And unperceived by Taffy a pair of kindly eyes watched his own as they
met the first vision of that lovely tower rising above the trees and (so
like a thing of life it seemed) lifting its pinnacles exultantly into
the blue heaven.
"Well?"
All three had come to a halt. The boy turned, blushing furiously.
"This is the best of all, sir."
"Boy," said old Velvet-cap, "do you know the meaning of 'edification'?
There stands your lesson for four years to come, if you can learn it in
that time. Do you think it easy? Come and see how it has been learnt by
men who have spent their lives face to face with it."
They crossed the street by Magdalen bridge, and passed under Pugin's
gateway, by the Chapel door and into the famous cloisters. All was quiet
here; so quiet that even the voices of the sparrows chattering in the
ivy seemed but a part of the silence. The shadow of the great tower
fell across the grass, on which (so a notice-board announced) nobody
was allowed to walk.
"This is how one generation read the lesson. Come and see how another,
and a later, read it."
A narrow passage led them out of gloom into sudden sunlight; and
the sunlight spread itself on fair grass-plots and gravelled walks,
flower-beds and the pale yellow façade of a block of buildings in the
classical style, stately and elegant, with a colonnade which only needed
a few promenading figures in laced coats and tie-wigs to complete the
agreeable picture.
"What do you make of that?"
As a matter of fact, Taffy's thoughts had run back to the theatre at
Plymouth with its sudden changes of scenery. And he stood for a moment
while he collected them.
"It's different—that is," he added, feeling that this was lame, "it
means something different; I cannot tell what."
"It means the difference between godly fear and civil ease, between
a house of prayer and one of no-prayer. It spells the moral change
which came over this University when religion, the spring and source of
collegiate life, was discarded. The cloisters behind you were built for
men who walked with God."
"But why," objected Taffy, plucking up courage, "couldn't they do that
in the sunlight?"
Velvet-cap opened his mouth. The boy felt he was going to be denounced;
when a merry laugh from the old clergyman averted the storm.
"Be content," he said to his companion; "we are Gothic enough in
Oxford nowadays. And the lad is right too. There was hope even for
eighteenth-century Magdalen while its buildings looked on sunlight and
on that tower. We lay too much stress on prayer. The lesson of that tower
(with all deference to your amazing discernment and equally amazing whims)
is not prayer, but praise. And between ourselves, when all men unite to
worship God, it'll be praise, not prayer, that brings them together.
Praise is devotion fit for noble minds,
The differing world's agreeing sacrifice...."
"Oh, if you're going to fling quotations from a tapster's son at my
head.... Let me see ... how does it go on?... Where—something or
other—different faiths—