NATIONAL RELICS, TRUE AND FALSE.
AN amusing comment on 'Hayward's "Pearls and Mock Pearls of History" comes from an English writer who was taken by a French officer to see a new statue. It was erected to the memory of a general who had died with a speech of epigrammatic patriotism upon his lips. Having indulged his turn for sentiment fully, he pointed with emo- tion to the legend on the pedestal. Then, turning to go home, be remarked : "But, after 'all, you know, he never said it. What he did say was something very different." These mock- pearls of history are numerous. But it is far easier to mak, a national legend pass current when false than to obtaa; credit for a national relic which is counterfeit, or which it is sought for political purposes to make symbolical of some event which has touched and aroused the united feelings of a
nation. There is something genuine in the project of modern Greeks, reported in last week's news from Athens, to restore the lion of Chaeronea. But no amount of political propa-
ganda could ever induce the French of the Third E to Empire recognise in the Napoleonic Eagles the emblem of anything but a personal rule. There is never any doubt whatever as to true national relics. Just as the wood of the 'hue Cross was a visible object associated with the whole intense feeling of the supreme moment of the Christian faith, so these palladia of nations are objects associated at a given moment of time with the supreme efforts of cities and peoples, when all that was most spiritual and most courageous was summoned at one sublime moment of self-sacrifice for great and noble ends. The objects consecrated as relics are commemorative, but they are not by first intention deliberate monuments. The senti- ment roused by the sight of Henry's helmet and the saddle on which he rode at Agincourt lying on the dusty beam above his tomb is as true as the light of the diamond which he wore in his helmet then, and which shone later in the crowns of his successors. The making of some monuments followed so naturally the sublime achievement that they are almost a part of the achievement itself. Such a combined monument and relic is the tripod made by the victorious Greeks after their final and desperate struggle at Plataea to hurl back the invading East. Wrought from the golden cups of the Persians' table and the bronze of their soldiers' armour, it bore on its sides the names of every city whose soldiers fought and fell in the supreme moment of a nation's life. That tripod still exists at Constantinople, a national relic which has endured longer than the States whose deeds it consecrated.
But in their essence national relics are not objects made as memorials. They are things which themselves tell the story of the triumphs of the nations, or recall by their silent monition the mighty deeds of old. They are not memorials erected by posterity, or the work of historic revivals. They are adopted spontaneously in the hour of national exaltation, and are chosen at once and by acclaim as an everlasting memorial. Of these the most perfect, the most entirely natural, and the most revered to-day is Nelson's ship, the Victory.' It records, without omitting one essential, the triumph, deliverance, sacrifice, and thanksgiving of Trafalgar Day. The ship was itself part of the battle. It was the vessel of the hero's own choosing. There you may tread the deck where he fell and see the cabin where he died. But this unit, and though every soul who fought her has followed the a complete is only detail. The 'Victory' herself is a whole, great Admiral to his eternal rest, her wooden walls are the embodiment of the words, "This shall be to you for a memorial for ever."
History regrets the loss of a relic of another victory and deliverance by sea commemorated for ever in story, but which never took the place as a national relic for which it was clearly destined. It is matter of common recollection that on the very day when the land army of the Greeks routed the Persian host at Plataea, their fleet across the Aegean destroyed the Persian ships at Mykale. In the moment of intense nervous suspense before the battle was begun the crews of some Greek ships saw floating towards them on the water a herald's staff, such as was carried when news was sent in war. Instantly through all the Grecian fleet, the minds of each and every one of the sailors being exalted by a common great purpose and working like a sensitised receiver, the coninction was transmitted that they had that day won a victory In Greece. After that came the onset and the victory. But no one thought to pick up that herald's staff to keep in the temple of Olympian Zeus.
Next to their undoubted truth is the rarity of these memen- toes of the greater days of the nations. Such great days DTt always be few ; and those on which the event supplies own memorial fewer still. The Ark of the Covenant WaS the to oldest of all national relics ; yet from the Ark the 'Victory' the tale of the ages is illustrated only at rarek intervals by relics chosen by national adoption, or mar ecks out as such by natural propriety, which only the spontaneol
recognition of the people ratifies as such. It has given us the Stone of Scone and the armour of the Black Prince, but no national relic of the Armada or of Waterloo. The solemn and apathetic Turks are capable of moments of extraordinary exaltation, religious and racial. Yet the objects which can fire such enthusiasm are to our eyes trivial and ridiculous. Possessing a tribal relic of extraordinary interest, the leather apron of the founder of the Ottoman line (originally a blacksmith), they preferred to this the clothing worn by the Prophet of Mecca. When the Sultan determined on the total destruction of the Janissaries, he decided after the first day's desperate fighting to exhibit this holy garment to the rapturous gaze of the faithful. The gates of Constantinople were thrown open, and the country Turks poured into the city in tens of thousands to see the holy gar- ment, and then drawing their yataghans joined in the attack upon the Janissaries.
The Bucket of Bologna is said to be the most trivial object which ever served as the pretext for cival war; and it is related that the gates of the temple of Somnauth, carried off from India by the Afghan conqueror, and brought back by General Pollock after his avenging expedition to Kabul by the express desire of Lord Ellenborough, in order to im- press Indian sentiment, had been absolutely forgotten by the people of Hindostan, who did not know what they were being brought back for,—an instance of the futility of ever trying to invest with the character of national relics objects not spontaneously made such by the heart of a nation. The sword of Ivan the Terrible was probably at least as much a national as a dynastic relic ; though the weapons presented to cities or families were often designed to be more in the nature of a retaining fee than a memorial. Thus the city of Exeter still keeps the sword of Henry VIE, but this was presented as a reward for loyalty and a token that the chief town of the West Country was on his side.
Though buildings and tombs do not come strictly within the definition of national relics given above, there are some which in time acquire this place in the esteem of a people. The Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle is of this nature. The senti- ment which it inspires in the German who enters it is altogether of the same character as that which mementoes of great national efforts inspire. The tombs of Charlemagne and of thirty Emperors and Kings lie under its roof. Consciously or unconsciously, the long line of mighty dead were actors in the work which is crowned to-day by German unity and reconstructed power. Of Battle Abbey the same cannot be said. It was without doubt a monument of our own conquest, and could only be regarded in that light by every early Englishman, however much its towers might appeal to the pride of the Norman. But there is a relic intended to be understood in the contrary sense in Portugal, yet bearing the same name, Batelle. It is a church erected in memory of the victory which freed the Portuguese from Spanish dominion, an enduring record of a national deliverance.
Both the Battle Abbeys recall events of lasting national importance. But the danger of being too much in a hurry to commemorate successes, and to manufacture historic objects before time has set its seal on them, or the unerring acclaim of public feeling has chosen them, might be instanced again and again in history. The obelisk set up on the French Bide of the Rhine by the French general stating that "here the Grande Armee crossed for the invasion of Russia in 1812" bears as its comment, "Vu et approuve par moi, 1813," with the signature of the Russian general who was invading France beneath it.
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