Rome had been completely honeycombed and corrupted by Eastern mysticism before the final fatal clash of faiths occurred under Constantine, and the Semitic conception of the immortal importance of the human individual overthrew European nature-worship. So potent was this idea that for more than a thousand years Europe lent itself to scorn and repression of nature, and attempted to deal with life as only a pathway to death and the infinitely more important future beyond. The miserable confusion of the Dark Ages was the result of this struggle of the materialistic spirit of the European race in the bonds of a mysticism foreign to its genius. The Renaissance was rightly named a new birth. Out of the womb of this long night arose once again the mind of the West in its natural shape. Slowly beauty, knowledge, health, regained their old empire. Life grew in importance, and the futile, millennial-long struggle against death began to seem what it truly was--a mere terrified dream of the darkness. All this appears a long way around to Stevenson, but it is by this avenue I travelled--amid all those soft declamations--to find him the typical poet of the nineteenth century. Stevenson is pure Roman, not a touch of the Semitic is upon him. Every line of his prose and verse attests it. Someone said the other day that Hardy was not so much a pagan as a "revolted Christian," and brought as a charge against him that he did not resent the hard fates of the characters in his books. The second charge, of course, contradicts the first. It was the Eastern rebellion against Fate--against things as they are--that nourished its mysticism. But however one may decide as to Hardy there is no uncertainty as to Stevenson. His relish for life--life with all its pains and limitations--was keen to ecstasy. He leaves no dubiety on that head. Here was no wish for a city of gold and pearl, fenced from care, in which to take the refuge of ease in an impossible Elysium. His "House Beautiful" was "A naked house, a naked moor" and --"the incomparable pomp of Eve" was all he asked to make desirable "this earth, our hermitage." That this life leads to nothing more does not daunt him. "On every hand the roads begin, And people walk with zeal therein, But wheresoe'er the highways tend Be sure there's nothing at the end." To which he adds cheerfully: "Hail and farewell! I must arise, Leave here the fatted cattle, And paint on foreign lands and skies My Odyssey of battle. "The untented Cosmos my abode, I pass, a wilful stranger; My mistress still the open road And the bright eyes of danger. "Come ill or well, the Cross, the Crown, The rainbow, or the thunder, I fling my soul and body down For God to plow them under."