ty a Divine Agony was necessary, so
that all Heaven and its choirs and Hell trembled in the majesty of
this _stricken_ Doom. Death is the final chord, the passage of our
full song from time to the silence of eternity. Sleep next to death is
the most terrible life that soul and body knows. It is the center of
the wheel radiating high powers to the circumference. The speed there
is terrific, so fast that it hardens, again that "majestic instancy."
The tiniest flame is the friction of conflicting "universes." Beauty
is alike the center and circumference of infinity, the silent wheel of
omnipresent omnipotence, wherein all thoughts are not timed but
eternal. From eternity we were nothing: to eternity we are Beauty's
image. Is it strange that in sleep we are often given sight?

August 1.

Art is the exhibition of life in the light of eternity. I can conceive
of no other adequate critical formula. This applies to painting,
sculpture, literature and music. Such too is the art of life,--the
exhibition to God and man of life in the light of eternity. I have
been startled to find a kinship between Wordsworth and Millet. I found
it today in a stooped old man who was traveling the roads with a
walking stick and a heavy bundle of driftwood. He was worthy of a
great painter or a great poet. By the sign of the cross one draws a
magic circle round the soul which evil may not penetrate. It places
one "in the name." On the seashore one should lie parallel with the
waves facing inland. Then only may one advance onward with their
prayer.

August 2.

It is absolutely true that only music may shape woods and fountains
and the beauty of souls, for it is the only medium of expression which
is pure. Pure music is the true white magic, as black magic is music
mixed with clay by human hands. Naked Beauty alone may mix music with
clay in Its own image and likeness. Even poetry fails save in so far
as it echoes the pure natural truths of music. And all creation may
flow from a flute if the player breathes a prayer. Some day we shall
have the great opera of the Incarnation and Redemption. It is the
ideal goal of music, and so of all art. But it demands the poet, the
painter, and the sculptor, too, for its actors shall be immortal
statues and a living chorus singing the passion of the race against
the supreme dawn and the supreme sunset. But its greatest moments will
be silence. Christ and His Mother will live this silence in the glory
of t