THE ROMANCE OF THE UNKNOWN 287 



romance halted. Unattainable and unrealised, it 

 dwells for ever amid the Delectable Mountains at 

 the other end of the rainbow. 



We conjure it before our eyes from the shadows 

 of long-dead years. Those who follow us will in 

 their turn summon it from the age in which we 

 live. Future generations will accomplish in a few 

 hours journeys on which we have spent weeks and 

 months. " Ah ! " they will say, wagging their 

 heads, " that was the age in which to live. What 

 chances existed then for an adventurous spirit! 

 What uncouth and wonderful beasts roamed the 

 earth 1 Romance is dead ! " But romance is not 

 dead ; romance is the unknown, and those who 

 listen may hear at times the flutter of its elusive 

 wings. They beckon to us from the mystery of 

 strange lands, and though railways and the civilisa- 

 tion of the West have already begun to pierce the 

 mists which have so long shrouded China from the 

 eyes of outer barbarians, she still has more than 

 her share of mystery and romance. We exist, it is 

 true, in a hideously practical and work-a-day world. 

 The cry is all for progress and the annihilation of 

 time. Machinery hems us in, its roar is for ever in 

 our ears. The wise man shuts his ears to the throb 

 of the machines and the cries of the money-market. 

 He grasps, however, vainly at the golden illusions 

 of his childhood and lives for some all too-brief 

 moments in a world of make-believe. 



For every man must work out his own salvation 

 with fear and trembling. It is a better thing, it 

 seems to me, when all the world is young and 

 trees are green, while hot blood still courses 

 through the veins, to see the world as God has 



