spirituality, as of eternal tropical spring. It must have been
to even such a sky that Xenophanes lifted up his eyes of old when
he vowed the Infinite Blue was God;--it was indeed under such a
sky that De Soto named the vastest and grandest of Southern
havens Espiritu Santo,--the Bay of the Holy Ghost. There is a
something unutterable in this bright Gulf-air that compels
awe,--something vital, something holy, something pantheistic:
and reverentially the mind asks itself if what the eye beholds is
not the Pneuma indeed, the Infinite Breath, the Divine Ghost, the
great Blue Soul of the Unknown. All, all is blue in the
calm,--save the low land under your feet, which you almost
forget, since it seems only as a tiny green flake afloat in the
liquid eternity of day. Then slowly, caressingly, irresistibly,
the witchery of the Infinite grows upon you: out of Time and
Space you begin to dream with open eyes,--to drift into delicious
oblivion of facts,--to forget the past, the present, the
substantial,--to comprehend nothing but the existence of that
infinite Blue Ghost as something into which you would wish to
melt utterly away forever....

And this day-magic of azure endures sometimes for months
together. Cloudlessly the dawn reddens up through a violet east:

there is no speck upon the blossoming of its Mystical
Rose,--unless it be the silhouette of some passing gull, whirling
his sickle-wings against the crimsoning. Ever, as the sun floats
higher, the flood shifts its color. Sometimes smooth and gray,
yet flickering with the morning gold, it is the vision of
John,--the apocalyptic Sea of Glass mixed with fire;--again, with
the growing breeze, it takes that incredible purple tint familiar