In his dedication of the volume to his father, Lowell speaks of it as “containing many opinions from which he will wholly, yet with the large charity of a Christian heart, dissent,” and the most flagrant of these is probably in a passage in which he speaks with vehemence of the church and religion. As falls to the hearer of many impulsive utterances of young men, one is apt to see in them rather the impatience of a generous heart (“why so hot, my little man?”) than the deliberate convictions into which one has been forced reluctantly, but the passage is so characteristic of Lowell at this period and so expressive of the turbulence of his mind that it may well be read here. John has been commenting on the innate piety of Chaucer as illustrated by his glowing words on the daisy, and Philip takes up the parable. “PHILIP. “Piety is indifferent whether she enters at the eye or the ear. There is none of the senses at which she does not knock one day or other. The Puritans forgot this and thrust beauty out of the meeting-house, and slammed the door in her face. I love such sensuality as that which Chaucer shows in his love of nature. Surely, God did not give us these fine senses as so many posterns to the heart for the Devil to enter at. I believe that he has endowed us with no faculty but for his own glory. If the Devil has got false keys to them, we must first have given him a model of the wards to make a mould by. The senses can do nothing unless the soul be an accomplice, and, in whatever the soul does, the body will have a voice.... “JOHN. “All things that make us happy incline us also to be grateful, and I would rather enlarge than lessen the number of these. Morose and callous recluses have persuaded men that religion is a prude, and have forced her to lengthen her face, and contract her brows to suit the character. They have laid out a gloomy turnpike to heaven, upon which they and their heirs and assigns are privileged to levy tolls, and have set up guide-boards to make us believe that all other roads lead in quite an opposite direction. The pleasanter they are, the more dangerous. For my part, I am satisfied that I am upon the right path so long as I can see anything to make me happier, anything to make me love man, and therefore God, the more. I would stamp God’s name, and not Satan’s, upon every innocent pleasure, upon every legitimate gratification of sense, and God would be the better served for it. In what has Satan deserved so well of us, that we should set aside such first-fruits for him? Christianity differs not more widely from Plato than from the Puritans. “PHILIP.