ions--for the instinctive horror of art,
since to these craven souls every written and studied work was in its
nature a vehicle of sin and an incitement to fall.

Would it not really be far more sensible and judicious to open the
windows, to air the rooms, to treat these souls as manly beings, to
teach them not to be so much afraid of their own flesh, to inculcate the
firmness and courage needed for resistance? For really it is rather like
a dog which barks at your heels and snaps at your legs if you are afraid
of him, but who beats a retreat if you turn on him boldly and drive him
off.

The fact remains that these schemes of education have resulted, on the
one hand, in the triumph of the flesh in the greater number of men who
have been thus brought up and then thrown into a worldly life, and on
the other, in a wide diffusion of folly and fear, an abandonment of the
possessions of the intellect and the capitulation of the Catholic army
surrendering without a blow to the inroads of profane literature, which
takes possession of territory that it has not even had the trouble of
conquering.

This really was madness! The Church had created art, had cherished it
for centuries; and now by the effeteness of her sons she was cast into a
corner. All the great movements of our day, one after the
other--romanticism, naturalism--had been effected independently of her,
or even against her will.

If a book were not restricted to the simplest tales, or pleasing fiction
ending in virtue rewarded and vice punished, that was enough; the
propriety of beadledom was at once ready to bray.

As soon as the most modern form of art, the most malleable and the
broadest--the Novel--touched on scenes of real life, depicted passion,
became a psychological study, an effort of analysis, the army of bigots
fell back all along the line. The Catholic force, which might have been
thought better prepared than any others to contest the ground which
theology had long since explored, retired in good order, satisfied to
cover its retreat by firing from a safe distance, with its old-fashioned
match-lock blunderbusses, on works it had neither inspired nor written.

The Church party, centuries behind the time, and having made no attempt
to follow the evolution of style in the course of ages, now turned to
the rustic who can scarcely read; it did not understand more than half
of the words used by modern writers, and had become, it must be said, a
camp of th