be our work in the city; to the chapel we are to come to have strengthened within us the conviction of the Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of Man in Christ, upon which alone we can ground our hope that our good deeds shall continue, and ultimately have their full fruition when the last enemy of the Lord of Life and Love has been trampled beneath His feet. Is such our life? is suchin spirit, in essential truth, if not in literal form-our faith? If not, and unless we be converted, let us go our way: the Chapel of the Ascension is not for us.

But if we are willing that art should be on occasion the handmaid of religion, even though she sacrifice thereby somewhat of her own individuality; if we can accept and draw help from dogmatic teaching which knows nothing of the higher criticism; if we are wont to derive the strength. for our daily life from the great cloud of witnesses, and above all, from Him who, called by whatever name, is the beginner and perfecter of our faith, then we may enter the chapel, and gain there the rest which is the highest re-creation. And not only when we are in the chapel can it help us thus, but it can become to us one of those sacred places to which we turn in thought even when far away. How often do we turn thus to the little Arena Chapel at Padua, with Giotto's frescoes there, a prototype of Mr. Shields' work, to the cells of San Marco at Florence, with their frescoes by Fra Angelico, Mr. Shields' chief master among the Early Italian painters; and to the Catholic Apostolic Church at Edinburgh, with its paintings by Mrs. Traquhair, who to-day is working in the same spirit as Mr. Shields and as those masters of earlier days. And a few glimpses of the unfinished chapel in the Bayswater Road already link it in mind with those other sanctuaries, and many others still, where architecture and painting unite to do us highest service.

The book now issued tells us what is the complete pictorial scheme. It would be too long to give any

detailed account of it here. An abbreviation of the painter's own outline will best serve our immediate purpose. "Upon entering the chapel the visitor is in presence of the yet unfinished scheme of decoration, which will be found to open with the Creation of Man. This is followed by the circular design portraying the union of man and woman in their Creator's praise, which is followed by groups expressive of the purpose of holy matrimony. Next in order there is depicted a series of fourteen prophets, which are followed by a corresponding series of the Twelve Apostles, preceded by the Baptist, and concluding with the Protomartyr, St. Stephen. It is proposed that these shall alternate with successive subjects taken from the Gospels and the figures of the Prophets, with incidents from the Acts of the Apostles, in accordance with the appeal of St. Peter, Yea, all the prophets, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold these days.' And it is further projected that the whole shall culminate upon the north wall, setting forth the Passion of the Son of God, made of a woman, made under the law,' and His glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and His return to judge the world with that last and unerring verdict, against which the conscience of every man shall consent there can be no appeal."

Will they be few or many who find their way to this chapel for other reasons than mere curiosity, or to do more than merely choose here and there a picture or a medallion, and say that it appeals to them? How many will forgive that minor defect with which the scheme seems threatened: somewhat of overcrowding, and hence a conflict both in thought and emotion, and also of the bright chromatic colour of each picture with that of the

adjoining ones? How many will work their way through the crowded symbolism of the pictures until their meaning lying clear to the mind through the sight, perplexity is at an end, and has given place to a swift visual apprehension of "the eternal purpose of God's redeeming love, developing through successive dispensations-Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian ?" Time alone will show. Doubts of this nature were not always absent from Mrs. Gurney's mind. "Is it wiser," she questioned at one time, "to give up the precious vision as unsuited to our English people, and to our Londoners especially?" Miss Octavia Hill wrote that she thought "only the associations of a church would keep visitors at all in order, and that there were few who would look at solemn pictures without a living exponent voice." But be they few or many, there will be some in each coming generation who will be grateful to Mrs. Gurney and to her "servant," as Mr. Shields humbly styles himself, for help in realising "the past yet ever continuing ways of God with man;" and already there are some to whom the modest little chapel is one of the spiritual oases in the great wilderness of London, and who, in gratefully congratulating Mr. Shields on the near completion of the crowning work of his life, do not forget the lady whose noble ideal gave the artist his opportunity, and who, though she passed away more than a year ago, still, happily, lived to see that ideal so far realised that she could say, after a visit to the chapel, it had been to her "an atmospheric harmony, audible, visible, sensitive, like a nature scene that exists of itself in a perfection of unity and detail. It has been a sort of communion with the soul of things." May this happy enjoyment of the fruit of her own generous thought for others be the lot of many for whom she and her fellow worker shall have been the means of rendering such enjoyment possible.

مو

ΑΝ IDYLL

OF

LAKELAND.

BY JOHN WALKER.

"LAKELAND is now Elysium," said a friend, whilst we discussed our holiday plans; and we found out how true were his words when the train passed into the delectable land beyond Threlkeld Station, where the thin young moon hung above the clear-cut western hills, a semicirque of silver set in a sky of bronze. The breeze that fanned our heated faces seemed to be the very breath of the mountains, full of the subtle scents of the dewy grass of early June. The broom "blowing bonnie" on the slopes, and the rowan exhaling her fragrance, filled our hearts with the deep joy that always comes to us in the "North Countree."

A little later we found that the incomparable view from Friar's Crag had lost none of its abiding charm. There, among the gnarled roots of the pines, we sat on and on into the summer night-that is really only half a night— our hearts rejoicing in the soft beauty of the misty landscape. At this place one always takes a deep breath of unutterable satisfaction, knowing that England can afford no lovelier view than that which there spreads out before us. Thus sitting we tried to distinguish the voices of the birds,

calling to each other in the grey shadows that stretched away to Borrowdale. First of all the familiar sounds that floated to us through the still air was the harsh voice of a mallard, disturbed, maybe, by some roving otter or polecat. We could imagine the drake raising his glossy green head, and opening his yellow bill to sound an alarmı across the water. Then we heard the weird, deep hoot of the barn-owl from the woods on Castle Head; and this was answered by a blood-curdling "tu-whit" from the pines but fifty yards away. We arose and approached the bird's perching place, catching a glimse of a pair of large fiery eyes gazing at us for a moment, and then disappearing, as a white, phantom-like body dived into the gloom. From the little bay near at hand came the chiding voice of a love-sick edge-warbler, almost imitating the many cries of his feathered friends heard during the day. Leaving his ferny, furze-canopied chamber, a nightjar now plunged into the vapours in pursuit of insects, doubling about like a great moth. We heard his watchman's rattle in the island opposite, where he had disturbed the slumbers of the rookery. A noise of subdued cawing came from the trees, where the crows were discussing the churn-owl-as the nightjar is sometimes called-and his intrusion into their quiet haunt. The scent of hay floated towards us from a field where a few early swathes were lying. It is said that benzoic acid is responsible for this delicious fragrance, but a scientific word jars upon us when we think of "the sweep of scythe in morning dew."

In the morning we were awakened by the birds. The black swifts, or "screechers," uttering their shrill, piercing, metallic screams, clove the air with long scythe-shaped wings, in never-ending quest of food. The embodiment of restless energy as he is, the swift was our exemplar