L. Yes; it is certainly a great argument against singing that there were once sirens.

Dora.  Well, it may be all very fine and philosophical, but shouldn’t I just like to read you the end of the second volume of “Modern Painters”!

L. My dear, do you think any teacher could be worth your listening to, or anybody else’s listening to, who had learned nothing, and altered his mind in nothing, from seven and twenty to seven and forty?  But that second volume is very good for you as far as it goes.  It is a great advance, and a thoroughly straight and swift one, to be led, as it is the main business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle-pieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico.  And it is right for you also, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the general sense and judgment which may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses from the virtues of what you love, else you might come to love both alike; or even the weaknesses without the virtues.  You might end by liking Overbeck and Cornelius as well as Angelico.  However, I have perhaps been leaning a little too much to the merely practical side of things, in to-night’s talk; and you are always to remember, children, that I do not deny, though I cannot affirm, the spiritual advantages resulting, in certain cases, from enthusiastic religious reverie, and from the other practices of saints and anchorites.  The evidence respecting them has never yet been honestly collected, much less dispassionately examined:  but assuredly, there is in that direction a probability, and more than a probability, of dangerous error, while there is none whatever in the practice of an active, cheerful, and benevolent life.  The hope of attaining a higher religious position, which induces us to encounter, for its exalted alternative, the risk of unhealthy error, is often, as I said, founded more on pride than piety; and those who, in modest usefulness, have accepted what seemed to them here the lowliest place in the kingdom of their Father, are not, I believe, the least likely to receive hereafter the command, then unmistakable, “Friend, go up higher.”

LECTURE 8.

CRYSTAL CAPRICE

Formal Lecture in Schoolroom, after some practical examination of minerals.

L. We have seen enough, children, though very little of what might be seen if we had more time, of mineral structures produced by visible opposition, or contest among elements; structures of which the variety, however great, need not surprise us:  for we quarrel, ourselves, for many and slight causes,—­much more, one should think, may crystals, who can only feel the antagonism, not argue about it.  But there is a yet more singular mimicry of our human ways in the varieties of form which appear owing to no antagonistic force; but merely to the variable humor and caprice of the crystals themselves:  and I have asked you all to come into the schoolroom