the portrait of Olympia. Even as the beauty of truth in our religion wins a reluctant homage from the unbelieving world, so does the loveliness of Olympia's secluded life at Mary's feet captivate and draw the mind to itself. The picture of this "daughter of the sunlight and the shrine" is simply exquisite. Godfrid, who has wandered to an Italian seaside town, is fascinated by the beauty of her holiness, her purity and simplicity. He is now actuated by a higher and more lasting because a spiritual feeling, and the whole atmosphere of the story rises with it, as if we too had exchanged dull skies and heavy air for the clear Italian sunshine. At Spiaggiascura there is a beautiful little chapel dedicated to Maria Stella Maris. There Olympia dwells. A window overlooking the sea shows the chamber that is her home, if one might not rather say that her home is the church, where she tends the lamp, and her resting-place at Madonna's feet surrounded with the flowers her own hands have gathered. Godfrid sees her first in the church, where he at once becomes a constant attendant; and she, noticing a strange face,

gave thanks, one callous bosom less

Should mitigate the Sacred Heart's distress.

He never tired of being present, but she knew not why.

When transubstantiated wine and bread

In mystic mass renewed the gainful loss
Of cruel Calvary, or tonsured head
O'er carven pulpit banned as worthless dross
All that the flesh can win, or doleful tread
Followed the tearful Stations of the Cross,
At Vespers' chant, at Benediction's prayer,
At Quarant Ore, was the stranger there.

It would be useless to follow step by step the beautiful points of their intercourse; we should have to quote it all. On his side it is marked by respect amounting to reverence; on hers by guileless simplicity. That passage is very fine where in the midst of the storm in the night Godfrid for the first time pours out his soul to Olympia. She has asked him to pray for those that are at sea, and he who believed he " possessed his soul in peace" gives vent to its restless yearning :

"She hear! he pleaded, "hearken rather thou!"
And clutched her robe, and crouched low at her feet;
"For never storm broke over failing prow,
As on my breast life's stifling billows beat.
A long-tossed mariner I, behold me now
Straining to shore, craving for haven meet.

Oh, lift me, feeble, from these fearful waves,

And fold me, shipwrecked, to the heart that saves! "
"Mine a deeper woe,

Than bead, or prayer, or psalm can hope to probe.
I at my mother's knee was taught to throw
Myself on Heaven, and cling to Mary's robe;
But, like yon waves that wander to and fro,
Homeless and aimless through the whirling globe,
I flow now where Fate bids me, nor demand
Why there I ebb, or here I hug the strand."

He will not pray to Mary now, but he will "seek one intermediary more." Olympia will pray to her, he to Olympia. This is anguish to the child of Madonna; the veil is torn away from the mind which she believed to be perfect, and she can only say that she belongs to Mary-not to him; still she yearns for Godfrid, and will watch and weep, and plead that he yet may pray even as he prayed in his childhood. How true to nature is this incident. There are men who seem different beings by day and by night. It is in the night all Godfrid's woes break from him unrestrained. There is something in the rest after the day, the standing still as it were of time and of existence, which urges the soul to manifest its inner workings, and to reveal itself till it shows the yearning for spirit intercourse by the vain effort to formulate such thoughts in language. Olympia has a last hope left. They journey together to Milan, where she knows one of the canons of the cathedral, who she trusts will convince Godfrid that he has abandoned the truth. The story of their pilgrimage is accompanied by a changing picture of Italian scenery. Once when they are taking their mid-day repast with the sea before them "flashing like burnished steel," and the mountains "gray and calm" behind, the key-note of the whole work seems to be struck. It is certainly the feeling which intentionally or not seems to pervade the book:

And Godfrid's lips could scarce the thought conceal,
How blest 'twould be each alien faith to smother,

And worship only Nature and each other.

To the author, Love and Nature seem to be the only two enduring powers. Witness how, after describing the dawn by a classical metaphor, he runs on in an excellent stanza, the meaning of which is, however, carried too far when, in the next one, he speculates on the possibility of Christianity following Paganism, and consoles us by an assurance that it will not drop into oblivion, the saints will still have a sort of

poetical fame to prevent them from being forgotten altogether:

You cannot kill the Gods. Their shadows still
The cherished rites of Pagan eld renew,
Haunt the cool grot, or scour the thymy hill,
And in the woods their wanton sports pursue.
This very morn I heard Pan's pastoral quill
And tracked Diana's sandals o'er the dew,
Caught dimpled Venus veiled in feathery foani,
And Faunus scampering to his sylvan home.
And if Jove prove not the last god dethroned,
But Heaven at length Olympus' fate should feel,
Deem not, withal, its choirs shall be disowned,
Or dumb oblivion o'er its seraphs steal.

Still shall calm Stephen smile on martyrs stoned,
Fair sinners still to Magdalen appeal;

Cecilia's touch still wake the sacred lyre,

And lamblike Agnes spotless loves inspire.

These thoughts are attributed to Godfrid, and, in charity, we trace them no further than that imaginary character, since the mind from which they spring has fallen to immeasurable depths beneath the true conception of Him with whom there is "no vicissitude nor shadow of change."

It is pleasant to turn from such verses to the true idea of the Madonna as it appears in the poem. How beautifully it shines out through the description of her statue, though to quote it now is a retrospect :

On the right the mild Madonna stood,
Down from her flowing hair to sandal shoon
The mystic type of maiden motherhood.
Below her feet there curved a crescent moon,
And all the golden planets were her hood;
In comely folds her queenly garb was moulded,
And over her pure breast her hands were folded.

She looked the most immortal mortal being
That ever yet descended from the skies,
As one who seemed to see all, without seeing,
And without ears to hear man's smothered sighs;
With all earth's discords the one note agreeing,
'Mid death and hate, a love that never dies;
A tranquil silence amid fretful din,

And still the sinless confidant of sin.

It is the Catholic spirit that gives life to the allusions to her. In the mountain hymn, a paraphrase of the Litany of

Loretto, she is addressed as "the sinner's last and best re-, treat," "To whom no outcast turns too late, even when thy Son is deaf to prayer." Again, speaking of Olympia :

Hers was a heart that knew not to deny,

Like the benign Madonna she adored.

But we have left the travellers on their way to Milan. The description of the cathedral there, when a solemn procession is moving through the kneeling multitude, is marvellous in the power with which its language calls up the scene. All is vividly present-the crowd bent down in prayer and adoration. The long procession with white-robed choristers, lights, flowers, and gorgeous vestments. There is the grave, yet joyous, singing; the incense from the silver censers, the organ music rolling and swelling, till the whole pageant of worship and triumphant gladness sweeps on "round arch and column old," and away to the far-off chancel, where "with one acclaim they praise the Lord."

Then on the dense mass sudden silence fell,

Each knee was bent, each reverent skull-cap doffed,
Held was each breath, and, touched by unseen spell,
The organ flutes piped silvery and soft.

Then came the tinkle of a little bell,

And, all heads low, the Host was held aloft ;

While glinted through warm panes day's dying gleam,
And the rapt soul touched Heaven in a dream.

Then once again the organ thundered loud.

When all the multitude has dispersed and the vast cathedral is empty in the half-darkness, Olympia leads Godfrid to the sacristy, where she leaves him for the conversation with the priest, which was the object of their journey. She goes back through the "long, dense-columned aisles," and, lying prostrate before the altar, pours out the agony and longing that rend her soul :

But, rising thence at last, her body first,

She lifted, then her hands, and last her eyes;

And floods of passionate supplication burst

Through lips long sealed from breast o'ercharged with sighs.
She called on Christ, on Her who bore and nursed,

On every Saint and Seraph in the skies,

And vowed herself to pain, if Heaven would save
From death the dear imperilled soul it gave.

"Oh, by Thine agony and bloody sweat,
Deliver him, O Lord!" she wildly cried ;

"By Thy keen Cross and Passion save him yet!
Save by Thy crown of thorns and bleeding side!

Why did Gethsemane Thy teardrops wet?

Why wert Thou scourged, why scorned, why crucified ?
Why didst Thou die, why gloriously ascend,

Why send the Comforter, be this the end?"

Then in a tempest of hot tears her cries

Were drenched and drowned, her wild words wash
Her tears were choked with sobs, sobs swooned to
Then sighs to silence, and there mute she lay.
Oh, if there be a Heaven beyond the skies,
A Heaven to hear, why was it deaf that day?
For since time's dawn into the realms of air,
No purer heart e'er breathed a purer prayer.

"Rise, my dear child," a mild voice gravely said,

66

Rise, and accept your doom :" whereat she rose.

In vain is Reason's dew when Faith is dead,

And meek Grace sleeps 'neath Doubt's unmelting snows.
I can no more. The Paraclete hath fled;

Through his parched heart e'en prayer no longer flows.
By Heaven may yet the miracle be wrought;

But human ways are weak, and words are nought."

It is not Heaven that has been deaf to Olympia's prayer, but Godfrid's heart that is deaf to Heaven. The last stanza is full of the Catholic doctrines of the blindness of reason rejecting, and therefore unaided by grace, and the necessity of the gift of faith for conversion, a doctrine which precludes the possibility of conversion by mere controversy, though it is often the channel through which the gift is bestowed. Godfrid takes Olympia back to the seashore near Spiaggiascura, and there his entreaties are vain. He swears that he will reverence her faith even as her soul. But Olympia, the gentle and childlike, is strong in grace. She crushes her own heart with all its blighted desires, and says farewell:

"No, Godfrid, no! Farewell, farewell! You might
Have been my star; a star once fell by pride;

But since you furl your wings and veil your light,

I cling to Mary and Christ crucified.

Leave me, nay, leave me, ere it be too late!

Better part here than part at Heaven's gate!"

For Godfrid the image of Olive is obliterated, but his love for Olympia, more elevated, more spiritual, cannot die out, and the memory of the days at Spiaggiascura is to follow him through life. His mind is as turbulent as the sea. Materialism, utter scepticism, chafe against the spirit's innate knowledge, and the mind cannot rest. There is something beyond, something hidden. The world is not wide enough to