'Today I have been to church which has not improved my temper I must own. The clergyman did his best to make me hate him and I took refuge in that admirable poem, The Song of Deborah and Barak; I should like to make a long scroll of painting (say, to go all round a cornice) illustrative of this jolly poem; with the people seen in the distance going stealthily on footpaths, while the great highways lie vacant; with the archers besetting the draw wells; with the Princes in hiding on the hills among the bleating sheep-flocks; with the overthrow of Sisera, the stars fighting against him in their courses and that ancient river, the river Kishon, sweeping him away in anger; with his mother looking and looking down the long road in the red sunset, and never a banner and never a spear-clump coming into sight, and her women with their white faces round her, ready with lying comfort. To say nothing of the people on white asses.'