“Posterity cannot fail to participate in the admiration of the XVIIth century for this particular kind of poetry, when it shall possess sufficient self-denial to transplant itself out of the totally different circle of contemporary ideas into the intuition of the world, and the mode of representing it, from which this entire species of drama has sprung. He who can in this way penetrate deeply into the spirit of a past century will see the wonderful creations of Calderon’s _autos_ rise before him, with sentiments somewhat akin to those of the astronomer, who turns his far-reaching telescope upon the heavens, and, as he scans the mighty spaces, sees the milky-way separating into suns, and from the fathomless depths of the universe new worlds of inconceivable splendor rising up. “Or let me use another illustration: he may feel like the voyager who, having traversed the wide waste of waters, steps upon a new region of the earth, where he is surrounded by unknown and wonderful forms--a region which speaks to him in the mysterious voices of its forests and its streams, and where other species of beings, of a nature different from any he has known, look out wonderingly at him from their strange eyes. “Indeed, like to such a region these poems hem us round. “A temple opens before us, in which, as in the Holy Graal Temple of Titurel, the Eternal Word is represented symbolically to the senses. “At the entrance the breath as if of the Spirit of eternity blows upon us, and a holy auroral splendor, like the brightness of the Divinity, fills the consecrated dome. “In the centre, as the central point of all being and of all history, stands the cross, on which the infinite Spirit has sacrificed himself from his infinite benevolence towards man. “At the foot of this sublime symbol stands the poet as hierophant and prophet, who explains the pictures upon the walls, and the dumb language of the tendrils, and the flowers that are twining round the columns, and the melodious tones which reverberate in music from the vault. “He waves his magic wand, and the halls of the temple extend themselves through the immeasurable; a perspective of pillars spreads from century to century up to the dark gray era of the past, where first the fountain of life gushes up, and where suns and stars, coming forth from the womb of nothing, begin their course. “And the inspired seer unveils the secrets of creation, showing to us the breath of God moving over the chaos, as he separates the solid earth from the waters, points out to the moon and the stars their orbits, and commands the elements whither they should fly and what they are to seek.