e heroic fortitude of valiant men and
tender girls, to whose piety and courage he owes the very
enlightenment, the very civilisation, of which he boasts.

It is an error, doubtless, and a fearful one, to worship even such as
them. But the error, when it arose, was at worst the caricature of a
blessed truth. Even for the sinful, surely it was better to admire
holiness than to worship their own sin. Shame on those who, calling
themselves Christians, repine that a Cecilia or a Magdalen replaced
an Isis and a Venus; or who can fancy that they are serving
Protestantism by tracing malevolent likenesses between even the
idolatry of a saint and the idolatry of a devil! True, there was
idolatry in both, as gross in one as the other. And what wonder?
What wonder if, amid a world of courtesans, the nun was worshipped?
At least God allowed it; and will man be wiser than God? "The times
of that ignorance He winked at." The lie that was in it He did not
interfere to punish. He did more; He let it work out, as all lies
will, their own punishment. We may see that in the miserable century
which preceded the glorious Reformation; we may see it in the present
state of Spain and Italy. The crust of lies, we say, punished
itself; to the germ of truth within it we partly owe that we are
Christian men this day.

But granting, or rather boldly asserting all this, and smiling as
much as we choose at the tale of St. Dorothea's celestial basket, is
it not absolutely, and in spite of all, an exquisite story? Is it
likely to make people better or worse? We might believe the whole of
it, and yet we need not, therefore, turn idolaters and worship sweet
Dorothea for a goddess. But if, as we trust in God is the case, we
are too wise to believe it all--if even we see no reason (and there
is not much) for believing one single word of it--yet still we ask,
Is it not an exquisite story? Is there not heroism in it greater
than of all the Ajaxes and Achilles who ever blustered on this earth?
Is there not power greater than of kings--God's strength made perfect
in woman's weakness? Tender forgiveness, the Saviour's own likeness;
glimpses, brilliant and true at the core, however distorted and
miscoloured, of that spiritual world where the wicked cease from
troubling, where the meek alone shall inherit the earth, where, as
Protestants too believe, all that is spotless and beautiful in nature
as well as in man shall bloom for ever perfect?

It