"That inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die;"
or to the Semitic legend, which described the firmament as made of hammered plate, with little windows for rain,—a device so poor and barbaric, that we wonder how any man could look up into the melting blue and admit such a sordid fancy into his soul.
"Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest men," confesses Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, "has mingled with it something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind." Such an admission from so genial and kindly a source should suffice to put us all on the defensive. It is not agreeable to be bullied even upon those matters which are commonly classed as facts; but when we come to the misty region of dreams and myths and superstitions, let us remember, with Lamb, that "we do not know the laws of that country," and with him generously forbear to "set down our ancestors in the gross for fools." We have lost forever the fantasies that enriched them. Not for us are the pink
