wandered in the mountains under the stars with peasants who had "second sight"; as he talked with fellow Hermetists in meeting-rooms in back streets whose shabby interiors grew rosy gloom as the talk turned on mysteries.
To us Mr. Russell talked much, talked kindly of all men, talked well of many things, said startling things of society and art and poetry so gently that you did not think until afterwards that in another you would hold them gages of combat. I can hear him yet, as I sat and tried at the same time to listen to him and to look at his flaming-hearted spirits with luminous angel wings and flashing halos enveloped in an atmosphere in which "the peacock twilight rays aloft its plumes and blooms of shadowy fire"—I can hear him saying, "You can't read Shakespeare, can you?" As I thought over this question later, I understood. Then I was too far rapt by the pictures to wonder at it greatly. Later came to mind Emerson's declaration that Homer, Milton, and Shakespeare "do not fully content us," that the "heavenly bread" is to be found in Zoroaster, Plato, St. John, and Menu. Both Emerson and Mr. Russell fail to use art as the standard. To the mystic, to whom this world is not reality, what appeal may have its seeming truths and shows as compared to the certain truth of the idealists and the beauties of the eternal life? The deep human knowledge, the great pageants of Shakespeare's kings and queens, are but "glories of our blood and state ... shadows, not substantial things."
Mr. Russell talked very simply of his pictures, of how their subjects came to him, and of his enjoyment in thus
