platform of rock.

"`Now, Arthur, it is your turn,' said he, `you perceive what an effect
my eloquence has produced on old Catiline, there: give him a lecture
upon the sinfulness of indulging the vindictive passions, and exhort him
to repentance.'

"The younger people pressed about me, and instigated and aided by
Barton, they fairly forced me upon the rocky platform. Though by no
means pleased at being obliged to take a part in a farce so little to my
taste, and for which I possessed none of Barton's talent, I saw plainly
that the shortest and least troublesome way, was to comply with their
wishes, and I accordingly endeavoured to recall some fragment of prose
or verse which might serve the present purpose. Supposing that English
would be quite as intelligible and acceptable to them as Barton's Latin,
I was just about to declaim those noble opening lines of Comus--

"`Before the starry threshold of Jove's Court,' etcetera.

"Which used to be a favourite of mine at school, when suddenly another
impulse seized me.

"As I glanced around upon the circle of smiling, upturned countenances,
I was struck by the docile and childlike expression of many of them. I
thought of the sad and benighted condition of this simple people,
without the knowledge of God, or the hope of immortality, given up, as
it seemed, a helpless prey to the darkest and most cruel superstitions.
I thought of the moss-grown marae in the dark wood, with its hideous
idols, its piles of human bones, and its hoary priest--fit minister of
such a religion. I remembered the aged woman at Mowno's house, and the
frightful doom in reserve for her. I felt that perhaps to such
impressible spirits, even a passing word, unskilfully and feebly spoken,
might by God's blessing do good; and yielding to the impulse of the
moment, instead of declaiming the verses from Comus, I began to speak to
them in their own language, of those great truths, the most momentous
for civilised or savage man to know, and the most deeply interesting to
every thoughtful mind, of whatever degree of culture--truths so simple,
that even these untutored children of nature could receive, and be made
happy by them.

"In the plainest and simplest language I could command, and striving to
adapt myself to their habits of thought, and to use those forms of
expression most familiar to them, I announced the great doctrine of the
existence of one God, the sole creator of the world, and the loving