e the romantic remnant of Crusoe's ship. That
there are two sexes and one sun, was like the fact that there were
two guns and one axe. It was poignantly urgent that none should be
lost; but somehow, it was rather fun that none could be added. The
trees and the planets seemed like things saved from the wreck: and
when I saw the Matterhorn I was glad that it had not been overlooked
in the confusion. I felt economical about the stars as if they were
sapphires (they are called so in Milton's Eden): I hoarded the hills.
For the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to
talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is
literally true. This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price:
for there cannot be another one.*

[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter IV, pp. 112-5.]

A fragment of an essay on Hans Anderson that cannot be later than the
age of seventeen shows Gilbert trying to shape part of what he calls
here, "The Ethics of Elfland," but a large part was, as he says,
"subconscious." In this chapter he sums up the results of musings
about the universe begun so long ago--small wonder that he had seemed
to sleep over his lessons while he was seeing these visions and
dreaming these dreams which after every effort to tell them he still
knows remains half untold:

. . . the attempt to utter the unutterable things. These are my
ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine.
These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt
before I could think; that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I
will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my bones; first, that
this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a
supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural
explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to
satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I
have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel
as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to
mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of
art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this
purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as
dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of
humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy