erialist of long
ago is the mouthpiece for his fraters in these last days. There is one
speech, and that a speech of dull despair, for those who say there is
no God; and for them who have no God, there is no duty, for duty is
born of hold on God. King Arthur, sure of God, therefore never asking,
"What is duty?" but in its stead urges the nobler query, "Where is
duty?" and so infused himself into the blood of empire; aye, and more,
into the spiritual blood of uncalendared centuries.

And King Arthur was pure. Vice is so often glorified and offers such
chromo tints to the eye as that many superficial folks think virtue
tame and vice exhilarating. Here lies the difficulty. They look on
those parts which are contiguous to vice, but are really not parts of
it. In the self of vice is nothing attractive. Lying, lust, envy,
hate, debauchery,--which of these is not tainted? Penuriousness is
vice unadorned, and who thinks it fair? Like Spenser's "false Duessa,"
it is revolting. Drunkenness, bestiality, spleen,--what roseate views
shall you take of these? Who admires Caliban? And Caliban is vice,
standing in its naked vileness and vulgarity. Man, meant for manhood,
self-reduced to brutehood,--that is drunkenness. In an era when Dumas
by fascinating fictions was making vice ingratiating, Tennyson was
rendering virtue magnificent. Can any person of just judgment rise
from reading "Idyls of the King" without feeling a repugnance toward
vice, like a nausea, and a magnetism in virtue? An admiration for
Arthur becomes intense. The poet draws no moral from his parable:
doing what is better, he puts morals into one's blood. While never
railing at Guinivere, he makes us ashamed of her and for her, and does
the same with Lancelot. He makes virtue eloquent. King Arthur is
neither drunkard nor libertine, therein contradicting the pet theories
of many people's heroes. He loves cleanness and is clean. He demands
in man a purity equal to woman's; setting up one standard of mortals
and not two. The George Fourth style of king, happily, Arthur is not;
for George was a shame to England and to men at large, while Arthur is
a glory, burning on above the cliffs of Wales, like some brave sunrise
whose colors never fade. To men and women, he is one law of virtue and
one law of love. When the years have spent their strength, then vice
shows itself hideous vice. The glamour vanished, no one can love or
plead for wickedness. Virt