The bishop interposed with a laugh: 

“I may tell you, Count, that I am not in the Episcopal mood to-day.  Not at all.  Never felt less Episcopal in my life.  For that matter, it is our English ecclesiastics who have dealt some of the most serious blows at Biblical authority of late, with their modern exegesis.  Pray go on!”

“I imagine it is nothing but a matter of racial temperament.”

“Goth and Latin?”

“One does not always like to employ such terms; they are so apt to cover deficiency of ideas, or to obscure the issue.  But certainly the sun which colours our complexion and orders our daily habits, influences at the same time our character and outlook.  The almost hysterical changes of light and darkness, summer and winter, which have impressed themselves on the literature of the North, are unknown here.  Northern people, whether from climatic or other causes, are prone to extremes, like their own myths and sagas.  The Bible is essentially a book of extremes.  It is a violent document.  The Goth or Anglo-Saxon has taken kindly to this book because it has always suited his purposes.  It has suited his purposes because, according to his abruptly varying moods, he has never been at a loss to discover therein exactly what he wanted—­authority for every grade of emotional conduct, from savage vindictiveness to the most abject self-abasement.  One thing he would never have found, had he cared to look for it—­an incitement to live the life of reason, to strive after intellectual honesty and self-respect, and to keep his mind open to the logic of his five senses.  That is why, during the troubled Middle Ages when the oscillations of national and individual life were yet abrupter—­when, therefore, that classical quality of temperance was more than ever at a discount—­the Bible took so firm a hold upon you.  Its unquiet teachings responded to the unquiet yearnings of men.  Your conservatism, your reverence for established institutions, has done the rest.  No!  I do not call to mind any passages in the Bible commending the temperate philosophic life; though it would be strange if so large a miscellany did not contain a few sound reflections.  Temperance,” he concluded, as though speaking to himself—­“temperance!  All the rest is embroidery.”

Mr. Heard was thoughtful.  The American observed: 

“That side of the case never struck me before.  How about Solomon’s proverbs?”

“Maxims of exhaustion, my dear friend.  It is easy to preach to me.  I am an old man.  I can read Solomon with a certain patience.  We want something for our children—­something which does not blight or deny, but vivifies and guides aright; something which makes them hold up their heads.  A friend, an older brother; not a pedagogue.  I would never recommend a boy to study these writings.  They would lower his spirits and his self-respect.  Solomon, like all reformed debauchees, has a depressing influence on the young.”