we may try in prose and verse to prove
the contrary, never do and never can facilitate the attainment of an aim
worthy of men, but always make it more difficult."

This is sufficiently dogmatic. Chapman thought otherwise.

Without love
All beauties bred in women are in vain,
All virtues born in men lie buried;
For love informs them as the sun doth colors:
And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers,
So love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honorable fruits
Of valor, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts,
Brave resolution and divine discourse.

Thus the great Elizabethan. Now for the laureate of the Victorian age.

For indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

Chapman's strain is higher than Tennyson's, but they harmonise.
Tolstoi's is a harsher note. He vilifies the flesh to exalt the spirit,
as though the two never mingled. He would abolish the springs of life to
purify its stream! He bids us see in our passions "foes to be conquered
rather than friends to be encouraged." Why not try to establish a just
harmony between them? Is there no medium? Must the passions be kings or
slaves, in prison or on the throne? "It is thought an injury to reason,"
wrote Diderot, "to say a word in favor of her rivals; yet it is only the
passions, and strong passions, that can lift the soul to great things;
without them there is nothing sublime, whether in conduct or in
productions--art becomes childish and virtue trivial."

But let us hear Tolstoi simply as a follower of Christ. We cannot do
better than reproduce some of his sentences _in extenso_.

"Christ not only never instituted marriage, but, if we search for formal
precept on the subject, we find that he rather disapproved it than
otherwise. ('And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or
sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my
name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting
life.' Matthew xix. 29, Mark z. 29, 30, Luke xviii. 29,30). He only
impressed upon married and unmarried alike the necessity of striving
after perfection, which in