and everlasting
contempt. Praise a vain man or a vain woman aright and enough and you
will get them to do anything you like. Give a vain man sufficient
publicity in your paper or on your platform and he will become a spy, a
traitor, and cut-throat in your service. The sorcerer's cup of
praise--keep it full enough in a vain man's hand, and he will sleep in
the arbour of vanity till he wakens in hell. Madam Bubble, the
arch-enchantress, knows her own, and she has, with her purse, her
promotion, and her praise, bought off many a promising pilgrim.

7. And then she, by virtue of whose sorceries this whole land is drugged
and enchanted, is such a bold slut that she will build a Sacred Arbour
even, and will fill it full of religious enchantment for you rather than
lose hold of you. She will consecrate places and persons and periods for
you if your taste lies that way; she will build costly and stately
churches for you; she will weave rich vestments and carve rich vessels;
she will employ all the arts; she will even sanctify and set apart and
seat aloft her holy men--what will she not do to please you, to take you,
to intoxicate and enchant you? She will juggle for your soul equally
well whether you are a country clown in a feeing-market or a fine lady of
aesthetic tastes and religious sensibilities in the capital and the
court. But I shall let Father Faber speak, who can speak on this subject
both with authority and with attraction. "She can open churches, and
light candles on the altar, and intone _Te Deums_ to the Majesty on high.
She can pass into the beauty of art, into the splendour of dress, and
into the magnificence of furniture. She can sit with high principles on
her lips discussing a religious vocation and praising God and sanctity.
On the benches of bishops and in the pages of good books you will find
her, and yet she is all the while the same huge evil creature." Yes; she
is all the time the same Madam Bubble who offered to Standfast her body,
her purse, and her bed.

Now, would you know for yourself, like the communicant who came to me in
my sleep, how you are ever to get past all those arbours, and settles,
and seats, and couches, with all their sweet sorceries and intoxicating
enchantments--would you in earnest know that? Then study well the case
of one Standfast. Especially the time when she who enchants this whole
ground hereabouts set so upon that pilgrim. In one word, it was this: he
remembe