cked world's end, a matter for pity and tears rather than for
indignation. The most perfect representations, certainly the most
tragical I know of it, are those which are remarkable, not for their
expression, but for their want of expression--the young girl in brocade
and jewels, with the gory head in her hands, thinking of nothing out of
those wide vacant foolish eyes, save the triumph of self-satisfied
vanity; for the spite and revenge is not in her, but in her wicked
mother. She is just the very creature, who, if she had been better
trained, and taught what John the Baptist really was, might have
reverenced him, worshipped him, and ministered unto him. Alas! alas! how
do the follies of poor humanity repeat themselves in every age. The
butterfly has killed the lion, without after all meaning much harm. Ah,
that such human butterflies would take warning by the fate of Herodias'
daughter, and see how mere vanity will lead, if indulged too long and too
freely, to awful crime.

One knows the old stories,--how Herod, and Herodias, and the vain foolish
girl fell into disgrace with the Emperor, and were banished into
Provence, and died in want and misery. One knows too the old legends,
how Herodias' daughter reappears in South Europe--even in old German
legends--as the witch-goddess, fair and ruinous, sweeping for ever
through wood and wold at night with her troop of fiends, tempting the
traveller to dance with them till he dies; a name for ever accursed
through its own vanity rather than its own deliberate sin, from which may
God preserve us all, men as well as women. So two women, one wicked and
one vain, did all they could to destroy one of the noblest human beings
who ever walked this earth. And what did they do? They did not prevent
his being the forerunner and prophet of the incarnate Son of God. They
did not prevent his being the master and teacher of the blessed Apostle
St John, who was his spiritual son and heir. They did not prevent his
teaching all men and women, to whom God gives grace to understand him,
that the true repentance, the true conversion, the true deliverance from
the wrath to come, the true entrance into the kingdom of heaven, the true
way to Christ and to God, is common morality.

And now let us bless God's holy name for all His servants departed in His
faith and fear, and especially for His servant St John the Baptist,
beseeching Him to give us grace, so