"My dear Lady Grace," he said in a tone of surprised remonstrance, "you are talking like a bishop."

"Well, certainly," said Lady Grace, rising, and struggling she hardly knew how into a smile, "nolo episcopari. You see I do know a little Latin, Mr. Luke."

"Yes," said Mr. Luke with a bow, as he pushed back a chair for her, "and a bit that has more wisdom in it than all other ecclesiastical Latin put together."

"We're going to leave you gentlemen to smoke your cigarettes," said Lady Grace. "We think of going down on the beach for a little, and looking at the sea, which is getting silvery; and by-and-by, I daresay you will not expel us if we come back for a little tea and coffee."

"Damn it!"

Scarcely had the last trailing skirt swept glimmering out of the pavilion into the mellow slowly brightening moonlight, than the gentlemen were astounded by this sudden and terrible exclamation. It was soon found to have issued from Mr. Saunders, who had hardly spoken more than a few sentences during the whole of dinner.

"What can be the matter?" was inquired by several voices.

"My fool of a servant," said Mr. Saunders sullenly, "has, I find, in packing, wrapped up a small sponge of mine in my disproof of God's existence."

"H'f," shuddered Mr. Rose, shrinking from Mr. Saunders's somewhat piercing tones, and resting his forehead on his hand; "my head aches sadly. I think I will go down to the sea, and join the ladies."

"I," said Mr. Saunders, "if you will excuse me, must go and see in what state the document is, as I left it drying, hung on the handle of my jug."

No sooner had Mr. Saunders and Mr. Rose departed than Dr. Jenkinson began to recover his equanimity somewhat. Seeing this, Mr. Storks, who had himself during dinner been first soothed and then ruffled into silence, found suddenly the strings of his tongue loosed.

"Now, those are the sort of young fellows," he said, looking after the retreating form of Mr. Saunders, "that really do a good deal to bring all solid knowledge into contempt in the minds of the half-educated. There's a certain hall in London, not far from the top of Regent Street, where I'm told he gives Sunday lectures."

"Yes," said Dr. Jenkinson, sipping his claret, "it's all very bad taste - very bad taste."

"And the worst of it is," said Mr. Storks, "that these young men really get hold of a fact or two, and then push them on to their own coarse and insane conclusions,-which have, I admit, to the vulgar eye, the look of being obvious."

"Yes," said Dr. Jenkinson with a seraphic sweetness, "we should always suspect everything that seems very obvious. Glaring inconsistencies and glaring consistencies are both sure to vanish if you look closely into them."

"Now, all that about God, for instance," Mr. Storks went on, "is utterly uncalled for; and as young Saunders puts it, is utterly misleading."

"Yes," said Dr. Jenkinson, "it all depends upon the way you say it."

"I hardly think," said Mr. Stockton with a sublime weariness, "that we need waste much thought upon his way. It is a very common one,- that of the puppy that barks at the heels of the master whose meat it steals."

"May I," said Mr. Herbert gently, after a moment's pause, ask this for I am a little puzzled here: Do I understand. that Mr. Saunders's arguments may be held, on the face of the thing, to disprove the existence of God? »

Mr. Storks and Mr. Stockton both stared gravely on Mr. Herbert, and said nothing. Dr. Jenkinson stared at him too; but the Doctor's eye lit up into a little sharp twinkle of benign content and amusement, and he said:

"No, Mr. Herbert, I don't think Mr. Saunders can disprove that, nor any one else either. For the world has at present no adequate definition, of God; and I think we should be able to define a thing before we can satisfactorily disprove it. I think I have no doubt Mr. Saunders can disprove the existence of God as he would define him. All atheists can do that."

so.

"nobly said!"

"Ah," murmured Mr. Stockton, "But that's not the way," the Doctor went on, "to set to work, this kind of rude denial. We must be loyal to nature. We must do nothing per saltum. We must be patient. We mustn't leap at Utopias, either religious or irreligious. Let us be content with the knowledge that all dogmas will expand in proportion as we feel they need expansion; for all mere forms are transitory, and even the personality of »

Fatal word! It was like a match to a cannon.

"Ah, Jenkinson," exclaimed Mr. Luke, and Dr. Jenkinson stopped instantly, "we see what you mean; and capital sense it is too. But you do yourself as much as any one else a great injustice, in not seeing that the age is composed of two parts, and that the cultured minority is infinitely in advance of the Philistine majority- which alone is, properly speaking, the present; the minority being really the soul of the future waiting for its body, which at present can exist only as a Utopia. It is the wants of this soul that we have been talking over this afternoon. When the ladies come back to us, there are several things that I should like to say; and then you will see what we mean, Jenkinson, and that even poor Rose has really some right on his side.

At the mention of Mr. Rose's name the Doctor's face again curdled into frost.

"I don't think so." That was all he said.

SIR THOMAS MALORY

AND THE MORTE D'ARTHUR'

(FIFTEENTH CENTURY)

BY ERNEST RHYS

HE one certain thing about Sir Thomas Malory is, that he wrote the first and finest romance of chivalry in our com

mon tongue,-the 'Morte d'Arthur.' Beyond this, and the testimony that the book affords as to its author, we have little record of him. That he was a Welshman, however, seems highly probable; and his name is certainly of Welsh origin, derived as it is from Maelor. That he was a clerk in holy orders is likely too. It was usual to distinguish vicars at that period and later by the prefix "Sir"; and various clergymen of the same Christian name and surname as his may be traced by old tombs, at Mobberley in Cheshire and elsewhere. Bale, in his interesting Latin chronicle of 1548, on 'Illustrious Writers of Great Britain,' speaks of his "many cares of State," it is true; but church and State were then closely enough allied to make the two things compatible with our view of him. Bale's further account is brief but eloquent. Our romancer was a man, he tells us, "of heroic spirit, who shone from his youth in signal gifts of mind and body." Moreover, a true scholar, a true man of letters, who never interrupted his quest "through all the remnants of the world's scattered antiquity." So it was that Malory was led to gather, from various sources, all the traditions he could find "concerning the valor and the victories of the most renowned King Arthur of the Britons." Out of many materials, in French and Latin, in Welsh and Breton, he shaped the book 'Morte d'Arthur' as we now know it; working with a sense of style, and with a feeling for the tale-teller's and the romancer's art, which show him to be much more than the mere compiler and book-maker that some critics have been content to call him.

A word now as to the dates of Malory's writing, and Caxton's publishing, the 'Morte d'Arthur,' and we turn from the history of the book to the book itself. In his last page,— after asking his readers to pray for him,- Malory says in characteristic words, which again may be thought to point to his being more than a mere layman: "This book was finished the ninth year of the reign of King Edward

the Fourth, . as Jesu help me, for his great might; as he . [i. e., Malory] is the servant of Jesu both day and night." The period thus fixed brings us approximately to the year 1469, and to the ten years previous as the probable time when the 'Morte d'Arthur' was being written. Caxton published it in 1485, and then referred to Malory as still living. Hence he and his noble romance both fall well within that wonderful fifteenth century which saw the rise of English poetry, with Chaucer as its morning star,—

and the revival of Greek learning. It is significant enough, seeing their close kinship, that romance with Malory, and poetry with Chaucer, should have come into English literature in the same period.

As for Malory and his romance, there is hardly a more difficult and a more delightful undertaking in all the history of literature than that of the quest of its first beginnings. Principal Rhys has in his erudite studies in the Arthurian Legend carried us far back into the early Celtic twilight,- the twilight of the morning of man and his spiritual awakening,—and shown us some of the curious parallels between certain Aryan myths and the heroic folk-tales which lent their color to the "culture-hero," Arthur.

To examine these with the critical attention they require is beyond the scope of the present brief essay; but we may gather from their threads a very interesting clue to the "coming of King Arthur," in another sense than that of the episode so finely described by Tennyson. We see the mythical hero carried in vague folk-tales of the primitive Celts, in their journey westward across Europe, when the traditions were attached to some other name. Then we find these folk-tales given a local habitation and a name in early Britain; until at last the appearance of a worthy historical hero, a King Arthur of the sixth century, provided a pivot on which the wheel of tradition could turn with new effect. The pivot itself might be small and insignificant enough, but the rim of the wheel might have layer after layer of legend, and accretion after accretion of mythical matter, added to it, till at last the pivot might well threaten to give way under the strain. Not to work the metaphor too hard, the wheel may be said to go to pieces at last, when the turn of the romancers, as distinct from the folk-tale tellers, comes. The Welsh romancers had their turn first; then their originals were turned into Latin by quasi-historians like Geoffrey of Monmouth; carried into France, given all manner of new chivalric additions and adornments, out of the growing European stock, by writers like Robert de Borron; and finally, at the right moment, recaptured by our later Welsh romancer,