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self-denial were but splendid sins, if they did not wear the Christian name. One would rather be
'A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,'
than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming into nature, and finding not names and places, not land and professions, but even virtue, and truth foreclosed and monopolized. You shall not be a man even. You shall not own the world; you shall not dare, and live after the infinite Law that is in you, and in company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms; but you must subordinate your nature to Christ's nature; you must accept our interpretations; and take his portrait as the vulgar draw it.
That is always best which gives me to myself The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. There is no longer a necessary reason for my being. Already the long shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and I shall decease forever.
The divine bards are the friends of my virtue, of my intellect, of my strength. They admonish me, that the gleams which dash across my mind, are not mine, but God's; that they had the like, and were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. So I love them. Noble provocations go out from them, invit-
