266 THE WORLD MACHINE 



plete, before all of its parts and its workings could be accounted 

 for. It seems slight enough to our modern time, rubbed so 

 clean of der Sinn fur das Wunderbare, " the sense of the miracu- 

 lous," which was the native hue of the mind of our forbears. It 

 did not seem so then. What were the argent flames, sometimes 

 soft and nebulous, often dazzling and vast, which come by times 

 across the quiet heavens ? 



