Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, no. 45, July, 1861 | Page 7

dwelt with
such homely force of language seldom made a part of her instructions.
Agnes tried to dismiss these gloomy images from her mind, and, after
arranging her garlands, went to decorate the shrine and altar,--a
cheerful labor of love, in which she delighted.
To the mind of the really spiritual Christian of those ages the air of this
lower world was not as it is to us, in spite of our nominal faith in the
Bible, a blank, empty space from which all spiritual sympathy and life
have fled, but, like the atmosphere with which Raphael has surrounded
the Sistine Madonna, it was full of sympathizing faces, a great "cloud
of witnesses." The holy dead were not gone from earth; the Church
visible and invisible were in close, loving, and constant sympathy,--still
loving, praying, and watching together, though with a veil between.
It was at first with no idolatrous intention that the prayers of the holy
dead were invoked in acts of worship. Their prayers were asked simply
because they were felt to be as really present with their former friends
and as truly sympathetic as if no veil of silence had fallen between. In
time this simple belief had its intemperate and idolatrous
exaggerations,--the Italian soil always seeming to have a fiery and
volcanic forcing power, by which religious ideas overblossomed
themselves, and grew wild and ragged with too much enthusiasm; and,
as so often happens with friends on earth, these too much loved and
revered invisible friends became eclipsing screens instead of
transmitting mediums of God's light to the soul.
Yet we can see in the hymns of Savonarola, who perfectly represented
the attitude of the highest Christian of those times, how perfect might
be the love and veneration for departed saints without lapsing into
idolatry, and with what an atmosphere of warmth and glory the true
belief of the unity of the Church, visible and invisible, could inspire an
elevated soul amid the discouragements of an unbelieving and
gainsaying world.

Our little Agnes, therefore, when she had spread all her garlands out,
seemed really to feel as if the girlish figure that smiled in sacred white
from the altar-piece was a dear friend who smiled upon her, and was
watching to lead her up the path to heaven.
Pleasantly passed the hours of that day to the girl, and when at evening
old Elsie called for her, she wondered that the day had gone so fast.
Old Elsie returned with no inconsiderable triumph from her stand. The
cavalier had been several times during the day past her stall, and once,
stopping in a careless way to buy fruit, commented on the absence of
her young charge. This gave Elsie the highest possible idea of her own
sagacity and shrewdness, and of the promptitude with which she had
taken her measures, so that she was in as good spirits as people
commonly are who think they have performed some stroke of
generalship.
As the old woman and young girl emerged from the dark-vaulted
passage that led them down through the rocks on which the convent
stood to the sea at its base, the light of a most glorious sunset burst
upon them, in all those strange and magical mysteries of light which
any one who has walked that beach of Sorrento at evening will never
forget.
Agnes ran along the shore, and amused herself with picking up little
morsels of red and black coral, and those fragments of mosaic
pavements, blue, red, and green, which the sea is never tired of casting
up from the thousands of ancient temples and palaces which have gone
to wreck all around these shores.
As she was busy doing this, she suddenly heard the voice of Giulietta
behind her.
"So ho, Agnes! where have you been all day?"
"At the Convent," said Agnes, raising herself from her work, and
smiling at Giulietta, in her frank, open way.
"Oh, then you really did take the ring to Saint Agnes?"
"To be sure I did," said Agnes.
"Simple child!" said Giulietta, laughing; "that wasn't what he meant
you to do with it. He meant it for you,--only your grandmother was by.
You never will have any lovers, if she keeps you so tight."
"I can do without," said Agnes.
"I could tell you something about this one," said Giulietta.

"You did tell me something yesterday," said Agnes.
"But I could tell you some more. I know he wants to see you again."
"What for?" said Agnes.
"Simpleton, he's in love with you. You never had a lover;--it's time you
had."
"I don't want one, Giulietta. I hope I never shall see him again."
"Oh, nonsense, Agnes! Why, what a girl you are! Why, before I was as
old as you I had half-a-dozen lovers."
"Agnes,"