result, I think, that Honour, Religion, and Love, the three fortresses of the human soul, will be found deeply involved with them. Honour, as I understand it, consists in the nice adjustment of what is due to me from my neighbours, and to them from me. Here, among the poor, where a native reserve has not grown, as a fungus upon it, a native cant, where there is no desire to seem better than one is, and no belief that one is so by seeming--here, I say, among the Tuscan poor, there is never any difficulty, for here there is no excrescence to the substantial quality of the soul, but precisely to the contrary, there is, if anything, a denudation. The fault of the Tuscans is, perhaps, a carelessness of opinion, and an ignorance of it, and, springing from that, a lack of reserve which occasionally approaches the shocking. Be this as it may, here it is possible for man to envisage man, each as he really is and can be discerned to be. In England it is not so. Honour is an artificial, manufactured thing, depending upon accepted, volunteered relationships. What is due from me to my lord differs from that which his lordship owes to me: so in any traffic between me and my valet, or my valet and the kitchen-boy. So also it is with Religion. The Englishman dare not even strip before his God, but will bear his garter or his worsted-braid, his cocked or cockaded hat, his sword or his dung-fork up to the very sanctuary rails-- lest, forsooth, by leaving them at home he should either seem so poor as to be without them, or so rich as to be able to discard them. But here, what a difference! Not only is man naked before God, but God stands naked before man. The church is their common ground; the church is their inn, and the blessed table their market ordinary. At this board, God and man, man and the saints, meet as friends. The sweetest intercourse possible on earth is not denied them. They may be gossips, God and man; they may be lovers, bosom friends. Is this not a hopeful estate for the tried and erring, naturally affectionate soul? I trow that it is. And as with Honour, as with Religion, so with that child of the pair, so with Love. Boy and maid, man and woman, in this country stand as children hand in hand before their parent, who is God. Hand in hand, in seemly innocence, naked, without shame, or underthought or afterthought, they stray about the flowery meads. Their hearts are by chance enkindled, each burns, fire seeks the embrace of fire; they touch, they mingle, they soar together. Wedded love, which neither soars nor leaps like a furnace, but glows steadily with equable and radiant heat--wedded love ensues this passionate commingling. But the pair remain what they were at first, simple, naked, unashamed, unshameful, with all things displayed, even to the very aspirations of the secret soul, in blessed sympathy, in union blessed and to be blessed.