one after one
Who can blame him ? The spectacle of a whole multitude swayed by one feeling , however little the object of that feeling may be approved by the judgment of the spectator , appeals irresistibly to his sympathies , if he be not more than usually cold-hearted : and I remember well that , though myself a faithful son of the Scotish church , I was once seduced by such an occasion into an involuntary act of idolatrous compliance with popery . It was at Orleans : the day was splendid : the bells proclaimed a festival : a vast procession of a mixed composition , religious and military , was streaming towards the cathedral ; and by a moral compulsion , rather than by any physical pressure of the crowd , I was swept along into the general vortex . Suddenly an angle of the road brought me into such a position with respect to all who were in advance of my station , that I could see the whole vast line bent into the form of a crescent , and with its head entering at the great-doors of the cathedral : I gazed on the tossing of the plumes and the never ending dance of heads succeeding to heads as they plunged into what seemed the dark abysses of the church : one after one I beheld the legions and their eagles , the banners and the lilies of France swallowed up by the cathedral : then , as I came nearer and nearer , I could hear the great blair of the organ -- throwing off its clouds of ascending music , like incense fuming from an altar : nearer still I could look through the high portals into the nave of the church , and could distinguish the opposite windows storied with gorgeous emblazonries of saints and martyrs , angels and archangels , whilst above them were seen the Madonna , and `` the Lamb of God '' with the cross ; and through the upper panes streamed in the golden rays of the sun , and the blue light of the unfathomable heavens : then , as I myself was entering , suddenly the shattering trumpet-stop was opened : and I heard the full choir singing the great anthem of Pergolesi -- `` And the Dead shall arise : '' at which instant I also wept with the multitude , and acknowledged a common faith and a common hope : and for a moment I will confess that I apostatized to the church of Rome for the sake of her pomps and vanities : a sin which I trust is forgiven me , as I can assure the church of Scotland that it is the single occasion throughout my life on which I have had any wanderings of thought from her pure and orthodox creed . Under a similar impulse , caught from the contagion of public enthusiasm , Bertram pressed after the procession into the church . He was carried by the crowd into a situation from which he could overlook the entire nave which was in the simplest style of Gothic architecture and naked of all the ornaments which belong to the florid Gothic of a later age . The massy pillars were left unviolated by the petty hand of household neatness : they stood severe in monumental granite , unwhitewashed , unstuccoed , without tricks or frippery .