He would have seen it to be a religion indisputably powerful in human affairs; often very harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows’ houses,[124] and consuming the strongest and fairest from among the young; freezing into merciless bigotry the policy of the old:  also, on the other hand, animating national courage, and raising souls, otherwise sordid, into heroism:  on the whole, always a real and great power; served with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; putting forth its claims, if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, not waiving any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in large measure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed:  a goodly system, moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, harmonious, mysterious;—­a thing which had either to be obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned.  A religion towering over all the city—­many-buttressed—­luminous in marble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety[125] shines over the sea; many-voiced also, giving, over all the eastern seas, to the sentinel his watchword, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips of all who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death.

I suppose the boy Turner to have regarded the religion of his city also from an external intellectual standing-point.

What did he see in Maiden Lane?

Let not the reader be offended with me; I am willing to let him describe, at his own pleasure, what Turner saw there; but to me, it seems to have been this.  A religion maintained occasionally, even the whole length of the lane, at point of constable’s staff; but, at other times, placed under the custody of the beadle, within certain black and unstately iron railings of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.  Among the wheelbarrows and over the vegetables, no perceptible dominance of religion; in the narrow, disquieted streets, none; in the tongues, deeds, daily ways of Maiden Lane, little.  Some honesty, indeed, and English industry, and kindness of heart, and general idea of justice; but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, not artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions; its paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and cold grimness of behaviour.

What chiaroscuro belongs to it—­(dependent mostly on candlelight),—­we will, however, draw considerately; no goodliness of escutcheon, nor other respectability being omitted, and the best of their results confessed, a meek old woman and a child being let into a pew, for whom the reading by candlelight will be beneficial.[126]

For the rest, this religion seems to him discreditable—­discredited—­not believing in itself; putting forth its authority in a cowardly way, watching how far it might be tolerated, continually shrinking, disclaiming, fencing, finessing; divided against itself, not by stormy rents, but by thin fissures, and splittings of plaster from the walls.  Not to be either obeyed, or combated, by an ignorant, yet clear-sighted youth:  only to be scorned.  And scorned not one whit the less, though also the dome dedicated to it looms high over distant winding of the Thames; as St. Mark’s campanile rose, for goodly landmark, over mirage of lagoon.  For St. Mark ruled over life; the Saint of London over death; St. Mark over St. Mark’s Place, but St. Paul over St. Paul’s Churchyard.