out the Idylls. He is the spiritual warrior waging war upon the "heathen of the land." His task is to reconstruct the fabric of society upon a spiritual basis. He would interpenetrate the whole kingdom of Sense with Soul. The powers by which this regeneration is to be wrought are revealed in the beautiful allegories of the "three fair Queens," "the Lady of the Lake," and "Excalibur."

"Three fair Queens,

Who stood in silence near his throne, the friends

Of Arthur, gazing on him, tall, with bright
Sweet faces, who will help him at his need."

The three Queens may be taken for "three of the noblest women," or "Faith, Hope, and Charity -those spiritual powers which are as strong angels within the soul as it wars with sense and sin. Ever near the throne of the heart must stand, as sentries on guard, these heavenly powers.

Merlin, subtle and powerful, represents intellect or science divorced from religion.

“And near him stood the Lady of the Lake,

Who knows a subtler magic than his own."

The Lady of the Lake is the symbol of religion. She is represented as dwelling

"'Down in a deep; calm, whatsoever storms
May shake the world, and when the surface rolls,
Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord,'"

She gives to Arthur the sword Excalibur

"Whereby to drive the heathen out."

The sword is the symbol either of the spiritual weapon by which the Soul wars with Sense, or the temporal power by which the Church assailed her enemies.

"On one side,

Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world,
"Take me," but turn the blade and ye shall see,
And written in the speech ye speak yourself,
"Cast me away!"

"Take thou and strike! the time to cast away
Is yet far off." So this great brand the King
Took, and by this will beat his foemen down.""

The reference may be to the temporal power at the time when the Church conquered by carnal weapons, and to the fact that the time had not yet arrived for the exercise of her purely spiritual functions; but, as Arthur is the centre of the conflict, Excalibur more probably is the symbol of that "sword of the spirit" by which all through life the soul must wage war with sin, and which can only be "cast away" when at last the soul, having "fought the fight," goes out upon the deep with the three fair Queens to the land where is no storm nor hail,

Gareth and Lynette.

KING ARTHUR'S court is still unstained and unshadowed. The knights are pure and loyal. There is much fighting in "Gareth and Lynette," but the air is untainted, and light and music play throughout. The romance begins with Gareth, the last of the sons of Lot and Bellicent, who craves to enter Arthur's Hall, but is restrained by his over-anxious mother. He is inspired with a noble ambition, sufficiently clear and lofty to become a fascinating ideal; he would rise

"To the great Sun of Glory, and thence swoop
Down upon all things base, and dash them dead,
A knight of Arthur, working out his will,
To cleanse the world.

But such glory is reached, not on swift wings, but
only by patient endurance and strenuous effort.
The initial difficulty, his mother, is not easily
overcome. She would have Gareth remain with
her, and promises him "a comfortable bride."
would have him stay to

a life of sensuous delight.

She

chase the deer and live Nobly he replies:

"Follow the deer? follow the Christ, the King,

Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—
Else, wherefore born?""

Bellicent alleges that Arthur is not " proven " King.
Gareth answers wisely :

"Who should be King save him who makes us free?'"

Finding that her appeal to filial feeling and sensuous ease fails to change the purpose of her son, she proposes a condition. He may go to Arthur's Hall, but he must go disguised, and serve for twelve months in the kitchen.

"Silent awhile was Gareth, then replied,
'The thrall in person may be free in soul."

He accepts the condition.

Gareth represents here, and throughout, the Soul in conflict with the forces that would blind its vision. He strives for the supremacy of the spiritual over the sensuous and selfish. The conflict between Soul and Sense with Gareth begins with the pathetic pleadings of Bellicent. She sees only with Sense, and is selfish. If he had yielded to her he would have followed the deer, not "the Christ, the King." The spiritual would have been lost in the sensuous, and in place of a spiritual warrior we should have had a self-indulgent lord of the manor. Gareth wins the first victory over Sense when he replies to Bellicent :

"Follow the deer? follow the Christ, the King.'"

Now he comes disguised to Camelot,* the city

* "Camelot,

a city of shadowy palaces, is everywhere symbolic of the gradual growths of human beliefs and institutions, and of the spiritual development of man."-TENNYSON, A Memoir, ii., p. 127.

built to music, and into Arthur's Hall, where he listens to the plaints of those who seek redress,

"And all about a healthful people stept

As in the presence of a gracious king."

In turn he craves his boon to serve twelve months

among the kitchen knaves. The boon is granted, and Gareth goes to serve under Kay, the seneschal. Of gentle birth, he finds himself surrounded by the vulgar. He sleeps with "grimy kitchen knaves," while Kay, jealous and exacting, imposes the most menial tasks.

"... And Gareth bow'd himself

With all obedience to the King, and wrought
All kind of service with a noble ease

That graced the lowliest act in doing it."

Thus he gains the second victory over self and circumstance. The conditions were anything but favourable to the high ideal. His ambition was to reach the flashing height, when he finds himself herding in a kitchen with base-born menials! Thus the soul on its way to the highest life may be conditioned by seeming evils that thwart its progress, but which, rightly estimated, become aids to the attainment of the ideal. If Gareth had judged only by Sense he would have chafed and fumed away his life in the servitude of the kitchen; but he judged by the spirit and saw "the soul of good in things evil." He accepted the discipline with