penetrate it _is_, and is
all the more, because I have found all prophecies and jugglings and
thaumaturgy fail to bridge over the abyss. It is since I have read with
love and faith the evolutionists and physiologists of the most advanced
type that the Unknown has become to me most wonderful, and that I have
seen the light which never shone on sea or land as I never saw it before.
And therefore to me the gypsy and all the races who live in freedom and
near to nature are more poetic than ever. For which reason, after the
laws of acoustics have fully explained to me why the nautilus sounds like
a far off-ocean dirge, the unutterable longing _to know more_ seizes upon
me,

"Till my heart is full of longing
For the secret of the sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me."

That gypsy fortune-teller, sitting in the shadow, is, moreover,
interesting as a living manifestation of a dead past. As in one of her
own shells when petrified we should have the ancient form without its
color, all the old elements being displaced by new ones, so we have the
old magic shape, though every atom in it is different; the same, yet not
the same Life in the future, and the divination thereof, was a
stupendous, ever-present reality to the ancient Egyptian, and the sole
inspiration of humanity when it produced few but tremendous results. It
is when we see it in such living forms that it is most interesting. As
in Western wilds we can tell exactly by the outline of the forests where
the borders of ancient inland seas once ran, so in the great greenwood of
history we can trace by the richness or absence of foliage and flower the
vanished landmarks of poetry, or perceive where the enchantment whose
charm has now flown like the snow of the foregone year once reigned in
beauty. So a line of lilies has shown me where the sea-foam once fell,
and pine-trees sang of masts preceding them.

"I sometimes think that never blows so red
The rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every hyacinth the garden wears
Dropt in her lap from some once lovely head." {292}

The memory of that court-yard reminds me that I possess two Persian
tiles, each with a story. There is a house in Cairo which is said to be
more or less contemporary with the prophet, and it is inhabited by an old
white-bearded emir, more or less a descendant of the prophet. This old
gentleman once gave as a precious