THE MAKING OF SCENERY 39 



"broads " on which picturesque wherry is damned." An ingenious prelate had 



and trim yacht pursue their business made certain calculations which estab- 



or their pleasure. lished the date of the Creation as 



A flat, here and there undulating, 4004 B.C. ; and precision, in one mo- 

 country, broken by pine-crowned knolls mentous detail, had been added to 

 or pine-encircling barrows ; its level Archbishop Usher's figures by a Vice- 

 horizon giving full glory of sunrise and Chancellor of the University of Cam- 

 sunset ; a country bounded westward bridge, who affirmed that " man was 

 for centuries by undrained swamp and created by the Holy Trinity at nine 

 fen, and therefore retaining that in- o'clock on the morning of October 23, 

 sular character which stereotypes 4004 B.C." Thanks to astronomers, 

 places and peoples shunted, as it were, geologists, and anthropologists, nous 

 off the main track of development, and avons change tout cela, and in so doing, 

 which, in many a nook and corner have widened the scope of wonder, 

 keeps primitive features dear to the and the area of mystery. The dis- 

 lover of nature and the student of the placement of the earth as the supposed 

 past. centre of a universe in which its mil- 



Those who observe and question lions upon millions of miles of orbit 

 are to-day a growing company. Our round the sun are but as a pin's point 

 forefathers, notably the country born viewed from certain "fixed" stars, 

 and bred, were keen-eyed for the things has been followed by the displacement 

 around on which life's needs depended, of man as the creature for whom sun, 

 but their heads rarely, if ever, struck moon and stars were made. Hence 

 the stars. With days " linked each to all thought, all speculation, has not 

 each by natural piety," all that was been merely reformed ; it has been 

 worth knowing, or that they thought revolutionized. Hence, with eager 

 it essential for their souls to know, and restless gaze, knowing so much, 

 had been revealed by " holy men of we would know all, piercing things that 

 old, who spoke as they were moved by we may reach the secret of the Eternal, 

 the Holy Ghost." The Book told and, baffled in that, would, at least, 

 them that the world, and everything learn what history they hold concern- 

 therein, had been created in six days, ing the processes which have made 

 and they believed it. To question them what they are. 

 was to doubt, and " he who doubteth This is a " revival," the revival of 



