the
road from nature to civilization; a sweet reposeful realm, almost
without any development of the negative forces of society; a temporary
stopping-place for Ulysses in his all-embracing career, also for
individuals and nations in their rush forward to reach the great end.
The deep collisions of social life belong not to Phaeacia, nor to
Nausicaa, its ideal image.

It is the virgin land, the virgin world, which now has a young virgin
as its central character and representative, to mediate Ulysses with
itself, the universal man who must also have the new experience. Still
she is not all of Phaeacia, but its prelude, its introductory form;
moreover, she is just the person to conduct Ulysses out of his present
forlorn condition of mind and body into a young fresh hope, into a new
world. The Calypso life is to be obliterated by the vision of the true
woman and her instinctive devotion to the Family. We are aware that
Ulysses has not been contented with the Dark Island and its nymph, he
has had the longing to get away and has at last gotten away; but to
what has he come? Lost the one and not attained the other, till he
beholds Nausicaa, who grasps him by the hand, as it were, and delivers
him wholly from Calypso, leading him forth to her home, where he is to
witness the central phase of domestic life, the mother.

The organism of the Book easily falls into two parts, one of which
portrays Nausicaa at home, the other gives the meeting between her and
Ulysses. Yet over this human movement hovers always the divine, Pallas
is the active supernal power which brings these events to pass,
introducing both the parts mentioned. She is the providence which the
poet never permits to drop out. Most deeply does the old singer's
sincerity herein move the reader, who must rise to the same elevation;
Homer's loyalty is to faith, faith in the Divine Order of the World,
for this is not suffered to go its way without a master spirit; the
individual, especially in his pivotal action, is never left alone, but
he fits in somewhere; the Whole takes him up and directs him, and
adjusts him into the providential plan; not simply from without but
through himself. Such is this poet's loyalty to his Idea; he has faith,
deep, genuine faith, yet unostentatious, quite unconventional at times;
a most refreshing, yes, edifying appearance to-day, even for religious
people, though he be "an old heathen."

Such continual recurrence of the God's interferen