Walks o'er the top of yonder eastern hill."

And sunrises and sunsets wake in Wordsworth's soul the
thought of

"The light that never was on sea or land."

And it is the world-old feeling of life and joy that breathes in
Blake's lines "To Morning":

"O holy virgin! clad in purest white,
Unlock heaven's golden gates and issue forth;
Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light
Rise from the chambers of the east, and bring
The honey'd dew that cometh on waking day.
O radiant morning, salute the sun,
Roused like a huntsman to the chase, and with
Thy buskin'd feet appear upon our hills."

But what of modern science? Does not that eliminate the mystic
element? Far from that, it increases it. The dominant theory is
that light is a sensation caused by waves in ether which travel at
a speed of 186,000 miles a second. Of this theory Whewell
wrote in 1857 that Optics had "reached her grand generalisation
in a few years by sagacious and happy speculations." But it was
not thus that a halting-place was gained. For there succeeded the
discoveries of Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Hertz, and other great
physicists who used the old theory merely as a foundation for a
superstructure of unsuspected and wondrous proportions. The
theory of electrons came to the front, and the phenomena of
light are being linked on to those of electricity. The phenomena
of electricity, again, are being linked on to those of life. And
thus, as ever where our deepest intuitions are concerned, the
nature-mystic finds himself in harmony with and abreast of the
latest developments of modern knowledge.

At the dawn of human thought light and life were dimly but
persistently felt to be akin, if not identical. And now we know it
was a deep prompting of mother nature which caused men to
give to their divine beings the simple name--"the Bright Ones."

CHAPTER XXX

THE EXPANSE OF HEAVEN--COLOUR

"The broad open eye of the solitary sky."

Charles Lamb, with his native sensitiveness, considered this line
to be too terrible for art. Its suggestion of "the irresponsive
blankness of the universe" was for him too naked and poignant.
And yet, in certain of his aspects, nature is undoubtedly
irresponsive to man--aloof from his affairs--more especially in
her pageantry of the heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars.
But this feeling of aloofness is not constant, nor even normal, as
witness the exquisite lines in Peter