And the angel that
sits at the grave is the angel of Anarchy."

THUS abruptly he brought to a close his extraordinary peroration, to
which I fear the written word has done but poor justice. A long
silence followed; in it there was borne to us from below the murmur of
the hidden fountain, the wail of the nightingale. It was night now;
the moon had set, and the sky was thick with stars. Among them one
planet was blazing red, just opposite where I sat; and I saw the eyes
of my neighbour, Henry Martin, fixed upon it. He was so lost in
thought that he did not hear me at first when I asked him whether he
would care to follow on. But he assented willingly enough as soon as
he understood. And as he rose I could not help admiring, as I had
often done before, the singular beauty of his countenance. His books,
I think, do him injustice; they are cold and academic. But there was
nothing of that in the man himself; never was spirit so alert; and that
alertness was reflected in his person and bearing, his erect figure,
his brilliant eyes, and the tumultuous sweep of his now whitening
beard. He stood for a moment silent, with his eyes still fixed on the
red star; then began to speak as follows:

"If," he said, "it be true, as certain mystics maintain, that the world
is an effect of the antagonisms of spiritual beings, having their
stations in opposite quarters of the heavens, then, I think, MacCarthy
and myself must represent such a pair of contraries, and move in an
antithetic balance through the cycle of experience. I, perhaps, am the
Urthona of his prophet Blake, and he the Urizen, or vice versa, it may
be, I cannot tell. But our opposition involves, on my part at least,
no hostility; and looking across to his quarter of the sky I can
readily conceive how proud a fate it must be to burn there, so red, so
sumptuous, and so superb. My own light is pale by comparison, a mere
green and blue; yet it is equally essential; and without it there might
be a danger that he would consume the world. I speak in metaphors,
that I may effect as gently as possible the necessary transition, so
cold and abrupt, from the prophet to the critic. But you, sir, in
calling upon me, knew what you were doing. You knew well that you were
inviting Aquarius to empty his watering-pot on Mars. And Mars, I am
sure, will pardon me if I obey. Unlike all the previous speakers, I
am, by vocation, a sceptic; and the vocation I hold to be a noble one.