1'1 C TI 0 N.- • A PRISONER IN FAIRYLAND.t

THE late F. W. H. Myers held that one of the great facts of the world was the " registration in the universe of every pest scene and thought." Modern thought is playing very closely with this idea. Science seems to give it -many indirect

• Dante, Goethe's Faust, and 'other Lectures. By Herbert 'Daring Garrod. Edited by Lucy F. Garrod. With an Introductory ligernoit by Geoffrey Garrod. London: Macmillan and Co. [33. &I. net.] sanctions. People believe more strongly than their fathers did, 'or, at all events, more strongly than they themselves -did in their youth,-in the reality of -what is invisible. They are not indeed more ready to accept the "supernatural"—pro-

bably less so; it is rather that the recent discoveries of physical science supply an obviously ready analogy for explaining the potency and communicability of mental im- pressions. Why should not a cerebral creation, in the nature of mental waves, projected from the human being, -travel about in the aether—perhaps be held captive in the nether for indefinite spaces of time—and be recorded or reproduced when some human receiving apparatus, tuned to responsiveness, happens to lie in the path of the wave ? Not many years ago

such a record of experience as was described lately in An Adventure by the two ladies who independently believed that they saw the court of Marie Antoinette at the Trianons, would have been generally rejected as a fantastic incredibility. The

reception of the book, as it was, was very different; most readers felt at least that they could not undertake to say that such things were impossible. In his new story, Mr. Algernon Blackwood has laid under contribution all this vague feeling about the communicability of mental impressions, and we fancy that he may find ready recipients of his doctrine, though many lethargic readers may think the fantasy is sustained at too high a pitch for continued attention. We are sure, however, that those who happen to have some chord within them that vibrates to its note will return to this remarkable book again and again. Mr. Blackwood is capable of ugliness, but here be has written a romance of unfaltering beauty. The streak of genius in it is unmistakable. It has the madness of dreams, the wildness, and the largeness. In Mr. Kipling's words, the author has "splashed at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair."

Henry Rogers is a man of forty who is able to retire from business with a handsome fortune. He hopes now to realize the schemes he formed years before of great and wise philan- thropic work. He engages as his private secretary a character strangely compact of clerkly and poetic qualities. Mr. Blackwood draws the secretary with such fine lines in his early chapters that we cannot help thinking that he intended him for a much larger part in the story, and that the story, like a dream, ran off on its own lines. Rogers, before settling down to draw up the great scheme for his Home for Disabled

(disabled what ? he never answers the question himself) pays a visit, the first for many years, to his old home. The scene revives memories which become hauntingly real. A delicious melancholy carries him along entranced, and when he has discovered that vivid thinking visualizes for him at will all his early experiences he practises the art with enthusiasm. A mouldering railway carriage in a field in which he played as a child becomes again for him the Starlight Express. The same old passengers of his fancy people the train ; the same guard controls it; and it performs the same old journey through

space to where the net of stars is weaved and the caverns lie where the lost starlight is stored.

Light, sympathy, thought—these things become almost inter- changeable as the idea develops. As one of the characters says :--

" You see, all light meets somewhere. It's all one, I mean. And so with minds. They all have a common meeting-place. Sympathy is the name for that place—that state—they feel with each other, see flash-like from the same point of view for a moment. And children are the conduits. They do not think things out. They feel them, eh ? "

The need for conduits takes Rogers off post haste to see a cousin, a struggling man of letters who has settled in Switzerland with his uproarious but attractive family of children. When' Rogers leaves London in the boat train his secretary sees him depart in company with the passengers of the Starlight Express. Thus the- thoughts of Rogers, pointedly and affectionately pondered, have already planted themselves, with material shape, in the mind of secretary. Inter-communication is carried further when Rogers, to his astonishment, discovers that his fancies have preceded him to Switzerland, and have long been the familiar possession of

his cousin's children. These children have a practice of agreeing to meet in their dreams—an expedient which readers of Du Maurier will not ha% e forgotten in Peter Ibbetson.

The father of the family, too, catches the mental infection, and is soon acting as expositor to his children, who feel more

than he does, though they can explain less. We may quote one delightful passage between the• father and his childresi. which is characteristic of many others:—

‘‘' Tell us more exactly, please.' 'Star-rays, you see,' he evaded: them, 'are visible in the sky on their way to us, but once they touch the earth they disappear and go out like a candle. Unless. a chance puddle, or a pair of eyes happens to be about to catch them, you can't tell where they've gone to. They go really into' these Star Caverns." But in a puddle or a pair of eyes they'd be lost just the same,' came the objection. On the contrary,' he- said ; 'changed a little—increased by reflection—but not lost: There was a pause; the children stared, expectantly. Here was mystery. 'See how they mirror themselves whenever possible,' he went on, 'doubling their light and beauty by giving themselves away ! What is a puddle worth until a Star's wee golden face shines out of it? And then—what gold can buy it? And what are your eyes worth until a star has flitted in and made a nest there?' ' Oh, like that, you mean—!' exclaimed Jane Anne,. remembering that the wonderful women in the newspaper storiesk always had starry eyes." Like that, yes.' Daddy continued. 'Their light puts sympathy in you, and only sympathy makes yom lovely and—and—' He stopped abruptly. He hesitated a. moment. He was again most suddenly aware that this strange idea that was born in him came from somewhere else, almost frOrr some one else. It was not his own idea, nor had he captured it completely yet. Like a wandering little inspiration from another mind it seemed passing through him on uncertain, feathery feet. He had suddenly lost it again. Thought wandered: Ile stared at Jimbo, for Jimbo somehow seemed the channel. The children waited, then talked among themselves. Daddy so often got muddled and inattentive in this way. They were accustomed to it, expected it even. always love, being out at night,' said Monkey, her eyes very bright ; it sort of excites and makes me soft and happy." Excuse me,. Daddy, but have you been inside one ? What's it like ? The cave, I mean ? Jinny stuck to the point. She had not yet travelled beyond it. 'It all collects in there and rises to the top like cream,' he went on, 'and has a little tiny perfume like wild violets, and by walking through it you get clothed and covered with it, and come out again all soft-shiny—'' What's soft-shiny,. please ? " Something half-primrose and half-Moon. You're like a. star—' But how—like a star ? " Why,' he explained gently, yet a little disappointed that his adventure was not instantly accepted, you shine, and your eyes twinkle, and everybody likes= you and thinks you beautiful— 'Even if you're not ? ' inquired Jinny. But you are—" Couldn't we go there now ? Mother's. fast asleep ! ' suggested Jimbo in a mysterious whisper. He felt a curious excitement. This, he felt, was more real than usual. He glanced at Monkey's eyes a moment. 'Another time,' said Daddy, already half-believing in the truth of his adventure, yet not quite sure of himself. 'It collects, and collects, and collects. Sometimes, here and-there. a little escapes and creeps out into yellow flowers like dandelions and buttercups. A little, too, slips below the ground and fills up empty cracks between the rocks_ Then it hardens, gets dirty, and men dig it out again and call it- gold. And some slips out by the roof—though very, very little— and you see it flashing back to find the star it belongs to, and. people with telescopes call it a shooting star, and — It came pouring through him again. 'But when you're in it—in the Cavern, asked Monkey impatiently, what happens then ? "Well," he answered with conviction, it sticks to you. It sticks to thee eyes most, but a little also to the hair and voice, and nobody loves you unless you've got a bit of it somewhere on you. A girL, before anyone falls in love with her, has always been there, and people who write stories and music and things—all have got some' on their fingers or else nobody cares for what they w Oh, Daddy, then why don't you go there and get sticky all over with it ? ' Jinny burst out with sudden eagerness, ever thinking of others before herself. I'll go and get some for you—lots and lots.' 'I have been there,' he answered slowly, 'once long, long ago. But it didn't stick very well with me. It wipes off so quickly in the day-time. The sunlight kills it." But you got some !' the child insisted. • And you've got it still, I mean?' A little, perhaps, a very little.'" The father, a "muddle man," who always wumbles his stories: (Mr. Blackwood, like Lear, invents jolly, preposterous words)„ is perhaps the most attractive character in the book.

At the end the author springs an agreeable surprise on us.. The original projector of the thoughts which have made. so wide a tour of human beings was not Rogers, but a. lady who visits the man of letters to thank him for one of his. stories. She and Rogers meet; although strangers, they are; deeply familiar with each other. "His being flowed out to, mingle with her own." That is a very happy and suitable- ending. But as the scheme for Disabled — had collapsed, we should like to know what place was left for the pow:-