terate the habits of
mind which I shall have to change. Many the delightful recollections
which I shall have to pluck out of my heart. I will try, but I am not
very confident of my power. Late in life have I known thee, O perfect
Beauty. I shall be beset with hesitations and temptation to fall
away. A philosophy, perverse no doubt in its teachings, has led me to
believe that good and evil, pleasure and pain, the beautiful and
the ungainly, reason and folly, fade into one another by shades as
impalpable as those in a dove's neck. To feel neither absolute love
nor absolute hate becomes therefore wisdom. If any one society,
philosophy, or religion, had possessed absolute truth, this society,
philosophy, or religion, would have vanquished all the others and
would be the only one now extant. All those who have hitherto believed
themselves to be right were in error, as we see very clearly. Can we
without utter presumption believe that the future will not judge us as
we have judged the past? Such are the blasphemous ideas suggested to
me by my corrupt mind. A literature wholesome in all respects like
thine would now be looked upon as wearisome.

"Thou smilest at my simplicity. Yes, weariness. We are corrupt; what
is to be done? I will go further, O orthodox Goddess, and confide to
you the inmost depravation of my heart. Reason and common sense are
not all-satisfying. There is poetry in the frozen Strymon and in the
intoxication of the Thracian. The time will come when thy disciples
will be regarded as the disciples of _ennui_. The world is greater
than thou dost suppose. If thou hadst seen the Polar snows and the
mysteries of the austral firmament thy forehead, O Goddess, ever so
calm, would be less serene; thy head would be larger and would embrace
more varied kinds of beauty.

"Thou art true, pure, perfect; thy marble is spotless; but the temple
of Hagia-Sophia, which is at Byzantium, also produces a divine effect
with its bricks and its plaster-work. It is the image of the vault of
heaven. It will crumble, but if thy chapel had to be large enough to
hold a large number of worshippers it would crumble also.

"A vast stream called Oblivion hurries us downward towards a nameless
abyss. Thou art the only true God, O Abyss! the tears of all nations
are true tears; the dreams of all wise men comprise a parcel of truth;
all things here below are mere symbols and dreams. The Gods pass away
like men; and it would not be well for