structure then completed, took place in 1731; but entire legislative
independence was only reached in 1782. Eighteen years later, owing
to some rather meretricious influences, the parliament voted away
its rights; and the Union occurred in 1800. The building, which took
many years to complete, possesses majesty in design combined with
simplicity in arrangement, and has few rivals. Constructed of Portland
stone, the style is chastely classic, owing nothing to extraneous
embellishment--the mere outline producing a harmonious effect. The
principal front is formed by an Ionic colonnade, raised on a flight
of steps, and ranged round three sides of a spacious quadrangle. In
the central part a portico projects, formed of four Ionic columns,
sustaining a tympanum with the royal arms, while the apex is adorned
with a colossal statue--Hibernia--with others representing Fidelity
and Commerce on the western and eastern points. From the outer ends of
these colonnades the building sweeps eastward and westward in circular
form, the walls, unpierced by openings, standing behind rows of
Corinthian columns, and having the interspaces tastefully indented by
niches. Over the eastern portico are statues of Fortitude, Justice, and
Liberty. The original designer of this noble edifice is unknown. The
House of Lords has been left practically untouched to this day, save
that the Speaker's chair is now in the Royal Irish Academy.
On the opposite side of College Green is the extensive Corinthian
façade of Trinity College; and passing a short way towards Sackville
(now O'Connell) street, one reaches the Carlisle Bridge, from which can
be seen another magnificent building called the Custom House (though
so immense as to accommodate many government offices), as well as the
Four Courts and other massive structures, so numerous as to give the
impression of a people possessing energy, taste, and industry. Since
the early years of the nineteenth century, however, there have been no
fine buildings added, if we except the splendid pile of the Science and
Art Museums and Library in Kildare street.
The environs of Dublin, within a dozen miles or so, possess singular
charm and variety; and on Sundays the good folk keep the jaunting-cars
busy throughout the regions from Delgany, Powerscourt and the Dublin
mountains, to Leixlip, Howth and Malahide. Not many know that Malahide
Castle contains an altar-piece from the oratory of Mary Queen of Scots,
at Holyrood, for which Charles II gave two thousand pounds sterling.
Among the valuable paintings in this Castle is a portrait of Charles I
by Vandyke.
There is a territory within almost equally easy reach of Dublin, whose
loveliness excels anything of the kind in Ireland except possibly the
Blackwater in county Waterford. It is the Boyne valley between Slane
and Beauparc. Everyone in Dublin admits it lovely--but no one has seen
it!
In the north and west of Ireland the scenery is frequently wild
and stern. Of this character is Fairhead on the Antrim Coast, the
_Robogdium Promontorium_ of Ptolemy the geographer, where on one's
northward journey is obtained the first glimpse of the remarkable
columnar basalt formation met with in profusion in the Giant's Causeway
region. One of the basaltic pillars forming the stupendous natural
colonnade over six hundred feet high at Fairhead, is a rectangular
prism 33 feet by 36 on the sides, and 319 feet in height, and is the
largest basaltic pillar known.
Further along this coast is the rope-bridge at Carrick-a-Rede, which
sways in the wind as you walk over it, while the Atlantic waves boil in
the appalling chasm beneath; and woe to you, if overcome by terror you
attempt to lean on the thin hand-line.
The coast scenery in the vicinity of the Giant's Causeway is grandly
impressive, as seen from a boat. The promontory called the Pleaskin,
consisting of terrace upon terrace of columnar basalt, and the
succession of extraordinary rock groups such as the Sea Gulls, the
King and his Nobles, the Nursing Child, the Priest and his Flock, the
Chimney Rock, the Giant's Organ, and finally the Causeway itself, form
astonishing instances of nature's sportfulness.
The pillars in the Causeway number about forty thousand, and are
composed mainly of irregular hexagonal prisms varying from fifteen to
twenty-six inches in diameter, but all fitting together compactly.
Among other features of the place is the Giant's Amphitheatre, which
is exactly semi-circular, with the slopes at the same angle all round;
while around the uppermost part runs a row of columns eighty feet high.
As a German writer, Kahl, continues:
Then comes a broad rounded projection, like an immense bench, for the
accommodation of the giant guests of Finn MacCumhal; then again a row
of columns sixty feet high, and then again a gigantic bench, and so
down to the bottom, where the water is enclosed by a circle of
black boulder stones, like the limits of the arena.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. THE OLD HOUSES OF
PARLIAMENT--NOW THE BANK OF IRELAND; COLLEGE GREEN, DUBLIN]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. AN IRISH PEASANT
WOMAN]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. AN IRISH FARMER]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. PART OF THE GIANTS'
CAUSEWAY, ANTRIM, IRELAND]
We should have to go back to the era when the Bamian statues were
carved out of the living rock (see _The Secret Doctrine_, ii, 388) to
find giants tall enough to occupy this amphitheater gracefully.
The convulsion which lowered the Giants' Causeway, with its substratum
of ocher, below the upper tier level of the Pleaskin, produced the
landslide at the Giants' Organ, and submerged the continuous land
connexion with Staffa, must have belonged to far pre-Atlantean times
(the Atlantean continental system proper having ended nearly a million
years ago), and be referable to the Secondary Age, when there really
were giants somewhat approaching the size suggested. It must have been
far back in Lemurian times, for the sinking and transformation of the
Lemurian continental systems began in the vicinity of Norway, and ended
at Atlantean Lankâ, of which Ceylon was the northern highland.
There are traditions of enormous giants in many parts of Ireland. Thus
the rope-bridge chasm above mentioned, is said to have been cut by a
stroke of Finn MacCumhal's sword, a feat that would have been difficult
for even a Lemurian giant. The legends in Kerry express, by similar
exaggeration, the size and strength of a former giant race.
This reminds us that the Raphaim (phantoms), Nephilim (fallen ones),
and Gibborim (mighty ones) of the Bible refer to the First and Second
semi-ethereal Races, the Third (Lemurian), and the Fourth (Atlantean)
respectively.
But in order to grasp this subject intelligently, the reader may be
referred to those volumes which it will be more and more the principal
business of the scholars, archaeologists, and scientific men of the
twentieth century to study, interpret and vindicate (vindication is
already in full stride), namely, _The Secret Doctrine_, written by H.
P. Blavatsky.
* * * * *
True glory consists in doing that which deserves to be written, in
writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the
world happier for our living in it.--_Pliny_
THE BLUEBELLS OF WERNOLEU: a Welsh Legend by Kenneth Morris
Out of the bluebell bloom of the night
When the east's agloom and the west's agleam.
Over the wern at Alder-Light
And the dark stile and the stream,
There's dew comes dropping of dream-delight
To the deeps where the bluebells dream.
It's then there's brooding on wizard stories
All too secret for speech or song,
And rapture of rose and daffodil glories
Where the lone stream wandereth long;
And I think the whole of the Druids' lore is
Known to the bluebell throng.
For they say that a sky-bee wandered of old
From her island hive in the Pleiades,
Winging o'er star-strewn realms untold,
And the brink of star-foamed seas--
Thighs beladen with dust of gold,
As is the wont of bees.
She left the hives of magical pearl,
Of dark-heart sapphire and pearl and dreams,
Where the flowers of the noon and the night unfurl
Their rose-rimmed blooms and beams--
Fain of the wandering foam awhirl
On the wild Dimetian streams,
Of the rhododendron bloom on the hills--
(There's dear, red bloom in the pine-dark dell)--
Of rhododendron and daffodils,
And the blue campanula bell,
And the cuckoo-pint by the tiny rills
That rise in Tybie's Well.
(And where's the wonder, if all were known?
There's many in Michael's hosts that ride
Would lay down scepter and crown and throne,
And their aureoled pomp and pride,
So they might wander and muse alone
An hour by the Teifi side.
And if anything lovely is under the sky,
That the eye beholds, or the proud heart dreams,
When the pomp of the world goes triumphing by,
When the sea with the sunlight gleams--
It's show you a lovelier thing could I,
'Twixt Tywi and Teifi streams.
Let be! whatever of praise be sung,
Here's one could never make straight the knee,
Nor stay the soul from its paeans flung
Where the winds might flaunt them free,
For a thousand o' mountains, cloud-fleece hung,
'Twixt Hafren Hen and the sea.)
Musing, down through the firmament vales,
Here and there in a thousand flowers,
Even till at last she was wandering Wales,
Lured by the pure June hours,
Lured by the glamor of ancient tales,
And the glory of age-old towers.
Peony splendor of eve and dawn.
Tulips abloom on the border of day,
West on fire with the sun withdrawn,
Night and the Milky Way--
Ah, it was midnight's bluebell lawn
Most in her heart held sway.
O'er Bettws Mountain she came down slowly,
Drowsy winged through the tangled wern;
Where in the sky was there hill so holy,
With so much glamor to burn,
As the hyacinth wilds beyond Wernoleu,
With their white bells 'mid the fern?
Musing, round by the wern she wandered
From bell to bell with her wings acroon,
There where they laughed and nodded and pondered
Through the beautiful hours of June;
Bluebell-dark were the dreams she squandered
On the gold and green of noon.
And the wild white hyacinths, wondering, heard her,
Suddenly caught by her starry song;
Gave no more ear to the woodland bird, or
Heeded the wild bee throng,
Or laughed with delight of the sunbright verdure
Of fern they had loved so long.
Marvelous thought took hold of them wholly,
Azure of mingled darkness and light,
And they deepened to dark-heart sapphire slowly
With brooding on the splendor of night;
And the first of the bluebells of white Wernoleu
Bloomed, night-blueness dight.
And that's why the wern at Alder-Light
Is sweet with silence and deep in dream,
In that wizard region of dream-delight
Beyond the stile and the stream,
When the dews have fallen from the bloom of night
On the glooms where the bluebells gleam.
International Theosophical Headquarters
Point Loma, California
THE SOUL AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION: by Henry Travers
The majority of people are not very original and independent in their
thinking, and consequently prefer to await the sanction of some
recognized authority before accepting a doctrine. For this reason
it is scarcely just to lay _all_ the blame on the institutions,
ecclesiastical and otherwise, which supply this demand. For this
reason, too, it will be a matter of considerable moment that a
professor at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement
of Science should have brought forward arguments which, according to
the report of his address, "help the belief that man has a soul."
The arguments brought forward are as old as man himself, it is true;
but doctrines are judged largely according to their immediate source.
Thus a new color, an additional weight, is given to the idea that
the eye has been made by "some external agency cognizant of all the
properties of light," and to the idea that the brain is an instrument
played upon by some power that is not material. We have heard this from
the pulpit, perhaps; now we hear it from the lecture table; so we can
believe it a little more strongly than we did before.
The lecturer's cautious remarks, as gathered from a brief report, seem
to indicate a belief on his part that there may be a soul after all.
The report is headed, "Eye and Brain Show a Soul Possibly Independent
of Life." His view is said to be regarded by physiologists as offering
a great stimulus to research, and "it provides for the general
public a new exposition of the theory of belief in a divinity." The
eye and the brain are such wonderful instruments that they surely
must have been made by some intelligent power. That is the argument,
and it surely must have occurred to many people before. "The brain's
workings and the will-power suggested," he said, "that the brain was
mysteriously affected by invisible and untraceable harmonies." The
following is of interest to Darwinists:
It was natural to suppose, he declared, the existence of some external
agent over and above natural selection, which [latter] would have done
no more than assist in the process.
Natural selection is in fact no more than a phrase descriptive of the
process itself; it can neither help nor hinder, any more than the
theory of the law of gravitation can pull down a stone or the calculus
of probabilities affect the destiny of a soul.
One feels as if the ancient faiths of humanity, after being confirmed
and appealed against times without number, had been laid before a final
court of appeal, which, after many painstaking and protracted labors,
had at last begun to hand down opinions, slowly and carefully. The
existence of the soul has at last been established beyond all possible
cavil. It has passed all the courts, there is no further appeal, it is
law. The most irrational rationalist, the most credulous sceptic, the
most visionary materialist, may now believe in the soul. There really
is one. At least "there was some loophole for the view that mind was
not directly associated with life or living matter, but only indirectly
with certain dispositions of dynamic state that were sometimes present
within certain parts of it." (_Times_ report.) At present, then, we may
believe in a soul--cautiously. One wonders if the British Association
will ever get so far as to say that we _must_ believe in a soul.
But why should there be only one soul? Why not separate souls for the
eye, the brain, the heart, the liver--all equally wonderful? The fact
is that such problems as this have been debated from time immemorial,
and one can but refer the curious to the world's literature. While our
learned men are cautiously speculating about "a soul," the literature
of Hindûstân (to take a single instance), thousands of years old,
summarizes the tenets of many different schools of philosophy on the
subject of the various souls in man, the faculties of these souls,
the nature of the mind, its numerous powers and functions, the inner
senses and their external organs, and so forth. And back of all lies
the inscrutable Self of man, the Master and possessor of all these
powers. Verily we have much yet to learn--the road we are going. It
looks like a snail verifying the tracks of a bird. It looks as if these
physiologists had just arrived at the edge of the sea, near enough
to get their feet wet so as to know there is a sea. And now they are
talking about a promising field of investigation.
Of course these physiologists are souls, the same as the rest of us,
and they have minds and other faculties which they use all the time.
But what they are doing is to bring a little of this actual practical
knowledge down to the plane of formal theory. An extraordinary duality
of the mind, truly! To be a soul, to act as a soul, and yet to live
half in and half out of a mental state wherein conditions are entirely
different! One sometimes wonders what bearing these speculations have
upon actual life at all. The achievements of science lie mainly in the
region of applied mechanics and chemistry. Physiology brings us closer
into contact with vital questions that cannot be ignored and that yet
lie without the prescribed domain.
The zoological professor also indulged in a little flight of the
imagination; for in lecturing on "The Greater Problems of Biology," he
made "Wonderment" a part of his theme. He pointed out that the problems
of consciousness and the mystery of the reasoning soul were not for the
biologist but the psychologist.
Beyond and remote from physical causation lay the End, the Final Cause
of the philosopher, the reason why, in the which were hidden the
problems of organic harmony and autonomy and the mysteries of apparent
purpose, adaptation, fitness, and design. Here, in the region of
teleology, the plain rationalism that guided them through the physical
facts and causes began to disappoint them, and Intuition, which was of
close kin to Faith [capitals not ours], began to make herself heard.
This is enough to make Tyndall turn in his grave, thereby causing
an earthquake in Scotland. He was so very satisfied with the plain
rationalism, and died before it began to disappoint. What would he
have said of Intuition, if not that it is a secretion of one of our
glands? It seems to have taken a long time to realize that purpose,
design, etc., are qualities of mind and not of matter. It is absolutely
essential that physiologists should study mind and soul, even though
their immediate object be the body. What geologist could adequately
study the earth if he ignored the existence of the air and the sea?
WARWICK CASTLE: by C. J. Ryan
Warwick Castle, one of the most magnificent and well-preserved of the
baronial palaces of the middle ages, is among the first of the historic
monuments that American travelers visit in England, for it is in the
immediate neighborhood of Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace,
to which most Americans pay their respects early in their tour.
Warwickshire is a typically English county. It is not only central in
situation but, as Henry James writes, "It is the core and center of
the English world, midmost England." He rightly considers there is
no better way for a stranger who wishes to know something of typical
English life and scenery than to spend some time in Warwickshire, with
its richly-wooded and densely-grassed undulating landscape, its famous
historical relics, and its literary associations. Not only is the
county sacred to the memory of Shakespeare, but it is also the scene of
many of George Eliot's finest stories. The backgrounds of _Middlemarch_
and _Adam Bede_ are here.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. WARWICK CASTLE, FROM
THE AVON]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. INNER COURT AND
TOWERS OF WARWICK CASTLE. GUY'S TOWER ON THE LEFT]
The castle stands on a commanding eminence, overlooking the river
Avon, and from every point of view it presents an imposing and highly
picturesque appearance. It is little touched by time, though some of
it dates from Saxon times, and it passed through a great siege in
Cromwellian times. The oldest portion which is conspicuous is Caesar's
Tower, a solid building 150 feet high, built soon after the Norman
conquest. The greater part of the castle was built in the 14th and
15th centuries, and, with the exception of the great Keep, which has
disappeared, it has been very little injured. The roof of the great
Hall and some parts of the other buildings were destroyed by fire
in 1871, but they have been carefully restored. The dungeons below
Caesar's Tower are painfully interesting, and the view from Guy's Tower
is famous for its beauty. Guy, Earl of Warwick in the tenth century,
is a notable hero of chivalric legend, though it is probable that the
stories about him have been greatly exaggerated. Tradition relates
that he defeated in single combat a doughty champion of the Danes in
the time of Athelstan. If the Dane had won the English would have lost
their independence, says the legend. Guy, who was disguised as a simple
pilgrim when chosen--through a vision--for the defender of his country,
immediately afterwards retired for life to a hermitage in a cave near
Warwick, at Guy's Cliff, a romantic spot where the river Avon winds
through picturesque rocks, woods, and meadows.
The interior of Warwick Castle contains many priceless relics of
antiquity, such as the mace of the great Earl of Warwick, the
"King-maker" (died 1471), relics of the legendary Guy, the helmet of
Oliver Cromwell, the well-known Warwick vase found in Hadrian's villa,
Tivoli, and many celebrated portraits by Vandyck and Rubens.
Warwick Park is noted for its magnificent ancient cedars. Nathaniel
Hawthorne has written about Warwick Castle and the surrounding scenery
in a way that cannot be bettered. He says, in one passage:
"We can scarcely think the scene real, so completely do those
machicolated towers, the long line of battlements, the high windowed
walls, the massive buttresses, shape out our indistinct ideas of the
antique time."
MAN AND NATURE: by R. Machell
No sooner is the right man in the right place than order begins to
take the place of confusion in any department of human activity; for
order is natural and disorder is the result of an interference with
the law of nature. There are some who seem to think that natural law
can operate without agents and instruments, which is absurd; and there
are some who seem to think that the agents and instruments of natural
law are gods and angels and spirits, but not men; or that they are
microbes and bacteria, and "forces," whatever that may be, and anything
invisible and intangible, but not man. And why not man? Is man outside
the field of nature, while he is still subject to her laws? That is
hardly reasonable.
The divine, the human, and the natural, are but different aspects of
the Universal, which is called Nature. The right man was not in power
when these separations and limitations took the place of the true
teaching. The right man is Theosophy. When Theosophy comes in then
knowledge of the unity underlying all multiplicity of manifestations
takes the place of ignorance which breeds confusion and causes discord.
It is so easy to get hold of one part of the truth, and to make it
false by separating it from the other parts of the great whole. This is
what men have done and still are doing. And the Teachers, while trying
to proclaim the greater Truth, have been forced at times to limit their
teachings to that which will serve the immediate need of the hour
by correcting some evil that has sprung from making a dogma out of a
partial aspect of truth. Yet in the old mythology preserved in the
Scandinavian book of the Wisdom of Brunhilda there is the teaching of
man's duty to nature as the instrument of the Higher Law plainly stated
in the lines from William Morris' version:
Know thou, most mighty of men, that the Norns shall order all;
And yet without thine helping shall no whit of their will befall.
The Norns are the emblems of Natural Law; they are above mankind and
above the gods. All-Father Odin, who seems to correspond to the Greek
Zeus, was forced to pay dearly for but a glimpse of their knowledge.
They are above all the hierarchies of spiritual beings, a primordial
trinity, prototype of all lesser trinities; and yet without man's help,
their will remains unaccomplished among men.
It seems as if the Universal Law is supreme, but that in the world
of man its action may be blocked by man, creating confusion in that
world, and in those dependent upon it, which lies within the sphere of
illusion we call Time. This great illusion "produced by the succession
of our states of consciousness as we pass through eternal duration"
(_The Secret Doctrine_), is the field of man's operation, when he
blocks the action of the supreme Law by the interposing of his personal
will; in it he dreams, and the dream becomes a nightmare, which
beneficent nature ends by periodic cataclysms of fire or flood, while
the deluded souls returning to their waking soul-state know that it was
a dream.