ue is wholly different; for to it the ages
burn incense each year, rendering its loveliness more apparent and
bountiful. Virtue grows in beauty, like some dear face we love.
Heroism is virtue; manliness is virtue; devotion is virtue. Sum up
those remembered deeds of which the centuries speak, and you will find
them noble, virtuous. Seen as it is, and with the light of history on
its face, vice is uncomely as a harlot's painted face. King Arthur is
virile and he is noble, engaging and fascinating us like a romance
written by a master, full of persuasive sweetness and enduring help.

Besides, King Arthur was a religious man. This is the transparent
explanation of his career. He is an attempted incarnation of the
precepts and love of Christ. This long-vanished prince knew that if a
king might but repeat the miracle of Jesus' life in his own history, he
would have achieved kingship indeed. "_Mea vita vota_" was Dempster's
motto,--a sentiment Arthur knew by heart. His life was owed to God,
and right manfully he paid his debt. Arthur exalted God in his heart
and court and on hard-fought field. So intense and vivid his sense of
God, he reminds us of the Puritan; but the Puritan touched to beatific
beauty by the interpretation of love God's Christ came to give.
Tennyson always made much of God, saw Him immanent in every hope of
human betterment, saying, as we remember and can not forget:

"Our little systems have their day--
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee;
And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

"The Idyls of the King" and "In Memoriam" might felicitously be called
treatises on theology written in verse. St. Augustine and Wesley were
not more certainly theologians than this poet Laureate. The rest and
help that come to men in prayer is burned into the soul in "Enoch
Arden:"

"And there he would have knelt, but that his knees
Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug
His fingers into the wet earth and prayed."

And

"He was not all unhappy. His resolve
Upbore him, and firm faith and evermore
Prayer from a living source within the will,
And beating up through all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul."

And Arthur, dying, whispers:

"More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise, like a fountain, for me night and day.
For wha