CAPÍTULO 28.

 

            THUS Noel and Maynard talked and consolidated their newborn friendship by the exchange of ideas. By degrees they came to converse of their respective colleges and acquaintances. Maynard made a reference to his recent Mexican expedition, which led to a mention of Mr. Tresham.

 

(p. 159)

            ‘My uncle,’ said Noel; ‘and presently named Lord Littmass.’

 

            ‘My guardian,’ said Maynard, ‘and the last time I was at Stonehenge he suddenly and mysteriously appeared, and carried me away.’

 

            ‘Just what I shall do this time,’ returned Noel, ‘only the mysterious appearance is on your side. Had we not better be starting homeward?’

 

            ‘By the time they were half-way back to Salisbury, Maynard had yielded to his companion’s entreaty that he would return with him to London, and take up his quarters in Mr. Tresham’s house, where Noel had rooms of his own, and everything was at his disposal.

 

            As they passed the blacksmith’s hut, at the door of which Maynard had stopped with Lord Littmass, he remarked, in a somewhat shy tone, –

 

            ‘I rather expected to have found shelter there last night, but my friends have vanished. I never find that any knowledge is superfluous, and so I make friends with people of all callings. A bit of blacksmithing that I learned here six months ago came in very handy lately on the Sierra Madre.’

 

            On reaching his hotel, Noel ordered a substantial luncheon, of which Maynard partook heartily, after having renovated himself by a hot bath. Whether owing to the excitement that still influenced him, or his hunger for intellectual converse after long abstinence, the conversation never flagged. He seemed to Noel to have studied everything, medicine included. His bath, for instance, set him talking about the benefits of heat as a renovating and curative agent, and he gave a description of the ancient Roman baths, and the admirable contrivance of bathing in hot dry air instead of in water, so as to gain health and strength by divesting the blood of its lymphatic particles, in place of absorbing additional moisture. Here Noel was able to join him, relating his own favourable experiences of the same process, as still practised in Turkey and throughout the East. From this, the conversation turned to the degenerating effects upon a nation’s force of the multiplication of luxuries, and the question, how far the decline of Rome was aided by such causes. Maynard thereupon made some remarks upon the stability of modern civilisation, saying that its only safeguard consists in its deriving its vitality from reason and experience, instead of resting on the dead authority of a past age.

 

            They continued talking in this manner until they entered

(p. 160)

the cathedral, there being yet time to go round that fine old structure before their train started for London.

 

            ‘It is solidly built,’ said Maynard, gazing up and around. ‘I wonder for what use it is reserved. Notwithstanding all we have been saying about man’s antiquity, the world is young yet, and there is time for many an ample change both in faith and practice. By the way, we may carry on our Druidical parallels here. For the sun determines the position of our churches, the cross their shape, and the seasons their festivals: while their doctrines and hymns contain many an allegorical allusion to things now generally forgotten, but belonging to the same connection. Not long ago I found a clerical friend, who was correcting the proofs of a hymn-book which he was bringing out for his congregation, in great trouble about the spelling in the lines –

 

                                   “Oh, Sun of righteousness, arise,

                                     With healing in thy wings.”

 

He could not determine whether to spell sun with “o” or “u,” showed him that in using an “o” he was making a pun, while in using an “u,” he was following the ancient sun-worshippers.’

 

            ‘And how did you settle it?’

 

            ‘I proposed to put in both, and leave it to the congregation to make their own choice. But he ultimately escaped the difficulty by altering it to

 

                                   “Oh, angel of salvation, rise,”

 

because, as he very properly observed, “angels, you know, have wings:” – an amendment and a reason at which I did not think it necessary to cavil. That hymn reminds me of another and most curious parallel. I dare say you know of a custom which prevails in many parts of the country, of people squeezing themselves and their children through an opening in a rock, for the sake of “luck.” A cleft rock has in all ages been associated with the worship of the Stone and Pillar, and there is abundant reason for supposing that the idea governed the construction of all the Druidical remains. The trilithons of Stonehenge are just what would be used for people to enter through into the inner shrines. Such passage was regarded as equivalent to a process of regeneration, precisely as is described in the Gospels. Few people, I take it, know the real allusion in the favourite hymn which commences, –

 

                                   “Rock of ages, cleft for me.”

 

(p. 161)

It may be that the first impression which is apt to be produced by such investigations is that all religions are false. But the later one will inevitably be that all are true, or at least have a common and fundamental element of truth.’

 

 

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