out when I am dead. I want you to carry out as joint trustee with
her your theories in regard to the ritual, the art, the sermon; and for
this purpose I should of course provide an ample endowment--say three
or four thousand a year; anything you may suggest: I shall leave a great
deal of money behind me."

"Your project startles me, Mr. Linton," said George Holland. "It
startles me as greatly as the first revelation you made to me did.
They may be mistaken--the doctors; I have known cases where the highest
authorities were ludicrously in error. Let us hope that."

"Well, we may hope; I may live long enough to lay the foundation stone
of the Church myself. But I am most anxious that you should give the
whole matter your earnest attention."

"I am quite dazed. Do you suggest that I should leave the Church of
England?"

"By no means. That is a question which I leave entirely to your own
decision. My own idea is that you would like a free hand. You will have
to leave the Church sooner or later. A man with your advanced ideas
cannot regulate your pace to that of an old woman. In twenty years the
Church will think precisely as you think to-day. That is the way with
the Church. It opposes everything in the way of an innovation. You
stated the case very fairly in your paper. The Church opposes every
discovery and every new thing as long as possible. It then only accepts
grudgingly what all civilization has accepted cordially. Oh, yes, you'll
find it impossible to remain in the Church, Mr. Holland. 'Crabbed age
and youth,' you know."

"I should part from the Church with the greatest reluctance, Mr.
Linton."

"Then don't part from it, only don't place yourself in its power. Don't
be beholden to it for your income. Don't go to the heads of the Church
for orders. Be your own master and in plain words, run the concern on
your own lines. The widow of the founder will have no power to interfere
with you in the matter of such arrangements."

"I shall have to give the matter a good deal of thought. I should
naturally have to reform a good deal of the ritual."

"Naturally. The existing ritual is only a compromise. And as for the
hymns which are sung, why is it necessary for them to be doggerel before
they are devotional?"

"The hymns are for the most part doggerel. We should have a first-rate
choir and anthems--not necessarily taken from the Bible. Why should not
Shakspere be sung in churches--Shakspere's divine poetry instea