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Updated: June 22, 2025
You cannot look at any good church-work from the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, with out seeing that leaves and flowers were perpetually in the workman's mind. Do you fancy that stems and boughs were never in his mind? He kept, doubtless, in remembrance the fundamental idea, that the Christian church should symbolise a grot or cave.
What dainty youth, bedewed with liquid perfumes, caresses you, Pyrrha, beneath the pleasant grot, amid a profusion of roses? For whom do you bind your golden hair, plain in your neatness?
Now as Beltane breathed the cool, sweet air of evening and looked about him drowsily, he suddenly espied a shadow within the shadows, a dim figure yet formidable and full of menace, and he started up, weapon in fist, whereupon the threatening figure stirred and spake: "Master 'tis I!" said a voice. Then Beltane came forth of the grot and stared upon Black Roger, grave-eyed.
When the wind is in the wrong quarter, it is impossible to enter the grot at all; and we waited till nine o'clock for the storm to abate before we ventured forth.
We found a little canoe fastened to a stone, and adventured on the quiet surface of the pond until at about eighty yards of penetration we came to a blind curtain of stone. "This grot," said M. Brault, "was for centuries the retreat of those conquered in war, sacred to gods, and a sanctuary never violated, like those cities of refuge among the Hebrews and Greeks.
But there had remained up to my last visit that grot on the gardened hill-slope whence a colossal marble Hercules helplessly overlooked the offence offered by the railroad; and now suddenly here was the lofty wall of some new edifice stretching across in front of the Hercules and wholly shutting him from view; for all I know it may have made him part of its structure.
Another descent and Hogarth reached a region of laugh and harping: whereupon, dismissing his guide, he tracked the music into a nook so rare, that he stood amazed a Court of Love, or Mahommedan Heaven, or grot of Omar anything old, lovely, and devil-sacred the air chokingly odorous, near a fountain some brazen demon Moloch or Baal buried in roses, over everything roses, bounty of flowers, a very harvest-home of Chloris, Flora in revel; and smooth youths bearing cups for some twenty others, all garlanded, besides those on the marble stage; and on the stage itself a scene of dancing girls, Sevillian, Neapolitan, Algerian, mixed with masked Satyrs, which made Hogarth pale, while at a Herod's-table buried under fruits, wines, flowers and gold, reclined Pat O'Hara, tonsured now, crowned with ivy and violets, gowned in a violet toga; while under a pendulum whose swings left whiffs of incense behind lay Harris insensible.
The farm-hand drew his horses down to a walk, that not a note might be marred. "A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Ferned grot The veriest school Of Peace, and yet the fool Contends that God is not Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign: 'Tis very sure God walks in mine." Together words and music were something to remember.
He takes a bull's-eye, and Mortimer and Eugene follow him to a cool grot at the end of the yard. They quickly come out again. "No clue, gentlemen," says the inspector, "as to how the body came into river. Very often no clue. Steward of ship, in which gentleman came home passenger, had been round to view, and could swear to identity. Likewise could swear to clothes.
In after ages his cave was ornamented, like that of the hermit of Montmajour by Arles; or his cell-chapel enlarged, as those of the Scotch and Irish saints have been, again and again; till at last a stately minster rose above it. Still, the idea that the church was to be a grot haunted the minds of builders.
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