irregular love such a firebrand to society that few writers can be found to courtesy to great kings or poets in its behalf. How such a love has come down the ages untainted by a single dark reflection may be due partly to the fine mysticism of the scholars who sought to glorify it as a purely imaginary worship of some ideal of divine wisdom and goodness which the dreamy poet carried about in the recesses of his own brain. Added to this, of course, is what one writer calls the remoteness of its object, since it seems clear that Beatrice saw her lover but once or twice in her earthly form and semblance and not till she had enveloped herself in the heavenly did she give free expression to the love for which his ardent soul long yearned-a precaution which might indeed protect most lovers who wish to prosecute a life affection without benefit of clergy. In fact, it is here that every Beatrice in love's calender should apply herself to the Dante School for her education, and, while men are learning how to follow the brightest star that shines for their souls, instruct herself in the nice business of keeping that star in the heavenly remoteness which zealous following naturally requires. The reckless manner in which beautiful stars in love's firmament have fallen to earth or gone, like the lost pleiad, wandering in the void, for lack of the Beatricean secret of keeping both their lover and their orbit is woeful enough to make that glorious lady leave the high courts of the blessed to teach her sisters, as she taught her lover, what "love might be, hath been indeed and is" in its divine end and essence.

That the most exquisite love-poem of the ages was given to setting forth this great truth has strangely availed little in woman's world, though Dante frankly admitted his obligations to Beatrice for the exaltation of their love and plainly sets forth her method of preserving it from all

those woes and pitfalls that yawn for ardent lovers who go searching for love-light in the eyes of married women and intercepting their pathways in the street. There is something deliciously honest and refreshing in that open manner in which he declares in the "Vita Nuova” his frequent efforts to win a glance from Beatrice in her walks, though only once did she favor him with a passing greeting. And yet there is evidence in the end of the story that she loved her strange dark lover-loved him well enough to come from the bowers of Paradise to hold him true to their love, and the moral of the matchless love-poem surely means as much to the woman as to the man in this question of truth to the soul's best star.

It

To hold her lover to the heights is the only hope of any woman who finds herself in the path of an irregular love, for it is not clear at all that Dante himself would have behaved as he should if more encouragement had been given to his passionate pursuit of the lady of his "heart and mind," and by no means is it certain that he would have kept his worship of her unchanged if she had stooped from her starry heights to satisfy in any way his earthly yearnings, however fervently he might have importuned her thereto. is meet that Dante students should do her honor by declaring that "she shines ever above the image of the poet himself." For though poets and artists have placed her in the high heaven of love, yet to the lover more than to the lady has the world looked for the supreme lesson in human life and affection. It is a lofty moral which draws from this matchless love story a challenge to every true man to follow his soul's star. But the challenge to every true woman to preserve the soul's star undimmed may yet be the essential one in the making of any Dante, ancient or modern, in the Divine Comedy of life and love.

POWER OF THE WRITTEN WORD

YRON was right. It is the drop of ink falling like dew upon a thought that counts. Buried in the brain

of the thinker the finest thought loses its true force and purpose. Nothing is clearer than that "Thoughts shut up want air and spoil like bales unopened to the sun.”

Hence printers' ink will never lose its power and purpose in human lives. Nor yet will those who use it ever escape the tremendous responsibility that rests upon them. Students of history have little difficulty in tracing the whole course of mankind to the ideals of youth which the written word fostered. The strange eclipse of liberalism and internationalism, which, before this mad world war, promised so much for mankind, may logically therefore be laid at the door of the "sentimental nationalism" which the literature of the middle classes of Europe brought to bear upon the idealism of the hour. The broad patriotism which would make the world its country and the cause of humanity its own, was lost for a time in that narrow nationalism of "my Country right or wrong" which has wrecked the cause of truth and justice through so many troubled ages of human history.

Add to Balzac's statement that "the whole principle of good and evil lies in thought," the later writer's assertion that "the literary element rules the whole universe of thought," and Byron's idea of making humanity think, receives its full endorsement. To bring the literary bibles to bear upon every creature's education becomes thus a first

principle of salvation even if the rising generation is inclined to turn its back upon them. The fact is, too, that there is no saving line of thought that does not run back to them. There is some truth in Brugere's statement that the finest and most beautiful thoughts have been carried away before our times and that to glean after the ancients is all that remains to us. It matters very little, however, where the thought comes from, if it can take lodgment in the brain and stir the soul to vaster issues. Ingenious moderns may shape it anew and mould it into creeds and cults but the mind that lays hold of it is the one to give it life in the veritable sense of the word made flesh and dwelling among us. "I think therefore I Am" and am what I am, is a truth of life and philosophy not to be gainsaid. Wherefore, nothing in all the forces of time can be so vitally important as that which gives the trend to human thoughts. Balzac declared that it is religion alone that can prepare, subdue, and mould the mind of man to life-giving thoughts and there is no question that there are words of sacred writ that above all others can lift man into the eternal spaces where life and joy forever reside. But, while what Stevenson calls "our little piping theologies, tracts and sermons" have so dulled and blurred the light of sacred truth one must go to the fountain head to find the joy-note which is ever the life-note in any human pathway. And if this should take him to the literary Bibles as well as the Christian's Scriptures, it would but strengthen Balzac's claim that religion is at the root of all high thinking.

Truth "married to immortal verse" takes hold of the mind in a way Heaven well knew when it made its poets "hierophants of inspiration." Coleridge foresaw the eclipse when he said, "They live no longer in the faith of reason."

It is not alone that "a verse may find him whom a sermon flies," but that it can stay with him in an hour of need to turn perchance the whole current of his thoughts from darkness and despair to courage and light. In the midst of the confusion and unrest enveloping all life and thought at this hour, may still be heard an under cry for some one to sing us the song of the eternal, and deep in the heart of humanity persists the faith that that song will ever be a song of joy. "The pendulum of the years will swing back,” says one writer, "and bring again to the ears of men the music of mighty poets who will sing, not of wars and empire, nor yet of things sociological, metaphysical or psychological, but the immortal song full of the heat and glow of the eternal hopes and emotions of the human heart."

To recognize the supremacy of spirit and let the kindred spirit within him unite him to the supreme source of joy and power is the working hypothesis recommended to man by more teachers in fact than the one who presents it as "the central tenet of the Christian faith." That it is this, and more, masters who perceive that "sensible and conscientious men all over the world are of one religion" are not slow to show us. And in this they can safely rest, that, whether from the Hindu Vedas or the Christian Scriptures, from Socrates or Bergson, from David or Tagore, the thought comes that anchors man in the "God consciousness" for his strength and hope, the peace that passeth understanding flows into his soul at that hour and the light that is not of day illumines all his way. To find out where this heart of joy resides and give it a voice beyond singing was the high calling which Stevenson set for the writers, and it may be well that "trenchant essayists" and spiritual advisors are concerned to remind those who let fall the drop of ink that makes millions think, of this high charge.