In retrospective thought, seated on its rock-ribbed, element-defying battlements, I muse upon the Legend: That here the wise ones of Lemuria—now ocean-covered—reared a stately edifice, a temple dedicated to the Gods of Light, wherein they taught her worthy youth the simple laws of life eternal: That here the gods touched hands with men and gave to them rich stores of knowledge and of wisdom in such measure as they could use unselfishly: That here men living for the soul of things made earth a heaven, themselves gods, conscious of their oneness with the Father (like their modern prototype, the fearless Nazarene): That from the temple-dome-crowned Point, standing like mystic virgin, old yet ever young—never yielding to the dark waters' fond embrace when all to Westward sank in one vast cataclysm—shone to all the world a quenchless, pure, white flame to light the way for mariners on ocean's waters, and on the sea of thought, that all might see and live: That once, when darkness filled the earth and men went blindly searching for the light and found it not, then the great Teacher from the temple—filled with pity and compassion—went forth to save the lost,—leaving the temple and its sacred light in care of trusted ones, charged on their lives to keep and hold its precincts inviolate till her return; their inspiration gone—careless and faithless to their sacred trust—the light went out and they in darkness perished; the temple—refuge for the good and wise—was sacked and leveled to the earth from sight of men: But caverned underneath (the Legend runs) stand guarding genii, giants grim, fairies, gnomes and sprites, to hold the portals closed by pitfalls, ocean tides, dire calamities and death, 'gainst venturous ones and the faithless guardians lingering near the whispering, moaning caverns by the sea—till their Queen returns to their release: That in some coming age when men, grown weary, heartsick, hopeless, wandering in the trackless waste, shall face again the rising Sun in search of ancient Wisdom and the Truth, then the great Teacher will again appear in human guise, among her own—welcomed by the wise-grown, faithful watchers, rejected and reviled by those who faithless in the past have been—to rear upon the ruins of the old, a new and grander Temple, dedicated to all that lives; and in its pure white marble dome to fix a light—symbolic of regenerate man—whose penetrating rays shall reach to lowest depths to light the ceaseless upward march of evolution to the Heaven on Earth—the Universal Brotherhood of Peace and Good-Will, made perfect through the travail, agony and blood of man, redeemed from SELF. EVOLUTION AND INVOLUTION. BY H. A. FREEMAN.