HOLIDAYS AND PILGRIMAGES 109 



have the clearest evidence, from Hiuen Tsaing and earlier, 

 to this day. Again, even this great religion was but one 

 of a whole series of spiritual movements broadly con- 

 temporaneous and surely interesting : witness the Zoro- 

 astrians in Persia, ' the discovery of the Law ' in Jerusalem, 

 the Pythagoreans of Greece and beyond, and so on, from 

 the early founders of Rome to the Druids of the Celtlands 

 from Gaul to the Hebrides. 



To understand Modern India we need better guidance 

 than any of our modern writers, so often too strident, even 

 to harshness, when not more or less narrowly specialised. 

 For this we should need some truly European-spirited 

 historian like Comte, or like Lord Acton ; and when he 

 comes since we must first realise ourselves before under- 

 standing others he will set before us those prehistoric and 

 semi-historic traditions above touched on. He would next 

 revive the unity of Roman days, from Clyde to Euphrates, 

 and its interaction, not always hostile, with the northern 

 barbarian world as well. He will not only renew for us 

 Arthur, Alfred, Charlemagne, and more, as heroes of Europe, 

 but behind all such champions of Christendom, show us 

 Christendom itself, at its gentlest and best. He will make us 

 feel anew the significance of the wanderings of St. Paul as a 

 source of enduring impulse to the missions of Rome, of Ireland, 

 of lona and Holy Isle ; as of Austin, Benedict, and others, 

 throughout European lands ; and of later teachers farther still. 

 He will trace the effect of such universally diffused re-idealis- 

 ing of life in these medieval lay pilgrimages of all our peoples, 

 with their faces set henceforward not only towards Rome 

 or Santa Sophia, but to Jerusalem itself, of which even the 

 Crusades were but the exasperated intensification. Within 

 each land too, and even between them all, he will trace 

 the pilgrims. Chaucer's genial company, riding towards 

 Canterbury, is but a swan-song of this old spirit. To 

 realise it more fully we must join all the great pilgrimages, 

 as to Compostella, to Chartres, to Cologne and farther, for 

 the West ; and similarly with East Europeans to Holy 



