And in all these places, and by all these men (and elsewhere, endlessly, and by hands unnumbered), two thousand years had wrought8 their visible manifestation9 in abbey, church, and cathedral; in manor10 and palace and castle, in trade hall and civic11 hall, and in library and seminary and school.
Wars, great and small, have swept it from river to river, but much has been free for a century and all of it free for forty years. Under every oppression and every adversity it has thriven and grown rich, not in material things alone, but in those commodities that have actual intrinsic value; and a short year ago it was the most prosperous, peaceful, and industrious12 quarter of Europe. Whatever the war, however violent the opposing agencies, its priceless records of architecture and other acts were piously13 or craftily14 spared, except when the madness of the French Revolution swept over its convents and cloisters15, leaving Coxyde, Villers, St. Bavon, St. Jean des Vignes, the Abbaye des Lys, dead witnesses of the faith that had built them and the spared monuments as well.{3}
And now a thing calling itself the highest civilisation16 in Europe, with the name of God in its mouth, again sweeps the already well-swept land. In defiance17 of Peace Palaces and Conferences; in spite of the bankers of the world and their double-knotted purse-strings; in spite of a socialism that said war should not happen again, and an evolutionary18 philosophy that said it could not happen again (men now being so civilised), the world is at war, and the old arena19 of Europe flames as at Armageddon, while those things too sacred for pillage20 and destruction by the armies and the commanders of five centuries are given over to annihilation in order that the peril21 of the Slav, on the other side of Europe, may not menace the treasured civilisation of the West, whose vestiges22 even now are blazing pyres, or cinders23 and ashes!
It is significant that thus far the heavy hand of the pursuer has fallen notably24 on two things: the school and the church; for these are two of the three things he most fears and hates. Not the school, as with him, where secularism25, through economic materialism26 and a sinister27 philosophy, breeds a race as unprincipled as it is efficient and fearless, nor the church, as with him, where in{4}tellectualism ousts28 faith, expediency29 morals, and God is glad “ably to support” the victorious30 battalions31 of a crown prince. Quite otherwise; the school that teaches both independence and regard for law, with religion as the only basis for right conduct, and the Church that teaches humility32 and the reality of sin, and the subservience33 of all rulers, whether king or parliament, to the religion and the authority of a living Christ speaking to-day as He spoke35 on the Mount of Olives.
When the University of Louvain passed in the smoke and flame of a murdered city; when the Church of St. Pierre and the Cathedral of Malines and the Shrine36 of Our Lady of Reims were shattered by bombs and swept by devouring37 fire, there was something in it all other than the grim necessity of a savage38 war; there was the symbol of a new thing in the world, built on all Louvain, Malines, and Reims had denied, and destroying the very outward show of what could not exist on earth side by side with its potent39 and dominant40 negation41.
Reims Cathedral “stood in the line of gunfire,” it was “a landmark42 and unfortunately could not escape,” it had been “fortified43 by the{5} enemy and therefore could not be spared.” All true, each statement, and thus: It stood between a brute44 power founded on Bismarckian force and Nietzschean antichristian philosophy, on the one hand, and on the other nations newly conscious of their Christianity, ashamed of their backsliding, and ready to fight to the death for what had made them. It was a landmark, a vast, visible showing forth46 of a great Christian45 spirit and a greater Christian principle, and as such it must go down. It was fortified, as every church is fortified, to fight against the devil and all his works, and therefore, equally with the allied47 forces behind it, it was fighting against a common enemy. If by its ruin it can make this universally and eternally clear, we can see it go without a tear or a regret, for, like the martyr48 in the Roman arena, it has accomplished49 its work.
Thus far, of the great cities, Liége, Louvain, Malines, Ypres, Arras, and Reims are gone, with the greater part of their treasured art, while Laon, Soissons, and Namur have been grievously wrecked50. Apparently51, Amiens, Noyon, Bruges, and Ghent are now safe, but endless opportunities open for destruction and pillage, and we may well be prepared for irreparable loss before the{6} invader52 is hurled54 back across his natural river frontier. Let us consider, not what already has been annihilated55, but the kind of art it was, so measuring, in a degree, the quality of our loss—and of what we still may lose.
First of all, there are the towns themselves, for all art is not concentrated in h?tel de ville and cathedral; it shows itself sometimes in more appealing guise56 in the river villages and proud cities, and its testimony57 to a great past is here equally potent. Ypres, Malines, Dinant, Termonde, and Huy, all of which are gone, were treasures that belonged to all the world; Namur and Plombières we could not spare, and as for Bruges and Ghent, even apart from their exquisite58 architecture and their treasures of painting, the soul shudders59 at what might happen there were they involved in the retreat of a disorganised army, when one considers what happened to Liége and Louvain in its victorious advance. All Belgium and Luxembourg, all Picardy and Champagne are, or were, rich with lovely little towns and villages, each a work of art in itself; they are shrivelling like a garden under the first frost, and, it may be, in a little while none will remain.{7}
The major architecture of this unhappy land falls into three classes and three periods of time. Oldest and most priceless are the churches, and these are of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the ages when religion was one and secure and was building a great civilisation that we would fain see equalled again. Then come the town halls and guildhalls of the fifteenth century, each speaking for the proud freedom of merchant and burgher, when the hold of religion was weakening a little, and the first signs were showing themselves of what, in the end, was to have issue in this war of wars; finally come the town houses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in all their quaint60 individuality and their overriding61 self-esteem, though fine still, and with hints of the great art that already had passed.
Brussels is full of these, and Antwerp; Louvain had them, and Ypres, Termonde, Arras, and Charleville, only a few months ago; in Bruges and Ghent they fill whole streets and stand in silent accusation62 of what we of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have offered as our contribution to the housing of civilisation.
Of the civic halls the list is endless: Brussels,{8} Malines, Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Antwerp, Mons, Audenaarde, Termonde and Liége; Compiègne, St. Quentin, Arras, Valenciennes; ranging from the grave solemnity of the enormous and wide-spread Ypres to the lacy fantasticism of Louvain and Audenaarde. Architecture has gone far from the Salle Synodale of Sens and the Merveille of Mont-St.-Michel, and it has not gone altogether well, but how significant these stone fancies are of the abounding63 life and the splendid pride and the open-handed beneficence of the fifteenth-century burghers, who loved their towns and bent64 the rebellious65 masonry66 to their will, working it into a kind of stony67 lace and embroidery68 to the glory of trade and civic spirit! If we should lose them now, as we almost lost Louvain, standing69 in the midst of the roaring flame and drifting smoke, while tall churches and rich universities and fair old houses crumbled70 and died around it, what should we not lose?
And the churches, those matchless monuments, four, five, and six centuries old, where generations have brought all their best to glorify71 God, where glass and sculpture, tapestries72 and fretted73 woodwork, pictures, and gold and silver wrought cunningly into immortal74 art—how are we to{9} speak of these, or think of them, with St. Pierre of Louvain and St. Rombaut of Malines still smoking with their dying fires, while piece by piece the calcined stone falls in the embers, and while Reims, one of the wonders of the world, stands gaunt and shattered, wrecked by bombs, swept by fire, its windows that rivalled Chartres split into irremediable ruin, its statues devastated75 that once stood on a level with the sculptures of Greece?
The catastrophe76 itself is so unthinkable that the world does not now half realise it. And yet, what of all that remains77 in the pathway—backward or forward—of Attila and his Huns? St. Gudule of Brussels, St. Bavon of Ghent, and the cathedrals of Antwerp, Tongres, and Tournai; and in France that matchless sequence of which Reims was once the central jewel, Soissons, Senlis and Noyon, St. Remi, Amiens, and Laon; here, with Reims, are seven churches such as man never surpassed, and equalled only at Paris, Chartres, Coutances, and Bourges; each is of a different timbre78, each a different expression of the greatest century of Christian civilisation, and, given the opportunity, there is no reason why each should not suffer the fate of Reims.{10}
There is a thin and sinister philosophy, akin34 to that of Treitschke and Nietzsche (which is for to-day what Machiavelli was for the sixteenth century), that avows80 no building, no consummate81 work of art of any kind, “worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier,” justifying82 its statement on the basis of a superficial humanism. Never was a more malignant83 ethic84. A man is valuable in proportion to what he is and does for righteous society, and for what he makes of himself as a free and immortal soul responsible to God. Go through the roaring mills of Crefeld and Essen, the futile85 pleasure-haunts of Homburg and Wiesbaden, the bureaux and barracks and palaces of Berlin; you will find—as similarly in every country—hundreds of thousands of peasants, workmen, and aristocrats86 whose contribution to Christian civilisation is nothing, and will be nothing however long they may live; who forget their souls and deny their God, and of these we can say, it is not the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier or even the bones of a Prussian Junker that weigh more in the scale than Reims or Louvain, it is not a million of these that mean so much for service and the glory of God, as one such potent influence as Amiens or Reims, or the{11} library and schools of Louvain, or the pictures of Memling and the Van Eycks in Bruges and Antwerp and Ghent.
Those that cry loudest for the sanctity of human life and its priority before art and letters, most insistently87 hurl53 a hundred thousand lives against inevitable88 death, and spread black starvation over myriads89 of women and children, in order that their privilege of selling inferior and unnecessary products to far-away savages90 may be preserved intact. Against this set the cathedrals and universities and the exquisite art of France and Belgium and the Rhine; consider what it meant once, what it means even now, what for the future it is destined91 to mean as never before.
For the old passes: the old that began with Machiavelli and is ending with von Bernhardi. It is not alone Prussia that will be purged92 by the fire of an inevitable conflict, nor Germany, nor all the Teuton lands; it is the whole world, that sold its birthright for a mess of pottage and now, in terror of the price at last to be paid, denounces the infamous93 contract and fights to the death against the armies of the Moloch it helped to fashion. And when the field is won, what happens but the coming into its own again of the{12} very power that made Reims and Louvain, the recovery of the old and righteous and Christian standard of values, the building on the ruins of five centuries of a new civilisation where whatever art that remains will play its due part as the revealer of that Absolute Truth that brought it into being, forgotten now for very long? Then the pictures of Flanders and Umbria and Tuscany, the sculpture of France, the music of Teuton and Slav, the “minor arts” of all medi?valism, the architecture of Bourges and Amiens and Chartres will both reveal and inspire with doubled power.
And in all and through all, Reims in its ruin will be a more potent agency of regeneration than the perfection of Chartres or the finality of Bourges.
I should like to consider, though briefly94 and in the light of a very real unity79 that negatived the political disunity that has always prevailed, the art of these lands where for a twelvemonth millions of men have fought after a fashion never known before, while around them each day saw the irreparable destruction of the best that man could do for the love of God, and better than he can do now. In spite of constantly changing
frontiers and dynastic vicissitudes95, the great unity of medi?valism blends the Rhineland, Flanders, Brabant, Luxembourg, Artois, Champagne, Eastern Normandy, Eastern France, into a consistent whole, so far as all real things are concerned. In spite of its bickerings and fightings and jealousies96 and plots and counterplots, Europe was really more united, more a working whole, during the Middle Ages than ever it has been since. One religion and one philosophy did for the fluctuant states what the Reformation, democracy, and “enlightenment” could only undo97, and in this vanishing art, which, after all, is the truest history man can record, we find the dynamic force, the creative power, of a culture and a civilisation that took little count of artificial barriers between perfectly98 artificial nations, but included all in the greatest and most beneficent syntheses Europe has ever known.
The art of this land—or these lands, if you like—should be so considered; not as an interesting and even stimulating99 by-product100 of social, industrial, and political evolution, with only an accidental relationship to them, and only an empirical interest for the men of to-day, but as the most perfect material expression of the great{14} reality that existed through and by these agencies that were in themselves nothing; the character that emerged through the turmoil101 of human activity, as it shows itself in the men and women of the time, and expresses itself in their art.
To do this fully102 is impossible; every province would require a volume, every art a series of volumes, but at least we can catalogue again the more salient qualities of the greater masterpieces, and try to co-ordinate them into some outward semblance103 of that essential unity they both promised and expressed.
点击收听单词发音
1 grandeur | |
n.伟大,崇高,宏伟,庄严,豪华 | |
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2 begot | |
v.为…之生父( beget的过去式 );产生,引起 | |
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3 champagne | |
n.香槟酒;微黄色 | |
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4 sonorous | |
adj.响亮的,回响的;adv.圆润低沉地;感人地;n.感人,堂皇 | |
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5 evoking | |
产生,引起,唤起( evoke的现在分词 ) | |
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6 monks | |
n.修道士,僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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7 knights | |
骑士; (中古时代的)武士( knight的名词复数 ); 骑士; 爵士; (国际象棋中)马 | |
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8 wrought | |
v.引起;以…原料制作;运转;adj.制造的 | |
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9 manifestation | |
n.表现形式;表明;现象 | |
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10 manor | |
n.庄园,领地 | |
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11 civic | |
adj.城市的,都市的,市民的,公民的 | |
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12 industrious | |
adj.勤劳的,刻苦的,奋发的 | |
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13 piously | |
adv.虔诚地 | |
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14 craftily | |
狡猾地,狡诈地 | |
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15 cloisters | |
n.(学院、修道院、教堂等建筑的)走廊( cloister的名词复数 );回廊;修道院的生活;隐居v.隐退,使与世隔绝( cloister的第三人称单数 ) | |
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16 civilisation | |
n.文明,文化,开化,教化 | |
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17 defiance | |
n.挑战,挑衅,蔑视,违抗 | |
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18 evolutionary | |
adj.进化的;演化的,演变的;[生]进化论的 | |
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19 arena | |
n.竞技场,运动场所;竞争场所,舞台 | |
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20 pillage | |
v.抢劫;掠夺;n.抢劫,掠夺;掠夺物 | |
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21 peril | |
n.(严重的)危险;危险的事物 | |
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22 vestiges | |
残余部分( vestige的名词复数 ); 遗迹; 痕迹; 毫不 | |
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23 cinders | |
n.煤渣( cinder的名词复数 );炭渣;煤渣路;煤渣跑道 | |
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24 notably | |
adv.值得注意地,显著地,尤其地,特别地 | |
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25 secularism | |
n.现世主义;世俗主义;宗教与教育分离论;政教分离论 | |
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26 materialism | |
n.[哲]唯物主义,唯物论;物质至上 | |
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27 sinister | |
adj.不吉利的,凶恶的,左边的 | |
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28 ousts | |
驱逐( oust的第三人称单数 ); 革职; 罢黜; 剥夺 | |
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29 expediency | |
n.适宜;方便;合算;利己 | |
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30 victorious | |
adj.胜利的,得胜的 | |
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31 battalions | |
n.(陆军的)一营(大约有一千兵士)( battalion的名词复数 );协同作战的部队;军队;(组织在一起工作的)队伍 | |
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32 humility | |
n.谦逊,谦恭 | |
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33 subservience | |
n.有利,有益;从属(地位),附属性;屈从,恭顺;媚态 | |
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34 akin | |
adj.同族的,类似的 | |
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35 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
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36 shrine | |
n.圣地,神龛,庙;v.将...置于神龛内,把...奉为神圣 | |
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37 devouring | |
吞没( devour的现在分词 ); 耗尽; 津津有味地看; 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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38 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
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39 potent | |
adj.强有力的,有权势的;有效力的 | |
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40 dominant | |
adj.支配的,统治的;占优势的;显性的;n.主因,要素,主要的人(或物);显性基因 | |
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41 negation | |
n.否定;否认 | |
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42 landmark | |
n.陆标,划时代的事,地界标 | |
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43 fortified | |
adj. 加强的 | |
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44 brute | |
n.野兽,兽性 | |
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45 Christian | |
adj.基督教徒的;n.基督教徒 | |
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46 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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47 allied | |
adj.协约国的;同盟国的 | |
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48 martyr | |
n.烈士,殉难者;vt.杀害,折磨,牺牲 | |
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49 accomplished | |
adj.有才艺的;有造诣的;达到了的 | |
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50 wrecked | |
adj.失事的,遇难的 | |
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51 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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52 invader | |
n.侵略者,侵犯者,入侵者 | |
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53 hurl | |
vt.猛投,力掷,声叫骂 | |
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54 hurled | |
v.猛投,用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 );大声叫骂 | |
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55 annihilated | |
v.(彻底)消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 );使无效;废止;彻底击溃 | |
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56 guise | |
n.外表,伪装的姿态 | |
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57 testimony | |
n.证词;见证,证明 | |
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58 exquisite | |
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
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59 shudders | |
n.颤动,打颤,战栗( shudder的名词复数 )v.战栗( shudder的第三人称单数 );发抖;(机器、车辆等)突然震动;颤动 | |
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60 quaint | |
adj.古雅的,离奇有趣的,奇怪的 | |
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61 overriding | |
a.最主要的 | |
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62 accusation | |
n.控告,指责,谴责 | |
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63 abounding | |
adj.丰富的,大量的v.大量存在,充满,富于( abound的现在分词 ) | |
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64 bent | |
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的 | |
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65 rebellious | |
adj.造反的,反抗的,难控制的 | |
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66 masonry | |
n.砖土建筑;砖石 | |
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67 stony | |
adj.石头的,多石头的,冷酷的,无情的 | |
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68 embroidery | |
n.绣花,刺绣;绣制品 | |
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69 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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70 crumbled | |
(把…)弄碎, (使)碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 ); 衰落; 坍塌; 损坏 | |
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71 glorify | |
vt.颂扬,赞美,使增光,美化 | |
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72 tapestries | |
n.挂毯( tapestry的名词复数 );绣帷,织锦v.用挂毯(或绣帷)装饰( tapestry的第三人称单数 ) | |
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73 fretted | |
焦躁的,附有弦马的,腐蚀的 | |
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74 immortal | |
adj.不朽的;永生的,不死的;神的 | |
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75 devastated | |
v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词);摧毁;毁灭;在感情上(精神上、财务上等)压垮adj.毁坏的;极为震惊的 | |
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76 catastrophe | |
n.大灾难,大祸 | |
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77 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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78 timbre | |
n.音色,音质 | |
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79 unity | |
n.团结,联合,统一;和睦,协调 | |
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80 avows | |
v.公开声明,承认( avow的第三人称单数 ) | |
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81 consummate | |
adj.完美的;v.成婚;使完美 [反]baffle | |
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82 justifying | |
证明…有理( justify的现在分词 ); 为…辩护; 对…作出解释; 为…辩解(或辩护) | |
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83 malignant | |
adj.恶性的,致命的;恶意的,恶毒的 | |
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84 ethic | |
n.道德标准,行为准则 | |
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85 futile | |
adj.无效的,无用的,无希望的 | |
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86 aristocrats | |
n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
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87 insistently | |
ad.坚持地 | |
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88 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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89 myriads | |
n.无数,极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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90 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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91 destined | |
adj.命中注定的;(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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92 purged | |
清除(政敌等)( purge的过去式和过去分词 ); 涤除(罪恶等); 净化(心灵、风气等); 消除(错事等)的不良影响 | |
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93 infamous | |
adj.声名狼藉的,臭名昭著的,邪恶的 | |
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94 briefly | |
adv.简单地,简短地 | |
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95 vicissitudes | |
n.变迁,世事变化;变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 );盛衰兴废 | |
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96 jealousies | |
n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 );妒羡 | |
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97 undo | |
vt.解开,松开;取消,撤销 | |
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98 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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99 stimulating | |
adj.有启发性的,能激发人思考的 | |
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100 by-product | |
n.副产品,附带产生的结果 | |
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101 turmoil | |
n.骚乱,混乱,动乱 | |
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102 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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103 semblance | |
n.外貌,外表 | |
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