urified. Once I believed in, and
revered what I supposed was its existence, but I was speedily
disenchanted of my faith, for,--

'I have seen those that wore Heaven's armor, worsted:
I have heard Truth lie:
Seen Life, beside the founts for which it thirsted,
Curse God and die.'

Dr. Grey, I do not desire to sneer at your Christian trust, and God
knows I would give all my earthly possessions and hopes for a religion
that would insure me your calm resignation and contentment; but the
resurrection of my faith would only resemble that beautiful floral
_Palingenesis_ (asserted by Gaffarel and Kircher), which was but 'the
pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its own ashes,' and
speedily dropping back into dust. Leave me in the enjoyment of the
only pleasure earth can afford me, the contemplation of the
beautiful."

"Unless you blend with it the true and good, your love of beauty will
degenerate into the merely sensuous aesthetics, which, at the present
day, renders its votaries fastidious, etiolated voluptuaries. The
deification of humanity, so successfully inaugurated by Feuerbach and
Strauss, is now no longer confined to realms of abstract speculation;
but cultivated sensualism has sunk so low that popular poets chant the
praises of Phryne and Cleopatra, and painters and sculptors seek to
immortalize types that degrade the taste of all lovers of Art. The
true mission of Art, whether through the medium of books, statues, or
pictures, is to purify and exalt; but the curse of our age is, that
the fashionable pantheistic raving about Nature, and the apotheosizing
of physical loveliness,--is rapidly sinking into a worship of the
vilest elements of humanity and materialism. Pagan aesthetics were
purer and nobler than the system, which, under that name, finds favor
with our generation."

She listened, not assentingly, but without any manifestation of
impatience, and while he talked, her eyes rested dreamily upon the
yellow beach, where,--

"Trampling up the sloping sand,
In lines outreaching far and wide,
The white-maned billows swept to land."

Whether she pondered his words, or was too entirely absorbed by her
own thoughts to heed their import, he had no means of ascertaining.

"Mrs. Gerome, what have you painted recently?"

"Nothing, since my illness; and perhaps I shall never touch my brush
again. Sometimes I have thought I would paint a picture of Handel
standing up to listen to that