Pyrrhonic philosophy, his Benedictine erudition, his gentle wit and most
humane irony into such an unpromising and opaque vessel. He would have
attempted it in a spirit of benevolence towards his fellow men and of
compassion for that life of the earth which is but a vain and transitory
illusion. M. Anatole France is a great magician, yet there seem to be
tasks which he dare not face. For he is also a sage.

It is a book of ocean travel--not, however, as understood by Herr Ballin
of Hamburg, the Machiavel of the Atlantic. It is a book of exploration
and discovery--not, however, as conceived by an enterprising journal and
a shrewdly philanthropic king of the nineteenth century. It is nothing
so recent as that. It dates much further back; long, long before the
dark age when Krupp of Essen wrought at his steel plates and a German
Emperor condescendingly suggested the last improvements in ships' dining-
tables. The best idea of the inconceivable antiquity of that enterprise
I can give you is by stating the nature of the explorer's ship. It was a
trough of stone, a vessel of hollowed granite.

The explorer was St. Mael, a saint of Armorica. I had never heard of him
before, but I believe now in his arduous existence with a faith which is
a tribute to M. Anatole France's pious earnestness and delicate irony.
St. Mael existed. It is distinctly stated of him that his life was a
progress in virtue. Thus it seems that there may be saints that are not
progressively virtuous. St. Mael was not of that kind. He was
industrious. He evangelised the heathen. He erected two hundred and
eighteen chapels and seventy-four abbeys. Indefatigable navigator of the
faith, he drifted casually in the miraculous trough of stone from coast
to coast and from island to island along the northern seas. At the age
of eighty-four his high stature was bowed by his long labours, but his
sinewy arms preserved their vigour and his rude eloquence had lost