i templum sibi vindicat almus;" [149]

when, amidst a great dissoluteness of manners, alike common to Church and
laity, the opposite virtues were, as is invariable in such epochs of
society, carried by the few purer natures into heroic extremes. "And as
gold, the adorner of the world, springs from the sordid bosom of earth,
so chastity, the image of gold, rose bright and unsullied from the clay
of human desire." [150]

And Edith, though yet in the tenderest flush of beautiful youth, had,
under the influence of that sanctifying and scarce earthly affection,
perfected her full nature as woman. She had learned so to live in
Harold's life, that--less, it seemed, by study than intuition--a
knowledge graver than that which belonged to her sex and her time, seemed
to fall upon her soul--fall as the sunlight falls on the blossoms,
expanding their petals, and brightening the glory of their hues.

Hitherto, living under the shade of Hilda's dreary creed, Edith, as we
have seen, had been rather Christian by name and instinct than acquainted
with the doctrines of the Gospel, or penetrated by its faith. But the
soul of Harold lifted her own out of the Valley of the Shadow up to the
Heavenly Hill. For the character of their love was so pre-eminently
Christian, so, by the circumstances that surrounded it--so by hope and
self-denial, elevated out of the empire, not only of the senses, but even
of that sentiment which springs from them, and which made the sole
refined and poetic element of the heathen's love, that but for
Christianity it would have withered and died. It required all the
aliment of prayer; it needed that patient endurance which comes from the
soul's consciousness of immortality; it could not have resisted earth,
but from the forts and armies it won from heaven. Thus from Harold might
Edith be said to have taken her very soul. And with the soul, and
through the soul, woke the mind from the mists of childhood.

In the intense desire to be worthy the love of the foremost man of her
land; to be the companion of his mind, as well as the mistress of his
heart, she had acquired, she knew not how, strange stores of thought, and
intelligence, and pure, gentle wisdom. In opening to her confidence his
own high aims and projects, he himself was scarcely conscious how often
he confided but to consult--how often and how insensibly she coloured his
reflections and shaped his designs. Whatever was highest and purest,
that, Edit