rcady_ which
precedes this, and was published * * * subsequent to _A Kentucky
Cardinal_ and _Aftermath_. In these two books Nature was interwoven
benignantly with the human nature resting on her bosom, leading her
lover, Adam Moss, with gentle influences to the human lover, and
when bereft of human love, receiving him back into her healing
arms. Not so in _Summer in Arcady_; the sunlight that brooded in
calm over the forces of Nature that nursed Adam Moss's latent
powers of loving into domestic serenity, rouses the fierce claw and
tooth of Nature to drag Hilary and Daphne down to her level. As
clearly as the poet saw that, 'all's Love, yet all's Law' so
clearly is the same truth held in these stories with their
divergent ends. The lawlessness of Nature is the lawlessness of
man, untempered and ungoverned by that principle of chastity which
is the law of love; and again Nature, lawless in herself, becomes
beneficent, law-abiding, when controlled by that higher law of
instinct in man which is the seal and sign of the Divine upon his
soul. Without moralizing, a moral principle is at work in _Summer
in Arcady_; it is its vital distinction that over the whole action
reigns a moral simplicity which, like sunlight, licks up the
foetid, the exciting, sickening, uncertain torch-flames of passion.
And in order to point the way to a full justification of the
author's sincerity and moral purpose against the charge of
pandering to a decadent taste for the 'downwardtending' fiction of
the hour, it will be sufficient to show that the plea for the
Divine supremacy of goodness, and for an unfallen purity in man and
woman, has never been more strongly urged in modern fiction than in
_The Choir Invisible_.

If in _Summer in Arcady_ there were readers who were troubled by
the heat lightning of passion that incessantly fluttered in its
bosom and threatened to bolt from the blue, their fears will be
laid to rest in the contemplation of Mr. Allen's new work which is
pervaded by an intense summer calm--the brooding calm of the
Country of the Spirit--but which does not preclude, rather is
reached through, the fierce fightings of human spirit for victory
over the evil passions of human nature--the fiercest struggle that
can rend asunder the human breast, that of holding fast the
integrity and purity