h which she is always represented, as herself a miracle
of learning, and its chosen universal patroness in the schools of the
Middle Ages.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian_. Unquestionably the legend is interesting. At
present, your faith is simply poetical. But take care, my young friend,
that you do not finish by becoming the dupe of your own mystification.

_Mr. Falconer._ I have no fear of that I think I can clearly distinguish
devotion to ideal beauty from superstitious belief. I feel the necessity
of some such devotion to fill up the void which the world, as it is,
leaves in my mind. I wish to believe in the presence of some local
spiritual influence; genius or nymph; linking us by a medium of
something like human feeling, but more pure and more exalted, to the
all-pervading, creative, and preservative spirit of the universe; but
1 cannot realise it from things as they are. Everything is too deeply
tinged with sordid vulgarity. There can be no intellectual power
resident in a wood, where the only inscription is not '_Genio loci_,'
but 'Trespassers will be prosecuted'; no Naiad in a stream that turns a
cotton-mill; no Oread in a mountain dell, where a railway train deposits
a cargo of vandals; no Nereids or Oceanitides along the seashore, where
a coastguard is watching for smugglers. No; the intellectual life of
the material world is dead. Imagination cannot replace it. But the
intercession of saints still forms a link between the visible and
invisible. In their symbols I can imagine their presence. Each in
the recess of our own thought we may preserve their symbols from the
intrusion of the world. And the saint whom I have chosen presents to
my mind the most perfect ideality of physical, moral, and intellectual
beauty.

1 Epod. 16, 13.

[Illustration: Perfect ideality of beauty. 091-61]

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian_. I cannot object to your taste. But I hope
you will not be led into investing the ideality with too much of
the semblance of reality. I should be sorry to find you far gone in
hagiolatry. I hope you will acquiesce in Martin, keeping equally clear
of Peter and Jack.

_Mr. Falconer._ Nothing will more effectually induce me so to acquiesce
than your company, dear doctor. A tolerant liberality like yours has a
very persuasive influence.

From this digression the two friends proceeded to the arrangement of
their Aristophanic comedy, and divided their respective shares after the
manner of Beaumont and Fletcher