is that it should elevate and inspire the soul, bringing it to the noblest issues, and for this it must be associated with respect, as well as passion.  No true soul can love what it does not sincerely feel to be worthy of love.  And Sylvie—­ the brilliant little caressable Sylvie, whose warm heart had been so long unsatisfied, was, if not yet crowned by the full benediction of love, still gratefully aware of the wonderful colour and interest which had suddenly come into her life with the friendship of Aubrey Leigh.  His conversation, so different to the “small talk” of the ordinary man, not only charmed her mind, but strengthened and tempered it,—­his thoughtful and tender personal courtesy filled her with that serenity which is always the result of perfect manner,—­ his high and pure ideas of life moved her to admiration and homage,- -and when she managed to possess herself of every book he had written, and had read page after page, sentence after sentence, of the glowing, fervent, passionate language, in which he denounced shams and glorified truth,—­the firmness and fearlessness with which he condemned religious hypocrisy, and lifted pure Christianity to the topmost pinnacle of any faith ever known or accepted in the world, her feelings for him, while gaining fresh warmth, grew deeper and more serious, merging into reverence as well as submission.  She had a book of his with her as a companion to her walk this very morning, and as she entered the Pamphili woods, where she had a special “permesso” to go whenever she chose, and trod the mossy paths, where the morning sun struck golden shafts between the dark ilex-boughs, as though pointing to the thousands of violets that blossomed in the grass beneath, she opened it at a page containing these lines:—­

“Who is it that dares assert that his life or his thoughts are his own?  No man’s life is his own!  It is given to him in charge to use for the benefit of others,—­and if he does not so use it, it is often taken from him when he least expects it.  ’Thou fool, this night thy life shall be required of thee!’ No man’s thoughts even, are his own.  They are the radiations of the Infinite Mind of God which pass through every living atom.  The beggar may have the same thought as the Prime Minister,—­he only lacks the power of expression.  The more helpless and inept the beggar, the greater the responsibility of the Premier.  For the Premier has received education, culture, training, and the choice of the people, and to him is given the privilege of voicing the beggar’s thought.  And not only the beggar’s thought, but the thoughts of all in the nation who have neither the skill nor the force to speak.  If he does not do what he is thus elected to do, he is but an inefficient master of affairs.  And what shall we say of the ministers of Religion who are ‘ordained’ to voice the Message of Christ?  To echo the Divine!—­to