xxxiii] LITERARY WORK, ETC., 1887-1905 219 



expresses the same idea, and which perhaps may be it — 

 A Prayer — as follows : — 



" A crowned Caprice is god of this world ; 

 On his stony breast are his white wings furled. 

 No ear to listen, no eye to see, 

 No heart to feel for a man hath he. 

 But his pitiless arm is swift to smite, 

 And his mute lips utter one word of might ; 

 ' Mid the clash of gentler souls and rougher, 

 Wrong must thou do, or wrong must suffer.' 

 Then grant, oh, dumb, blind God, at least that we 

 Rather the sufferers than the doers be." 



The lecturer stated that, however extreme and even out- 

 rageous these views would appear to many of his audience, 

 he could assure them from personal knowledge, that they 

 represented the opinions of almost all of the poets of whom 

 he had spoken. 



After the lecture Dr. Lunn protested against the idea that 

 poets were generally agnostic or even irreligious, referring to 

 Milton, Browning, Tennyson, and many others ; but Mr. Le 

 Gallienne had said nothing about these — the major poets — 

 and he assured me afterwards that he was well acquainted 

 with all the poets he had referred to, and that every one of 

 them were more or less pronounced agnostics. This seems 

 to me an interesting fact. 



My own lecture was mainly devoted to a sketch of the 

 chief great advances of science during the century, but I 

 added to it a kind of set-off in discoveries which had been 

 rejected and errors which had been upheld, referring to 

 phrenology as one of the first class, and vaccination as one 

 of the second. There were, of course, in such a place as 

 Davos, many doctors among the audience, and they signified 

 their disapproval in the usual way ; but I assured them that 

 some of them would certainly live to see the time when the 

 whole medical profession would acknowledge vaccination to 

 be a great delusion. 



Although Davos has no grand alpine scenery immediately 

 around it, there are many delightful walks through woods full 

 of flowers and ferns, alpine meadows with gentians and 



