The Reverend Thomas Treherne, in a quiet corner of seventeenth-century England, could declare that “all Time was Eternity and a perpetual Sabbath.” “The corn was orient, and immortal wheat which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. The dust and stones of the streets were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world.” “Everything was at rest, free and immortal. I know nothing of sickness or death, or rents or exactions, either for tribute or bread. In the absence of these I was entertained like an Angel with the works of God in their splendour and glory. I saw all in the peace of Eden.”[24] A hundred years later Blake in the dusty byways of dead cities could carry on the tradition of those who accept and yet rejoice--perpetually charging themselves in Whitman’s cheerful proclamation with “contentment and triumph.” Seeing God visibly with the naked eye, angels “with bright angelic wings bespangling every bough with stars” in the trees of Peckham Rye, and the sun not as a golden guinea hung in the sky, but as a multitude of the heavenly host singing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” this master mystic could defiantly proclaim that “though on earth things seem permanent, they are less permanent than a shadow, as we all know too well.” A century afterwards the tradition still abides, and life is still illuminated by an adventure through and beyond the sense-given impression of the outward show, into a universe of fire and splendour. To some it is effort towards a secret, a refusal to accept the knowledge which is given as the last word on the matter: an attempt to get once more behind both science and revelation to the Quiet which lies beyond all the noises of the world. To others it is a spiritual pilgrimage, not so much towards knowledge as towards attainment; an attempt through the will, in the business of life, to identify life as a journey: along a “road which leads to a light on the far horizon and beyond to the presence of God.” In each there is an escape from a tyranny of a present offering grey streets encompassing grey people, evolving itself into a future which offers more grey streets encompassing more grey people. Against so desolate a prospect sounds the summons of high enterprise, in the affirmation of a splendour not yet revealed, of shadowy presences and casements opening upon the perilous seas of fairyland.