Where is that happy land of Faery,
Which I so much doe vaunt, yet no where show,
But vouch antiquities, which no body can know.

But let that man with better sence advize,
That of the world least part to us is red;
And daily how through hardy enterprize
Many great Regions are discovered,
Which to late age were never mentioned
Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru?
Or who in venturous vessell measured
The Amazon huge river, now found trew
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever vew?

Yet all these were, when no man did them know,
Yet have from wisest ages hidden beene;
And later times thinges more unknowne shall show.
Why then should witlesse man so much misweene,
That nothing is but that which he hath seene?
What if within the Moones fayre shining spheare,
What if in every other starre unseene
Of other worldes he happily should heare,
He wonder would much more; yet such to some appeare.

The general effect is almost always lively and rich: all is buoyant and
full of movement. That it is also odd, that we see strange costumes and
hear a language often formal and obsolete, that we are asked to take for
granted some very unaccustomed supposition and extravagant assumption,
does not trouble us more than the usages and sights, so strange to
ordinary civil life, of a camp, or a royal levee. All is in keeping,
whatever may be the details of the pageant; they harmonize with the
effect of the whole, like the gargoyles and quaint groups in a Gothic
building harmonize with its general tone of majesty and subtle
beauty;--nay, as ornaments, in themselves of bad taste, like much of the
ornamentation of the Renaissance styles, yet find a not unpleasing place
in compositions grandly and nobly designed:

So discord oft in music makes the sweeter lay.

Indeed, it is curious how much of real variety is got out of a limited
number of elements and situations. The spectacle, though consisting only
of knights, ladies, dwarfs, pagans, "salvage men," enchanters, and
monsters, and other well-worn machinery of the books of chivalry, is
ever new, full of vigour and fresh images, even if, as sometimes
happens, it repeats itself. There is a majestic unconsciousness of all
violations of probability, and of the strangeness of the combinations
which it unrolls before us.

2. But there is not only stateliness: there is sweetness and b