Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/540

536 on this occasion of their second meeting, they should pass the scene of their first. Between the two meetings, each of them had served with much distinction in different parts of the world. It so chanced that I was on the deck of the flag-ship when the scene which I have described took place.

As I think of that voyage, I am impressed by the much closer acquaintance which we have formed with St Lucia, and indeed with the West Indies in general, since those days – which, after all, are not so long ago. The snakes, the negroes, the flying-fish, and the sharks, used to be themes on which travellers could dilate for the amusement of their home-tarrying friends; but now it is so easy and so short an expedition for a man to go and see that region for himself, and so many have seen and declared its wonders, that life in the Gulf of Mexico is as well comprehended at our firesides as life in Kensington. One must go to Central Africa or to the interior of Tartary who wants to bring home anything fresh. The progress of science and art, which enables us thus to bring the ends of the earth together, is no doubt, on the whole, a great gain to humanity; but there are losses too, which must count as serious offsets. How are mankind ever to be compensated for the ignorance and darkness out of which glimmered the shadowy forms, the impossible adventures, the occult powers, the monsters animate and inanimate, of sovereign fiction, the materials of ever-to-be-wept romance? I might parody Pistol's fustian, and say, "Come we to plain facts here, and are charmed fables nothing?" Alas, alas! advancement will be dearly paid for if it is to cost us our mystery and our myths!

Of all the countries of the earth, Egypt was, perhaps, the most mystic and most legendary. Even while we breathe to-day, our public servants, civil and military, and our press, are sedulously at work secularising Egypt; so that the time cannot be far distant when the Pyramids will be known as well as Paul's – when the shoe-brigade, while awaiting customers, will season their discourse with slang drawn from the Labyrinth, and tame crocodiles will waddle at the heels of butchers' lads. These, however, are the material, real wonders of the land: cannot all the imaginary spells of it remain as great as ever, though the gross palpable objects become intimately known? I say, No. The sanctity of the Nile has passed away, now that that "exulting and abounding river" can be profaned by groups of personally conducted Cockneys from its mouths to its ruthlessly exposed source – now that its nakedness has been uncovered, and the fountain which had been kept secret since the foundation of the world revealed. The Thebes in whose gates "a 'undred 'Arrys" daily imbibe their Bass – must it not be commonplace and vulgar as Brummagen itself? Even the memory of Cleopatra descends to the lowest level of interest since the scenes in which she bloomed and charmed became common tracks. Familiarity and awe cannot away together; gnomes and afrites, marvels and dreams, flee before accurate topography and everyday intimacy. Unfortunately, the science which is turning Egypt and other strongholds of fable into material for facts and figures, and forbids them any longer to furnish such stuff as dreams are made of, does not take us much nearer to an even obscure acquaintance with life in Jupiter and Saturn, so that it gives us no compensation for the