Christianity, for we should remember that it was the WISE men,
who, when they had journeyed far across the world to salute the King
of kings, laid their offerings down at the feet of a little child.

Is there not something to reverence in faith and resignation such as are
here expressed by Evelyn? Were not these men of old with their
unshakable faith and simple piety better and happier than those who in
these days know so much more and believe so much less?

We, no doubt, have the knowledge, but perhaps they had the wisdom.

I think, Antony, that in the history of England we shall have
difficulty in finding any of our greatest men whose hearts and minds
were not filled with a reverence for God and a faith in something
beyond the blind forces which are all that Science has to offer
mankind as a guide of life.

All who have acted most nobly from the days of Ralegh and Sir Thomas
More, down to the days of Gordon of Khartoum, and down again to our
own days when the youth of England upheld the invincible valour,
self-sacrifice, and glory of their race in the greatest of all wars,--all
have been filled with the love of God and have found therein a perfect
serenity in the face of death, and that peace which passeth all
understanding.

The character of our race rests indubitably upon that faith, and he
who lifts his voice, or directs his pen, to tear it down, had better
never have been born.

Your loving old
G.P.

[Footnote 1: Another diary that you should read by and by is that of
Henry Grabb Robinson.]

10

MY DEAR ANTONY,

In these letters I am never going to quote to you anything that does
not seem to me to rise to a level of merit well above ordinary proper
prose. There are many writers whose general correctness and
excellence is not to be questioned or denied whom I shall not select in
these letters for your particular admiration.

By and by, when your own love of literature impels you to excursions in
all directions, you may perhaps come to differ from my judgment, for
everyone's taste must vary a little from that of others.

English prose in its excellence follows the proportions manifested by the
contours of the elevation of the world's land.

Vast tracts lie very near the sea-level, of such are the interminable
outpourings of newspapers and novels and school books. And, as each
ascent from the sea-level is reached, less and less land attains to it,
and when the snow-line is approached only a