AN UNDISCOVERED ISLAND. ^3 



ing things so alien, he took refuge with his books, 

 and found his &quot; library was dukedom large enough.&quot; 

 But the problem was not solved by this surrender ; 

 out of the library, as out of the dukedom, he was set 

 adrift, homeless and friendless, until he set foot on 

 the island where he was to rule with no divided 

 sway. Here was his true home ; here the spirits of 

 the air and the powers of the earth were his minis 

 ters ; here his word seemed part of the elemental 

 order ; he spoke and it was done, for the winds and 

 the sea obeyed him. And when, in the working 

 out of destiny which he himself directed, he returns 

 to the dukedom from which he had been thrust out, 

 he is no longer the Prospero of ineffective days. 

 Henceforth he will rule Milan as he rules the quiet 

 dukedom of his books ; he has become a master of 

 life and time, and his sovereignty will never again 

 be disputed. 



Prospero did not find the island ; he created it. 

 It was the necessity of his life that he should fash 

 ion this bit of territory out of the great sea, that 

 here his soul might learn its strength and win its 

 freedom ; that here, far from dukedom and cour 

 tiers, he might discover that a great soul creates its 

 own world and lives its own life. Milan may cast 

 him out, as did Florence another of his kind, but 

 this human rejection will but bring him into that 

 empire which no enmity may touch, in the calm of 

 whose divinely ordered government treasons are un 

 known. No man finds himself until he has created 



