usions, must have its place. The emotions and the imaginations
will assert their just right to be fed--by foul means if not by
fair; and even self-torture will have charms after the utter dryness
and life-in-death of mere ecclesiastical pedantry. It is good,
mournful though it be, that a few, even by gorging themselves with
poison, should indicate the rise of a spiritual hunger--if we do but
take their fate as a warning to provide wholesome food before the
new craving has extended itself to the many. It is good that
religion should have its Werterism, in order that hereafter
Werterism may have its religion. But to my quotations--wherein the
reader will judge how difficult it has been for me to satisfy at
once the delicacy of the English mind and that historic truth which
the highest art demands.

'Erat inter eos honorabile connubium, et thorus immaculatus, non in
ardore libidmis, sed in conjugalis sanctimoniae castitate. For the
holy maiden, as soon as she was married, began to macerate her flesh
with many watchings, rising every night to pray; her husband
sometimes sleeping, sometimes conniving at her, often begging her,
in compassion to her delicacy, not to afflict herself indiscreetly,
often supporting her with his hand when she prayed.' ('And,' says
another of her biographers, 'being taught by her to pray with her.')
'Great truly, was the devotion of this young girl, who, rising from
the bed of her carnal husband, sought Christ, whom she loved as the
_true husband of her soul_.

'Nor certainly was there less faith in the husband who did not
oppose such and so great a wife, but rather favoured her, and
tempered her fervour with over-kind prudence. Affected, therefore,
by the sweetness of this modest love, and mutual society, they could
not bear to be separated for any length of time or distance. The
lady, therefore, frequently followed her husband through rough
roads, and no small distances, and severe wind and weather, led
rather by emotions of sincerity than of carnality: _for the chaste
presence of a modest husband offered no obstacle to that devout
spouse in the way of praying, watching, or otherwise doing good_.'

Then follows the story of her nurse waking Lewis instead of her, and
Lewis's easy good-nature about this, as about every other event of
life. 'And so, after these unwearied watchings, it often happened
that, praying for an excessive length of time, she fell asleep on a
mat beside her husb