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sarily true, they perceive, if the story itself is true. Thus, if Belisarius, after his disgrace, was reduced to the last degree of pauperism, he must have taken to begging therefore the great general became a beggar. But he would not have condescended to beg if he could

have worked-therefore he was incapacitated for work by blindness. And if he begged he must have been glad of the smallest coinstherefore he used to say Date obolum, "Please a penny for Belisarius."

(To be continued.)

ON A BED OF MOSS

I LAY and dreamed, all yestereve,
A dream of deep delight;

For a charm about my couch did weave
Visions surpassing sight.

My bed was moss and violets sweet,
Shaded by forest boughs,

Whither faeries came with dancing feet,
And aureoles on their brows.

They told me mysteries magical,
Strange unto ears terrene,

How, circling in their flower-sweet hall,
They need no moon-ray sheen;
For the king's eyes fill that faery part
With the light that makes their day,
And the glowing of his radiant heart
Surrounds each dancing fay.

I asked for one I loved and lost,
Whom long ago they stole;

She was, said they, all clad in frost,
Till the king drew forth her soul.
He drew it towards his glowing breast,
And made her all his own;

Still must she dwell within that rest;
She dares not walk alone.

"And why with her should this be so,Her, pure as any fay?"

"Ay," said they, "pure as mountain snow,

And cold as arctic day:

You could not make her love you then,

But she is learning now;

You'll meet her yet in faery glen,

An aureole on her brow!"

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AN ARYAN ANCESTOR.

Ar first sight it would seem that to dwell upon the final or resurrection condition of the Zoroastrian Adam would be to turn away from the consideration of his genesis, and to be regarding the creation legend of the Parsis through lenses that invert.

But if we follow the Aryan belief that earth life, when spiritually regarded, is related to eternal life as but an episode of sleep or dream, then either side of that shadowy period must equally be the fringe of the true state from which all our so-called protoplasm draws its essential vitality. Under such an aspect, birth and death alike are rifts in the veil which covers us; and the difference between them is only in the direction of the soul's passage-whether into or out from the umbrageous avenue of mortality.

If, notwithstanding our very natural and wholesome prejudices in favour of the existence in which we are called to manifest ourselves in the all-important present, the now hidden life be the sphere from which proceeds that magic quality which bids chemical atoms uprise in organic force and beauty; and if, as contradistinguished from the seventy years journey in the caravan whose protection we have found temporarily serviceable, the unrealised dream state be the abiding and virtual life; then the ideal or standard man of any complete philosophy of creation, whether entering upon his perigee or apogee, must represent the strength and

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Kaiômart, or the pure man, as manifested in the Aryan books, is represented as the summit of the animal creation, differentiated from the lower degrees by his upright carriage, his articulate speech, his response to the mind of the Heavenly Supreme. He retains his hold upon essential life, perhaps in the continued consciousness of relation to his angelic counterpart. His pre-eminence of type is declared by his being described as the white man par excellence. This attribute of the arch-natural man was, no doubt, a mark of high distinction in the days when the myth of creation was embodied. The tribes among whom the Aryans made their way were probably for the most part dark and degraded aborigines of a lower race than themselves. But Kaiômart, or the ideal man, was not only white and radiant; he is represented as by origin an immortal being, with eyes looking up to heaven. The liquid of life had been applied to him in creation which rendered him ever beautiful and radiant, as a spiritual being would be who could dominate this body of mortality. The prophet Zoroaster is represented in the paintings and sculptures as endowed with a nimbus, à glory or crown of radiance, which is meant to typify the shining forth of the

atmosphere that fills the world of light.

We may assume that Kaiômart was understood never to have lost the consciousness of the unity of the two worlds. That oneness, Persian writers have said, even distinguished ascetics may comprehend. To understand the theory of resurrection, as it chimes in with such views as these, and to make an intelligent analysis of the word itself as we find it in the philosophical language of Greece, it will be necessary to bear in mind a matter that is considered in Persian books as belonging to ancient lore; a doctrine, moreover, that is revived by new believers in every age. This is the belief, as summarised by the authors of the Synopsis of the Dabistan, "that a man may attain the faculty to quit and reassume his body, or to consider it as a loose garment, which he may put off at pleasure, for ascending to the world of light, and on his return be reunited with the material elements."

It is logically manifest that these mystic passages must in a partial way be in themselves a resurrection and a new birth. If birth and death are entrances and exits in due form and ceremony with all one's belongings through the great portals of our mortal career, in which we are come to stay; these other movements are like unencumbered and hasty errands, to execute which one steps out unnoticed through a private door, which is either left open or the master carries the key.

There is no double evolution necessary for this, for the physical frame is quiescent, held only by life's cord of ductile gold; but the processes by which the spirit adapts itself to the degrees of the spheres or transcends from rarer to denser atmospheres, are told of only in the mazy utterances of seers themselves.

This kind of occultism is very

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"trodden upon by noiseless angels, Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight."

Such questions must rest upon their merits. Though speaking philosophically, an earth life may be but episodical; yet it is, at least, a considerable episode and the real business during its progress. To fill out one's existence from a plane, however superior, to which one is not adjusted at the time, instead of expanding into the best capacities of the life that is present, would indeed be to turn what may be truest sunshine on its own plane into merest moonshine on another. The materialistic mind in its own purblind fashion is no doubt conscious of this truth, but forgets the fact that morbid cravings after the life withdrawn, while they may be an infringement of a true and wholesome balance, are no more so than is the equally morbid resort to a hoodwink of false science and a puerile arrogance of certainty, assumed in order that all beyond a defined horizon can be ignored.

If, by reason of our having journeyed "further from the east" to learn the mighty mechanics of the physical plane, we fail to sympathise with the dreams of our Aryan cousins, we may test the breadth of our own philosophic standing according as we fling away those beliefs as worthless with the feeble ridicule of ignorance, or accept them as contribu

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