Variety is a great deal more than the spice of life : it is one of its necessary ingredients. We might conceive of, we might even—under certain pressing circumstances—eat a rice pudding without nutmeg; but who can conceive of a world without variety!

Picture to yourself, suggests a recent writer, an afternoon tea at which all the ladies were attired exactly alike. I think the guest unwittingly introduced to such a function would invent a swift excuse for exit. Imagine, then, a world in which all the trees rose at precisely the same angle, like telegraph poles; in which all the leaves were of uniform shape and colour; in which all the hills were like the hills in a child’s geography; in which the stars punctured heaven at painfully precise intervals; a world in which all men thought in the same way about the same things, and did the same things under the same circumstances at the same time. I think that, as we found a way of absenting ourselves from that hideous tea-party, we should also find a way (laws of gravitation notwithstanding) of slipping off the edge of this uninteresting planet.

By solemn decree of nature the parents of a child control its future. According to the laws of civilisation they are at liberty to mould its soul. Not the least privilege is that of conferring the name with which it confronts its fellows, and which—should it offend the bearer arrived at the age of reason—cannot easily be doffed. Godparents, at Baptism, were formerly left to choose the neophyte’s name; but this courtesy has fallen into disuse, and almost everywhere the parents themselves designate their choice. Thus an infant is early bound, or safeguarded, as the case may be, not only by the blood inherited from his forbears, but by their fancy in Christian names as well as by the obligation of their surname. Too often the ‘Christian’ name is pagan; obsolete and disreputable gods and goddesses enjoying a condemnable vogue. But if Diana and Sylvia are mistakes, the names sought in vegetation, such as Ivy, Violet, Myrtle, etc., are likewise unbecoming when borne by Christians. Such names of flowers and plants are of Semitic provenance, and there is no excuse for overlooking, in their favour, the glorious roll with which the Church provides us.

Whether the surname be a fetter or an asset, the Christian name should be as far as possible in accordance with it, lest the child be from infancy torn in two, subjected to different currents, bewildered between adverse elements. Race, calling, heredity must be taken into account in bestowing names, for nobody should be made incongruous before he can speak. To hear of Marmaduke Murphy gives us a start.

It was finished. As far as his narrow workshop would allow, the artist stepped back, brush still in hand, to look at his work.

It was full sunset, and the crimson rays stole through the open window, filling the untidy room with a warm glow. Opposite the window the brilliantly-coloured, sharp-cut statue stood out in bold relief against the glowing light. The artist gazed at it with critical pride. It was his great work, the tour de force of his many struggling years. Not that he wanted public recognition for his masterpiece; but he was glad that in his own eyes he had justified himself as a cutter of wood and stone. These things, dead to most men, he had learnt to touch with reverence and treat with patience. They had their moods almost like human beings; moods that commanded respect and consideration. Undue liberties were not to be taken with them. Humility had gradually taught him how to approach them, and in return they had yielded obediently to his touch.

When the commission had come to him from St. Faith’s to carve a statue in wood of the seated Madonna and Child, he knew this was to be the supreme test of his art. He thanked God for the privilege of such a holy subject, and chose the piece of birchwood with loving care. His thoughts turned to the Mother and Son. She was to be a Queen on her throne, with the Little King standing on her knees.

It has been said that ‘Great is advertisement with little men,’ and this is verified in other fields besides that of commerce. The ‘best seller’ is almost invariably trumpeted as a masterpiece of ‘modern thought,’ and small indeed is the number of readers who pause to reflect that ‘modern,’ ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ are only relative terms. Those of us who are not yet old remember the days when Tennyson was deemed modern. Now he is ‘out-of-date,’ ‘antiquated’ for those who cultivate modernity. In the thirteenth century Gothic architecture was modern, in the sixteenth, Renaissance. And yet the delusion of a machine-ridden world persists that what is proclaimed as truth in the twentieth century must be truer and better than what was proclaimed as such in the nineteenth or any previous century, because more modern. Those who are bemused with the wonder and novelty of eugenics would be mightily astonished if they should come to study such authors, say, as St. Augustine.