He said, for instance, that conventional Religion was man's excuse to the Almighty: that faith was the power of believing what we could not prove untrue: and that churches should possibly be built, because of unemployment, but left empty for the glory of their Maker. All this puzzled her, and Mr. Alison would only chuckle, while most others grunted. Then the lecturer got round to Art and said that life was the Creator's masterpiece. He roughly defined Art as that which never found its way to paper. He admitted the existence of a body of literature and paintings. He did not for a moment wish to conceal the existence of the Royal Academy. One corn-crake, however, did not cause a winter: and he wished to-night to speak only about Art. The modern out-look was parochial and men failed to see even the parish for looking at the clergymen. An Artist had no fatherland. He had the key of the World: for paint was thicker than blood. No two nations had ever agreed on armaments or treaties: but all admitted that Farnese was greater than Phil May. The worry with the world to-day was not that it was old: it was a million years too young. No man troubled with the future, because he knew that it must some day be the past. Religion hinted at the future: Art alone interpreted the present. Five thousand years had thrown mud at the workman: Brangwyn proved him the sole dignified thing left in a dead-level age. For centuries they had destroyed old ruined tenements, and Bone had shown them to be the only kind that ought to be allowed. Art dealt with the beautiful and live; the Church with what was gloomy and decayed. You could not make people wicked by Act of Parliament; the plain man was an artist when he shaved his face. Art was to the English what death had been to the Egyptians, but London was full of things that no one ever spoke about. There was, for instance, the Imperial Institute. It was better to be beautiful than dead. Some of those he met were neither. He wished that they were both. He should be glad if any one would raise objections, for their mutual advantage. Every one was right and nobody was ever wrong. There had been ever so much more than that, she knew; but this was all she could recall when finally he took his seat, and now, already, she was not altogether sure how it had been connected. She was not by any means convinced but she was tremendously encouraged. New vistas of an unsuspected length and freshness opened out from a drab world, whilst the fat, bearded man was speaking. Sometimes she supposed he must be very funny? "Capital, capital," murmured Mr. Alison, and only that. He usually had such a lot to say, too! She was disappointed. But now grimly and deliberately there uprose an elderly man of stern broad face and a respectable frock-coat. He must apologise for letting his heavy periods drop on the top of the last speaker's brilliant flippancies, but truth, he regretted to say, was truth.