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In German mythology, England is the Phaiakian land of clouds and phantoms; the succubus, leaving her lover before daybreak, excuses herself on the plea that "her mother is calling her in England." The companions of Ursula are the pure stars, who leave the cloudland and suffer martyrdom as they approach the regions of day.
That development of the Christian creed, in one view, how natural and inevitable a process; yet what enormous waste of intellect, what diversion from sound inquiry! The original hypothesis being pure fancy, all the ingenious deductions are mere excursions into cloudland. We need not follow in any detail these speculations.
The grand character of the imaginary victim is but a species of phantom of her ownself, taken, like the German's camel, from the depths of her own self-consciousness, and projected into cloudland. This is the reason why authoresses enjoy dressing up a heroine who is ill-used.
To leave this cloudland of tradition, and approach the confines of recorded history.
Then a break in the woof, and a bit of dark blue sky could be seen glittering with stars, in the midst of which sailed the serene moon, shedding down her light on the cloudland beneath, giving to it all, one silver lining. Somewhat to the annoyance of Mr.
Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fancy; adventures wonderful and enthralling were happening to her in cloudland adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes like those of actual life.
It sounds so abstract, so remote from practice, that one might well believe we were landed again in the cloudland of festal oratory and the emotions of the leading article. The voluntary recognition of an invisible authority! And this after we have shattered the visible, and are living in the midst of intellectual anarchy and moral Nihilism!
The old English translator mentions grey eyes in his version of one of the amorous rondels; so far as I remember, he was driven by some emergency of the verse; but in the absence of all sharp lines of character and anything specific, we feel for the moment a sort of surprise, as though the epithet were singularly happy and unusual, or as though we had made our escape from cloudland into something tangible and sure.
She was no speculative theorist spinning impossible things out of the cobwebs of her brain. She was no Hypatia striving to restore the gods of the past, revelling in a brilliant cloudland of symbolisms and affinities. If she was caught in the mist at any time, she soon came out of it and found her footing in the practical realities of daily life.
Nor did we quarrel among ourselves and show them European weakness. Guacanagari remained a big, easy, somewhat slothful, friendly barbarian, a child in much, but brave enough when roused and not without common sense. He had an itch for marvels, loved to hear tales of our world that for all one could say remained to them witchcraft and cloudland, world above their world!
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