Ch. 6 - The Virgin of Chartres

We must take ten minutes to accustom our eyes to the light, and we
had better use them to seek the reason why we come to Chartres
rather than to Rheims or Amiens or Bourges, for the cathedral that
fills our ideal. The truth is, there are several reasons; there
generally are, for doing the things we like; and after you have
studied Chartres to the ground, and got your reasons settled, you
will never find an antiquarian to agree with you; the architects
will probably listen to you with contempt; and even these excellent
priests, whose kindness is great, whose patience is heavenly, and
whose good opinion you would so gladly gain, will turn from you with
pain, if not with horror. The Gothic is singular in this; one seems
easily at home in the Renaissance; one is not too strange in the
Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk
blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all
these styles seem modern, when we come close to them; but the Gothic
gets away. No two men think alike about it, and no woman agrees with
either man. The Church itself never agreed about it, and the
architects agree even less than the priests. To most minds it casts
too many shadows; it wraps itself in mystery; and when people talk
of mystery, they commonly mean fear. To others, the Gothic seems
hoary with age and decrepitude, and its shadows mean death. What is
curious to watch is the fanatical conviction of the Gothic
enthusiast, to whom the twelfth century means exuberant youth, the
eternal child of Wordsworth, over whom its immortality broods like
the day; it is so simple and yet so complicated; it sees so much and
so little; it loves so many toys and cares for so few necessities;
its youth is so young, its age so old, and its youthful yearning for
old thought is so disconcerting, like the mysterious senility of the
baby that--

Deaf and silent, reads the eternal deep,
Haunted forever by the eternal mind.

One need not take it more seriously than one takes the baby itself.
Our amusement is to play with it, and to catch its meaning in its
smile; and whatever Chartres maybe now, when young it was a smile.
To the Church, no doubt, its cathedral here has a fixed and
administrative meaning, which is the same as that of every other
bishop's seat and with which we have nothing whatever to do. To us,
it is a child's fancy; a toy-house to please the Queen of Heaven,--
to please her so much that she would be happy in it,--to charm her
till she smiled.

The Queen Mother was as majestic as you like; she was absolute; she
could be stern; she was not above being angry; but she was still a
woman, who loved grace, beauty, ornament,--her toilette, robes,
jewels;--who considered the