and glory of the Father,' each being equally, though not alike, a manifestation of the Divine to the other." Upon this symbol, conjugal love, Patmore indeed based the body of his work: yet he cannot justly be accused (as it would seem that Swedenborg, in his much-discussed work, must needs be) of sacrificing to it the eternal reality—love divine. Chastity our poet recognised as the final and perfect flowering of this fair bud, and it was the "Bride of Christ" alone who fully attained here below to that double sex which shall distinguish the regenerate in heaven. One of his most perfect odes, "Deliciæ Sapientiæ de Amore," stands for ever as a defence and vindication. Boldly it calls to the glad Palace of Virginity those "To whom generous Love, by any name, is dear"—who, all gropingly and unwittingly, have sought and yet seek
Nothing but God
Or mediate or direct.
Father Gerard Hopkins, upon his single visit to Hastings in 1885, was shown the manuscript of a prose work, Sponsa Dei, designed by Patmore for posthumous publication, and containing the fullest expansion of these transcendental views. He returned it with one grave remark—"That's telling secrets." It was upon the "authority of his goodness," Patmore always declared, that this beautiful treatise became fuel for another historic burnt-offering: but one can scarcely doubt that he himself had come to recognise the delicate rightness of the priest's judgment, and the fact that his subject demanded the parabolic vesture of poetry. We have the less cause to mourn over this lost manuscript, since most of its matter appears to have reached us through the pages of Religio Poetæ. "The Precursor" of this latter
