spiritualists!  On the day when the Athenians and the men of Rhodes fought for the sacrifice, thou didst choose to dwell among the Athenians as being the wisest.  But thy father caused Plutus to descend in a shower of gold upon the city of the Rhodians because they had done homage to his daughter.  The men of Rhodes were rich, but the Athenians had wit, that is to say, the true joy, the ever-enduring good humour, the divine youth of the heart.

“The only way of salvation for the world is by returning to thy allegiance, by repudiating its barbarian ties.  Let us hasten into thy courts.  Glorious will be the day when all the cities which have stolen the fragments of thy temple, Venice, Paris, London, and Copenhagen, shall make good their larceny, form holy alliances to bring these fragments back, saying:  ’Pardon us, O Goddess, it was done to save them from the evil genii of the night,’ and rebuild thy walls to the sound of the flute, thus expiating the crime of Lysander the infamous!  Thence they shall go to Sparta and curse the site where stood that city, mistress of sombre errors, and insult her because she is no more.  Firm in my faith, I shall have force to withstand my evil counsellors, my scepticism, which leads me to doubt of the people, my restless spirit which, after truth has been brought to light, impels me to go on searching for it, and my fancy which cannot be still even when Reason has pronounced her judgment.  O Archegetes, ideal which the man of genius embodies in his masterpieces, I would rather be last in thy house than first in any other.  Yes, I will cling to the stylobate of thy temple, I will be a stylites on thy columns, my cell shall be upon thy architrave and, what is more difficult still, for thy sake I will endeavour to be intolerant and prejudiced.  I will love thee alone.  I will learn thy tongue, and unlearn all others.  I will be unjust for all that concerns not thee; I will be the servant of the least of thy children.  I will exalt and natter the present inhabitants of the earth which thou gavest to Erechthea.  I will endeavour to like their very defects; I will endeavour to persuade myself, O Hippia, that they are descendants of the horsemen who, aloft upon the marble of thy frieze celebrate without ceasing their glad festival.  I will pluck out of my heart every fibre which is not reason and pure art.  I will try to love my bodily ills, to find delight in the flush of fever.  Help me!  Further my resolutions, O Salutaris!  Help, thou who savest!

“Great are the difficulties which I foresee.  Inveterate 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,