remark we shall close this inadequate notice of a literary field so boundless in its wealth of interest.
Compare the Indian or Chinese poetry of Nature, dramatic or otherwise, with that of modern Europe, and you discover a striking difference. The cuckoo brings to Wordsworth "a tale of visionary hours"—the recollection of his personal past never to return again—the memory of that "golden time" when the cuckoo's voice was "a mystery," and earth appeared "an unsubstantial fairy place." In the Oriental poetry this passionate sense of personal being is merged in one of social life. Only as a representative of his species does the Indian poet describe the seasons, only as such does the Chinese poet or philosopher describe or speculate. The Oriental knows not that concentrated personal being which looks on Nature as peculiarly connected with itself alone, and is for ever pacing round the haunts of its childhood, "seeking in vain to find the old familiar faces." Individual life, among the castes and village communities of India, or under the family system and paternal government of China, has attained no such social or artistic significance as in the West; and so in the Eastern dramas the face of Nature, too great and eternal to be brought into direct contrast with the ephemeral units of our Western stages, looks out fitly on the castes and families of the East.
