Destruction? That is, perhaps, too strong a word. We know that that is
simply the stepping from one stage to another of the eternal, the immortal
cycle. The little hamlet embowered in its protecting trees, defended by
its beloved hills, the Rock rising gaunt and naked in its midst; then the
Cathedral, the Monks, the Baron's Castle, the feudal rule; then the mighty
Bishops and the vast all-encircling power of the Church; then the new
merchant age, the Elizabethan salt of adventure; then the cosy seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, with their domesticities, their little cultures,
their comfortable religion, their stay-at-home unimaginative festivities.
Throughout the nineteenth century that spirit lingers, gently repulsing
the outside world, reproving new doctrine, repressing new movement...and
the Rock and the Cathedral wait their hours, watching the great sea that,
far on the horizon, is bathing its dykes and flooding the distant fields,
knowing that the waves are rising higher and higher, and will at last,
with full volume, leap upon these little pastures, these green-clad
valleys, these tiny hills.
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