Foul symbols of an idol temple grow,
      And sun-white Love is blackened into lust,
    And man’s impure doth into flower-cups flow,
      And the fair Kosmos mourneth in the dust.

    O Thou, out-topping all we know or think,
      Far off yet nigh, out-reaching all we see,
    Hold Thou my hand, that so the top-most link
      Of the great chain may hold, from us to Thee;

    “And from my heaven-touched life may downward flow
      Prophetic promise of a grace to be;
    And flower, and bird, and beast, may upward grow,
      And find their highest linked to God in me.”

Possibly you will say at once, “Oh, my boy has no taste for natural history, and he would take no interest in this kind of thing.”  All the better his finding it a bit dry—­it will rid the subject of some of its dangerous attraction.  I have yet to find the boy for whom the Latin Grammar has the least interest; but we do not excuse him on that ground from grinding at it.  Whether he takes an interest in it or not, you have to teach him that he has got to know about these things before going to school, to guard him from the danger of having all sorts of false, and often foul, notions palmed off on him.  I do not say that pure knowledge will necessarily save, but I do say that the pitcher which is full of clear spring-water has no room for foul.  I do say that you have gained a great step, if in answer to the offer of enlightenment which he is certain to receive, you have enabled your boy to acquit himself of the rough objurgation—­forgive me for putting it in schoolboy language:  “Oh, hold your jaw!  I know all about that, and I don’t want any of your rot.”  I do say that early associations are most terribly strong, and if you will secure that those early associations with regard to life and birth shall be bound up with all the sanctities of life—­with home, with his mother, with family, with all that is best and highest in life; then his whole attitude in life will be different.  But if these early associations are linked with all that is false and foul, some subtle odor of the sewer will still cling about the heart of the shrine, a nameless sense of something impure in the whole subject; an undefinable something in his way of looking at it, which has often made the purity of men—­blameless in their outer life—–­ sadden and perplex me almost as much as the actions and words of confessedly impure men.

IV

But, whatever is the importance I attach to pure teaching, I return to my old position, that purity is an attitude of soul, or, perhaps I ought to say, the “snowy bloom” of the soul’s perfect health, rather than anything you can embody in moral maxims or pure knowledge—­that perfect bloom of spiritual health which may be as much the result of a mother’s watchful care and training as the physical health of the body.  It is for you to train your boy in that knightly attitude of soul, that reverence for womanhood, which is to men as “fountains of sweet water” in the bitter sea of life; that chivalrous respect for the weak and the unprotected which, next to faith in God, will be the best guard to all the finer issues of his character.  Truth of truth are the golden words of Ruskin to young men: