which unblushing paganism can go.

Representative of modern literature, Carlyle comes first with his
_Sartor Resartus_. At the ominous and uncertain beginning of our modern
thought he stood, blowing loud upon his iron trumpet a great blast of
harsh but grand idealism, before which the walls of the pagan Jericho
fell down in many places. Yet such an inspiring challenge as his was
bound to produce _reactions_, and we have them in many forms. Matthew
Arnold presses upon his time, in clear and unimpassioned voice, the
claim of neglected Hellenism. Rossetti, with heavy, half-closed eyes,
hardly distinguishes the body from the soul. Mr. Thomas Hardy, the Titan
of the modern world, whose heart is sore with disillusion and the
bitterness of the earth, and yet blind to the light of heaven that still
shines upon it, has lived into the generation which is reading Mr. Wells
and Mr. Shaw. These appear to be outside of all such distinctions as
pagan and idealist; but their influence is strongly on the pagan side.
Mr. Chesterton appears, with his quest of human nature, and he finds it
not on earth but in heaven. He is the David of Christian faith, come to
fight against the heretic Goliaths of his day; and, so far as his style
and literary manner go, he continues the ancient role, smiting Goliath
with his own sword.

Francis Thompson's _Hound of Heaven_ is for many reasons a fitting close
and climax to these studies. He is as much akin to Shelley and Swinburne
as Mr. Chesterton is akin to Mr. Bernard Shaw. From them he has gathered
not a little of his style and diction. He is with them, too, in his
passionate love of beauty, without which no idealist can possibly be a
fair judge of paganism. "With many," he tells us in that _Essay on
Shelley_ which Mr. Wyndham pronounces the most important contribution to
English letters during the last twenty years--"with many the religion of
beauty must always be a passion and a power, and it is only evil when
divorced from the worship of the Primal Beauty." In this confession we
are brought back to the point where we began. The gods of Greece were
ideals of earthly beauty, and by them, while their worship remained
spiritual, men were exalted far above paganism. And now, as we are
drawing to a close, it is fitting that we should again remind ourselves
that religious idealism must recover "the Christ beautiful," if it is to
retain its hold upon humanity. In this respect, religion has greatly and
dis