Carlyle clings to the Christian formulary and the old Christian life
in spite of himself. He is almost fanatical in his attachment to the
mediaeval times,--to the ancient worship, its ceremonial, music, and
architecture, its monastic government, its saints and martyrs. And the
reason, as he shows in the "Past and Present," is, that all this array
of devotion, this pomp and ceremony, this music and painting, this
gorgeous and sublime architecture, this fasting and praying, were
_real_,--faithful manifestations of a religion which to that
people was truly genuine and holy. They who built the cathedrals of
Europe, adorned them with carvings, pictures, and those stately
windows with their storied illuminations which at this day are often
miracles of beauty and of art, were not frivolous modern
conventicle-builders, but poets as grand as Milton, and sculptors
whose genius might front that of Michel Angelo. It was no dead belief
in a dead religion which designed and executed these matchless
temples. Man and Religion were both alive in those days; and the
worship of God was so profound a prostration of the inmost spirit
before his majesty and glory, that the souls of the artists seem to
have been inspired, and to have received their archetypes in heavenly
visions.
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