assigned to him my lord was well furnished in all particulars and the clemency of the season further lessened to his discomforts of prison but he was closely guarded and he complained to me though without bitterness that when his wife had visited him but a week before bringing with her the little count my master and his little sister also by the hand a man at arms had been present throughout the interview he also told me that for writing he might have what liberty he would but he might fold over and seal no letter i asked him what his regiment had been in the matter of religion at which he sighed and said that he had been permitted to see the carthusian whom your excellency had sent to this part under a safe guard but that no mass might be set in his room nor within the precincts of the whole castle which as he was told was forbidden by a law of this realm but this i would hardly believe and indeed we had permission of his majesty who is indifferent to such things that mass should be privilege set upon the following morning and which was that on which my lord was to suffer and for this purpose a table was set he whom your excellency has sent bringing with him a little altar stone and all it was necessary for the office my lord dismissed me when i had spoken to him for perhaps half an hour asking him what i should do but he made me return a little before sunrise on the moral which your excellency i very punctually did more sorrowful at heart than i could say having not slept that night for the multitude of letters that i must read and dispatch and for the weight of the business that was before me when therefore it was fully light but the sun not yet risen i went over from my lodgings which are not far from the royal mint to the castle and was admitted to my lord's presence where he sat with a heavy look and yet delonely as it were having with him my lady and the two little children the priest having said mass and the table being now in order but he remaining for the last offices my lady was troubled exceedingly and a woman of hers who was with her was but little help to her or to us as for my lord's children though they could not understand the case they saw that something great and terrible was at hand but all this should not be detailed to your excellency nor can my pen properly express it my lady and her servant and the two children were taken i think from the room but i did not look nor did i hear any sound except a slight sobbing which very soon ceased the passing of men and arms set at regular places without i remember to hear continuing and if it be a trivial matter to have this set down for your excellency i do so only in the desire to relate every particular and to omit nothing i asked my lord whether there was anything i could further communicate to the king or to his family or to anyone he answered in a firm voice that he had attended to all and he gave me a letter sealed for this was now permitted him which letter i am to deliver to your excellency and will do so since i must entrust it to no one he told me further that he had made his peace and that he had received communion but that he would beg the priest whom your excellency had sent to remain with him to the end the warden of the castle a man of strict purpose but not harsh in his demeanor though silent as are most of these people said here that the populace who had gathered in a great crowd might be angered at the sight of a priest which site indeed would recall in them all the circumstances of the war to this my lord answered a little disdainfully i thought that it was but little to ask and that for the anger of the people and indeed for any feeling they might have towards himself he had no care of it he did not desire to arouse it nor did he fear it then said the warden of the castle he might be accompanied as he wished but the priest must put off his gown which he did and stood dressed like any common man of this country or rather like some servant but his hair and the trim of his beard seemed the more foreign in such a habit the sun had now risen and we were apprised that my lord's hour had come by the beating of drums outside the castle and the noise of the people my lord hearing this looked at me sorrowfully for a little time and asked me a question in the matter of religion which i thought both terrible and confusing at such a time but he pressed me and i replied very humbly that for my part i had lived as most men lived in these times which are corrupt and evil and that indeed no man could fully understand the unseen things nor no so much has conceived them but that nonetheless i hoped i might always bear witness to the faith as he did at that very moment to which my lord answered saying i bear no witness to that but only to my constancy and i could wish they had left me my sword i sat down for your excellency all that happened but i would not have your excellency think that my lord was troubled in these matters only it was his custom to debate learning and philosophy and to express doubts that he might hear them answered this was all and it is truly said that a man's custom will be seen expressed in the end of his life meanwhile they were waiting for us and i was to be the other that might be present with my lord when he suffered the priest and i went before him and behind the men at arms while first went the warden of the castle and we found that the scaffold had been put up upon a level with the window at the side of the main gate which looks westward towards the city there was a red cloth upon it a square but the rest naked and rounded a sort of railing of rope stretched from posts the hole was guarded by soldiers of the king's guard who were a horse even the drummers there was a very great crowd of people who were silent but when they saw my lord shouted and made a confusion till the soldiers pressed them back the warden asked my lord whether he would speak to the people but he shook his head and pressed his lips together so firmly that one would have thought he smiled then the headsman kneeling upon one knee as is the custom asked my lord's forgiveness for what he was to do to whom my lord answered in a cheerful voice that he very heartily forgave him and all others in this manner and then saying this word come wherein i did not understand his meaning but he may have been doing no more than call me as one calls a servant he took off his cloak which was dark and heavy and which was that which he had commonly carried in the field very serviceable and without ornament and this cloak he handed to me so that i have it and will bring it with me upon my journey when he had done this he took off also his undercoat upon which as upon his cloak he had kept no sign of his rank nor any jewel even of his order and this done he kissed me and also him whom your excellency sent the religious then he nailed down and as i think prayed but very shortly after which he laid his head upon the block and asked the headsman if it were fairly so to which the headsman said yes and that at his signal he would strike which when it was given the headsman struck and by the mercy of god was ready at his business so we threw a cloth that had been given us as quickly over the body of my lord and while the people groaned we lifted him two mannered arms the priest and i together to set him in a case of wood which was prepared only the husband showed my lord's head to the people and said so perish all traitors while the people still groaned then my lord's head also was given us and we set it very reverently down and we covered the case with the cloth given us which was the end of the business of that morning from which time till now i have not written but now right as your excellency ordered and in the first hour in which i find myself able and in command of myself to do so my lord was a great captain the end of section 14 section 15 on anything this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org on anything by Hilaer Bellach section 15 on the shadows it is always in a time when one's attention is at the sharpest strain when innumerable details are separately and clearly grasped by the mind and in a word when the external circumstance of life is most real to us that the common contrast between ourselves and the greatness outside us can best be appreciated we humans make all that present which is never there and which is always hurrying past us like the tumble of a stream and all important thing a form of dress unusual at one particularly insignificant moment a form of words equally unusual and so forth seem like immovable eternities to us they seem so particularly in those moments when we are most thoroughly mixed with our time then what fun it is to remember that the whole thing all the trappings of life are nothing but a suit of clothes old-fashioned almost before we have used them and worthless anyhow it is a general election that has made me think these things in the moment of an election men mixed together very closely the life of one's time is set before one under a very brilliant and concentrated light which holds a thousand things one had forgotten in the habits of the nation one sees so many kinds of men one finds about one the relics of so many philosophies one is astonished to me still surviving so many illusions that these contemporary details take up a very exaggerated place in our mind then it is good for one to remember that the whole of it is but a little smoke there are commonplace tags in history which boys can never understand one of the most commonplace and most worn is Burke's exclamation in the Bristol election he heard of the death of a man and said what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue and the phrase has gone threadbare and no school boy can understand why his elders dwell upon that phrase the reason is that it expresses the thing which is not only obvious but which also happens to be of the utmost moment and is peculiarly valuable coming from Burke who of all men was keenest upon the shams of his time who of all men was most immersed in the game of politics who of all men perhaps in parliamentary history was capable of self-deception and of the salaried advocacy which is the basis of self-deception Burke is as it were a little god or idol of your true politician he was a politician of the politicians Burke is to the politician what Keats is to the poet the exemplar the mirror of the profession yet Burke it was who said what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue it was quite right a little time ago in Paris an experiment was tried which later was repeated in London it was a curious success in each capital the experiment was this to put upon the stage a play the time of which was the 60s of the last century and to dress the actors up in the clothes of the 60s in Paris they went further they reproduced the slang the jests the very tone and affectations of fashion which marked the period of Napoleon the third the younger generation which could not remember the time looked on curiously at the experiment to the older people it was comic with an uncanny comedy and the irony of it was sometimes more bitter than they liked so this was man this was the immortal being this was the ambitious fellow who would now write a deathless poem now discover the ultimate truths of hell in heaven now dominate the earth with his machines now enter the adventure of mexico and the rest there he was in peg top trousers long whiskers and an absurd top hat with an arrow brim and there was woman the woman for whom such a man had killed himself such and such another had volunteered for the crimea or the woman of whom a third had made a distant idol in the atlas when he was out in africa and there was the woman upon whom the court depended or the ministry there was the woman who had inspired the best work of hugo or who had changed the life of renon she wore a crinoline at the back of her head was a mass of ugly false hair and how odd these gestures seemed and what queer turns of phrase there were in her language what wax work and how dead the whole thing seemed that experiment in either capital was a dreadful one which will not easily be tried again like all things to grip the mind the power of its action lay in its truth and the truth which vivified that experiment and gave it its power was the truth that our affairs are mortal things and the ephemeral conditions which close our lives seem to us at a moment to be the universe itself and yet are not even as important as the dust they are small they are ridiculously small and also they are evanescent as the snow it is an amusement in which i have sometimes indulged and no doubt many of those who are reading this have tried it for themselves to turn to the files of old newspapers choosing some period of great excitement which one can one self remember but which is separated from the present time by a sufficient space of years it is well in practice this sport to choose the columns of a journal which expressed one's own enthusiasm and one's own conviction at the moment the smile provoked by such a resurrection of the past must be bitter but it will be the more salutary for its bitterness there is that great question which we supposed would change the world there is all the shouting and the exaggeration and violence and there beyond it unseen is the reality which we have come to know their future has become our past and note how utterly the vision disagree with the real stuff and see how vain the vision was look how terrors were never fulfilled read how these hopes were still less destined to fulfillment and above all attached to worthless ends in nothing is this lesson better learned or more valuable than in the matter of loves and hatreds look up the heroes they were your heroes too read mournfully the enormous nonsense which was written of the villains sir said a famous politician and writer of the victorian time sir the world in which palmistan is allowed to live makes me doubt the kindness of my creator that is the kind of thing smith is your hector and jones is your thercides and then the mills of the years take up that flimsy stuff and begin grinding out reality and what a different thing that finished article is from the raw material of guesswork and imagination with which the mills were fed you can look back now and see the real smith and the real jones you can see that the real smith was chiefly remarkable for having one leg shorter than the other and that the principal talent of the real jones was the imitating of a steam engine or a very neat way of playing cards and that both jones and smith were of that common stature which men have in the middle distance of a very ordinary landscape for the benefit of mankind the illusion which it is impossible to feel with regard to a past actually remembered realizes when attached to a past longer still one can make a hero or a villain of fox or a pit one can look at the dress of the eighteenth century or the puffs and slashes of the sixteenth not only without a smile but actually with pleasure and admiration we find it glorious to read the english of elizabeth and pleasant to read the plain letters written when george the third was king but oh heavens the idols of a king i say for the benefit of a man one is allowed an illusion with regard to the remote past of the near past which we have known alas we know the truth and it appalls one with its emptiness there is no doubt at all that berke was right for once in his life when he said that we were shadows and that we pursued shadows nevertheless there is one important thing and there is one eternal subject which survives the end of section 15 section 16 on anything this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org on anything by hilaire bellach section 16 on the canvasser in that part of the garden of eden which lies somewhat to the southwest of the center thereof the weather during the recent election which was held there was bad it blew it rained it hailed it snowed and all this was on account of the great comet of which the people of that region said proudly to strangers have you seen our comet imagining with i know not how much justice that this celestial phenomena was local rather than national or imperial the garden of eden being mainly of clay soil large parts of it were flooded and the canvasser a draper by profession and a gentleman from london by birth unacquainted as he was with the garden of eden thought it a foul place and picked his way without pleasure he went down a lane the like of which he did not even know to exist in england for it was what we call in the garden of eden a green lane and only those learned in the place could get along it at all during the floods i say he went down this lane turned back took a circumvendibus over some high but abominably sticky plowed fields and turned up with more of the english earth than most citizens can boast at the door of the important cottage he had been given his instructions carefully and he was sure of the place he swung off several pounds of clay from his boots to the right and to the left and then it struck him that he did not know how to accost a cottage door there was no knocker and there was no bell but he had plenty of proof and instructions dimmed into him as to the importance of that cottage so at last he made up his mind to do something bold and unconventional and he knocked at it with his knuckles hardly had he done so when he heard within a loud series of syllables proceeding from two human mouths and consisting mainly of the broad a in the vowels and of the z by way of consonants at last the door was opened a little way and a rather formidable looking old woman short fat but energetic looked out at him through the crack she continued to look at him curiously for it is good manners in the garden of eden to allow the guests to speak first when the canvasser addressed this from the great length of the silence which he had to endure he said with the utmost politeness taking off his hat in a graceful manner and speaking with the light accent of the cultured is your husband in madam by way of answer she shut the open door upon him and disappeared and the canvasser not yet angry marveled at the ways of the garden of eden in a few moments she was back again she opened the door a little wider just wide enough to let him come in and said he can see him buddy ain't my husband he wore my sister's husband like as she said this she kept her eyes fixed upon the stranger noting every movement of his face and of his body until she got him into the large old kitchen there she put a chair for him and he sat down he found himself opposite a very very old man much older than the old woman sitting in a patched easy chair and staring merrily but fixedly at the fire the very very old man said marnard there was pause the canvasser felt nervous the old fat but energetic woman still scowling somewhat and still fixedly regarding the stranger said i do be telling you ain't my husband you'd be poor mathas husband that was our our said the old man by way of preparation and the smile if it were a smile upon his drawn and wrinkled face became more mysterious than ever the canvasser coughed a little i brought bad weather with me he said by way of opening the delicate conversation our said the old man he only bought a nether now being here a senai come Friday then he added more reflectively and as though he were already passing into another world while he stared at the fire he only brought another no well said the stranger gallantly though a little put out i'm sure i should have been sorry to have brought it ah so you may say i am a sorry i lay the old man and went off into a rattle of laughter which ended in a violent fit of coughing but even as he coughed he wagged his head from side to side relishing the joke immensely and repeating it several times to himself in the intervals of his spasms a lot of water lying about said the canvasser hoping to start some vein at least which would lead somewhere maybe so maybe so said the ancient like a true peasant planting sideways for the first time at his visitor and quickly withdrawing his eyes again there be even a water some places or others so they tell he concluded for fear of committing himself then he added i ain't been out myself he's got romantics chronic said the sister-in-law standing by and watching them both with equal disapproval our said the ancient are all or me the canvasser disparate you took the plunge he said as pleasantly as he could i come to ask you how you're going to vote mr. Layton maybe what answered his host with the look of extreme cunning and affecting a sudden deafness as he put his left hand into his shriveled ear and lean towards the londoner how you were going to vote mr. Layton said the canvasser still good-humored but a little more rosy than before and leaning forward and speaking in a louder tone oh i were voting and to the agent Layton with a touch of indignation in his cracked tones i ain't voted till yet uh no no mr. Layton said the canvasser relieved at any rate to have got to the subject what i meant was how are you going to vote oh our quickly caught up the peasant if he said that first off maybe i told him he gave another little cackle of laughter looked into the fire it is very important to mention mr. Layton said the canvasser solemnly a great deal hangs on it don't you be worrying young man said the sister-in-law with a touch of menace in her tone her arms the kimbo and her attitude sturdy there do be some began the ancient absolutely off his own and so far as the bewildered londoner could understand entirely irrelevant there do be some as have a bit of money lay by and there do be some as none our ms has none do without him he laughed again this time rather unpleasantly and more shortly than before there wasn't awkward silence then in a louder voice and at a higher pitch he took up his tail again mind my furthest saying when i were first to remind them uh further says to me are you my drugs and you get your fair peace when farm amount give it to you and you bring it straight home to me same as i tell you this reminiscent concluded the old man repeated his formula to the effect that there were some who had money laid by others who had none and that those who had none would have to do without that commodity of this sentiment his sister-in-law by a slight nod expressed her full approval her lips were firmer sat than ever and she was positively glaring at her guest the canvasser began to shift uneasily well i put it straight mr. latin he said will you vote for mr. richards i you can put straight answered the ancient with a look of preternatural cunning and i you can answer and straight and wow you'd be none wiser i reckon to answer any man straights a man be airbouts neighbor no neighbor and so i tell him that's right said his sister-in-law approvingly and so we tell him she was getting to look actually threatening but the canvasser had not yet got his answer we do really hope that we can hear you are going to vote for mr. richards he said leadingly the action of the government as i do here said the old man chuckling over some profound thought and master william musu say that too though he'd be to the other side he wagged his head twice with the wise subtlety of age alright now which way i be going to vote are that's what many in us like to know the canvasser began to despair he kept his weary smile upon his face rose from his chair and said well i must be going now madame that you must said the old lady cheerfully don't you let go without ungetting some of that wane said the host as he leaned forward in his chair and stirred down the fire with an old charred stick the woman looked at the canvasser suspiciously and poured him out some parsnip wine which he drank with the best of grace in the world as he lifted the glass he said with an assumed cheerfulness well here's to mr. richards are said the old man the old woman took the glass wiped it carefully without washing it put it back into the cupboard with the bottle and turned around to continue her occupation of fixing the stranger with her eye well i must be gone he said for the second time and in as breezy a tone as he could command our though you say was all the reply obtained and he left that citizen of many years still smiling with his bony aged jaws at the down fire and muttering again to himself that great truth about material wealth which had haunted him throughout the brief conversation the woman shut the door behind the canvasser and he was off across the fields in the next cottage he came to he asked them which way old playton would vote the woman at the place answered nothing but her son a very tall and silent young man with a soft nascent beard who was stacking wood to the leeward of the house myle secretly and said are the end of section 16 section 17 on anything this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org on anything by hilaire bellach section 17 on the abstracted man i had occasion the other day to catch a train which was going to the west of england from pattington and i was in a taxi which was open because the weather was clear now when we came to within about a quarter of a mile of pattington we got into a block which was exasperating in the extreme for my time was short and immediately in front of me also in an open taxi an astonishing thing and one i had never seen before sat a man who though all alone yet had his back to the driver even in the rush of the moment i could not help being fixed and somewhat stirred by his face it was a face of intense weariness yet in that there was a sort of patient rest he had a thin straggling beard so thin that it was composed as it were of separate hairs his eyes were very hollow and long-grown and his eyebrows arched unduly as though on some occasion in his life long past and by this time have forgotten he had suffered some immense surprise the expression in those eyes was one of unchangeable but meek sadness he had a high domed forehead as some poets have and he wore upon it kilted rather far back a dirty gray hat soft and somewhat on the side he had a heavy old gray overcoat upon him he was thin he had no gloves upon his hands which were long and bony and very withered these hands of his were clasped one over the other upon the handle of his umbrella so he said and so i watched him i in a fever to catch a train he apparently no longer fighting the complexities of this world the block broke up and we all began to dodge past each other toward pettington his taxi turned into the station just in front of mine we got out together i was interested in a note that he asked for a ticket to the same station in the same town which i was about to visit so great was my curiosity that i did what perhaps no one should do save a servant of the state in pursuit of a criminal that is i deliberately watched into which carriage he got and i got in with him the express started and we were alone together for some two hours he sat in the opposite corner to mine still patient and still silent he had bought no newspaper his hands were still clashed on his umbrella and he looked out of the window without interest as we passed by the various degrees of sorority and unhappy life which fringe london and when we came out into the open country he still continued to gaze thus emptyly i was most eager to speak to him but i did not know how to begin he solved the difficulty for me by saying at a point where the great mass of Windsor is to be seen through the south of the line upon a clear day and he lent forward to say it and said in a low rather pleading voice stands out well he yes i said stands out wonderfully well he said again and sighed not profoundly but in a manner that was very touching to hear when a little while later we crossed the tames he moved his head slowly to look down at the water and sighed as we passed the town of maidenhead then he said to me again spontaneously do you often travel upon this line i said i traveled upon it fairly often and i asked him since he's appeared to strike some slight note of interest in his mind whether he traveled upon it also he answered in a tone a little lower and sadder than which he had used before and shaking his poor gray head from side to side not now i did once but it was broad gauge then and again he sighed profoundly he continued upon this topic which apparently had been one of the thin veins of interest in the mind of his heart he told me they would never have anything like the old broad gauge again never and he shook his head pathetically once more he proceeded to remember the name of isimbard brunel and spoke of the tames tunnel and how men could go dry shot under the river under the river dry shot from one shore to the other marvelous then still on that theme he referred to the great eastern and said what a mighty great ship she was they will never have another like her never no one else will ever make a ship as big as that now at this point i would have contradicted him had i known him to be a man upon whom contradiction might act as tonic and he might have told me something about his extraordinary self for to certain that nowadays ships much larger than the great eastern and 50 times more efficient sail in and out of our harbors every hour and i could even have told him that the great eastern had been broken up but i did not know that such a truth might not provoke tears in those old eyes so i forbore after a little pause he continued again for he was now fairly on the run wonderful thing steam and then he was silent for a long while i began to wonder whether perhaps he was much older than a head guest but in a little while he settled this for me by talking to me with some enthusiasm of lord palmostin it was an enthusiasm of youth i know not how many metaphors he did not use little bits of sly slang as dead as the pyramids peeped into his conversation as he described his hero and he would always cut a paragraph of his pen guy rick by waving his hand and letting his heart sink again at the reflection that such men could not endure forever i gently agreed with him and talked boastfully of foreign politics for that was the trend of his own mind apparently but his ideas upon these were not only simple but few he had a craze that made it very difficult to keep up if i may use that expression for his one obsession was the french and though he was too patriotic to prophesy their arrival upon these shores his head shook more nervously than ever when he had turned on that topic however he said we had beaten them before and we should beat them again and he added that it was not the same napoleon his mind fastened upon this relief and he repeated it several times then he remained silent for a while too tired to notice the towns among which we were passing i asked him whether he was acquainted with the veil of the white horse he told me sadly and with the first faint smile i had seen upon his face that he had known it years ago but not now he said that when he had known it the white horse was much more distinct than much more like a horse and he wanted out to tell me that swindon today was not at all the place it had been this was his universal judgment of everything along the line and for a little he would have told me that the crest of the downs had changed he remarked there was no wheat in the fields which after all was not surprising at this time of year and looking at the dull earth as we passed it he assured me he could remember the time when the whole of it had been yellow with corn and if i had said but not in january i might have compelled him to an uneasy silence which was the last thing in the world i wished perhaps what i most remarked about him as strange was not his reading i have already said that he had brought no newspaper for himself but he did not ask for mine when an ice fell upon it where it lay upon the seat they looked at it as a man looks at the cat upon the earth rug but he did not take up the paper though the moment through which we were passing was not without interest and this leads me to the way in which we parted we had sat for some time in silence his old face still turned to the rapid landscape which took on with every mile more and more the unmistakable nature of the west of england the sharp hills the combs and with it all that which has something about it roman a note i never miss when i cross its boundaries at last we drew up into the great station of the city i opened the door for him and got out first in case he should wish to hand me his bag but though he was feeble he took it down himself and slowly came out of the carriage backwards and with the utmost caution when he reached the platform he gassed with some little hint of adventure in his tone there and he told me that railways were dangerous things so we went down the platform together for i wish to get all the experiences i could before we had to part he knew his way out and when we got into the main place of the town an enormous mob pushing and shoving and cheering and doing all that mobs do was filling the hole of it for the first time since we had met i saw a look of terror in his old eyes he whispered to me instead of speaking what's all that it's only a crowd i said they're good natured enough it's the election the election he answered his look of terror increasing whose election oh i never could abide a riot i never could abide one i assured him i would get him through without any danger and i took his thin arm in mine and pushed and scrambled him through to a hotel that was near and there i left him the terror had left his eyes but he was much weaker i asked him if i could do anything more but the manager rest told me that she knew him and that he often came there she was a very capable person and she reassured me and so i left the abstracted man he telling me in a tone still low but no longer in a whisper that he doesn't go out till the riot was gone and all this shows that during an election you meet more different kinds of men and explore more corners of england than any other time not until i had lost him that i remember that i had forgotten to ask him on which side of our present struggle he had formed his opinion but perhaps it was just as well i did not it would only have confused him the end of section 17 section 18 on anything this is a LibraVox recording all LibraVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org on anything by Hilaire Bellach section 18 on the method of history an apprehension of the past demands two kinds of information first the mind must grasp the inner nature of historic change and therefore must be made acquainted with the conditions of human thought in each successive period as also with the general scheme of its revolution secondly the external actions of men the sequences and dates and hours and such actions and their material conditions and environment must be strictly and accurately acquired neither of these two foundations upon which both repose the teaching and learning of history is more important than the other each is essential but a neglect of due emphasis which one or the other demands though both be present warps the judgment of the scholar and forbids him to apply this science to its end which is the establishment of truth history may be called the test of true philosophy or it may be called in a very modern and not very dignified metaphor the object lesson of political science or it may be called the great story whose interest is upon another plane from all other stories because its irony its tragedy and its moral are real were acted by real men and were the manifestation of god whatever brief and epic romantic summary we make to explain the value of history to men that formula still remains an imperative formula for them all and i repeat it the end of history is the establishment of truth a man may be ever so accurately informed as to the dates the hours the weather the gestures the types of speech the very words the soil the color that between them all would seem to build up a particular event but if he be not seized of the mind which lay behind all that was human in the business then no synthesis of his detailed knowledge is possible he cannot give to the various actions which he knows there do order or proportion he knows not what to omit nor what to enlarge upon among so many or rather a number of potentially infinite of facts and his picture will not be as somewhat put it distorted it will be false he will not be able to use history for its end which is the establishment of truth all that he establishes by his action and all that he confirms and make stronger is untruth and so far as truth is concerned it would be far better that a man should be possessed of no history than that he should be possessed of history ill stated as to its prime factor which is human motive a living man has to aid his judgment and to guide him in the establishment of truth contemporary experience other men are his daily companions the consequence and the living principles of their acts and of his own are fully within his grasp if he is rightly informed of all the past motive and determining mine from which the present has sprung that information of his will illumine and expand and confirm his use of present experience if he know nothing of the past his personal observation and the testimony of his own senses are so far as they go an unshakable foundation but if he brings to the aid of contemporary experience and appreciation of the past which is false because it gives to the past a mind which was not its own then he will not only be wrong upon that past he will tend to be wrong also in his conclusions upon the present he will forever read into the plain facts before him origins and predetermining forces which do not explain them and which are not connected with them in the way he imagines he will come to regard his own society which as a man wholly uninstructed he might fairly though insufficiently have grasped through a veil of illusion and a false philosophy until at last he will not even be able to see the things before his eyes in a word it is better to have no history at all than to have history which misconceives what were the general directions and the large sweeps of thought in the immediate and the remote past this being evidently the case one is tempted to say that a just estimate of the revolution and the progress of human motive in the past is everything to history and that an accurate scholarship in the details of the chronicle in dates especially is of wholly inferior importance such a statement would be quite false scholarship in history that is an acquaintance with the largest possible number of facts and an accurate retention of them in the memory is as essential to this study as is that other background or motive which has just been examined the thing is self-evident if we put an extreme case for if a man were wholly ignorant of the facts of history and of their sequence he could not possibly know what might lie behind the actions of the past for we only obtain communion with that which is within and that which is foundation in human action by an observation of its external effect a man's history for instance is sound and on the right lines if though we have but a vague and general sentiment of the old pagan civilization of the Mediterranean that sentiment corresponds to the very large outline and is in sympathy with the main spirit of the affair but he cannot possess so much as a sketch of the truth if he has not heard the names of certain of the great actors if he is wholly unacquainted with the conception of a city-state and if the names of Rome of Athens of Antioch of Alexander and of a Jerusalem have never been mentioned to him nor will a knowledge of facts be valuable contrary wise it will be detrimental and of negative value to his judgment if accuracy in his knowledge be lacking if he were invariably inaccurate thinking that red which was blue inverting the order of any two events and putting without fail in the summer what happened in winter or in the german days what took place in Gaul his facts would never correspond with the human motive of them and his errors upon externals would at once close his avenues of access toward internal motive and suggest other and nonexistent motive in its place it is of course a pedantic and negligible error to imagine that the knowledge of a time grows out of a mere accumulation of observation external things do not produce ideas they only reveal them and to imagine that mere scholarship is sufficient to history is to put oneself on a level with those who in the sphere of politics for instance ignore the necessity of political theory and talk muddily of working of institutions as though it were possible to judge whether an institution were working ill or not when one had no ideal of what the institution might be designed to attain but those scholarship is not the source of judgment in history it is the invariable and the necessary accompaniment of it facts which to repeat do not produce ideas but only reveal or suggest them do nonetheless reveal and suggest them and form the only instrument of such suggestion and revelation scholarship accurate and widespread has this further function that it is necessary to a general apprehension of the past which however just is the firmer the larger and the more intense as the range of knowledge and its fixity increase and scholarship has one more function which is that it corrects and it corrects with more and more precision in proportion as it is more and more detailed the tendency of the mind to extend a general and perhaps justly apprehended idea into the region of unreality for the mind is creative it will still make and spin and if you do not feed it with material it will spin dreams out of emptiness thus a man will have a just appreciation of the 13th century in england he will perhaps admire or will perhaps be repelled by its whole spirit according to his temperament or his acquired philosophy but in other case though his general impression was once just he will if he considers it apart from reading tend to add to it excretances of judgment which as the process continues will at last destroy the true image scholarship like a constant auditor comes in regularly to check and tally his conclusions does he admire the 13th century then he will tend to make it more national than it was because our time is national and to forget its cruelties because the good enthousiasms of our own age happen for the moment not to be accompanied by cruelty he will tend to lend the 13th century a science that did not possess because physical science is in our own time an accompaniment of greatness but if he reads and reads continually these vagaries will not oppress or warp his vision more and more body will be added to that spirit which he does justly but only vaguely know and he will at last have with the english 13th century something of that acquaintance which one has with the human face and voice these also are external things and these also are the product of a soul indeed though metaphors are dangerous in such a manner a metaphor may with reservation be used to describe the effect of the chronicle of research and of accurate scholarship in the science of history a man ill provided with such material is like one who sees a friend at a distance a man well provided with it is like a man who sees a friend close at hand both are certain of the identity of the person seen and both are well founded in that certitude but there are errors possible to the first which are not possible to the second and close and intimate acquaintance lends to every part of judgment assurity which distance and general acquaintance wholly lacks the one can say something true and say it briefly there is no more to say the other can fill in and fill in the picture until though perhaps never complete is is a symptotic to completion to increase one's knowledge by research to train oneself to an accurate memory of it does not mean that one's view of the past is continually changing only a fool can think for instance that some documents somewhere will be discovered to show that the mass of the people of London had for James the second and ardent veneration or that the national defense organized by the committee of public safety during the French Revolution was due to the unpopular tyranny of a secret society but research in either of these cases and a minute and increasing acquaintance with detail does show one a London largely apathetic in the first case and does show one large sections of rebellious feeling in the armies of the terror it permits one to appreciate what energy and what initiative were needed for this overthrow of the stewards and to see from how small a body of wealthy and determined men that policy proceeded it permits one to understand how the battles of 93 could never have been fought upon the basis of popular enthusiasm alone it permits one to assert without exaggeration that the autocratic power of the committee of public safety and the secrecy of its action were necessary conditions of the national defense during the French Revolution one might conclude by saying what might seem too good to be true that minute and accurate information upon details the characteristic of our time in the science of history must of its own nature so corroborate the just and general judgments of the past that when the modern phase of willful distortion is over mere blind scholarship will restore tradition the end of section 18 section 19 on anything this is a Libra Vox recording all Libra Vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libra Vox.org on anything by Hilaire Bellach section 19 on history and travel i've sometimes wondered whether it might not be possible to have guidebooks written for the great routes of modern travel i mean a modern pleasure travel which should make the whole road a piece of history for history enlarges everything one sees and gives a fullness to flat experience so that one lives more than one's own life in contemplating it and so that new landscapes are not only new for a moment but subject to centuries of varieties in one's mind it is true that those who write good guidebooks do put plenty of history into them but it is sporadic history as it were it is not continuous or organic and therefore it does not live you are told of a particular town that such and such was its roman name that centuries later a medieval contest was decided in its neighborhood if it is connected in some way with the military history of this country you will be given some detailed account of an action fought there and that is particularly the case in spain which one leaves with a vague impression that it was created to serve as terrain for the peninsular war all knowledge of that sword interest the traveler but it hardly remains nor does it inform in the full sense of that word and to be informed is the object and the process of it is the pleasure of learning to give life to the history of places there must be connection in it and it so happens that with our travel today especially our pleasure travel a connection stands ready to the writer's hand for we go in herds today along the great roads which have made europe it is the railways that have done this before they were built the network of crossroads already excellent in the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th tempted men of leisure in every direction towns that had something curious to show were visited as easily whether they lay on the main roads or no the fruit of that time you may see in the great ends which still stand though often half deserted in places eccentric to modern travel it may be that this old universality of travel will return with our new ease of going wherever there is a good surface for wheels it has in part return but still much of the most of us go along the lines laid down fast for us by the first great expenditure on railways and this was invested necessarily along some at least of the immemorial track which from long before history were the framework of western society if you are from the north and go to the riviera from then sundown the coast of Rome you go mile for mile along the central highway that bounds together the roman empire the road that adrian went and constantine descended york london dover boulogne leon dijon lyons marcellé are the posts strung along it and the same long line is the line of advance which the creed took when christianity came up northwards from the Mediterranean it is the line the second advent of that influence took when saint augustin brought it back to this island after the breakdown of the empire or if you will consider that short eight hours of tearing speed which so many thousands know the main line from london to paris see what a thick pass there is gathered all along it the crossing of the derrant was to one of the string of canterbury palaces and just to the left of your train the field where edmund ironside met the danes further on rotham another of the archbishop's line of houses and on the hills above in the plain below the sacred monoliths that savages put up for worship before letters or buildings were known and beyond the valley kitt's coddy house and the bear place where stood the root of boxley and ailesford the first bridge where the pirates first drove the british in their conquest of this country and much further the british camp which the tenth legion storm standing above the store canterbury where there is fixed continuity with rome and with the history before rome the little roman bricks and saint martin's church the roman roads radiating to the ports of the channel and the british tracks on which they lay or which they straightened deep under the side of the city the group of lake dwellings when its defense was a lagoon now meets and in the side of the great central tower the end of the middle ages with which that town is crammed or if you reach it by the northern way then everywhere you are following the great military road whereby for two thousand years travel has come from the straits to london rochester the armed defense of the river crossing the capture of whose castle twice gave an army the south of england and all but saved henry the third against his barons the second bishopric of england the garrison which stood central and sheltered the halt of forced marches from the sea upon london and every step of the way chaucer if you cross by blown sea above you on the last of english land the hill forts they build to overlook the broad shallow harbor of le manus now dry you cross upon the narrow sea the track of caesar who when he first invaded drifted here under a light breeze and whisked the tide for four hours coming with the transports from balon and beaching at last upon the flats of deal also in balon that broad valley was landlocked harbor in caesar's day and there he built his ships if you cross by calais you come some three miles from the french land over that good holding ground where the armada lay at anchor on a summer evening waiting to take aboard the unconquered soldierry which was designed for the assault of england but outward on the flock of little english boats came up after just thwart of grisnaz which you see tall and huge to your right they lay there at anchor out of range against the stormy sunset and one night came drove their fire ships against the spanish fleet and broke its formation and next day the tempest drove them up that flat coast to your left and so on to destruction in the open sea then see how the french road is full also here just beyond the tables is the place where the two ambassadors passed in 93 neither knowing the other the one returning driven out of london the other posting thither at full speed to avert war they missed and so war came a little further onto your left is a patch of wood to your right beyond the flats is a broad estuary of which you may see the lighthouse towers that wood is the wood of creasy through it there marched the english host on their way to victory and the rising ground beyond the river mouth is that where williams started with his hundreds of ships on the way to hastings he lay gathered there with the wind in his teeth for days until the equinox sent him a southwester and he bowled across to pervency and landed there every stretch of this road is alive with stories and things done the way down into italy by borg is a way of armies also though not a way of english armies and it is a way of great influences too thus if you would see the gothic north and the southern renaissance first meeting like salt water and fresh at the turn of a river tide get out in borg and drive a mile to brew and see there the tombs of the house of savoy there is no site like it in europe yet how few know it out of all who whirl down that line often by night on the way to the alps sort of italy there are other roads east temps one to list of wonders the road northeastward from paris every step of which is the line of the last napoleonic struggle the road eastward into germany by mats every step of which is the history of the revolution or of invasion or of success in the field a little station which your eyes will hardly catch as the thresholds by is neighbor to the camp that atilla made before he was defeated in those planes of champagne another little station the station of a hidden hamlet is called balmy half an hour on beyond les islets you see quite close by the forest path that drew it took when he intercepted the flight of the king and so destroyed the french monarchy all these roads are known roads but there is one which the railway has abandoned and which is therefore half derelict many motors rediscovered for it has half the story of europe strung along it i mean the road from paris by tours and quachtiers to perino to talus over the high pyrenees and on to saragosa no one line serves it across the mountains for a day and more travel there is no line at all but this is the road up which is lemon came a thousand years ago to end us the host got past potiers charles met them from tours and they were destroyed you may see the place today and this is the road by which all the frankish and gothic invasions moved on spain and this is the road that charlemagne must have taken when he first marched across the hills against the valley of ebo i know of no road more holy with past wars none more wonderful where it meets the mountains none better made for all sorts of going and none more deserted than it is upon the high places between france and spain but of this road i will write later to prove how much there may be in travel the end of section nineteen on anything by hill air bellach this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox dot org on anything by hill air bellach section 20 on the traveler those who travel about england for their pleasure or for that matter about any part of western europe rightly associate with such travel the pleasure of history for history adds to a man giving him as it were a great memory of things like a human memory but stretched over a far longer space than that of one human life it makes him i do not say wise and great but certainly in communion with wisdom and greatness it adds also to the soil he treads for to this it adds meaning how good it is when you come out of tweaksbury by the chelton hem road to look upon those fields to the left and know that they are not only pleasant meadows but also the place in which the fate of english medieval monarchy was decided or as you stand by that ferry which is not known enough to englishman for it is one of the most beautiful things in england and look back and see tweaksbury tower frame between tall trees over the level of the suburn to see the abbey buildings in your eye of the mind a great mass of similar stone with solid norman walls standing to the right of the building all this historical sense and the desire to marry history with travel is very fruitful and nourishing but there is another interest allied to it which is very nearly neglected and which is yet a way more fascinating and more full of meaning this interest is the interest in such things as lie behind recorded history and have survived into our own times for underneath the general life of europe with its splendid epic of great rome turned christian crusading discovering furnishing the springs of the renaissance and flowering at last materially into this dupendous knowledge of today the knowledge of all the arts the power to construct and do underneath all that is the foundation on which europe is built the stem from which europe springs and that stem is far far older than any recorded history and far far more vital than any other phenomena which recorded history presents recorded history for this island and for northern france and for the rine valley is a matter of 2000 years for the western Mediterranean of three but the things of which i speak are to be reckoned in tens of thousands of years their interest does not lie only or even chiefly in things that disappeared it is indeed a great pleasure to rummage in the earth and find the polished stones of the men who came so many centuries before us but of whose blood we certainly are and it is a great pleasure to find or guess that we find under canterbury the piles of a lake or marsh dwelling proving that canterbury has been there from all time and that the apparently defenseless valley city was once chosen as an impregnable site when the water meadow of the store were impassable as marsh or with difficulty passable on a shallow lagoon and it is delightful to stand on the earthwork beyond chillum and to say to oneself as one can say with fair certitude here was the british camp defending the southeast here the tenth legion charged all these are pleasant but more pleasant i think to follow the things where it actually survives consider the trackway for instance how rich england is in these no other part of europe will afford the traveler so permanent and so fascinating a problem elsewhere rome hardened and straightened every barbaric trail but in this distant province of britain she would only spend just so much energy has made them a foothold for her soldiery and all over england you go if you choose foot by foot along the ancient roads that were made by the man of your blood before they had heard of brick or of stone or of iron or of written laws i wonder that more men do not set out to follow let us say the fosway there it runs right across western england from the southwest to the northeast in a line direct yet sinuous characters which are the very essence of a savage trail it is a modern road for many miles let us say and there you are tramping along the cutswold on a hard metal to modern english highway with milestones and notices from the county council telling you that delverts will not bear a steam engine if so be you were traveling in one then suddenly it comes up against your crossroad and apparently ceases making what map grotsman call a t but right in the same line you will see a gate and beyond it a farm lane and so you follow you come to a spiny where a ride is cut through by the wood reef and it is all in the same line the fosway turns into a little path but you are still on it it curls over a marshy brook valley keeping on firm land and as you go you see old stones put there heaven knows how many generations ago or perhaps yesterday for the tradition remains and the country folks strengthen their wetlands as they have strengthened them all these thousands of years you climb up out of that depression you get you over a style and there you are again upon a lane you follow that lane and once more it stops dead this time there is a field before you no right of way no trace of a path nothing but grass rounded into those parallel ridges which mark the decay of the corn lands and pasture taking the place of agriculture now your pleasure comes in casting about for the trail you look back along the line of the way you look forward in the same line till you find some indication a boundary between two parishes perhaps upon your map or two or three quarries set together or some other sign and very soon you have picked up the line again so you go on for mile after mile and as you tread that line you feel in the horizon that you see in the very nature and feel of the soil beneath your feet in the skies of england above you the ancient purpose and soul of this kingdom up this same line went the clans marching when they were called northward to the host and up this went slow creaking wagons with the lead of the mendips or the tin of cornwall or the gold of wales and it is still there it is still used from place to place as a high road it still lives in modern england there are some of its peers as for instance the ermine street far more continuous and affording problems more rarely others like the ridgeway of the berkshire downs which roam hardly touched and of which the last 2000 years has therefore made hardly anything you may spend a delightful day piecing out exactly where across the tames making your guess at it and wondering as you sit there by streetly vicarage whether those islands did not form a natural weir below which lay the ford the roads are the most obvious things there are many more for instance thatch the same laying of the straw in the same manner with the same arc as continued as we may be certain from a time long before the beginning of history see how in the fennelin they thatch with reeds and how upon the chalk downs with straw from the lowlands i remember once being told of a record in a manner which held of the church and which lay upon the southern slope of the downs that so much was entered for straw from the lowlands then years afterwards when i had to thatch a betlehem in an orchard underneath tall elms a pleasant place to write in with the noise of bees in the air the man who came to thatch said to me we must have straw from the lowlands this upland straw is no good for thatching then immediately when i heard him say this there was added to me 10 000 years and i know another place in england far distant from this where a man said to me that if i wished to cross in a winter mist as i had determined to do cross fell that great summit of the pennines i must watch the drift of the snow for there was no other guide to one's direction in such weather and i remembered another man in a boat in the north sea as we came towards the foreland talking to me of the two tides and telling me how if one caught the tide all the way up to long nose and then went round it one made two tides in one day he spoke with the same pleasure that silly men show when they talk about an accumulation of money he felt wealthy and proud from the knowledge for by this knowledge he had two tides in one day now knowledge of this sort is older than 10 000 years and so is the knowledge of how birds fly and how they call and of how the weather changes with the moon very many things a man might add to the list that i'm making doopans are older than our language or religion and the finding of water with a stick and the catching of that difficult animal the mole and the building of flints into mortar which if one does it in the old way as you may see it prevents it lasts forever and if you do it the new way does not last 10 years and then there is the knowledge of planting during necrescent part of the month but not before the new moon shows and there is the influence of the moon on cider and to a less extent upon the brewing of ale and talking of ale the knowledge of how ale should be drawn from the brewing just when a man can see his face without mist upon the surface of the hot brew and there is the knowledge of how to bank rivers which is called throwing rivers in the south but in the fenn land by some other name and how to bank them so they do not silt but scour themselves there are these things and a thousand others all are immemorial but have no space for any now the end of section 20