PREFACE.

In sending forth another book belonging to the class known as religious novels, the author is moved to say a word to the critics who received a former one with so pleasant a mixture of praise and deprecation. As one of them frankly explained, "they like a pill none the better for being sugar-coated." It is not necessary to remind them that there may be younger (and possibly older) people who do. It is more to the point to state that persons to whom religion is a pill—a bitter, nauseous compound, to be bolted in sickness, and kept out of sight in health—are not the persons for whom the author writes.

There is another class of objectors. They talk solemnly of Art and its canons; they make a religion of it, having little other. One of these remarks, that "a tract in the hands of the Venus di Medici would be an impertinence." I quite agree with him. But why need he ignore the fact that the Venus is also the outcome of a religion? To the ancient sculptor, it was a goddess, not a woman, that grew under his hands; it was Devotion, working together with Genius, that produced the two or three statues which the world agrees to admire. So the few great poems of the world are religious poems. Why, then, should not the great novel of the world be a religious novel? Some day, be sure, a genius sweeter than Hawthorne's, more genial than Dickens', and subtler than Thackeray's, will arise to give it to us. Let me humbly help to prepare the way for him! Meanwhile, be it also understood that the persons to whom Art is a sufficing end, instead of a noble means, are not the persons for whom I write.

I do write for the "gentle reader" who enjoys religion in novels, as elsewhere. Be thus much said for his liking, even from the art side. There are two classes of novels—the descriptive and the analytical; one pictures real life, the other passions and motives. Religion has its rightful place in both, because it is an important part of real life, and controls both passions and motives. Finally (for the subject is much too wide for a preface), the modern novel being so potent a power,—for evil on the one hand, for social and civil reform on the other,—it is fair to suppose that it may do good service for religion.

In conclusion, I have to make two acknowledgments. The first to an unknown coadjutor, a hand that is doubtless mouldering into dust. Some years ago, a yellow, time-worn manuscript, purporting to be a veritable family history, fell into my hands. I am indebted to it for the main outline of my story. The second is to MISS FREEBORNE,—the only sculptor of our day, so far as I know, who has consecrated her genius to Christian Art. From her studio I have quietly abstracted the sculpture which lends its white grace to these pages. I should also have seized upon the slender figure of her St. Agnes, and the bowed head of her Martyr, had they been available to my purpose.

NEW YORK, July, 1874.