himself the necessity of turning a little more matter-of-fact again.

"You will see what I mean, plainly enough,” he said, “if you will just think of our architecture, and consider how that naturally will be ".

"Yes," said Mr. Luke, "I should be glad to hear about our architecture."

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how that naturally will be," Mr. Rose went on, of no style in particular."

"The deuce it won't!" exclaimed Mr. Luke.

"No," continued Mr. Rose unmoved; "no style in particular, but a renaissance of all styles. It will matter nothing to us whether they be pagan or Catholic, classical or mediæval. We shall be quite without prejudice or bigotry. To the eye of true taste, an Aquinas in his cell before a crucifix, or a Narcissus gazing at himself in a still fountain, are in their own ways, you know — equally beautiful."

"Well, really," said Miss Merton, "I can not fancy St. Thomas being a very taking object to people who don't believe in him either as a saint or a philosopher. I always think that except from a Christian point of view, a saint can be hardly better described than by Newman's lines, as

'A bundle of bones, whose breath

Infects the world before his death.""

"I remember the lines well," said Mr. Rose calmly, "and the writer you mention puts them in the mouth of a yelping devil. But devils, as far as I know, are not generally-except perhaps Milton's-conspicuous for taste; indeed, if we may trust Goethe, the very touch of a flower is torture to them."

"Dante's biggest devil," cried Mr. Saunders, to every one's amazement, "chewed Judas Iscariot like a quid of tobacco, to all eternity. He, at any rate, knew what he liked."

Mr. Rose started, and visited Mr. Saunders with a rapid frown. He then proceeded, turning again to Miss Merton as if nothing had happened.

"Let me rather," he said, "read a nice sonnet to you, which I had sent to me this morning, and which was in my mind just now. These lines" (Mr. Rose here produced a paper from his pocket) "were written by a boy of eighteen, a youth of ex traordinary promise, I think, whose education I may myself

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claim to have had some share in directing. Listen," he said, laying the verses before him on a clean plate

"Three visions in the watches of one night

Made sweet my sleep - almost too sweet to tell.
One was Narcissus by a woodside well,

And on the moss his limbs and feet were white;
And one, Queen Venus, blown for my delight
Across the blue sea in a rosy shell;

And one, a lean Aquinas in his cell,
Kneeling, his pen in hand, with aching sight
Strained towards a carven Christ: and of these three
I knew not which was fairest. First I turned
Towards that soft boy, who laughed and fled from me;
Towards Venus then, and she smiled once, and she

Fled also. Then with teeming heart I yearned,
O Angel of the Schools, towards Christ with thee!"

"Yes," murmured Mr. Rose to himself, folding up the paper, "they are dear lines. Now there," he said, "we have a true and tender expression of the really catholic spirit of modern æstheticism, which holds nothing common or unclean. It is in this spirit, I say, that the architects of our State will set to work. And thus for our houses, for our picture galleries, for our churches, — I trust we will have many churches, — they will select and combine

"Do you seriously mean," broke in Allen a little impatiently, “that it is a thing to wish for and to look forward to, that we should abandon all attempts at original architecture, and content ourselves with simply sponging on the past?"

"I do," replied Mr. Rose suavely; "and for this reason, if for no other, that the world can now successfully do nothing else. Nor indeed is it to be expected, or even wished, that it

should."

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"You say we have no good architecture now!" exclaimed Lady Ambrose; "but, Mr. Rose, have you forgotten our modern churches? Don't you think them beautiful? Perhaps you never go to All Saints'?"

"I every now and then," said Mr. Rose, when I am in the weary mood for it, attend the services of our English Ritualists, and I admire their churches very much indeed. In some places the whole thing is really managed with surprising skill. The dim religious twilight, fragrant with the smoke of incense; the

tangled roofs that the music seems to cling to; the tapers, the high altar, and the strange intonation of the priests, all produce a curious old-world effect, and seem to unite one with things that have been long dead. Indeed, it all seems to me far more a part of the past than the services of the Catholics."

Lady Ambrose did not express her approbation of the last part of this sentiment, out of regard for Miss Merton; but she gave a smile and a nod of pleased intelligence to Mr. Rose.

"Yes," Mr. Rose went on, "there is a regretful insincerity about it all, that is very nice, and that at once appeals to me, 'Gleich einer alten halbverklungnen Sage.' The priests are only half in earnest; the congregations even

"Then I am quite sure," interrupted Lady Ambrose with vigor," that you can never have heard Mr. Cope preach."

I don't know," said Mr. Rose languidly. "I never inquired, nor have I ever heard any one so much as mention, the names of any of them. Now all that, Lady Ambrose, were life really in the state it should be, you would be able to keep."

"Do you seriously, and in sober earnest, mean," Allen again broke in, "that you think it a good thing that all our art and architecture should be borrowed and insincere, and that our very religion should be nothing but a dilettante memory?"

"The opinion," said Mr. Rose," which by the way you slightly misrepresent, is not mine only, but that of all those of our own day who are really devoting themselves to art for its own sake. I will try to explain the reason of this. In the world's life, just as in the life of a man, there are certain periods of eager and all-absorbing action, and these are followed by periods of memory and reflection. We then look back upon our past and become for the first time conscious of what we are, and of what we have done. We then see the dignity of toil, and the grand results of it; the beauty and the strength of faith, and the fervent power of patriotism: which whilst we labored, and believed, and loved, we were quite blind to. Upon such a reflective period has the world now entered. It has acted and believed already: its task now is to learn to value action and belief, to feel and to be thrilled at the beauty of them. And the chief means by which it can learn this is art; the art of a renaissance. For by the power of such art, all that was beautiful, strong, heroic, or tender in the past, all the actions, passions, faiths, aspirations of the world, that lie so many fathom deep in the years, float upward to the tranquil surface of the

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present, and make our lives like what seems to me one of the loveliest things in nature, the iridescent film on the face of a stagnant water. Yes; the past is not dead unless we choose that it shall be so. Christianity itself is not dead. There is 'nothing of it that doth fade,' but turns into something rich and strange,' for us to give a new tone to our lives with. And believe me," Mr. Rose went on, gathering earnestness, "that the happiness possible in such conscious periods is the only true happiness. Indeed, the active periods of the world were not really happy at all. We only fancy them to have been so by a pathetic fallacy. Is the hero happy during his heroism? No, but after it, when he sees what his heroism was, and reads the glory of it in the eyes of youth or maiden."

SIR THOMAS MALORY.

MALORY, SIR THOMAS, an English prose-writer of the fifteenth century, is supposed to have been born about 1430; died some time after 1470. Bale says that he was occupied with affairs of state, but definite information as to his life and the manner of his death has been unattainable until recent discoveries seem to point to his death on the block, a victim of the fierce hatred engendered by the Wars of the Roses, then raging in England. Caxton tells us that the "Morte d'Arthur" was translated into English by Sir Thomas, but that it was divided into twenty-one books and chaptered by himself. The sources of his book are found in "Romance of Merlin," "La Morte Arthure," "Romance of Lancelot," "Adventures of Gareth," "Romance of Tristan." Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," William Morris's "Defence of Guinevere," Swinburne's "Tristram of Lyonesse," and Matthew Arnold's "Death of Tristram" were all suggested by Malory's book.

THE FINDING OF THE SWORD EXCALIBUR.

(From "Morte d'Arthur.")

AND SO Merlin and he departed, and as they rode King Arthur said, "I have no sword." "No matter," said Merlin; "hereby is a sword that shall be yours and I may." So they rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair water and a broad; and in the midst of the lake King Arthur was aware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in the hand. "Lo," said Merlin unto the King, "yonder is the sword that I spake of."

With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake. "What damsel is that?" said the King. "That is the Lady of the Lake," said Merlin; " and within that lake is a reach, and therein is as fair a place as any is on earth, and richly beseen; and this damsel will come to you anon, and then speak fair to her that she will give you that sword." Therewith came the damsel to King Arthur and saluted him, and he her again. "Damsel," said the King, "what sword is that which the arm holdeth yonder