. women of England! ...do not think your daughters can be trained to the
truth of their own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which God
made at once for their schoolroom and their playground, lie desolate and
defiled. You cannot baptize them rightly in those inch-deep founts of
yours, unless you baptize them also in the sweet waters which the great
Lawgiver strikes forth for ever from the rocks of your native land--waters
which a Pagan would have worshipped in their purity, and you worship only
with pollution. You cannot lead your children faithfully to those narrow
axe-hewn church altars of yours, while the dark azure altars in heaven--the
mountains that sustain your island throne--mountains on which a Pagan would
have seen the powers of heaven rest in every wreathed cloud--remain for you
without inscription; altars built, not to, but by an unknown God."
Here we have, we may say, words in their best order--Coleridge's equally
admirable definition of prose. It is splendid prose, won only from great
nobility of emotion. But it is not poetry, not the best words in the best
order announcing that the feeling expressed has been experienced with the
highest intensity possible to the mind of man.
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