that delights you is no simplicity of barbarism. Here every one has
been taught; every one knows how to write and speak beautifully, how
to compose poetry, how to behave politely; there is everywhere
cleanliness and good taste; interiors are bright and pure; the daily
use of the hot bath is universal. How refuse to be charmed by a
civilization in which every relation appears to be governed by
altruism, every action directed by duty, and every object shaped by
art? You cannot help being delighted by such conditions, or feeling
indignant at hearing them denounced as "heathen." And according to
the degree of altruism within yourself, these good folk will be able,
without any apparent effort, to make you happy. The mere sensation of
the milieu is a placid happiness: it is like the sensation of a dream
in which people greet us exactly as we like to be greeted, and say to
us all that we like to hear, and do for us all that we wish to have
done,--people moving soundlessly through spaces of perfect repose,
all bathed in vapoury light. Yes--for no little time these fairy-folk
can give you all the soft bliss of sleep. But sooner or later, if you
dwell long with them, your contentment will prove to have much in
common with the happiness of dreams. You will never forget the
dream,--never; but it will lift at last, like those vapours of spring
which lend preternatural [15] loveliness to a Japanese landscape in
the forenoon of radiant days. Really you are happy because you have
entered bodily into Fairyland,--into a world that is not, and never
could be your own. You have been transported out of your own
century--over spaces enormous of perished time--into an era
forgotten, into a vanished age,--back to something ancient as Egypt
or Nineveh. That is the secret of the strangeness and beauty of
things,--the secret of the thrill they give,--the secret of the
elfish charm of the people and their ways. Fortunate mortal! the tide
of Time has turned for you! But remember that here all is