t on the modern
mind, what must it have been on that of primitive man! No laws
of reflection came within his ken. He looked down on the still
surface of tarn, or pool, or fountain, and saw, sinking
downwards, another world, another sky, losing themselves in
mystery. Mere wonder would yield place to meditation. Ah!
what secrets must lurk in those crystal depths, if only one could
surprise them--wrest them from the beings who inhabit that
nether realm! Possibly even the world-riddle might so be
solved! And thus it came to pass that most water spirits were
deemed to be dowered with prophetic gifts.

The Teutonic water-gods were "wise"--they could foretell the
future. In classical mythology, Proteus, the old man of the sea,
presents himself as a well-developed embodiment of this belief.
Old Homer knew how to use the material thus provided, and
Virgil, in his choicest manner, follows the lead so given. In the
fourth book of the Georgics, Aristaeus, who had lost his bees, in
despair appealed to his mother, the river-nymph, Cyrene. She
bids him consult Proteus, the old prophet of the sea. He follows
her counsel, captures Proteus, and compels him to tell the cause
of his trouble. "The seer at last constrained by force, rolled on
him eyes fierce-sparkling with grey light, and gnashing his teeth
in wrath, opened his lips to speak the oracles of fate."

Once more the transient must be allowed to fall away, and the
central intuition be recognised and grasped. The sense of a
secret to be gained, of a mystery to be revealed--of a broken
reflection of some fuller world--has been nurtured by the
reflections of form and light and colour in nature's mirror. The
older, simpler impressions made by such phenomena persist
with deeper meanings. The "natural" emotion they stimulate
affords the kind of sustenance on which Nature Mysticism can
thrive. Longfellow, in his poem, "The Bridge," strikes the
deeper note. The rushing water draws the poet's reflections
away from a world of imperfection to the sphere of the ideal.

"And for ever and for ever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;

The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven
And its wavering image here."

And thus the mountain tarn, the placid lake, the quiet river
reaches, the hidden pool, and the ocean at rest, have each and al