After a time a sort of parliament was convened in an amphitheatre formed by one of the craters of the great mountain. No one could think of this strange place of assembly as having been so lately given over to the two fiercer elements of those primal four in which the old world believed, the rush of angry Fire, or the wash of stormy Waves under which it had lain a little while, but long enough for the busy coral creatures to have claimed it for a foundation. Now it seemed as if Earth from the beginning had held it in her green arms, and as if the gentle Air had immemorially carried to and fro the sleepy odours of its wonderful flowers. Here they met, the Western party standing loyally round their leaders and chief speakers—the old Scholar of whom I have spoken, the young Priests, and a large company of English working men, who believed heartily in the communistic idea. I will not say that as they discussed the affairs of their Island nationality and opinion always kept together. There were some Englishmen of a low type who applauded the violent and warlike party; there was a company of the wiser and more educated Russians who were convinced by the words of the West; there were moderate men among the Germans and Belgians; but the Irish were mostly for the axe and the sword. It was clearly shown at this time that the Moderates were in the minority; there was no force to which they could appeal, and, as the sun set behind the ridge on which they stood, they turned and went rather sadly homeward. Still there seemed one effort to be made. The Western party was now, through the opposition of the South, bound by a real unity of thought. They could, at any rate, set themselves to persuade by individual converse some of the other side; indeed, as I have said, some of the better class of Russian Nihilists had already been convinced—these might influence their own people. So for a while, though without much hope, milder counsels were urged here and there by messengers from the West, who went singly across the hills to speak to all who would listen. The young Priests even endeavoured to recall some of the settlers of the South to thoughts of duty and heavenly wisdom, and preached the gladness of a life in which each lived for his fellows, in contrast with the misery of that state in which each strove for his own gain, wrangling like brute beasts. But though some few, touched by words that recalled an innocent past, inclined at least to consider their meaning, there were but few who were ready to receive them, and to most the Cross seemed but a worn-out emblem of the creed of oppressors.