nts of the parentage and offices of the Graces.
But one fact, the most vital of all, they could not in its fulness
perceive, namely, that the intensity of other perceptions of beauty is
exactly commensurate with the imaginative purity of the passion of love,
and with the singleness of its devotion. They were not fully conscious
of, and could not therefore either mythically or philosophically
express, the deep relation within themselves between their power of
perceiving beauty, and the honour of domestic affection which found
their sternest themes of tragedy in the infringement of its laws;--which
made the rape of Helen the chief subject of their epic poetry, and which
fastened their clearest symbolism of resurrection on the story of
Alcestis. Unhappily, the subordinate position of their most revered
women, and the partial corruption of feeling towards them by the
presence of certain other singular states of inferior passion which it
is as difficult as grievous to analyse, arrested the ethical as well as
the formative progress of the Greek mind; and it was not until after an
interval of nearly two thousand years of various error and pain, that,
partly as the true reward of Christian warfare nobly sustained through
centuries of trial, and partly as the visionary culmination of the faith
which saw in a maiden's purity the link between God and her race, the
highest and holiest strength of mortal love was reached; and, together
with it, in the song of Dante, and the painting of Bernard of Luino and
his fellows, the perception, and embodiment for ever of whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of
good report;--that, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
men might think on those things.

93. You probably observed the expression I used a moment ago, the
_imaginative_ purity of the passion of love. I have not yet spoken, nor
is it possible for me to-day, to speak adequately, of the moral power of
the imagination: but you may for yourselves enough discern its nature
merely by comparing the dignity of the relations between the sexes, from
their lowest level in moths or mollusca, through the higher creatures in
whom they become a domestic influence and law, up to the love of pure
men and women; and, finally, to the ideal love which animated chivalry.
Throughout this vast ascent it is the gradual increase of the
imaginative faculty which exalts and enlarges the authority of the