which cannot clearly express the secrets of God, and would have been
for discomfort rather than comfort. And know, therefore, that the King
parted from me marvellously content, and comforted in his mind.'"

Of all which story, not a word, of course, is credible by any rational
person.

Certainly not: the spirit, nevertheless, which created the story, is an
entirely indisputable fact in the history of Italy and of mankind.
Whether St. Louis and Brother Giles ever knelt together in the street
of Perugia matters not a whit. That a king and a poor monk could be
conceived to have thoughts of each other which no words could speak;
and that indeed the King's tenderness and humility made such a tale
credible to the people,--this is what you have to meditate on here.

Nor is there any better spot in the world,--whencesoever your pilgrim
feet may have journeyed to it, wherein to make up so much mind as you
have in you for the making, concerning the nature of Kinghood and
Princedom generally; and of the forgeries and mockeries of both which
are too often manifested in their room. For it happens that this
Christian and this Persian King are better painted here by Giotto than
elsewhere by any one, so as to give you the best attainable conception
of the Christian and Heathen powers which have both received, in the
book which Christians profess to reverence, the same epithet as the
King of the Jews Himself; anointed, or Christos:--and as the most
perfect Christian Kinghood was exhibited in the life, partly real,
partly traditional, of St. Louis, so the most perfect Heathen Kinghood
was exemplified in the life, partly real, partly traditional, of Cyrus
of Persia, and in the laws for human government and education which had
chief force in his dynasty. And before the images of these two Kings I