Piles of superb masonry will often pass like a
common panorama; and on this grey and silver morning the ruined towers
of the cathedral stood about me somewhat vaguely like grey clouds.
But down in a hollow where the local antiquaries are making
a fruitful excavation, a magnificent old ruffian with a pickaxe
(whom I believe to have been St. Joseph of Arimathea) showed me
a fragment of the old vaulted roof which he had found in the earth;
and on the whitish grey stone there was just a faint brush of gold.
There seemed a piercing and swordlike pathos, an unexpected
fragrance of all forgotten or desecrated things, in the bare
survival of that poor little pigment upon the imperishable rock.
To the strong shapes of the Roman and the Gothic I had grown accustomed;
but that weak touch of colour was at once tawdry and tender,
like some popular keepsake. Then I knew that all my fathers were
men like me; for the columns and arches were grave, and told of
the gravity of the builders; but here was one touch of their gaiety.
I almost expected it to fade from the stone as I stared.
It was as if men had been able to preserve a fragment of a sunset.
And then I remembered how the artistic critics have always praised
the grave tints and the grim shadows of the crumbling cloisters and
abbey towers, and how they themselves often dress up like Gothic ruins
in the sombre tones of dim grey walls or dark green ivy.
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