is not so much a forcing of strange sights upon our

eyes as the lifting of a veil-that we may hear and see something of her hidden life.

The thrushes sing,

And shake our pulses and the elms' new leaves,

Howsoe'er the world goes ill,

The thrushes still sing in it.

The skies, the clouds, the fields,

The happy violets hiding from the roads

The primroses run down to, carrying gold ;

The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out
Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths

'Twixt dripping ash-boughs.

Hills, vales, woods netted in a silver mist;

A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky

Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb.

"And see is God not with us on the earth?
"And shall we put Him down?"

All this we can see for ourselves.

We have but to

lift our eyes, and lo! a sheet of white paper pinned to the wall-and upon it are words written which we cannot read-but the words are these: "Seeing the Invisible."

So I have done with the first type; but where is my vision?

In the pages of the poet; on the canvas of the painter; in the marble of the sculptor; in the fretted arch of the architect; in the sweet strains of the musician; in every splendour that Art can put on like beautiful garments. Dante and Milton; Angelo and

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Raphael; Handel and Mozart, are not these also the sons of God? do not they also sing? is not their song a cry of joy? Where is my vision? At least the thrushes sing, and shake our pulses; howsoe'er the world goes ill, the thrushes still sing in it." There is my vision-in heaven and earth. And it shall endure so long as the sea is His who made it; so long as He hath sons to sing His praise; so long as man goeth forth to his labour.

II.

THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY.

HO shall read these pages? Men, perhaps,

WHO

with grave eyes, who will detect faults in every line, and yet, seeing that I am in earnest will not cast them hastily aside. Women, it may be, with kind eyes, who will impart to my words a grace from their own pure minds. Children, I hope, whose trustful eyes will see with mine for a little while, until, passing me in the race, they reach nearer to the light itself.

All this is hidden from me; and yet of one thing I am quite sure, namely, that every one who reads. will give to "the Supernatural" a somewhat different meaning. Nor is it necessary for my purpose that it should be otherwise. There are some who think of it as the unseen agency of the Divine Being the manifestation of His power over as well as in the universal laws of Nature. Others there are to whom it is only a name for phenomena that they cannot yet explain, but

hope to explain when Science has done its perfect work. Are there not many who dream about it as something half-mysterious, half-wicked, but quite delightful, that gives a charm to ghost stories if they are told nicely by a bright fireside ?

It is the legend over again of the King's Messengers -Theology, Science, and Art; and perhaps, after all, we cannot thoroughly understand "the Supernatural" until we have heard what each one of these Messengers may have to tell us.

But the Supernatural in Art" is a qualification of the subject less beset with difficulties, and more susceptible of definition. It is to the painter that unknown quantity which cannot be expressed in any terms of Art. Amongst the early Christian painters there was one, taken, like David, from the sheepfolds. What splendours the young Giotto must have witnessed through the long Italian summers-what revelations of glory through the starry nights that might make him think of the angel and the multitude of the heavenly host seen by those other shepherds, who also, thirteen hundred years before, had watched their flocks by night. And then, just think of it, amongst those shepherds might there not have been one, penetrated with the like love of nature, to whom the gold and azure of the Syrian skies would have been as dear as the same changes were to the Florentine? The meridian light

may have been all too dazzling for the pencil, but when the sun had gone down, when the after-glow had faded from the horizon and the stars came out, then!-and that star, that hangs in luminous glory over Bethlehem, shall he not paint it?

And if we could see the picture, what would it be like? And if Giotto painted it, how should he make that star differ from another star in glory? No doubt the definition is so far true. The Supernatural is, in this instance at least, an unknown quantity that cannot be expressed in any terms of Art.

Nor in this instance only. If we examine the works of the best period of Hellenic Art we shall find gods and men represented side by side, absolutely alike. Although the Supernatural was then the almost perpetual theme of Art, yet, guided by a knowledge more refined than that of the later schools, or by an unerring instinct in their apprehension of the beautiful, the Greek sculptors attempted nothing beyond the realisation of the highest types of natural beauty.

It was when Arms had given place to Art-Sparta to Athens-that the second Parthenon arose, the great cathedral of classic times. This temple was to Athens what St. Peter's is to Rome, what its Duomo is to Milan, what Notre Dame is to Paris. There, may have been heard the thunder of the voice of Periclesthere, the persuasive eloquence of Socrates; while upon