THE RHONE TO THE SEINE
scrubbed, scraped and soaped as if its renovation were a feat daily performed by the "seven maids with seven mops" on whose purifying powers the walrus so ingeniously speculated. Matthew Arnold's poem does not prepare the reader for the unnatural gloss which makes the unhappy monument look like a celluloid toy. Perhaps when he saw it the cleansing process had not begun—but did he ever really see it? And if so, where did he see the
Savoy mountain meadows,
By the stream below the pines?
And how could he have pictured the Duchess Margaret as being "in the mountains" while she was supervising the work? Or the "Alpine peasants" as climbing "up to pray" at the completed shrine, or the priest ascending to it by the "mountain-way" from the walled town "below the pass"?
Is Bourg the walled town, and its dusty faubourg the pass? And shall we, when we pass under the traceries of the central door, and stand beneath the vaulting of the nave, hear overhead the "wind washing through the moun-
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