Oh far sea-farer, Blow the sky clear for us, Seamen that fare for them Forth, with a prayer for them; Violet Staunton: I should like to repeat that. It must taste in one's mouth, as one says it, like a wine. It is quite true, as you say, that it is an arrangement in vowel sounds. really can't see any. As to the sense of it, I Gage Stanley: Most of the volume is composed, apparently, on the same principle. He always had a tendency this way; but now it has grown on him. And yet, when he began, he had the faculty-no one better-of making sound and sense stand in their right relationship. This new volume is to me a very sad one, because there are many verses that remind you what he might have done, side by side with the rest, which convince you he will never do it. Listen to this now about the dead Baudelaire. What can be more felicitous than this?-though even here the loud pedal has been put down for a moment: And one weeps with him in the way Lethean, And stains with tears her changing bosom chill, That obscure Venus of the hollow hill, That thing transformed which was the Cytherean. And see how tender too are these lines, with their grave hushed music: For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother, Take at my hands this garland, and farewell. And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother. Lady Lilith Wardour: Out of which poem are those lines? Gage Stanley: Out of the same poem about Baudelaire. It is a dirge for his death, called Ave atque vale.'. It is a mixture of a dirge and a criticism. Now there is a curious feature about this volume. About half of it is really literary criticisms in verse. There is one long poem in it called 'In the Bay.' It begins like this. I will read the verse to you, for it is very characteristic of the writer's style: Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west, Is as a port, with clouds for harbour bar, That stir no plume now of the bland sea's breast. Well, I read on and on, thinking I was still dealing with the sea, and on a sudden discovered I had drifted into the Elizabethan dramatists and Shelley. The allusions are as obscure as Lycophron, and if Shakespeare and Webster had not been mentioned by name, one would have had no clue whatever to what the poet was driving at. However, when all is said, here is a genuine singer, with a lark's delight in the music he gives forth, and music like his was certainly never made before with language, though one would like to see in language something more than a musical instrument. Just look, Miss Staunton, at the last verse in the book-the close of the dedication of it to Richard Burton. Violet Staunton (reading): For life's helm rocks to the windward and lee; And time is as wind, and as waves are we; And song is as foam that the sea winds free, Though the thought at its heart may be deep as the sea. Ralph Burgoyne: These last two lines are a curious comment on the whole volume. Violet Staunton: I think that one of the loveliest and most touching verses I ever read. Gage Stanley: I quite agree with you. Perhaps of all similes in the world Dante's are most perfect, but I think the simile in this verse might stand with any of Dante's. By the way, Lady Lilith, I wonder what Dante would have thought of the pictures, and the state of things generally, that we have just now been discussing. Lady Lilith Wardour: I must have that out again with you at some more convenient season. For really now I must be saying good-bye. Gage Stanley: Before you go, let me lend you a book to take with you. It is called Proteus and Amadeus. It bears a great deal on what we have been talking about. Proteus is a Roman Catholic, who has lost faith; and Amadeus is his old tutor. They are genuine letters, and for that reason very interesting. Proteus is a Proteus and Amadeus, a Correspondence. Edited by Aubrey de Vere. Kegan Paul and Co.) (C. man in every way above the average, and you have here his confession as to how the modern school of thought has affected him and his entreaty to his friend to liberate him from its bondage. Of course you won't like the book much; and so charitable am I, that this is the very reason why I want to lend it to you. Lady Lilith Wardour: And why shan't I like it? Gage Stanley: Because the whole history of Proteus is the history of the shipwreck of a life under the guidance of your theories. Lady Lilith Wardour: I don't much care to read about that, because some people will always make shipwreck of their lives, let them believe much or little; but what I should care to learn is what sort of reply the tutor makes to Proteus. Does he-I suppose, from what you say, that the tutor is a Catholic, as the pupil is-does he give any reason for the faith that is in him? Has he got any compelling proof to offer? Because if he hasn't, of course we are left just where we were. Gage Stanley: I'm afraid the good man doesn't shine in his proofs -nor indeed in anything else that I can see, except his good intentions. No; a more feeble set of arguments I never read in my life. Lady Lilith Wardour (brightening): Pray lend me the book. I shall like much to look at it. I have no doubt Amadeus is a very typical reasoner. What I want is the imbecility of theology concentrated in a short space. I don't know Latin, you see; and if I did, the works of Aquinas are so long that I should hardly find time to read them through during the London season. Good-bye, Mr. Stanley. I'll take care of your book, and send it back to you in a day or two, with my marks in it. [Exit.] Ralph Burgoyne: Well, there goes the most ornamental utilitarian that ever I set eyes on. Gage Stanley: She, in her way, knows as little of life as Mill did in his way. 'She has but fed on the roses and lain on the lilies' of it. What! Miss Staunton, and are you going too? Violet Staunton: I am, Mr. Stanley. We have certainly had a most instructive conversation. Gage Stanley: At least we have been talking about most instructive topics. Violet Staunton: I have read Proteus and Amadeus, and that, I confess, I did not think very instructive. Of course we all know that if men don't believe in God, in a soul, in a heaven, they won't take the trouble to behave well-and why should they? At least that is my experience of others. Lady Lilith Wardour may perhaps know the world better than I do, or she may have been more fortunate in her acquaintance. And as to the letters of that priest-as you say, they are really too foolish. Gage Stanley: To me the book is a very suggestive one. It actually shows you in the heart of a man of the world, what otherwise one only knew must be there. And seeing a thing itself, and knowing that it exists, are two very different things. The priest's letters, to me, are very suggestive also; and they show me more forcibly than anything I have read for a long time, that if theology is to make any fight at all, it must provide itself with quite new weapons; for the old ones are by this time quite blunted. Violet Staunton: I must make my adieux now for a second time. I like, Mr. Stanley, talking to you and to your cousin. You are both people whom thought has taught to be pessimists. Women, of course, can't reason, but I have learned the same lesson from experience. W. H. MALLOCK. THE RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AS ILLUSTRATED BY GREEK INSCRIPTIONS. II. In my remarks on the temples of the Greeks and their establishments of priests and other ministers, in the June number of the Nineteenth Century, I have taken first in order those in which the public worship of the State was carried on. But there were many other temples and sanctuaries which were endowed and maintained by private citizens or by religious associations, and which had their establishments of priests paid out of the revenues of sacred estates. Sometimes these pious investments were made under the direction of an oracle, sometimes at the promptings of a dream, or in honour of the dead. We have a familiar example of such a private endowment in the case of Xenophon, who devoted the tenth of certain spoil gained in war to the purchase of an estate in Lakonia, on which he built a temple in honour of the Ephesian Artemis, surrounded by a forest full of wild animals. The condition on' which the tenant held the sacred land round this temple was that he was every year to devote the tenth of its produce to a great festival in honour of Artemis, to which the neighbours round about were invited, and also to keep the temple in repair. In an inscription from Santorin commonly known as the will of Epikteta (Böckh, No. 2448), the conditions under which the endowment is made are very fully and clearly stated. Phoenix, the husband of Epikteta, dedicated a temple to the Muses in memory of a son whom they had lost. Epikteta, becoming a widow and losing another son, erected sculptures and sepulchral shrines (heroa) in memory of her husband and children, and bequeathed 3,000 drachmæ, about 1207., in trust for pious uses. This sum of 3,000 drachmæ is chargeable on certain specified real property of Epikteta. The temple of the Muses and the sacred precinct in which stood the heroa in memory of her husband and sons she bequeaths to her daughter Epiteleia, on the following tenure: she is to pay every year 210 drachmæ, rather more than 87., to the trustees of the endowment, |