any a glowing kiss had won.

* * * * *

Thus she stood amid the stocks,
Praising God with sweetest looks.

Sure, I said, Heaven did not mean
Where I reap thou should'st but glean;
Lay thy sheaf adown and come,
Share my harvest and my home."

That the Bible was translated into English at the time when the
language was spoken and written in its most noble form, by men whose
style has never been surpassed in strength combined with simplicity,
has been a priceless blessing to the English-speaking race. The land of
its birth, once flowing with milk and honey, has been for long centuries
a place of barren rocks and arid deserts: Persians and Greeks and
Romans and Turks have successively swept over it; the descendants
of those who at different times produced its different books are
scattered to the ends of the earth; but the English translation has for
long years been the head corner-stone in homes innumerable as the
sands of the sea in number.

No upheavals of the earth, no fire, pestilence, famine, or slaughter, can
ever now blot it out from the ken of men.

When all else is lost we may be sure that the old English version of the
Bible will survive. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words
shall not pass away."

Do not think it enough therefore, Antony, to hear it read badly and
without intelligence or emotion, in little detached snippets, in church
once a week.

Read it for yourself, and learn to rejoice in the perfect balance,
harmony, and strength of its noble style.

Your loving old
G.P.

3

MY DEAR ANTONY,

I could write you many letters like my last one about the Bible, and
perhaps some day I will go back to that wonderful Book and write
you some more letters about it; but now I will go on and tell you about
some of the great writers of English prose that came after the
translation of the Bible.

Those translators were the great founders of the English language,
which is probably on the whole the most glorious organ of human
expression that the world has yet known.

It blends the classic purity of Greek and the stately severity of Latin
with the sanguine passions and noble emotions of our race.

A whole life devoted to its study will not make you or me perfectly
familiar with all the splendid passages that have been spoken and
written in it. But I shall show in my letters, at least some of the
glorious utterances scattered around me here in