bit of territory out of the
great sea, that here his soul might learn its strength and win its
freedom; that here, far from dukedom and courtiers, he might discover
that a great soul creates its own world and lives its own life. Milan
may cast him out, as did Florence another of his kind, but this human
rejection will but bring him into that empire which no enmity may
touch, in the calm of whose divinely ordered government treasons are
unknown. No man finds himself until he has created a world for his own
soul; a world apart from care and weakness and the confusions of
strife, in which the faiths that inspire him and the ideals that lead
him are the great and lasting verities. To this world-building all the
great poetic minds are driven; within this invisible empire alone can
they reconcile the life that surrounds them with the life that floats
like a dream before them. No great mind is ever at rest until in some
way the Real and the Ideal are found to be one. Literature is full of
these beautiful homes of the soul, reared without the sound of chisel
or hammer by the magic of the Imagination--divinest of the faculties,
since it is the only one which creates. The other faculties observe,
record, compare, combine; the imagination alone uses the brush, the
chisel, or the pen!

If one were to record these kingdoms of the mind, how long and luminous
would be the catalogue! The golden age and the fabled Atlantis of the
elder poets; the "Republic" of the broad-browed Athenian; the secret
gardens, impregnable castles, sweet and inaccessible retreats of the
mediaeval fancy; the Paradise of Dante; the enchanting world through
which the Fairy Queen moves; the "Utopia" of the noble More; the Forest
of Arden--what visions of peace, what glimpses of beauty, accompany
every name! To all these worlds of supernal loveliness there is a
single key; fortunate among men are they who hold it!

III

Be not afraid; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

When the sun rose the next morning, we rose with it, eager to explore
our little world about which the sea never cea