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In consequence of demolitions and reconstructions, the Paris of his youth, that Paris which he bore away religiously in his memory, is now a Paris of days gone by. He must be permitted to speak of that Paris as though it still existed.
M. Ceres showed his enthusiasm for demolitions, tunnelings, constructions, reconstructions, and all other fruitful operations. "We build to-day in an admirable style," said he; "everywhere majestic avenues are being reared. Was ever anything as fine as our arcaded bridges and our domed hotels!"
In general, the history of Europe and of England develops naturally before the Catholic reader; he is not tempted to that succession of theories, self-contradicting and often put forward for the sake of novelty, which has confused and warped modern reconstructions of the past. Above all, he does not commit the prime historical error of "reading history backwards."
Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every important exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits have been more instructive and more popular than have been the picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of their city life, and the corresponding surveys of the present conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering them.
In literary criticism Mr Arnold needed no teaching from M. Renan, and as his English training on one of its sides preserved him from the Frenchman's sentimental hedonism, so on another it kept him from the wildest excesses of M. Renan's critical reconstructions of sacred history. On the whole, the two were far too much alike to do each other any good.
Our very isolation from continental wars and revolutionary reconstructions have kept them unique. The particular kind of beauty there is in an English village, the particular kind of humour there is in an English public-house, are things that cannot be found in lands where the village is far more simply and equally governed, or where the vine is far more honourably served and praised.
The proposed reconstructions of Jerusalem have been on the whole reasonable and sympathetic; but there is always a danger from the activities, I might almost say the antics, of a sort of antiquary who is more hasty than an anarchist.
It looks as if the city at the mouth of the greatest and largest valley, which penetrates Asia Minor from the west coast, was too important in subsequent ages and suffered chastisements too drastic and reconstructions too thorough for remains of its earlier greatness to survive except in holes and corners.
Now the most unreal part of the reconstructions of school life is the insistence on the boyish code of honour. Neither as a boy nor as a schoolmaster did I ever have much evidence of this. There were certain hard and fast rules of conduct, like the rule which prevented any boy from giving information to a master against another boy. But this was not a conscientious thing.
It is a stiff fight, and for this reason if for no other, that before we can get on much further in a progressive world we must achieve with wisdom and courage some fundamental reconstructions in our Christian thinking. Aratus of Soli: Phaenomena, lines 122-3. Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Naturalium Quaestionum, Liber VII, 25. T. Lucretius Carus: De Rerum Natura, Lib.
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