sustenance, but soar higher, enter the regions of mysticism, and mount instinctively in order to expand on the confines of a loftier world. Spenser leads us to Milton, and thence to Puritanism, as Plato to Vergil, and thence to Christianity. Sensuous beauty is perfect in both, but their main worship is for moral beauty. He appeals to the Muses: "Revele to me the sacred noursery Of vertue, which with you doth there remaine, Where it in silver bowre does hidden ly From view of men and wicked worlds disdaine!" He encourages his knight when he sees him droop. He is wroth when he sees him attacked. He rejoices in his justice, temperance, courtesy. He introduces in the beginning of a song, long stanzas in honor of friendship and justice. He pauses, after relating a lovely instance of chastity, to exhort women to modesty. He pours out the wealth of his respect and tenderness at the feet of his heroines. If any coarse man insults them, he calls to their aid nature and the gods. Never does he bring them on his stage without adorning their name with splendid eulogy. He has an adoration for beauty worthy of Dante and Plotinus. And this, because he never considers it a mere harmony of color and form, but an emanation of unique, heavenly, imperishable beauty, which no mortal eye can see, and which is the masterpiece of the great Author of the worlds.[351] Bodies only render it visible; it does not live in them; charm and attraction are not in things, but in the immortal idea which shines through them: "For that same goodly hew of white and red, With which the cheekes are sprinckled, shall decay, And those sweete rosy leaves, so fairly spred Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away To that they were, even to corrupted clay: That golden wyre, those sparckling stars so bright, Shall turne to dust, and lose their goodly light. But that faire lampe, from whose celestiall ray That light proceedes, which kindleth lovers fire, Shall never be extinguisht nor decay; But, when the vitall spirits doe expyre, Upon her native planet shall retyre; For it is heavenly borne, and cannot die, Being a parcell of the purest skie."[352] In presence of this ideal of beauty, love is transformed: "For Love is lord of Truth and Loialtie, Lifting himself out of the lowly dust, On golden plumes up to the purest skie, Above the reach of loathly sinfull lust, Whose base affect through cowardly distrust Of his weake wings dare not to heaven fly, But like a moldwarpe in the earth doth ly."[353]