else in the English-speaking world; and that that whole Celtic Renaissance was born in the rooms of the Dublin Theosophical Society.  Yet there were to be eventualities:  the Dublin Lodge was only a promise; the Celtic Renaissance is only a promise.  Theosophy only bides its time until the storm of the world has subsided.  It will take hold upon marvelous Ireland yet; it will take hold upon Sacred Ierne.  What may we not expect then?  When she had but a feeble candle of Truth, in those ancient times, she stood up a light-giver to the nations; how will it be when she has the bright sun shining in her heart?

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So now we have followed the history of the world, so far as we might, for about a thousand years.  We have seen the Mysteries decline in Europe, and nothing adequate rise to take their place; and, because of that sorrowful happening, the fall of European civilization into an ever-increasing oblivion of the Spiritual things.  We have seen how in the East, in India and China, spiritual movements did arise, and succeed in some sort in taking the place of the Mysteries; and how in consequence civilization there did in the main, for long ages, go forward undeclining and stable.  And we have watched the Crest-Wave, indifferent to all national prides and conceits, flow from one race to another, according to a defined geographical and temporal plan:  one nation after another enjoying its hour of greatness, and none chosen of the Law or the Spirit to be lifted forever above its fellows;—­but a regular circulation of splendor about the globe, like the blood through the veins:  Greece, India, China; Rome, Spain, Rome, Egypt, Persia, India, China:  each repeating itself as the cycles of its own lifetime might permit.  And then, as the main current passed eastward from dying Europe, a reserve of it, a little European Sishta, passing west:  from Gaul to Britain, from Britain to Ireland; from Ireland to Tirnanogue and Wonderland,* there to hide for some centuries until the Great Wave should roll westward again from China through Persia, Egypt, Africa, Sicily and Spain, up into Europe:  when the Little Wave, returning magic-laden out of the Western Paradise should roll back Europewards again through Ireland, twelfth-century Wales and Brittany; and spray Christendom with foam from the sea! that wash the shores of Fairyland:  producing first what there was of mystery and delicacy to uplift mankind in feudal chivalry; then the wonder-note in poetry which has probably been one of the strongest and subtlest antidotes against deathly materialism.  Hence one may understand the raison d’etre for that strange correspondence between Chinese and Celtic happenings which we have noted:  the main wave rolls east; the backwash west; and they touch simultaneously the extremities of things, which extremities are, Celtdom and China.  In both you get the sense of being at the limits of the world,—­of having beyond you only nonmaterial and magical realms:—­Peng-lai in the East, Hy Brasil in the West;—­the Fortunate Islands of the Sunset, and the Fortunate Islands of the Dawn.