he beauty and repose of the deep woods, must be satisfied,
and forsaking whatever was in hand we fled incontinently across the
invisible boundaries into that other and diviner country. No sooner
had the Poet made his confession than we hastened to make ours, and,
without further consideration, we resolved the very next day to shake
the dust from our feet and escape into Arden. This question settled, a
great gaiety seized us, and we began to plan new journeys for the years
to come; journeys which had this peculiar charm--that they belonged to
a few kindred spirits; the world knows nothing of them, and when some
obscure reference brings them to mind, smiles its sceptical smile, and
goes on with its money-getting. Rosalind drew from its hiding-place
the chart of this world of the imagination which we were given to
studying on long winter evenings, and of which only a few copies exist.
These charts are among the few things not to be had for money; if they
fall into alien hands they are incomprehensible. It is true of them,
as of the books which describe the Forest of Arden, that they have a
kind of second meaning, only to be discerned by those whose eyes detect
the deeper things of life. It is another peculiarity of these charts
that while science has indirectly done not a little for their
completeness, the work of preparing them has fallen entirely into the
hands of the poets; not, of course, the writers of verse alone, but
those who have had the vision of the great world as it lies in the
imagination, and who have heard that deep and incommunicable music
which sings at the heart of it.

Rosalind spread this chart on the table, and we drew our chairs around
it, noting now one and now another of the famous places of which all
men have heard, but which to most men are mere figments of dreams.
Here, for instance, in a certain latitude plainly marked on the margin,
is that calm sweet land of the Phaeacians where reigns Alcinoues the
great-souled king, and the white-armed Nausicaae sings after her bath on
the river's brink:

Without the palace court and near the gate
A spacious garden of four acres lay;
A hedge inclosed it round, and lofty trees
Flourished in generous growth within--the pear
And the pomegranate, and the apple tree
With its fair fruitage, and the luscious fig,
And olive always green. The fruit they bear
Falls not, nor ever fails in winter time
Nor summer, but is yielded all the year.