AN UNDISCOVERED ISLAND. 2C 



Nature that no grosser currents of influence h; 

 borne her away from the most wholesome and co . 

 soling of all companionships. Ferdinand came 

 from the shows of royalty and small falsities of 

 courtiers ; the palace, the city, the crowded, self- 

 seeking, hypocritical world had encompassed him 

 from youth, robbed him of privacy, cheated him of 

 that repose which brings a man to a knowledge of 

 himself, and despoils him of those sweet and tran- 

 quilizing memories which grow out of a quiet child 

 hood as the wild flowers spring along the edges of 

 the woods. 



Coming, one from the stillness of a solitary island 

 and the other from the roar and rush of a court and 

 a city, these two met, and there flashed from one to 

 the other that sudden and thrilling intelligence 

 which on the instant gives life a new interpreta 

 tion and the world an all-conquering loveliness. 

 Nowhere, surely, has the eternal romance found 

 more significant setting than on this magical island, 

 about which sea and sky, day and night, weave and 

 weave again those vanishing webs of splendor in 

 which daybreak and evening stars are snared ; with 

 such music throbbing on the air as invisible spirits 

 make when the command of the master is on 

 them ! Here, surely, was the home of this drama 

 of the soul, the acting of which on the troubled 

 stage of life is a perpetual appeal to faith and hope 

 and joy ! For youth and love are shining words in 

 the vocabulary of the Imagination words which 



