e, or illuminating hint upon the beauties of liturgy and
symbolism. They, and a hundred other things, are all gathered up and
introduced to us in Ruskin's books; and we are shown them from the exact
standpoint from which they are most likely to appeal to us, and be of
use. There never was a great world made so easy and pleasant of entrance
for the adventuring traveller; you have only to enter and take
possession.

Do you incline towards myth and symbolism and allegory--the expression
of abstract thought by beautiful figures? Read the myths of Greece
expounded to you in their exquisite spirituality in the "Queen of the
Air." Or is your bent devotion and the devout life, expressed in
thrilling story and gorgeous colour? Read, say, the life of St.
Catherine or of St. George in the "Golden Legend." Or are you in love,
and would express its spring-time beauty? Translate into your own native
language of form and colour "The Romaunt of the Rose."

For the great safeguard and guide in the perilous forest of fancy is to
find enough interest in the actual facts of some history or the
qualities of some heroic character, whether real or fabled, round which
at first you may group your thought and allegory. Listen to _them_, and
try to formulate and illustrate _their_ meaning, not to announce your
own. Do not set puzzles, or set things that will be puzzling, without
the highest and deepest reasons and the apostleship urgently laid upon
you so to do--but let your allegory surround some definite subject, so
that men in general can see it and say, "Yes, that is so and so," and go
away satisfied rather than puzzled and affronted; leaving the inner few
for whom you really speak, the hearts that, you hope, are waiting for
your message, to find it out (and you need have no fear that they will
do so), and to say, "Yes, that _means_ so and so, and it is a good
thought."

For, remember always that, even if you conceive that you have a mission
laid upon you to declare Truth, it is most sternly conditioned by an
obligation, as binding as itself and of as high authority, to set forth
Beauty: the holiness of beauty equally with the beauty of holiness. No
amount of good intent can make up for lack of skill; it is your business
to know your business. Youth always would begin with allegory, but the
ambition of the good intention is generally in exactly the reverse
proportion to the ability to carry it out in expression. But the true
allegory that