Excerpt from The Mirror and the Lamp

Rom; resembled Athens, Brussels was just a smaller Paris, one country town is very like another; but St. Dun stan's is like nothing except itself.

Even the idlest tourist at once recognises the spell, and in every minute that he lingers he submits to its deepening force. He is not so much affected by what he sees as by what he feels. The place is old, the streets are narrow, and over all the clustered roofs rises the splendour of the church of Christ; here one pauses with bowed head to gaze at hal lowed ground, here one strains lifted eyes to catch the sun light on stones that look like lace hung as a curtain in the sky; under that archway used to ride mailed warriors; round those cloisters came lines of singing monks; and over the marshy plain, through the night of history, from cities that are dust and lands that have long since lost a name, wended their way century after century the endless pilgrim horde - but all this is nothing, the drone of hireling guides, the tale of a three-penny book, the echo of memory's sleepy tongue. What is real is the faith that clings to the faithful spot. Here men believed; here men are still believing.

It is less than nothing that all which was material should perish and decay, if all that was spiritual and impalpable may continue to live. This is the third church that has stood in the meadow blessed by the saint, and if this too falls a fourth shall take its place; but, new or old, it would always be the same church - the self-same church wherein conquering lords of a savage isle craved pardon from the God-man whom their ancestors had killed, wherein sun beams slanting down from lofty windows made tremulous tinted halos for a martyr's brow; wherein foreign refugees crept underground to worship in darkness, and praise the maiden queen whose hand was strong enough to hold them 33 e.

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