I can feel what you say, when I look at the cathedral on
the outside; there, indeed, every line sweeps the eye upward--carries it
from one pinnacle to another, each with less and less standing-ground, till
at the summit the building gradually vanishes in a point, and leaves the
spirit to wing its way, unsupported and alone, into the ether.
"Perhaps," I added, half bitterly, "these cathedrals may be true symbols
of the superstition which created them--on the outside, offering to
enfranchise the soul and raise it up to heaven; but when the dupes had
entered, giving them only a dark prison, and a crushing bondage, which
neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear."
"You may sneer at them, if you will, Mr. Locke," said Eleanor, in her
severe, abrupt way. "The working classes would have been badly off without
them. They were, in their day, the only democratic institution in the
world; and the only socialist one too. The only chance a poor man had of
rising by his worth, was by coming to the monastery. And bitterly the
working classes felt the want of them, when they fell.
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