orgot that I was
speaking to a clergyman."

"Pray don't beg my pardon on that ground. If what you say be right,
a clergyman above all others ought to hear it; and if it be wrong,
and a symptom of spiritual disease, he ought to hear it all the
more. But I cannot tell whether you are right or wrong, till I know
what you mean by religion; for there is a great deal of very truly
confounded and confounding religion abroad in the world just now, as
there has been in all ages; and perhaps you may be alluding to
that."

Templeton sat silent for a few minutes, playing with the tackle in
his fly-book, and then murmured to himself the well-known lines of
Lucretius:

"Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret
In terris oppressa gravi sub Relligione
Quae caput a coeli regionibus ostendebat,
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans.

There!-blasphemous reprobate fellow, am I not?"

"On the contrary," I said, "I think that in the sense in which
Lucretius intended that the lines should be taken, they contain a
great deal of truth. He had seen the basest and foullest crimes
spring from that which he calls Relligio, and he had a full right to
state that fact. I am not aware that one blasphemes the Catholic
and Apostolic Faith by saying that the devilries of the Spanish
Inquisition were the direct offspring of that 'religious sentiment'
which Mr. Windrush's school-though they are at all events right in
saying that its source is in man himself, and not in the 'regionibus
Coeli'-are now glorifying, as something which enables man to save
his own soul without the interference of 'The Deity'-indeed, whether
'The Deity' chooses or not."

"Do leave these poor Emersonians alone for a few minutes, and tell
me how you can reconcile what you have just said with your own
dialogue."

"Why not?"

"Is not Lucretius glorying in the notion that the gods do not
trouble themselves with mortals, while you have been asserting that
'The Deity' troubles Himself even with the souls of heathens?"

"Certainly. But that is quite a distinct matter from his dislike of
what he calls Relligio. In that dislike I can sympathise fully:
but on his method of escape Mr. Windrush will probably look with
more complaisance than I do, who call it by the ugly name of
Atheism."

"Then I fear you would call me an Atheist, if you knew all. So we
had better say no more about it."

"A most curious speech, certainly, to make to a parson, or soul-
curer b