ng all Christians. They were not regarded as worship, any
more than a similar outpouring of confidence to a beloved and revered
friend yet in the body. Among the hymns of Savonarola is one addressed to
Saint Mary Magdalen, whom he regarded with an especial veneration. The
great truth, that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, that
_all_ live to Him, was in those ages with the truly religious a part of
spiritual consciousness. The saints of the Church Triumphant, having
become one with Christ as he is one with the Father, were regarded as
invested with a portion of his divinity, and as the ministering agency
through which his mediatorial government on earth was conducted; and it
was thought to be in the power of the sympathetic heart to attract them by
the outflow of its affections, so that their presence often overshadowed
the walks of daily life with a cloud of healing and protecting sweetness.

If the enthusiasm of devotion in regard to these invisible friends became
extravagant and took the language due to God alone, it was no more than
the fervid Italian nature was always doing with regard to visible objects
of affection. Love with an Italian always tends to become worship, and
some of the language of the poets addressed to earthly loves rises into
intensities of expression due only to the One, Sovereign, Eternal Beauty.
One sees even in the writings of Cicero that this passionate adoring kind
of love is not confined to modern times. When he loses the daughter in
whom his heart is garnered up, he finds no comfort except in building a
temple to her memory,--a blind outreaching towards the saint-worship of
modern times.

Agnes rose from her devotions, and went with downcast eyes, her lips still
repeating prayers, to the font of holy water, which was in a dim shadowy
corner, where a painted window cast a gold and violet twilight. Suddenly
there was a rustle of garments in the dimness, and a jewelled hand essayed
to pass holy water to her on the tip of its finger. This mark of Christian
fraternity, common in those times, Agnes almost mechanically accepted,
touching her slender finger to the one extended, and making the sign of
the cross, while she raised her eyes to see who stood there. Gradually the
haze cleared from her mind, and she awoke to the consciousness that it was
the cavalier! He moved to come towards her, with a bright smile on his
face; but suddenly she became pale as one who has seen a spectre