must drop the excrescences they have put on; doff the ornate ritual and formalities of mediævalism and magic, and instead live faithfully according to the Gospel of Christ as taught by His apostles twelve.

The present condition has permitted endless unsettlements, uncertainties, and doubts, heart-breaking; with all manner of experiments and tricksters-Shakers and mediums, false gods, false guides and sentimentalists— to mislead those who need the lasting comfort of the divine. The superstitious and mental and moral riot and crankiness which in recent years have troubled the world must go; for who should presume to dabble in the mighty mysteries of which Christ said nothing, and thereby often lead the weaker of mind and fearful of heart to madness? But more important still, the true and truly accepted guides, the ministers and priests who are living and working according to the simple calls of their creed, must be outspoken, and shame the devil— which is worldly selfishness and cruelty-with all their hearts.

After Religion, as influences in building the renewed order of civilisation, come the 'Humanities'-Arts and Literature. Again, apparently, we are touching an obvious truth; for, of course, the Arts that realise the beauty and truth of life and make them permanent, a joy for ever, are essential to any uplifting of heart and spirit. But the application is not so obvious, after all; for, in a way, the arts will flourish in any civilisation, as they have done especially in periods of decadence. The history of Florence is the sufficient proof of that. The painters, sculptors, poets, romanticists, and musicians will remain with us as resolutely as the poor; but something more is required of them if the renewed Civilisation is to be established worthily. Greatness of aim, of vision, of thought, and greatness of venture-that is what especially is required, and nothing less than that in any age of nobler enlightenment. The ordinary stuff so easily outpoured from paint-box and word-machine may be sufficient for ordinary times; but if the renewed order is not to be loftier than this of the post-war and that of the pre-war years, it can only mean that the arc of human aspiration has passed the zenith and is descending: a conclusion intolerable, impossible to accept.

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dof It may, however, be asked, But how to attain the nd greatness required of ideal and accomplishment? It is Gospe not to be realised by thinking of it, or merely by desiring

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it; any more than one is able to hold fire in the hand by uns thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Greatness can only come from life itself. If the environment be sordid, kers mean, or entirely worldly, greatness of heart and purtali pose cannot spring from it. Therefore, slums and the of mean streets, too often nests of foul disease and sin, rio must be abolished and decent conditions made. Nature led and the beauty of the world are ever calling to humanity, bble offering their inspiration and refreshment. So why continue to endure base ugliness? There is a nobler wealth than riches, and it is really more useful. The The money-grubber has never achieved anything but his pile of golden muck. The man of small thoughts was never of any lasting use to his fellow-creatures. It is true der that often genius has come from lowly origins and circumstances of poverty. Shakespeare, Burns, Keats, Blake, Turner, occur, at once, as instances of that. But there was something behind their upbringing: healthy forbears, noble and serious purpose, strength of spirit which stimulated their powers; and, after all-there, in those words, we have something of the influences required supremely in the renewed civilisation.

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Ideals are the absolute essentials of the future. Where no vision is, no civilisation can persist. Material security also is necessary; but it is not enough, for the merely material is bound eventually to pass beyond control and so become a dangerous greed. Trusts and combines in the future cannot be permitted to continue to spread and establish an autocracy of their own. An underlying and yet a governing principle of the new régime must be the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Let that be the last word in this very brief and merely suggestive survey of vast and infinite possibilities.

MARTIN G. WELSH.

Art. 5.-THE HAUNTS OF THE RAVEN AND BUZZARD.

'It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps till June December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,

A silent turn below.

'There sometimes doth a leaping fish

Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's croak,
In symphony austere.'

So wrote William Wordsworth, more then a hundred years ago, of one of the loneliest and most beautiful spots in romantic Westmoreland, and the lines strike a singularly appropriate note, for there is something in the raven's croak that accords well with the spirit of the Red Tarn and the jagged precipices of Helvellyn, over which history has cast an atmosphere of tragic gloom. Austere indeed, and magnificent in their loneliness, must those mountains have been when the shepherd' of the poem made his melancholy discovery on the shores of the sombre little lake, and the poet himself inscribed those other and equally famous lines upon the smooth rock which witnessed the brothers' parting.' In those days the golden eagle still terrorised the hills, and it was the harsh scream of the royal bird which by fits' broke the stillness when Scott in his turn

"... climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,' to view the wonderful panorama of lakes and mountains spread wide below.

A century has passed. The eagle has gone; while the tourist, the fell-climber, and other products of civilisation have robbed the mountains of much of their solitude, but, unchanged as the rugged hills themselves, the raven remains, possibly not so remote a descendant of the bird of the poem, for, if ancient accounts contain even a substratum of truth, the wild raven may attain an age little dreamed of even by the naturalist. Discounting the fantastic estimates of writers such as Hesiod, who ascribes to the bird a term of life exceeding by one hundred and eight times the three score years and ten

allotted to mankind, there appears to be no doubt that BUZ individual ravens in captivity have been known to live a century or more, upon the strength of which one might reasonably expect wild birds to enjoy an even longer existence. It is therefore, at least, within the bounds of possibility that the very bird whose croak awakes the echoes on Eagle Crag or the jagged Pikes of Dollywaggon, may actually have watched Wordsworth at work upon the rock, or, by a greater stretch of the imagination, have witnessed the memorable tragedy on Swirrel Edge, and even harassed the faithful solitary vigil of the illfated traveller's dog who remained

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Romantic notions, perhaps, but the raven is essentially a romantic bird. His dark personality has figured conspicuously in the folk-lore of all northern lands, and, wherever he occurs, an atmosphere of romance invests Shim still. There is an ancient legend, not generally known, to the effect that when King Arthur passed to the great deep' whence he had come, he did not die, but by enchantment took the form of a raven, in which disguise he still guards these shores until the appointed time when he shall reign again and recover his kingdom. This legend, as W. H. Hudson suggested, may be responsible for the old idea that the killing of a raven by any Englishman will certainly bring misfortune upon all concerned. That the average countryman has long since lost faith in such a belief is testified only too clearly by the complete banishment of the bird from the greater part of England, and one must follow him to his main stronghold in the rocks and cliffs of superstitious Cornwall-a far cry from the Cumbrian hills-to find him still enshrouded in the gloomy dignity of 'Denmark's grim raven,' the terrible bird that

Croaks its black auguries from some dark wood.'

Whether the enlightened' Cornishman of to-day still firmly believes that evil fortune must descend upon the house over which a raven's shadow passes I cannot say, but, were such the case, the Dartmoor village from

which I write must be an ill-fated spot indeed, for every morning with clockwork regularity a pair of ravens from the Skaigh eyrie sail slowly over, flying wide apart, as ravens always fly, calling intermittently to one another, or, as the country people might well imagine, invoking curses of awful import upon the cottages below. Daily during the winter months they take the same route, quitting their eyrie at the prescribed moment, and beating steadily south until their voices are lost in the distance. Where they go, or with what purpose, I have never been able to discover, but in late afternoon, about sundown, or a trifle earlier if the weather is bad, they may be heard returning, travelling homewards by a somewhat different route a mile or two east of their outward course.

These two birds made their appearance in the district a few years ago, and my first encounter with one of them -the male-was somewhat remarkable. Returning from an evening walk over the moors, my way lay near a quiet little larch plantation which is a favourite roosting place, and, hoping to surprise a pair of harriers, I approached cautiously, and was well inside the wood before the inevitable pigeons discovered me and clattered out. I was still anathematising these over-watchful sentinels, and scanning the grey mist of twigs for more interesting perchers, when a mightier fluttering drew my gaze to a patriarchal larch not far away, from which a huge dark bird rose heavily. It might have been a big crow, but, as it mounted with a lusty flapping of wings, a deep bull-like note boomed suddenly over the darkening landscape. There was no mistaking it, though never before within the memory of living man had the cry of a raven sounded from that wood. But better was to follow. The big bird circled overhead, then, seeing nothing, and deciding apparently that it must have been a false alarm, he swung in again, folded sable wings, and dropped to a perch within fifteen feet of me.

There he settled, black and huge against the sunset, his long hooked nose and ample proportions proclaiming his identity beyond question. All seemed well. His steely eye, losing some of its keenness in the gathering twilight, could not pierce the soft brown gloom beneath