234 INDOOR STUDIES 



temper out 1 No ; and vaccination is a better safe- 

 guard against smallpox than prayer, however fer- 

 vent and serious. 



What remains, then, for those who cannot pray; 

 who cannot look upon God as a being apart from 

 themselves, a supreme parent, seated somewhere in 

 the universe, and withholding or bestowing gifts 

 and goods upon man? This alone, and this is 

 enough: To love virtue, to love truth, to cherish 

 a lofty ideal, to keep the soul open and hospitable 

 to whatsoever things are true, to whatsoever things 

 are beautiful, to whatsoever things are of good 

 report. 



TII 



THE TRUE BEALISM 



Without at all aiming to impeach the value of 

 what is known in current criticism as realism in 

 art, I think it may safely be said that any imagina- 

 tive work, or any work aspiring to the rank of 

 literature, which does not afford a sure and a speedy 

 escape into the ideal, is of little value. 



The true literary artist is not afraid of the real, 

 the concrete; indeed, he loves real things as the 

 painter his pigments, but they are only a means to 

 an end, and that end is not the literal truth, but 

 the ideal truth. Strict fidelity to nature, to fact, 

 is to be demanded, and equal fidelity to the spirit, 

 the imagination. The artist must give us a true 

 picture, but he must give us much more than that; 

 he must give us himself. 



It is the province of literature to make us free of 



