which were to be given by "the laying on of hands," all tended to
excitement. I could scarcely control myself as I knelt at the altar
rails, and felt as though the gentle touch of the aged bishop, which
fluttered for an instant on my bowed head, were the very touch of the
wing of that "Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove," whose presence had been so
earnestly invoked. Is there anything easier, I wonder, than to make a
young and sensitive girl "intensely religious"? This stay in Paris
roused into activity an aspect of my religious nature that had
hitherto been latent. I discovered the sensuous enjoyment that lay in
introducing colour and fragrance and pomp into religious services, so
that the gratification of the aesthetic emotions became dignified with
the garb of piety. The picture-galleries of the Louvre, crowded with
Madonnas and saints, the Roman Catholic churches with their
incense-laden air and exquisite music, brought a new joy into my life,
a more vivid colour to my dreams. Insensibly, the colder, cruder
Evangelicalism that I had never thoroughly assimilated, grew warmer
and more brilliant, and the ideal Divine Prince of my childhood took
on the more pathetic lineaments of the Man of Sorrows, the deeper
attractiveness of the suffering Saviour of Men. Keble's "Christian
Year" took the place of "Paradise Lost," and as my girlhood began to
bud towards womanhood, all its deeper currents set in the direction of
religious devotion. My mother did not allow me to read love stories,
and my daydreams of the future were scarcely touched by any of the
ordinary hopes and fears of a girl lifting her eyes towards the world
she is shortly to enter. They were filled with broodings over the days
when girl-martyrs were blessed with visions of the King of Martyrs,
when sweet St. Agnes saw her celestial Bridegroom, and angels stooped
to whisper melodies in St. Cecilia's raptured ear. "Why then and not
now?" my heart would question, and I would lose myself in these
fancies, never happier than when alone.