It is only for a time; again the fair structure they have made falls into ruin, and fragments are whirled into the eddies of everyday speech and abandon their beauty of form and meaning for something their original maker would never recognise. Then begins the old process; the débris of forgotten works, rounded and smoothed in the current of time, serves as the rubble to be concreted into the artistic works of a new age. Alas for the artists who have such a task before them! Out of the rubbish heap of the past they must mould what will please the new times. And where is there room for true harmony in the result of such a process? The materials depend for their form on the caprice of chance; the artists depend for the form they give on the caprice of the age in which they work, certain to be antiquated by the next new fashion. As long as a literary product depends on its form for its lasting effect, it must be comparatively ephemeral; for form is nothing if it does not suit the fancy of the age to which it appeals, and the fancy of one age conflicts with most others. Artificial means may seem to keep it alive, an ecclesiastical or political movement, the aid of an extraneous art, or the ambition of scholars and critics; but the life is only galvanic, and not from the heart of the people. No true music can come out of that which is essentially unmusical. CHAPTER VI INSPIRATION I ABANDONED the effort to defend the literature of Christendom, and came to the conclusion that a people that so scorned all word-mongering could not have any literature. I was soon disabused of the idea. One day, after my education had advanced into the final stage of its earlier course, and my loyalty to the race had been tested in many ways, my proparents bade me accompany them to the production of a new book. After what I had heard in depreciation of literature such as I had been accustomed to in Europe, I was somewhat startled at this invitation. But they said nothing to explain the anomaly, although they knew well the nature of the discussion I had had with Thyriel.