may be tempted to remark that he has certainly followed
the first part of the prescription.

Mr. Le Gallienne is a long time in coming to "the sublime figure of
Christ." He has a considerable ground to cover before he undertakes the
cleaning and painting of the old idol. First of all, he has to establish
his native superiority over the common herd. He divides the world into
"natural spiritualists and materialists." The first have a Spiritual
Sense (capitals, please), while the second have not; and "it is obvious
that the large majority of mankind belong to the latter class." Mr. Le
Gallienne, of course, belongs to the former. He is a member of Nature's
(or God's) aristocracy. It is for them that he writes, although on his
own supposition the task is superfluous. The common herd of materialists
are warned against wasting their time in reading him--which also
is somewhat superfluous. The fault of materialists--or rather their
misfortune, for they are born that way--is that they are such sticklers
for facts, and have "no conception of aught they cannot touch and
handle, eat, or see through a microscope." Not, indeed, that Mr. Le
Gallienne objects to eating, for instance; he speaks of it with wet
lips, and looks down upon the Vegetarian as a person whose "spiritual
insight" is not "mercifully intermittent," especially at meal times. But
barring meal times, and other fleshly occasions when the spiritualists
join the materialists, the former habitually see facts as "transitory
symbols" of "transfiguring mysteries," so that the whole world (and
perhaps the moon) is "palpitating with occult significance."

For instance. A materialist eats rook-pie, and cares for nothing else
but a sound digestion. The spiritualist also eats rook-pie, but after
the repast he will sentimentalise over dead rooks, without losing his
belief in an all-merciful Providence. He will assure you, indeed, and
try to convince you, that the shooting of rooks and the pulling off
their heads to prevent the rook-pie from tasting bitter, is simply
one of the "terrible and beautiful mysteries" which make the world
so interesting--especially to gentlemen of comprehensive natures, who
combine a taste for rook-pie with a taste for optimistic theology.

When we come to test Mr. Le Gallienne's conception of mystery, we find
it to be nothing but muddle. The whole mystery of life, he says, may be
found in a curve: as thus, Why isn't it straight?

"Color in itself is