THE RAFT

IT has been frequently said that the modern developments of science are gradually destroying many of the poetical elements of our daily lives, and in consequence are reducing us to a dead level of prosaic commonplace, in which existence is scarcely worth having. The first part of this rather sweeping assertion is perfectly true, but, as we shall presently see, the second portion is absolutely untrue.

Science has certainly destroyed, and is destroying, many of the poetic fancies which made a part of daily life. It must have been a considerable shock to the mind of an ancient philosopher when he found himself deprived of the semi-spiritual, semi-human beings with which the earth and water were thought to be peopled. And even in our own time and country there is in many places a still lingering belief in the existence of good and bad fairies inhabiting lake, wood, and glen, the successors of the Naiads and Dryads, the Fauns and Satyrs, of the former time. Many persons will doubtless be surprised, even in these days, to hear that the dreaded Maelström is quite as fabulous as the Symplegades or Scylla and Charybdis, and that the well-known tale of Edgar Poe is absolutely without foundation.