oman, and pilloried one of them, and drove them out under
a shower of stones, selecting them by caprice, persecuting them without
justice, slaying them because they were friendless. But that was all.
For the most part sin was an obsolete thing, archaic and unheard of.

* * *

Music is not a science, any more than poetry is. It is a sublime
instinct, like genius of all kinds.

* * *

Charity in various guises is an intruder the poor see often; but
courtesy and delicacy are visitors with which they are seldom honoured.

* * *

There is no shame more bitter to endure than to despise oneself. It is
harder to keep true to high laws and pure instincts in modern society
than it was in the days of martyrdom.

* * *

One weeps for the death of children, but perhaps the change of them into
callous men and women is a sadder change to see after all.

* * *

Honour is an old-world thing, but it smells sweet to those in whose hand
it is strong.

* * *

Young lives are tossed upon the stream of life like rose-leaves on a
fast-running river, and the rose-leaves are blamed if the river be too
strong and too swift for them and they perish. It is the fault of the
rose-leaves.

* * *

Every pretty woman should be a flirt, every clever woman a politician;
the aim, the animus, the intrigue, the rivalry which accompany each of
these pursuits make the salt without which the great dinner were
tasteless.

* * *

In these old Austrian towns the churches are always very reverent
places; dark and tranquil; overladen, indeed, with ornament and image,
but too full of shadow for these to much offend; there is the scent of
centuries of incense; the walls are yellow with the damp of ages.
Mountain suzerains and bold reiters, whose deeds are still sung of in
twilight to the zither, deep beneath the moss-grown pavement; their
shields and crowns are worn flat to the stone they were embossed on by
the passing feet of generations of worshippers. High above in the
darkness there is always some colossal carved Christs. Through the
half-opened iron-studded door there is always the smell of pinewood, the
gleam of water, the greenness of Alpine grass; often, too, there is the
silvery falling of rain, and the fresh smell of it comes through the
church by whose black benches and dim lamps there