tity, as of
hidden violets."

And again: He "noticed the flowers when their timorous splendours peeped
through the snow at the first impulse of life in the dark earth, and
when, afterwards, as a mantle they spread their glory over garden and
field; greeted the birds, from the lark's early carol, and the arrival
of the swallows, until the woods became vocal with multitudinous
voices."

As to Hunt's religion, by the way, there has been much discussion. I
have Leigh Hunt's copy of a volume bearing this long title: "_The
Mystical Initiations; or, Hymns of Orpheus, translated from the original
Greek: with a preliminary dissertation on the Life and Theology of
Orpheus_," containing this observation in Hunt's hand-writing:

Mr. Taylor's faith sometimes makes him eloquent; but if he had
united, with his Platonical abstractions, the true Christian power
of socially working at all times, he need not have feared whatever
seemed coming. Platonism and Christianity, if either be thoroughly
understood, are formed admirably to go together. The first shapes
the human being to beauty and imagination, the latter to love and
immortality. The first perfects him individually, the latter to
endless companionship. Platonism lifts the philosopher towards
heaven: Christianity takes up the whole human race, and puts them
there.

I should like to be a worshiper in a Christian temple, in which
whatsoever is good and beautiful should be held, for those reasons,
to be divinely true; in which Plato's unmalignant evil should be
the ground for Christ's all-benevolent good to stand upon; and in
which no more limits should be assigned to whatever was sincere,
loving, and imaginative, than to that boundless and beautiful sky,
which is surely large enough to hold it.

In these days when so many feel forebodings of trouble it is pleasant to
recall that two such men as Robert Louis Stevenson and Leigh Hunt, each
of whom had reason for gloomy thoughts, persisted in looking upon the
bright things of life. Not anywhere in the writings of these two men
will one find them dwelling on their miseries. Per contra, both preached
cheerfulness. In darkest hours they saw the sunshine and the flowers.
Like our own Lincoln, they plucked the thistle and planted the flower
where they thought the flower would grow. The reading of these two
authors is recommended--as is also a better and