does so the boat sinks slowly down in the water as though freighted with many passengers. Silently he pushes out from the land, into the darkness, with his invisible company, towards an Enchanted Island; and as the boat touches its sands voices are heard, like the reading of a roll of names; the boat becomes lighter as one by one the passengers leave it; and the fisherman is permitted to return to his home-whither, indeed, he is carried by a fair wind-but the unseen passengers return no more. How should they return? The bride has a new life to live, too full of love and duty for her to miss those who have passed away. The children will grow up with but a dim remembrance of the smiles that first greeted their young eyes. The old man will himself very soon be of their company. Why should they return? Besides, it is no more morning. The sun is high in the heavens of the nineteenth century, and everybody knows that we have no myths now. These Western shores of Europe, from the Maelstrom to the Bay of Biscay, are busy with Art and Commerce. The Island is Great Britain-no more enchanted, but always listening for the thunder that is to break someday from Cherbourg or Kronstadt-while the Channel is daily crossed by an innumerable fleet of steamers, amongst all the captains of which it would be impossible to find one who would so much as know how to reckon the freightage of a ghost. Now here is a strange thing. The same stretch of sea coast-the same race of seafaring men—the same crossing to and fro—and yet, by an enchantment greater than that of any morning mist, for it has been wrought in the full light of day, the old and the new have become different worlds. The Tyndalls of the Victorian age, and the Merlins of the Arthurian, are each occult to the other. It is as though the past and the future, like our dreams, formed no part of our actual lives. The story of the Enchanted Island is not more incredible to the new world, than the story that our "Iron horses of the steam, Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke—” I would have been incredible to the old. We have one word that settles everything,—and so had they. The story they tell us we call a myth. If they could have heard our story they would have called it a vision. But now-here is a thing still more strange. If we look closely into the matter we perceive that it is just those elements which at first sight seem most chimerical and unstable, that are essentially true and abiding. The sinking of the wale of the fisherman's boat, though established by the strictest laws of evidence, would still be only part of the mechanism of the story, of no more account than the wobbling of the neck of Lohengrin's swan, as it is hitched across the stage of Her Majesty's Theatre. Our "iron horses" may yet be driven by some motive power other than steam. All that is a matter of shifting detail. But the forces we use-or shall ever use-are constant, and were lying from the first at the fisherman's feet; only he did not know, nor could Merlin teach him, how to stoop and take them up. And what is happening to us? ghosts sweep past us. To-day it is Arnold-yesterday it was Darwin-the day before it was Rossetti. mechanism is indeed changed. We can render them no friendly aid. We do not know, nor does Tyndall tell us, whither they are going. On the verge of an unknown land we leave them, bringing back only the remembrance of their names. But they return no more. Every day a crowd of The As in the ruins of an ancient temple one might come upon a broken mosaic, and perceive it to be a fragment of a picture of the saint or god whose shrine was there; and then, examining the separate tesseræ, might determine that these which formed the aureole round the head are of gold, that the blood-stains on the hands There is the There is faith There is the are rubies, and that the purple robe is of amethyst-so, looking again at this dual story we may perceive that it is a fragment of a greater story, and that many elements go to the perfect telling of it. record of the event-that is History. in an unseen World-that is Religion. falling of night on land and sea-that is Nature. There is the subduing of the earth-that is Science. is action-that is Life. There is separation—that is Death. And last of all there is the bringing of these things together, the naming of them, the fashioning out of them a new Paradise-that is Art. There But the new Paradise that Art fashions is like the old, at least in this—that it is always slipping from under our feet. Where now is the Enchanted Island? We have reached its shores; but the dead are still trooping past us, we know not whither, and we seem further than ever from— "The island-valley of Avilion; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Where is the river that went out from Eden to water the garden? Upon its littoral are-crocodiles, but its waves reflect no more the Tree of Life. The gold of Havilah may be good, but there is very little of it left. The mosaic may have been lovely-but it is broken. We are told indeed that there will yet be a Tree whose leaves shall be for the healing of the nations, and a River of the Water of Life. For these we wait. Meanwhile Art goes on re-arranging for us her scattered tesseræ History, Religion, Nature, Science, Death, Life. What will the great mosaic be like when it is finished? For that also we must wait; content if only we can find amethyst for the purple robe, rubies for the bloody sweat, and gold for the aureole, which is the hope of the future. |