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Avenues of brightness, arches of green, glimpses of airy columns, of boundless lawns set with high, pyramidal shrines, great places of quiet and straight line, alleys whose shadow taught the necessity of mystery, the sound of water the pure, positive element of it all and everywhere, above, below and far, that delicate, labyrinth light, diffused from no visible source.
Under one altar rest the bones of St. Felix, which were taken from the Catacombs at Rome, and on another is a picture of the Madonna, said to be a copy of one painted by St. Luke. On all the shrines are candlesticks, votive offerings and many other articles of great age, value and veneration.
Thompson took me into the Via Portoghese, and showed me an old palace, above which rose not a very customary feature of the architecture of Rome a tall, battlemented tower. At one angle of the tower we saw a shrine of the Virgin, with a lamp, and all the appendages of those numerous shrines which we see at the street-corners, and in hundreds of places about the city.
Here we did little more than re-visit the shrines of Shakespeare the church, the birthplace, the grammar school all familiar to the English-speaking world. Nor did we forget the Red Horse Inn at luncheon time, finding it much less crowded than on our previous visit, for we were still well in advance of the tourist season.
The avenue leading to the temple is lined with shops where mementoes of the goddess may be purchased, as in Ephesus of old silver shrines might be bought in honor of the great goddess Diana. It is the old story of buyers and sellers in the Jewish temple.
It seems strange, indeed, that the government should take such pains to suppress phallicism, and allow such immorality to go on under the eaves of the greatest national shrines; for these shrines are not private affairs; the government takes possession of the gifts, and pays the regular salaries of the attending priests.
How was it that this tiny, dark-eyed child of the south, whose face was immediately suggestive of olive-covered hills and taper-lit shrines, came to have her home in that stately English manor-house, by the side of the blonde matron, Lady Cheverel almost as if a humming-bird were found perched on one of the elm-trees in the park, by the side of her ladyship's handsomest pouter-pigeon?
Therefore it is that great reformers so often must break the shrines and temples of the physical and earthly beauty, when they seek to draw men upward to that which is high and divine. Christ says of John the Baptist, "What went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold they which are clothed in soft raiment are in kings' palaces." So was it when our fathers came here.
"As to thee," answered the knight, "we have that power; we will dissolve every monastery or religious establishment held for the souls of these Douglasses, and will only allow the religious people to hold their residence there upon condition of their praying for the soul of King Edward the First of glorious memory, the malleus Scotorum; and if the Douglasses are deprived of the ghostly benefit of the prayers and services of such shrines, they may term thy obstinacy the cause."
In sweet remembrance at the Three Holy Shrines of your labours of love for His Cause, I am and remain your brother and coworker in His service. 19 January 1923 The beloved of the Lord and the handmaids of the Merciful throughout Germany, Care of the members of the National Spiritual Assembly. My dearly-beloved friends!
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