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Updated: May 18, 2025
Under defence comes the planning of walls, towers, and gates, permanent devices for resistance against hostile attacks; under religion, the erection of fanes and temples to the immortal gods; under utility, the provision of meeting places for public use, such as harbours, markets, colonnades, baths, theatres, promenades, and all other similar arrangements in public places.
What need of cascade and of cataract, the deep green turf, the foliage of the fairest trees, the impenetrable forest, the abounding river, mountains of glaciered crest, the voice of birds, the bounding forms of beauteous animals; all sights and sounds of material loveliness that might become the delicate ruins of some archaic theatre, or the lingering fanes of some forgotten faith?
Under weaker treatment the effect was grievous. There was neither manliness nor solemnity in the usual run of churches built after the similitude of 'Roman theatres and Grecian fanes. Maypoles instead of columns, capitals of no order, and pie-crust decorations such, exclaimed Seward, were the too frequent adjuncts of the newly built churches he saw about him.
What a passion for building majestic churches the Irish hired-girl has. It is a fine thing for our architecture but too often we enjoy her stately fanes without giving her a grateful thought.
In no ruin of earth's youth giants' work now crumbling under the weight of time had I ever sensed a shadow of the strangeness with which this was instinct. No nor in the shattered fanes that once had held the gods of old Egypt, nor in the pillared shrines of Ancient Greece, nor Imperial Rome, nor mosque, basilica nor cathedral.
Titus destroyed the temple. The religion of Judaea has in turn subverted the fanes which were raised to his father and to himself in their imperial capital; and the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob is now worshipped before every altar in Rome. Jerusalem by moonlight! 'Tis a fine spectacle, apart from all its indissoluble associations of awe and beauty.
'Ah, then, murmured the Queen to herself, and with an expression of the greatest satisfaction, 'Dar-kush was rightly informed; he is one of us. 'I behold then, at last, the gods of the Ansarey, said Fakredeen. 'All that remains of Antioch, noble Emir; of Anti-och the superb, with its hundred towers, and its sacred groves and fanes of flashing beauty.
Where the idols are fed with incense by the streams of Ching-wang-foo; where the minarets soar sparkling above the cypresses, their reflections quivering in the lucid waters of the Golden Horn; where the yellow Tiber flows under broken bridges and over imperial glories; where the huts are squatted by the Niger, under the palm-trees; where the Northern Babel lies, with its warehouses, and its bridges, its graceful factory-chimneys, and its clumsy fanes hidden in fog and smoke by the dirtiest river in the world in all the cities of mankind there is One Home whither men of one family may resort.
Nothing was spared that the country could produce, and the result was indeed worthy of the effort, not so much on account of its size for there are larger fanes in the world as because of its perfect proportions, the richness and beauty of its materials, and the wonderful workmanship.
The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests, and the old beliefs wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the ice halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains to the earth no more.
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