it.

"I have a strong objection to a _voyage pittoresque_ through the
planets; we bear in our own breasts a heaven full of
constellations. There is in our hearts an inward, spiritual world,
that breaks like a sun upon the clouds of the outward world. I mean
that inward universe of goodness, beauty, and truth,--three worlds
that are neither part, nor shoot, nor copy of the outward. We are
less astonished at the incomprehensible existence of these
transcendental heavens because they are always there, and we
foolishly imagine that we create, when we merely perceive them.
After _what model_, with what _plastic power_, and _from what_,
could we create these same spiritual worlds? The atheist should ask
himself how he received the giant idea of God, that he has neither
opposed nor embodied. An idea that has not grown up by comparing
different degrees of greatness, as it is the opposite of every
measure and degree. In fact, the atheist speaks as others of
_prototype_ and _original_."

"Stop there," I cried; "why that is the ontological argument of St.
Anselm, adopted afterwards by a soldier philosopher like yourself,
called Descartes. There's nothing new under the sun. It is wonderful how
modern artists can refurbish our old Masters and make wonderful pictures
from them!"

"Quite so," he replied, "in lieu of yourselves. There, now, I am always
too precipitate; pardon me, sir, if I am too bold; but you Catholics
have a wonderful talent for burying your treasures in napkins. Have you
any treatise on the immortality of the soul in English, and in such a
style as this?"

"I am afraid," I replied, as I looked askance at the volume, "that just
now I cannot mention one. But go on, if it does not tire you. Time is
the cheapest thing we have in Ireland."

He continued:--

"'The inward world, that is indeed more splendid and admirable than
the outward, needs another heaven than the one above us, and a
higher world than that the sun warms; therefore, we say justly, not
a second _earth_, or globe, but a second world beyond this
universe.'

"Gione interrupted me: 'And every virtuous and wise man is a proof
of another world.'

"'And,' continued Nadine quickly, 'every one who undeservedly
suffers.'

"'Yes,' I answered; 'that is what draws our thread of life through
a long eternity. The threefold