modest and delicate and meek and quiet. Take
from thyself grief, for (as Hamlet will one day discover) 'tis the
sister [116] of doubt and ill-temper. Grief is more evil than any
other spirit of evil, and is most dreadful to the servants of God, and
beyond all spirits destroyeth man. For, as when good news is come to
one in grief, straightway he forgetteth his former grief, and no longer
attendeth to anything except the good news which he hath heard, so do
ye, also! having received a renewal of your soul through the beholding
of these good things. Put on therefore gladness that hath always
favour before God, and is acceptable unto Him, and delight thyself in
it; for every man that is glad doeth the things that are good, and
thinketh good thoughts, despising grief."--Such were the commonplaces
of this new people, among whom so much of what Marius had valued most
in the old world seemed to be under renewal and further promotion.
Some transforming spirit was at work to harmonise contrasts, to deepen
expression--a spirit which, in its dealing with the elements of ancient
life, was guided by a wonderful tact of selection, exclusion,
juxtaposition, begetting thereby a unique effect of freshness, a grave
yet wholesome beauty, because the world of sense, the whole outward
world was understood to set forth the veritable unction and royalty of
a certain priesthood and kingship of the soul within, among the
prerogatives of which was a delightful sense of freedom.

The reader may think perhaps, that Marius, who, Epicurean as he was,
had his visionary [117] aptitudes, by an inversion of one of Plato's
peculiarities with which he was of course familiar, must have
descended, by foresight, upon a later age than his own, and anticipated
Christian poetry and art as they came to be under the influence of
Saint Francis of Assisi. But if he dreamed on one of those nights of
the beautiful house of Cecilia, its lights and flowers, of Cecilia
herself moving among the lilies, with an enhanced grace as happens
sometimes in healthy dreams, it was indeed hardly an anticipation. He
had lighted, by one of the peculiar intellectual good-fortunes of his
life, upon a period when, even more than in the days of austere ascesis
which had preceded and were to follow it, the church was true for a
moment, truer perhaps than she would ever be again, to that element of
profound serenity in the soul of her Founder, which reflected the
eternal goodwill of G