Dr. Grey, I do not desire to sneer at your Christian trust, and God knows I would give all my earthly possessions and hopes for a religion that would insure me your calm resignation and contentment; but the resurrection of my faith would only resemble that beautiful floral _Palingenesis_ (asserted by Gaffarel and Kircher), which was but 'the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its own ashes,' and speedily dropping back into dust. Leave me in the enjoyment of the only pleasure earth can afford me, the contemplation of the beautiful." "Unless you blend with it the true and good, your love of beauty will degenerate into the merely sensuous aesthetics, which, at the present day, renders its votaries fastidious, etiolated voluptuaries. The deification of humanity, so successfully inaugurated by Feuerbach and Strauss, is now no longer confined to realms of abstract speculation; but cultivated sensualism has sunk so low that popular poets chant the praises of Phryne and Cleopatra, and painters and sculptors seek to immortalize types that degrade the taste of all lovers of Art. The true mission of Art, whether through the medium of books, statues, or pictures, is to purify and exalt; but the curse of our age is, that the fashionable pantheistic raving about Nature, and the apotheosizing of physical loveliness,--is rapidly sinking into a worship of the vilest elements of humanity and materialism. Pagan aesthetics were purer and nobler than the system, which, under that name, finds favor with our generation." She listened, not assentingly, but without any manifestation of impatience, and while he talked, her eyes rested dreamily upon the yellow beach, where,-- "Trampling up the sloping sand, In lines outreaching far and wide, The white-maned billows swept to land." Whether she pondered his words, or was too entirely absorbed by her own thoughts to heed their import, he had no means of ascertaining. "Mrs. Gerome, what have you painted recently?"