les nuances.' Certainly 'the mind's dark cottage battered and decayed'
does in that last dialogue admit some wonderful flashes,

From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house
Of Socrates,

or rather to that noble 'banquet-hall deserted' which aforetime had
entertained Socrates.

Suffer me, Mr Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen, before reaching my text, to
remind you of the characteristically beautiful setting. The place is
Crete, and the three interlocutors--Cleinias a Cretan, Megillus a
Lacedaemonian, and an Athenian stranger--have joined company on a
pilgrimage to the cave and shrine of Zeus, from whom Minos, first
lawgiver of the island, had reputedly derived not only his parentage but
much parental instruction. Now the day being hot, even scorching, and the
road from Cnossus to the Sacred Cave a long one, our three pilgrims, who
have foregathered as elderly men, take it at their leisure, and propose
to beguile it with talk upon Minos and his laws. 'Yes, and on the way,'
promises the Cretan, 'we shall come to cypress-groves exceedingly tall
and fair, and to green meadows, where we may repose ourselves and
converse.' 'Good,' assents the Athenian. 'Ay, very good indeed, and
better still when we arrive at them. Let us push on.'

So they proceed. I have said that all three are elderly men; that is, men
who have had their opportunities, earned their wages, and so nearly
earned their discharge that now, looking back on life, they can afford to
see Man for what he really is--at his best a noble plaything for the
gods. Yet they look forward, too, a little wistfully. They are of the
world, after all, and nowise so tired of it, albeit disillusioned, as to