ge of the true God,
of the really and exclusively holy, of good, truth, beauty, to know and
receive which into our soul we must struggle lifelong with the world and
with ourselves; yes, struggle for the sake of the really holy with that
mere innocence which is for ever threatening to become guilt."

Baldwin paused; then resumed after a moment: "I believe that mankind
as it exists, with whatever noble qualities it possesses, has been
gradually evolved out of a very inferior sort of mankind or brutekind,
and will, I hope, be evolved into a very superior sort of mankind. And I
believe, as science teaches us, that this has been so far effected, and
will be further effected henceforward, by an increased activity of those
nobler portions of us which have been developed as it were by their own
activity; I believe, in short, that we can improve only by becoming
more and more different from the original brutes that we were. I have
said this to explain to you my feelings towards a young poet of my
acquaintance, who is very sincerely smitten with the desire to improve
mankind; and has deliberately determined to devote a very fine talent to
the glorification of what he calls pure passion, pure in the sense that
it can be studied in its greatest purity from the cats on the house
tops."

Cyril made a grimace of disgust.

"No, indeed," continued Baldwin, "that poet is not one of the
aesthetic-sensual lot you seem to think. He is pure, conscientious,
philanthropic; but he is eminently unreasoning. He is painfully
impressed by the want of seriousness and holiness with which mankind
regards marriage, and his ambition is to set mankind right on this
subject, even as another young poet-philanthropist tried to improve
family relations in his 'Laon and Cythna.' Now, if you were required
to use your poetical talents in order to raise the general view of
marriage, in order to show the sanctity of the love of a man and a
woman, how would you proceed?"

"I have often thought about that," answered Cyril; "but it has been done
over and over again, and I think with most deliberate solemnity and
beauty by Schiller and Goethe in the 'Song of the Bell' and in 'Hermann
and Dorothea.' Well, I think that poetry can do good work in this line
only if the poet see where the real holiness of such love lies; in the
love not of the male and the female, but of the man and the woman. For
there is nowhere, I think, greater room for moral beauty and dignity
t