gratitude swept over him, so that looking at the majestic church--secular
witness to the soul's faith in and need of Almighty God's protective
mercy and goodness--he took off his hat, no longer metaphorically but
actually, and bowed himself together over the pommel of the saddle with
an irresistible movement of thanksgiving and of praise.

Recovering himself after a minute or so--"Almost thou persuades! me
to be a Christian," he said aloud, shaking his head remonstrantly at
the distant church, while tears started to his busy, politely
inquisitive eyes.

Then, striving by speech to bring his spirits to their accustomed
playfulness and poise, he soliloquized thus, still aloud:

"For, to be candid, what convincing argument can I advance, in the light
of recent experience, to prove that Rousseau, my friends the
Encyclopeadists, or even the great M. de Voltaire, were really wiser in
their generation, truer lovers of the people and safer guides, than St.
Benedict--of blessed memory, since patron of learning and incidentally
saviour of classic literature--whose pious sons raised this most
delectable edifice to God's glory seven hundred years ago?--The tower is
considerably later than the transepts and the nave--fifteenth century I
take it,--Upon my soul, I am half tempted to renounce my allegiance and
to doubt whether our modern standards of civilization surpass, in the
intelligent application of means to ends, those of these mediaeval
cenobites, and whether we are saner philanthropists, deeper philosophers,
more genial humanists than they!"

But here his discourse suffered mortifying interruption. He became aware
the pony stood stock-still in the middle of the road; and, turning its