The marriage rites close and crown the grand achievement, and a magnificent tableau illustrates the consummation. The spirits of the elements arise, and array themselves in a vertical arch upon the stage. The centre and summit is occupied by a new figure, now first introduced, costumed appropriately in pure white, representing Truth in augurated or universal harmony; the Spirit of Earth at the base on one side, and of Water at the other, while impersonations of Air and Fire occupy the intermediate positions. This bow of beauty and promise, emblematically dressed and decorated, stood a happy symbol of the restored order of the material creation. The household, artistically arranged and displayed, represented the divine order of society, where government and liberty, refinement and efficiency, luxury and industry, are reconciled, and man with his fellow man is organized in the harmonies of the creative scheme. And, that the joy may be full to the utmost limits of communion and sympathy, the Fairy of the Oak is seen ascending, to take possession, in behalf of her race, of their recovered heaven—the guerdon of their services to the redeemed family of Adam. So, the last scene in the drama mingles the new Heavens with the new Earth, and all the worlds in our universe triumph together in the general resurrection, as they rejoiced on the birth-day of the creation.
I do not know the history of the fairy tale, its age or origin. I know nothing of the design with which it was prepared for theatrical representation, nor do I see why it should be inferred, because the idea and method are so strikingly significant, that the manager, after the fashion of the ancient “Mysteries,” intended to restore sacred subjects to the stage in allegorical disguise. I suppose that the fable is simply fancy’s method of the great fact, and that its doctrinals are the natural intuitives and inevitable theory of the human mind concerning the mystery of life, the great epochal experiences of the human family, their final fortunes, and the interests and sympathies of other worlds included; for such conceptions as these are general and common among all men. The question of special revelation is not affected by its concurrence with universally received ideas. The correspondence pervading all systems proves the truth and unity of origin of the essential points in all, but in no wise touches the method of their revealment, discovery or propagation.
The points and particulars of the play are none of them manufactured to supply the running parallel we have given, nor are they nearly exhausted. Moreover, it will readily occur that the plan of the play illustrates the whole philosophy of world-mending by its merely human hero. The actual and eventual progress of civilization, religion and liberty can be laid down upon its scheme in the exactest detail of principles, which facts must follow and fulfill. The supernatural agencies introduced also answer this aspect and rendering of the myth. They well represent the material and immaterial forces concerned in all societary movements, and if they may not serve for the religion of the great process, they may do duty as philosophical abstractions, or as a beautiful system of poetical symbolism—for in the mystical correspondence of all these systems of ideas there is such fundamental unity of use.
W.
HYLAS.
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BY BAYARD TAYLOR.
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Storm-wearied Argo slept upon the water.