CHAPTER X.
THE ENDLESS EMPIRE One of the adventures of travel consists, not so much in finding that popular sayings are false, as that they mean more than they say.
We cannot appreciate the full force of the phrase until we have seen the fact.

We make a picture of the things we do not know out of the things we know; and suppose the traveller's tale to mean no more abroad than it would at home.

If a man acquainted only with English churches is told about certain French churches that they are much frequented, he makes an English picture.
He imagines a definite dense crowd of people in their best clothes going all together at eleven o'clock, and all coming back together to lunch.

He does not picture the peculiar impression he would gain on the spot; of chance people going in and out of the church all day, sometimes for quite short periods, as if it were a sort of sacred inn.

Or suppose a man knowing only English beer-shops hears for the first time of a German beer-garden, he probably does not imagine the slow ritual of the place.
He does not know that unless the drinker positively slams down the top of his beer-mug with a resounding noise and a decisive gesture, beer will go on flowing into it as from a natural fountain; the drinking of beer being regarded as the normal state of man, and the cessation of it a decisive and even dramatic departure.
I do not give this example in contempt; heaven forbid.
I have had so much to say of the inhuman side of Prussianised Germany that I am glad to be able to pay a passing tribute to those more generous German traditions which we hope may revive and make Germany once more a part of Christendom.