, anticipating Zutphen, the most perfect knight in our
history. Again--

"Truly I have known men that even with reading _Amadis de Gaule_
(which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesy) have found
their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and
especially courage."--

All active virtues be it noted. "We are not damned for doing wrong,"
writes Stevenson, "but for not doing right. Christ will never hear of
negative morality: _Thou shalt_ was ever His word, with which He
superseded _Thou shalt not_. To make our morality centre on forbidden
acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of
our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. . . . In order that a man may be
kind and honest it may be needful that he should become a total abstainer:
let him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance.
Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts." Yet how many
times a day will we say 'don't' to our children for once that we say 'do'?
But here I seem to be within reasonable distance of discussing original
sin, and so I return to Mr. Blank.

I do not like Mr. Blank; and I disliked his speech the other night so
heartily that it drove me to sit down when I reached home and put my
reflections into verse; into a form of verse, moreover, which (I was
scornfully aware) Mr. Blank would understand as little as the matter of
it. He would think them both impractical. Heaven help the creature!

CHANT ROYAL OF HIGH VIRTUE.

Who lives in suit of armour pent,
And hides himself behind a wall,
For him is not the great event,
The garland, nor the Capitol.
And is God's guerdon less than they?
Nay, moral man, I tell thee Nay:
Nor shall the flaming forts be won
By sneaking negatives alone,
By Lenten fast or Ramazan,
But by the challenge proudly thrown--
_Virtue is that beseems a Man!_

God, in His Palace resident
Of Bliss, beheld our sinful ball,
And charged His own Son innocent
Us to redeem from Adam's fall.
--"Yet must it be that men Thee slay."
--"Yea, tho' it must must I obey,"
Said Christ,--and came, His royal Son,
To die, and dying to atone
For harlot and for publican.
Read on that rood He died upon--
_Virtue is that beseems a Man!_

And by that rood where He was bent
I saw th