In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody has been summoned by
ringing of the great bell.
L. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallization! I
cannot conceive why unless the little ones think that the
discussion may involve some reference to sugar-candy.
(Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger members of
council. ISABEL frowns severely at L., and shakes her head
violently.)
My dear children, if you knew it, you are yourselves, at this
moment, as you sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eye of a
mineralogist, but a lovely group of rosy sugar-candy, arranged by
atomic forces. And even admitting you to be something more, you
have certainly been crystallizing without knowing it. Did not I
hear a great hurrying and whispering ten minutes ago, when you
were late in from the playground; and thought you would not all be
quietly seated by the time I was ready:--besides some discussion
about places--something about "it's not being fair that the little
ones should always be nearest?" Well, you were then all being
crystallized. When you ran in from the garden, and against one
another in the passages, you were in what mineralogists would call
a state of solution, and gradual confluence; when you got seated
in those orderly rows, each in her proper place, you became
crystalline. That is just what the atoms of a mineral do, if they
can, whenever they get disordered: they get into order again as
soon as may be.
I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, "But we know
our places; how do the atoms know theirs? And sometimes we dispute
about our places; do the atoms--(and, besides, we don't like being
compared to atoms at all)--never dispute about theirs?" Two wise
questions these, if you had a mind to put them! it was long before
I asked them myself, of myself. And I will not call you atoms any
more. May I call you--let me see--"primary molecules?" (General
dissent indicated in subdued but decisive murmurs.) No! not even,
in familiar Saxon, "dust"?
(Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt; LILY gives
voice to the general sentiment in a timid "Please don't.")
No, children, I won't call you that; and mind, as you grow up,
that you do not get into an idle and wicked habit of calling
yourselves that. You are something better than dust, and have
other duties to do than ever dust can do; and the bonds of
affection you will enter into are better than merely "getting in
to order." But see to it, on the other hand, that you always
behave at least as well as "dust;" remember, it is only on
compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do as it likes,
that IT ever gets out of order; but sometimes, with some of us,
the compulsion has to be the other way--hasn't it? (Remonstratory
whispers, expressive of opinion that the LECTURER is becoming too
personal.) I'm not looking at anybody in particular--indeed I am
not. Nay, if you blush so, Kathleen, how can one help looking?
We'll go back to the atoms.
"How do they know their places?" you asked, or should have asked.
Yes, and they have to do much more than know them: they have to
find their way to them, and that quietly and at once, without
running against each other.
We may, indeed, state it briefly thus:--Suppose you have to build
a castle, with towers and roofs and buttresses, out of bricks of a
given shape, and that these bricks are all lying in a huge heap at
the bottom, in utter confusion, upset out of carts at random. You
would have to draw a great many plans, and count all your bricks,
and be sure you had enough for this and that tower, before you
began, and then you would have to lay your foundation, and add
layer by layer, in order, slowly.
But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy days, when
children don't read children's books, nor believe any more in
fairies, if suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a bright brick-
red gown, were to rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap
the heap of them with her wand, and say, "Bricks, bricks, to your
places!" and then you saw in an instant the whole heap rise in the
air, like a swarm of red bees, and--you have been used to see bees
make a honeycomb, and to think that strange enough, but now you
would see the honeycomb make itself!--You want to ask something,
Florrie, by the look of your eyes.
FLORRIE. Are they turned into real bees, with stings?
L. No, Florrie; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you saw
the slates flying from the roof the other day in the storm; only
those slates didn't seem to know where they were going, and,
besides, were going where they had no business: but my spell-bound
bricks, though they have no wings, and what is worse, no heads and
no eyes, yet find their way in the air just where they should
settle, into towers and roofs, each flying to his place and
fastening there at the right moment, so that every other one shall
fit to him in his turn.
LILY. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals?
L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more than
crystals; but she builds these also. I dreamed that I saw her
building a pyramid, the other day, as she used to do, for the
Pharaohs.
ISABEL. But that was only a dream?
L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel; but I won't
tell it you unless you like.
ISABEL. Oh, please, please.
L. You are all such wise children, there's no talking to you; you
won't believe anything.
LILY. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, when you
say we ought.
L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect that
evening when we had been looking at your old cave by Cumae, and
wondering why you didn't live there still: and then we wondered
how old you were; and Egypt said you wouldn't tell, and nobody
else could tell but she; and you laughed--I thought very gayly for
a Sibyl--and said you would harness a flock of cranes for us, and
we might fly over to Egypt if we liked, and see.
SIBYL. Yes, and you went, and couldn't find out after all!
L. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that third pyramid
of hers; [Footnote: Note i.] and making a new entrance into it;
and a fine entrance it was! First, we had to go through an ante-
room, which had both its doors blocked up with stones; and then we
had three granite portcullises to pull up, one after another; and
the moment we had got under them, Egypt signed to somebody above;
and down they came again behind us, with a roar like thunder, only
louder; then we got into a passage fit for nobody but rats, and
Egypt wouldn't go any further herself, but said we might go on if
we liked; and so we came to a hole in the pavement, and then to a
granite trap-door--and then we thought we had gone quite far
enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed at us.
EGYPT. You would not have had me take my crown off, and stoop all
the way down a passage fit only for rats?
L. It was not the crown, Egypt--you know that very well. It was
the flounces that would not let you go any further. I suppose,
however, you wear them as typical of the inundation of the Nile,
so it is all right.
ISABEL. Why didn't you take me with you? Where rats can go, mice
can. I wouldn't have come back.
L. No, mousie; you would have gone on by yourself, and you might
have waked one of Pasht's cats,[Footnote: Note iii] and it would
have eaten you. I was very glad you were not there. But after all
this, I suppose the imagination of the heavy granite blocks and
the underground ways had troubled me, and dreams are often shaped
in a strange opposition to the impressions that have caused them;
and from all that we had been reading in Bunsen about stones that
couldn't be lifted with levers, I began to dream about stones that
lifted themselves with wings.
SIBYL. Now you must just tell us all about it.
L. I dreamed that I was standing beside the lake, out of whose
clay the bricks were made for the great pyramid of Asychis.
[Footnote: Note ii] They had just been all finished, and were
lying by the lake margin, in long ridges, like waves. It was near
evening; and as I looked towards the sunset, I saw a thing like a
dark pillar standing where the rock of the desert stoops to the
Nile valley. I did not know there was a pillar there, and wondered
at it; and it grew larger, and glided nearer, becoming like the
form of a man, but vast, and it did not move its feet, but glided,
like a pillar of sand. And as it drew nearer, I looked by chance
past it, towards the sun; and saw a silver cloud, which was of all
the clouds closest to the sun (and in one place crossed it), draw
itself back from the sun, suddenly. And it turned, and shot
towards the dark pillar; leaping in an arch, like an arrow out of
a bow. And I thought it was lightning; but when it came near the
shadowy pillar, it sank slowly down beside it, and changed into
the shape of a woman, very beautiful, and with a strength of deep
calm in her blue eyes. She was robed to the feet with a white
robe; and above that, to her knees, by the cloud which I had seen
across the sun; but all the golden ripples of it had become
plumes, so that it had changed into two bright wings like those of
a vulture, which wrapped round her to her knees. She had a
weaver's shuttle hanging over her shoulder, by the thread of it,
and in her left hand, arrows, tipped with fire.
ISABEL (clapping her hands). Oh! it was Neith, it was Neith! I
know now.
L. Yes; it was Neith herself; and as the two great spirits came
nearer to me, I saw they were the Brother and Sister--the pillared
shadow was the Greater Pthah.[Footnote: Note iii] And I heard them
speak, and the sound of their words was like a distant singing. I
could not understand the words one by one; yet their sense came to
me; and so I knew that Neith had come down to see her brother's
work, and the work that he had put into the mind of the king to
make his servants do. And she was displeased at it; because she
saw only pieces of dark clay; and no porphyry, nor marble, nor any
fair stone that men might engrave the figures of the gods upon.
And she blamed her brother, and said, "Oh, Lord of truth! is this
then thy will, that men should mold only foursquare pieces of
clay: and the forms of the gods no more?" Then the Lord of truth
sighed, and said, "Oh! sister, in truth they do not love us; why
should they set up our images? Let them do what they may, and not
lie--let them make their clay foursquare; and labor; and perish."
Then Neith's dark blue eyes grew darker, and she said, "Oh, Lord
of truth! why should they love us? their love is vain; or fear us?
for their fear is base. Yet let them testify of us, that they knew
we lived forever."
But the Lord of truth answered, "They know, and yet they know not.
Let them keep silence; for their silence only is truth."
But Neith answered, "Brother, wilt thou also make league with
Death, because Death is true? Oh! thou potter, who hast cast these
human things from thy wheel, many to dishonor, and few to honor;
wilt thou not let them so much as see my face; but slay them in
slavery?"