CHAPTER XVIII.
A MOUNT OF VISION--HENRY VAUGHAN.
We have now arrived at the borders of a long, dreary tract, which, happily for my readers, I can shorten for them in this my retrospect.
From the heights of Henry Vaughan's verse, I look across a stony region, with a few feeble oases scattered over it, and a hazy green in the distance.

It does not soften the dreariness that its stones are all laid in order, that the spaces which should be meadows are skilfully paved.
Henry Vaughan belongs to the mystical school, but his poetry rules his theories.

You find no more of the mystic than the poet can easily govern; in fact, scarcely more than is necessary to the highest poetry.

He develops his mysticism upwards, with relation to his higher nature alone: it blossoms into poetry.

His twin-brother Thomas developed his mysticism downwards in the direction of the material sciences--a true effort still, but one in which the danger of ceasing to be true increases with increasing ratio the further it is carried.
They were born in South Wales in the year 1621.