I confess myself a lover of the truth beyond all things." "But are you sure," she returned, looking him gently but straight in the eyes, "that, in your anxiety not to make more of things than they are, you do not make less of them than they are ?" "There is no fear of that," returned Faber sadly, with an unconscious shake of the head.

"So long as there is youth and imagination on that side to paint them,--" "Excuse me: are you not begging the question?
Do they paint, or do they see what they say?
Some profess to believe that the child sees more truly than the grown man--that the latter is the one who paints,--paints out, that is, with a coarse brush." "You mean Wordsworth." "Not him only." "True; no end of poets besides.

They all say it now-a-days." "But surely, Mr.Faber, if there be a God,--" "Ah!" interrupted the doctor, "there, _you_ beg the question.

Suppose there should be no God, what then ?" "Then, I grant you, there could be no poetry.

Somebody says poetry is the speech of hope; and certainly if there were no God, there could be no hope." Faber was struck with what she said, not from any feeling that there was truth in it, but from its indication of a not illogical mind.