specially trusting those who do not trust themselves.
That enigma is strictly peculiar to Christendom. There is nothing
really humble about the abnegation of the Buddhist; the mild Hindoo
is mild, but he is not meek. But there is something psychologically
Christian about the idea of seeking for the opinion of the obscure
rather than taking the obvious course of accepting the opinion
of the prominent. To say that voting is particularly Christian may
seem somewhat curious. To say that canvassing is Christian may seem
quite crazy. But canvassing is very Christian in its primary idea.
It is encouraging the humble; it is saying to the modest man,
"Friend, go up higher." Or if there is some slight defect
in canvassing, that is in its perfect and rounded piety, it is only
because it may possibly neglect to encourage the modesty of the canvasser.

Aristocracy is not an institution: aristocracy is a sin;
generally a very venial one. It is merely the drift or slide
of men into a sort of natural pomposity and praise of the powerful,
which is the most easy and obvious affair in the world.

It is one of the hundred answers to the fugitive perversion
of modern "force" that the promptest and boldest agencies are
also the most fragile or full of sensibility. The swiftest things
are the softest things. A bird is active, because a bird is soft.
A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. The stone must
by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness.
The bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force.
In perfect force there is a kind of frivolity, an airiness that can
maintain itself in the air. Modern investigators of miraculous
history have solemnly admitted that a characteristic of the great
saints is their power of "levitation." They might go further;
a characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity.
Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.
This has been always the instinct of Christendom, and especially
the instinct of Christian art. Remember how Fra Angelico represented
all his angels, not only as birds, but almost as butterflies.
Remember how the most earnest mediaeval art was full of light
and fluttering draperies, of quick and capering feet. It was
the one thing that the modern Pre-raphaelites could not imitate
in the real Pre-raphaelites. Burne-Jones could never recover
the deep levity of the Middle Ages. In the old Christian pictures
the sk