AN UNDISCOVERED ISLAND, 177 



our feet and escape into Arden. This question 

 settled, a great gayety seized us, and we began to 

 plan new journeys for the years to come; journeys 

 which had this peculiar charm that they belonged 

 to a few kindred spirits ; the world knows nothing 

 of them, and when some obscure reference brings 

 them to mind, smiles its skeptical smile, and goes 

 on with its money-getting. Rosalind drew from its 

 hiding-place the chart of this world of the imagina 

 tion which we were given to studying on long win 

 ter evenings, and of which only a few copies exist. 

 These charts are among the few things not to be 

 had for money ; if they fall into alien hands they 

 are incomprehensible. It is true of them, as of the 

 books which describe the Forest of Arden, that they 

 have a kind of second meaning, only to be dis 

 cerned by those whose eyes detect the deeper things 

 of life. It is another peculiarity of these charts 

 that while science has indirectly done not a little 

 for their completeness, the work of preparing them 

 has fallen entirely into the hands of the poets ; not, 

 of course, the writers of verse alone, but those who 

 have had the vision of the great world as it lies in 

 the imagination, and who have heard that deep 

 and incommunicable music which sings at the heart 

 of it. 



Rosalind spread this chart on the table, and we 

 drew our chairs around it, noting now one and now 

 another of the famous places of which all men 

 have heard, but which to most men are mere fig- 



