THE METHODS OF ARCH^OLOGICAL RESEARCH. 607 



the great masses of woikineu were transported eastward and westward 

 under the control of the same exacting masters, and thus the designs 

 on Chinese porcelain — phanixes and dragons, etc. — invaded Persia, 

 and similarly the Chinese learned how to make Avhat we call blue and 

 white porcelain, which they did not know until the time of the Ming 

 dynasty. 



To take one more illustration: We can not wander about the 

 glorious ruins of your county — such ruins as Wenlock Priory — without 

 being reminded of the sermon in every stone. We realize how much 

 we owe to Gregory and to Augustine, who planted Christianity here, 

 as well as to Benedict and St. Bernard, and their indomitable disciples 

 and scholars, who reared aloft high standards of i^urity and simplicity 

 of work and of duty in a community which was disintegrated under 

 the influence of a barbarous soldiery and of brutal and uneducated 

 manners. We are further reminded, as we can almost hear the jingling 

 spurs and iron-incased feet of the knights tramping down the aisles, 

 that it was the romantic enterx^rise of the crusading nobles, prelates, 

 and monks which brought back the genius of Gothic architecture to 

 Europe, and the taste for poetry, for sentiment, and for art, which 

 they had learned from the Saracens, followers of Saladin, and it was 

 very largely their handiwork that flooded western Europe with new 

 ideas, which blossomed into magnificent forms in our ministers, and the 

 equally fresh and novel ideas which Froissart and Chaucer and Malory 

 enshrined in immortal verse and prose; and if we turn over the medal 

 and look on the other side we shall realize the refiex influence of the 

 crusades upon the East. 



I do not propose to carry this disintegrated story further. My pur- 

 pose and object have been to press home as a universal factor of human 

 progress the element of continuity which we all concede in regard to 

 particular cases, and also to j)ress home the lesson that we can not do 

 justice to our subject if we limit our horizon, as we are apt to do, to 

 our parish, our county, or our island. These are only outlying pieces 

 of much larger areas, and the true way of studying and profiting by the 

 study of art is not only to be catholic but to be continually conscious 

 of its interdependence and continuity. Lastly, one lesson let us carry 

 away with us, lest we forget the humility which becomes the students 

 of the venerable past. If it is true that we are the heirs of all the ages 

 it is true also that the memory of much of our inheritance is blighted 

 and sophisticated. It is not exhilarating to our vanity and self-respect 

 to think that human progress is not a continual growth — that men reach 

 levels very often which those who come after can not emulate. The 

 men who built the Parthenon no less than the unknown architects of 

 so many of our great ministers, the artifieers who manufactured the 

 lovely embroideries, the matchless tiles, the radiant decorations of the 

 Alhambra and the Taj at Agra, have left no heirs, and we are mere 

 scholars sitting at their feet. Our strength is not great enough to bear 



