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On one Sunday morning at Rouen we go with ‘all the world’ to be present at a musical mass at the cathedral, and to hear another great preacher from Paris.  It was a grander performance than the one we attended at Caen; but the sermon was less eloquent, less refined, and was remarkable in quite a different way.  It was a discourse, holding up to his hearers, as far as we could follow the rapid flow of his eloquence, the delight and glory of ’doing battle for Right’—­of fighting (to use the common phrase) the ‘fight of Faith.’

But he was preaching to a congregation of shopkeepers, traders, and artisans, and his appeal to arms seemed to fall flatly on the trading mind; whilst the old incongruity between the building and the dress of the nineteenth century, was as remarkable as it is in Westminster Abbey; and the contrast between the unchivalrous aspect of the speaker, and the tone of his language, was more striking still.[47]

What priest or cure, in these days, stands forth in his presence or influence, as the ideal champion of a romantic faith, the ceremonials of which seem more and more alienated from the spirit of the nineteenth century—­at least in the north of Europe, where colour, imagination, and passion have less influence?  What real sympathy has the kind, fat, fatherly figure before us with soldiers, saints, or martyrs?[48]

He preached for nearly an hour, with frequent pauses and strange changes in the inflexion of the voice.  We will not attempt a repetition of his arguments, but must record one sentence in an extempore sermon of great versatility and power; a sentence that, if we understood it aright, was singularly liberal and broad in view.  Speaking of the rivalry that existed between the different sects of Christians, and making pointed allusion to the colony of protestant Huguenots established at Beuzeval on the sea-shore, he ended with the words, ’Better than all this rivalry and strife (far better than the common result amongst men, indifference) that, like ships becalmed at sea,—­when a religious breeze stirs our hearts—­we should raise aloft our fair white sails and come sailing into port together, lowering them in the haven of the one true church.’

He made a pause several times in his discourse, during which he looked about him, and mopped his head with his handkerchief, and behaved, for the moment, much more as if he were in his dressing-room than in a public pulpit; but he held his audience with magic sway, his influence over the people was wonderful—­wonderful to us when we listened to his imagery, and to the means used to stir their hearts.[49]

In the picturesque and moving times of the middle ages it must surely have needed less forcing and fewer formulae to ’lift up the hearts of the people to the Queen of Heaven;’ if it were only in the likeness of the black doll, which they worship at Chartres to this day.  But until we realise to ourselves more completely the lives of warriors in mediaeval days, we shall never understand how chivalry and the worship of beauty entered into their hearts and lives, and was to them the highest and noblest of virtues; nor shall we comprehend their ready acceptance of the adoration of the Virgin as the one true religion.