of the Buddhist; the mild Hindoo is mild, but he is not meek.
But there is something psychologically Christian about the idea of
seeking for the opinion of the obscure rather than taking the obvious
course of accepting the opinion of the prominent. To say that voting is
particularly Christian may seem somewhat curious. To say that canvassing
is Christian may seem quite crazy. But canvassing is very Christian in
its primary idea. It is encouraging the humble; it is saying to the
modest man, "Friend, go up higher." Or if there is some slight defect in
canvassing, that is in its perfect and rounded piety, it is only because
it may possibly neglect to encourage the modesty of the canvasser.

Aristocracy is not an institution: aristocracy is a sin; generally a
very venial one. It is merely the drift or slide of men into a sort of
natural pomposity and praise of the powerful, which is the most easy and
obvious affair in the world.

It is one of the hundred answers to the fugitive perversion of modern
"force" that the promptest and boldest agencies are also the most
fragile or full of sensibility. The swiftest things are the softest
things. A bird is active, because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless,
because a stone is hard. The stone must by its own nature go downwards,
because hardness is weakness. The bird can of its nature go upwards,
because fragility is force. In perfect force there is a kind of
frivolity, an airiness that can maintain itself in the air. Modern
investigators of miraculous history have solemnly admitted that a
characteristic of the great saints is their power of "levitation." They
might go further; a characteristic of the great saints is their power of
levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. This
has been always the instinct of Christendom, and especially the instinct
of Christian art. Remember how Fra Angelico represented all his angels,
not only as birds, but almost as butterflies. Remember how the most
earnest mediaeval art was full of light and fluttering draperies, of
quick and capering feet. It was the one thing that the modern
Pre-raphaelites could not imitate in the real Pre-raphaelites.
Burne-Jones could never recover the deep levity of the Middle Ages. In
the old Christian pictures the sky over every figure is like a blue or
gold parachute. Every figure seems ready to fly up and float about in
the heavens. The tattered cloak of the beggar will bear him up like the
ray