while, asleep, with
folded wings, is crouched on one side of her the figure of Love, with
rosy feathers, and on the other the figure of Faith, with plumage
of a deep azure. Over her head, on the portico, are written the
words:--"I am all that hath been, is, and shall be, and no mortal
hath uncovered my veil." The tinted lights falling on the group are
shed, you see, from the rainbow-coloured lamps of Sais, which are
countless. But in spite of all these lamps, Mr. Aylwin, no mortal can
see the face behind that veil. And why? Those who alone could uplift
it, the figures with folded wings--Faith and Love--are fast asleep at
the great Queen's feet. When Faith and Love are sleeping there, what
are the many-coloured lamps of science?--of what use are they to the
famished soul of man?'

'A striking idea!' I exclaimed.

'Your father's,' replied Wilderspin, in a tone of such reverence that
one might have imagined my father's spectre stood before him. 'It
symbolises that base Darwinian cosmogony which Carlyle spits at, and
the great and good John Ruskin scorns. But this design is only the
predella beneath the picture "Faith and Love." Now look at the
picture itself, Mr. Aylwin,' he continued, as though it were upon an
easel before me. 'You are at Sais no longer: you are now, as the
architecture around you shows, in a Greek city by the sea. In the
light of innumerable lamps, torches, and wax tapers, a procession is
moving through the streets. You see Isis, as Pelagia, advancing
between two ranks, one of joyous maidens in snow-white garments,
adorned with wreaths, and scattering from their bosoms all kinds of
dewy flowers; the other of youths, playing upon pipes and flutes,
mixed with men with shaven shining crowns, playing upon sistra of
brass, silver, and gold. Isis wears a Dorian tunic, fastened on her
breast by a tasselled knot,--an azure-coloured tunic bordered with
silver stars,--and an upper garment of the colour of the moon at
moonrise. Her head is crowned with a chaplet of sea-flowers, and
round her throat is a necklace of seaweeds, wet still with sea-water,
and shimmering with all the shifting hues of the sea. On either side
of her stand the awakened angels, uplifting from her face a veil
whose folds flow soft as water over her shoulders and over the wings
of Faith and Love. A symbol of the true cosmogony which Philip Aylwin
gave to the world!'

'Why, that's esackly like the wreath o' seaweeds as poor Winnie Wynne
us