moved little about. With him scenery must grow
with age before it speaks to his heart. Fleeting impressions are of
little value, and the appearance of things without the forces of
tradition and experience behind it does not attract him:

Others, who wander far in distant lands may seek
On Alpine Mountains high the magic Edelweis;
I am an Element Immovable; each year,
April delights me in my garden, and the May
In my own village.
O lakes and fiords, O palaces of France and shrines
And harbors, Northern Lights and tropic flowers and forests,
O wonders of art, and beauties of the world unthought,--
A little Island here I love that always lies before me.

We must not think, however, that the spirit of Palamas rests within the
narrow confines of his native land. On the contrary, it knows no chains
and travels freely about the earth. He is a faithful servant of
"Melete," the Muse of contemplative study, a service which is very
seldom liked by Modern Greeks. In his preface to his collection of
critical essays entitled _Grammata_ he rebukes his fellow countrymen for
this: "On an old attic vase," he says, "stand the three original Muses,
the ones that were first worshipped, even before the Nine, who are now
world-known: Mneme, Melete, Aoide--Memory, Study, Song. With the first
and last, we have cultivated our acquaintance; and never must we show
any contempt for the fruit of our love for them. Only with the middle
one, we are not on good terms. She seems to be somewhat inaccessible,
and she does not fill our eyes enough to attract us. We have always
looked, and now still we look, for what is easiest or handiest. Is that,
I wonder, a fault of our race or of our age? And is the French
philosopher Fouillee somewhat right when in his book on the _Psychology
of Races_ he counts among our defects our aversion to great and above
all endless labors?" That Palamas is not subject to this fault, one has
only to glance at his works to be convinced. There is hardly an
important force in the world's thought and expression whether past or
present, to which Palamas is a stranger. The literatures of Europe,
America, or Asia are an open book for him. The pulses of the world's
artists, the intellectual battles of the philosophers, the fears and
hopes of the social unrest, the religious emancipation of our day, the
far reaching conflict of individual and state, in short, all events of
importance in the social,