tions, they are
yet noble works, abounding in passages of remarkable descriptive
power; and while as works of art they are far inferior to the
Greek epics, in some respects they appeal far more strongly to
the romantic mind of europe, namely, by the loving appreciation
of natural beauty, their exquisite delineation of womanly love
and devotion, and their tender sentiment of mercy and forgiveness."

--Precisely because they come from a much higher civilization
that the Greek. From a civilization, that is to say, older and
more continuous. Before Rome fell, the Romans were evolving
humanitarian and compassionate ideas quite unlike their old-time
callousness. And no, it was not the influence of Christianity;
we see it in the legislation of Hadrian for example, and
especially in the anti-Christian Marcus Aurelius. These feeling
grow up in ages unscarred by wars and human cataclysms; every
war puts back their growth. The fall of Rome and the succeeding
pralaya threw Europe back into ruthless barbarity. In the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries humanism began to grow again;
and has been gaining ground especially since H. P. Blavatsky
began her teaching. But not much more than a century ago they
were publicly hanging, drawing, and quartering people in England;
crowds were gathering at Tyburn or before the Old Bailey to enjoy
an execution. We have hardly had four generations in Western
Europe in which men have not been ruthless and brutal barbarians
with a sprinkling of fine spirits incarnate among them; no
European literature yet has had time to evolve to the point where
it could portray a Yudhishthira, at the end of a national epic,
arriving at the gates of heaven with his dog,--and refusing to
enter because the dog was not to be admitted. There have been,
with us, too great ups and downs of civilization; too little
continuity. We might have grown to it by now, had that medieval
pralaya been a quiet and natural thing, instead of what it was:--
a smash-up total and orgy of brutalities come as punishment for
our sins done in the prime of manvantara.

A word or two as to the _Ramayana._ Probably Valmiki had the
other epic before his mental vision when he wrote it; as Virgil
had Homer. There are parallel incidents; but his genius does
not appear in them;--he cannot compete in their own line with the
old Kshattriya bards. You do not find here so done to the life
the chargings of lordly tuskers, the gilt and crims