I was in
Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost
converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those
significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all
enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in
dreams." Returning to the theatre after an interval of some years, he
vainly looked for the same feelings to recur with the same occasion.
He was disappointed. "At the first period I knew nothing, understood
nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered
all--'was nourished I could not tell how.' I had left the temple a
devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there
materially; but the emblem, the reference was gone! The green curtain
was no longer a veil drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which
was to bring back past ages, to present a 'royal ghost'--but a certain
quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a
given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward
and pretend those parts. The lights--the orchestra lights--came up a
clumsy machinery.
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