The value of romantic literature, which has been, so far as the Middle Ages are concerned, unjustly depreciated, does not depend upon beauty of words or beauty of fact.  To-day the immense debt of modern literature to the literature of the Middle Ages is better understood; and we are generally beginning to recognize what we owe to the imagination of the Middle Ages, in spite of the ignorance, the superstition and the cruelty of that time.  If the evils of the Middle Ages had really been universal, those ages could not have imparted to us lessons of beauty and lessons of nobility having nothing to do with literary form in themselves, yet profoundly affecting modern poetry of the highest class.  No; there was very much of moral goodness as well as of moral badness in the Middle Ages; and what was good happened to be very good indeed.  Commonly it used to be said (though I do not think any good critic would say it now) that the fervid faith of the time made the moral beauty.  Unless we modify this statement a great deal, we can not now accept it at all.  There was indeed a religious beauty, particularly mediaeval, but it was not that which created the romance of the period.  Indeed, that romantic literature was something of a reaction against the religious restraint upon imagination.  But if we mean by mediaeval faith only that which is very much older than any European civilization, and which does not belong to the West any more than to the East—­the profound belief in human moral experience—­then I think that the statement is true enough.  At no time in European history were men more sincere believers in the value of certain virtues than during the Middle Ages—­and the very best of the romances are just those romances which illustrate that belief, though not written for a merely ethical purpose.

But I can not better illustrate what I mean than by telling a story, which has nothing to do with Europe, or the Middle Ages, or any particular form of religious belief.  It is not a Christian story at all; and it could not be told you exactly as written, for there are some very curious pages in it.  But it is a good example of the worth that may lie in a mere product of imagination.

There was a king once, in Persia or Arabia, who, at the time of his accession to power, discovered a wonderful subterranean hall under the garden of his palace.  In one chamber of that hall stood six marvellous statues of young girls, each statue being made out of a single diamond.  The beauty as well as the cost of the work was beyond imagination.  But in the midst of the statues, which stood in a circle, there was an empty pedestal, and on that pedestal was a precious casket containing a letter from the dead father of the king.  The letter said: