lasphemy
where it is not, and to confuse reasoning with ribaldry."

"Ah!" said the curate, looking the more ascetic because he was slightly
confused in mind.

"Now you spoke of music ousting doctrine. Do you not think that the
truest, the most poignant doctrine, speaks, utters itself through the
arts. Music has its religion and its atheism, painting its holiness
and its sin. A statue, in its white and marble stillness, may suggest
to us dreams in which the angels walk, or visions that I will not
characterise in the presence of an ordained priest. Even architecture
may incline us to worship, and a few broken fragments of stone to faith.
Have you ever been in Greece?"

"I have never been out of my own country," said Mr. Smith, "except once,
when I spent a week in Wales."

"I have never made an exhaustive study of Welsh art," said Amarinth,
"but I believe Mr. Gladstone thinks it gallant, while others prefer to
call it little. But the point I wanted to suggest was merely this, that
we can draw doctrine from the music and the painting of men, as well as
from literature and sermons."

"I have never thought of it before," said Mr. Smith doubtfully.

"Mozart and Bach have given me belief that not even the subversive
impotencies of Sir Arthur Sullivan, and the terribly obvious 'mysteries'
of Dr. A. C. Mackenzie, have been able to take from me," murmured Lord
Reggie.

"Ah! Reggie, each decade has its poet Bunn," remarked Amarinth. "We have
our Bunn in Mr. Joseph Bennett, but where are his plums? Religion dwells
in the arts, Mr. Smith, as irreligion so often, unhappily, lurks in the
sciences."

"Indeed I have no opinion of science," the curate said with
authoritative disapproval.

"Science is too often a thief. Art is a prodigal benefactor. She
provides for us an almshouse in which we can take refuge when we are old
and weary. And in music especially--in good music--all doctrine is
crystallised. The man who has genius gathers together all his highest
thoughts and aspirations, all his beliefs, his trust, his faith, and
gives them forth in his art, in his music, or in his picture. Lord
Reginald, for instance, would convert more men to Christianity by his
exquisite and purple anthem than most preachers by all their sermons."

"Indeed, has Lord Reginald composed an anthem?" asked the curate, gazing
upon Reggie with a priestly approval.

"He has, and one that Roman Catholics have delighted in. Forgive my
allusion to an a