ligion that contents itself with merely
material beauty, differs in nothing but nomenclature from the
pagan worship of Cybele, Venus, and Astarte."

A chill smile momentarily brightened Mrs. Gerome's features, and
turning towards her visitor, she answered slowly,--

"Be thankful, sir, that even the worship of beauty lingers in this
world of sin and hate; and instead of defiling and demolishing its
altars, go to work zealously and erect new ones at every cross-roads.
Lessing spoke for me when he said, 'Only a misapprehended religion can
remove us from the beautiful, and it is proof that a religion is true
and rightly understood when it everywhere brings us back to the
Beautiful.'"

"Pardon me. I accept Lessing's words, but cavil at your interpretation
of them. His reverence for Beauty embraced not merely physical and
material types, but that nobler, grander beauty which centres in pure
ethics and ontology; and a religion that seeks no higher forms than
those of clay,--whether Himalayas or 'Greek Slave,'--whether emerald
icebergs, flashing under polar auroras, or the myosotis that nods
there on the mantelpiece,--a religion that substitutes beauty for
duty, and Nature for Nature's God, is a shameful sham, and a curse to
its devotees. There is a beauty worthy of all adoration, a beauty far
above Antinous, or Gula or Greek aesthetics,--a beauty that is not the
_disjecta membra_ that modern maudlin sentimentality has left it,--but
that perfect and immortal 'Beauty of Holiness,' that outlives marble
and silver, pigment, stylus, and pagan poems that deify dust."

He leaned towards her, watching eagerly for some symptom of interest
in the face before him, and bent his head until he inhaled the
fragrance of the violets which clustered on one side of the coil of
hair.

"'Beauty of Holiness.' Show it to me, Dr. Grey. Is it at La Trappe, or
the Hospice of St. Bernard? Where are its temples? Where are its
worshippers? Who is its Hierophant?"

"Jesus Christ."

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to shut out some painful
vision evoked by his words.

"Sir, do you recollect the reply of Laplace, when Napoleon asked him
why there was no mention of God in his '_Mecanique Celeste_?' '_Sire,
je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothese._' I was not sufficiently
insane to base my religion of beauty upon a holiness that was buried
in the tomb supplied by Joseph of Arimathea,--that was long ago hunted
out of the world it might have p