_-JOHN RUSKIN.
When our day is done, and men look back to the, shadows we have left
behind us, and there is no longer any spell of personal magnetism to
delude right judgment, I think that the figure of Dean Inge may emerge
from the dim and too crowded tapestry of our period with something of
the force, richness, and abiding strength which gives Dr. Johnson his
great place among authentic Englishmen.
His true setting is the Deanery of St. Paul's, that frowning and
melancholy house in a backwater of London's jarring tide, where the
dust collects, and sunlight has a struggle to make two ends meet, and
cold penetrates like a dagger, and fog hangs like a pall, and the blight
of ages clings to stone and brick, to window and woodwork, with an
adhesive mournfulness which suggests the hatchment of Melpomene. Even
the hand of Grinling Gibbons at the porch does not prevent one from
recalling Crabbe's memorable lines:
Dark but not awful, dismal but yet mean,
With anxious bustle moves the cumbrous scene;
Presents no objects tender or profound,
But spreads its cold unmeaning gloom around.
Here in the midst of overshadowing warehouses--and until he came hither
at the age of fifty-one few people in London had ever heard his name, a
name which even now is more frequently pronounced as if it rhymed with
_cringe_, instead of with _sting_--here the Dean of St.
Pages:
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45