On High Places by Hilaire Belloc — Read

All over the world every kind of man has had for the high places of his country, or for the high places that he has seen in travel (though these last have made upon him a lesser impression), a sentiment closely allied to religion and difficult to fit in with common words. It is upon such sites that sacrifice upon special occasion has been offered. It is here that you will find rare, unvisited, but very holy shrines to-day, and even in its last and most degraded form the men of our modern societies, who are atrophied in such things, spur themselves to a special emotion by distant voyages in which they can satisfy this adoration of a summit over a plain. It is not capable of analysis; but how marvellously it fills the mind.

It is not difficult to understand that monk of the Dark Ages -- to be accurate, of the early eleventh century -- who, having doubtless seen Paris a hundred times from the height of Montmartre, could not believe that the martyrdom of St. Denis had taken place on the plain. Something primal in him demanded the high and lonely place as the scene of the foundation of the Church of Lutetia, and he would have it that St. Denis was martyred there. All the popular stories were with him, and the legend arose. Up and down Europe, wherever there are hills, you will find upon conspicuous crags or little peaks, upon the loneliest ridges, a chapel. There is one such on a hill near Remiremont; there is another at Roncesvalles; there is another on the high platform at Portofino; there is another on the very height called Holy Cross above Urgel. In its way, St. Martha's in Surrey is of that kind.