"What is it?" he asked. "How far?" And
whatever the answer was, although he sometimes seemed to hesitate, he
never declined. He stepped into an open cab, made his conductor sit
beside him to answer questions, bade the driver go fast (he had a
particular aversion to slow driving) and rolled, in all probability
through a dusty suburb, to the goal of his pilgrimage. If the goal was a
disappointment, if the church was meagre, or the ruin a heap of rubbish,
Newman never protested or berated his cicerone; he looked with an
impartial eye upon great monuments and small, made the guide recite his
lesson, listened to it religiously, asked if there was nothing else to
be seen in the neighborhood, and drove back again at a rattling pace.
It is to be feared that his perception of the difference between good
architecture and bad was not acute, and that he might sometimes have
been seen gazing with culpable serenity at inferior productions. Ugly
churches were a part of his pastime in Europe, as well as beautiful
ones, and his tour was altogether a pastime. But there is sometimes
nothing like the imagination of these people who have none, and Newman,
now and then, in an unguided stroll in a foreign city, before some
lonely, sad-towered church, or some angular image of one who had
rendered civic service in an unknown past, had felt a singular inward
tremor.
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