a long drive and a wonderfully beautiful one, for the year was at
its best. All the trees had put on their new summer dresses, and never a
pair of them were of the same shade. The hedges were covered with a
wreath of white May-blossom, and seemed like interminable drifts of that
snow in summer which is as good news from a far country; and the roads
were bordered by the feathery hemlock, which covered the face of the
land as with a bridal veil.

"Isn't the world a beautiful place?" said Elisabeth, with a sigh of
content, to Alan, who was driving her in his mail-phaeton. "I do hope
all the people will see and understand how beautiful it is."

"They can not help seeing and understanding; beauty such as this is its
own interpreter. Surely such a glimpse of nature as we are now enjoying
does people more good than a hundred prayer-meetings in a stuffy
chapel."

"Beauty slides into one's soul on a day like this, just as something--I
forget what--slid into the soul of the Ancient Mariner; doesn't it?"

"Of course it does; and you will find that these people--now that they
are brought face to face with it--will be just as ready to worship
abstract beauty as ever the Greeks were. The fault has not been with the
poor for not having worshipped beauty, but with the rich for not having
shown them sufficient beauty to worship. The rich have tried to choke
them off with religion instead, because it came cheaper and was less
troublesome to produce."

"Then do you think that the love of beauty will elevate these people
more and make them happier than Christianity has done?"

"Most assuredly I do. Had our climate been sunnier and the fight for
existence less bitter, I believe that Christianity would have died out
in England years ago; but the worship of sorrow will always have its
attractions for the sorrowful; and the doctrine of renunciation will
never be without its charm for those unfortunate ones to whom poverty
and disease have stood sponsors, and have renounced all life's good
things in their name before ever they saw the light. Man makes his god
in his own image; and thus it comes to pass that while the strong and
joyous Greek adored Zeus on Olympus, the anaemic and neurotic Englishman
worships Christ on Calvary. Do you tell me that if people were happy
they would bow down before a stricken and crucified God? Not they. And I
want to make them so happy that they shall cease to have any desire for
a suffering Deity."

"Well