SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE.
“She was a charmer, and cou’d almost readThe thoughts of people.”Othello.
“She was a charmer, and cou’d almost readThe thoughts of people.”Othello.
“She was a charmer, and cou’d almost readThe thoughts of people.”Othello.
“She was a charmer, and cou’d almost readThe thoughts of people.”Othello.
“She was a charmer, and cou’d almost read
The thoughts of people.”
Othello.
Ida.As you unfold the wonders of the mind, Evelyn, the secrets of many splendid mysteries shine forth in the light of your truth; and the wisdom of “charmed rings,” “blessed brambles,” and amulets and talismans, fades before the precepts of a purer faith. Yet is there no witchcraft in your philosophy? You have, methinks, absolved Astrophel from spells and dark hours, for, in the softened lustre of his eye I see a light more holy than its wonted flash of divination.
Cast.You have more faith in his conversion than I have, Ida; for, lo ye now! On a mossy stone in Tintern lay this sable velvet pouch, which, from its mystic ’broidery, might be the lost treasure of a Rosicrucian cabalist.
“There’s magic in the web of it;A sibyl that had number’d in the worldThe sun to make two hundred compasses,In her prophetic fury sew’d the work.”
“There’s magic in the web of it;A sibyl that had number’d in the worldThe sun to make two hundred compasses,In her prophetic fury sew’d the work.”
“There’s magic in the web of it;A sibyl that had number’d in the worldThe sun to make two hundred compasses,In her prophetic fury sew’d the work.”
“There’s magic in the web of it;
A sibyl that had number’d in the world
The sun to make two hundred compasses,
In her prophetic fury sew’d the work.”
And here is a scroll of vellum folded within it. Listen, and you shall hear the pencillings of some unhappy student, benighted in the mazes of the Cabala.
“The eye of modern philosophy may wink at the wisdom of occult sciences, and sorcerers and magicians, necromancers and Rosicrucians, cabalists and conjurers, astrologers and soothsayers, Philomaths, Drows, and Oreades, wizards and witches, and warlocks, and sibyls and gipsies, may be, initsestimation, a mere legion of cyphers. Yet faith hath been long and firmly lavished on the art of divination by the learned and mighty men of all ages. The Chaldean, who read the stars, was the coryphæus and the type of superhuman knowledge; the magi of Persia and Egypt, and other orient lands, followed in his wake. The venerable Hermes Trismegistus was surrounded by his proselytes in the year of the world 2076; and Apollonius and Zoroaster, and Pythagoras, and, in later ages, John of Leyden, Roger Bacon, and other learned mystagogues, have imbibed a more than mortal wisdom from the aspect of those starry lights which gem the vaulted firmament; while the luminous schools of Padua, and Seville, and Salamanca, were rich in the records of occult and mystic learning. Emperors and kings, and ministers, who ruled the destiny of mighty nations, have believed. Wallenstein was all confiding; Richelieu and Mazarin (as Morin writes) retained soothsayers as a part of their household; Napoleon studied with implicit faith his book of fate; and Canute, obedient to his confidence in the virtue of relics, directed his Roman agent to buy St. Augustine’s arms for one hundred silver talents, and one of gold.
“Nay, what saith divinity itself? Glanvil, the chaplain of King Charles II., affirms in his ‘Saducismus Triumphatus,’ that ‘the disbeliever in a witch must believe the devil gratis;’ and Wesley said, that ‘giving up witchcraft was, in fact, giving up the Bible.’ Now, as the Chaldean sophs were divided into three classes—1. the ‘Ascaphim,’ or charmer; 2. the ‘Mecascaphim,’ or magician; 3. the ‘Chasdim,’ or astrologer; so the legion of modern witches was composed of a mystic tryad, distinguished by colours that were a symbol of their influence on our mortal frame. The black witch could hurt, but not help; the white could help, but not hurt; the grey could both help and hurt.”
Ida.My own Castaly, have pity on us. Evelyn may unrol the coils of this unholy manuscript if he will.
I do believe this lettered clerk has, in some unhappy hour, wandered by the ruins of the Seven Churches in the valley of Glendalough; and there, creeping up to St. Keven’s bed, that hangs over the gloomy waters of its lake, has won the fatal gift of Catholic magic. Or perchance he has sworn allegiance with Faust and Friar Bacon.
Astr.If an Oxford studentmustkneel at the shrine of a fair lady, he will whisper this confession. In exploring the treasures of black-letter romance, he revelled among the occult mysteries, slighting that pure analysis of nature which is the essence of all philosophy. The legends of Reginald Scott, De Foe, Glanvil, and Wanley, were the companions of his pillow; and thus in poring over the legends of enchantment, he was himself enchanted, and contemplated a wondrous history of witchcraft, where Sir Walter himself had failed. Let me have light penance, and I promise in the simple and beautiful light of nature alone to read her wonders; and if I dare, to study astrology in those planet eyes which look so mildly on their proselyte.
Ida.Or rather, as the magi of old, you will burn your books of divination; and, like Friar Bacon, who broke the rare glass which showed him things fifty miles off, you will study divinity, and become a pious anchorite.
Cast.I am happy that you abandon the dark and dooming spells of the magus and the witch, Astrophel, for witchcraft is the unholy opposition of a demon to the Deity. Yet in your fate I read my own. But censure not the poetry of that innocent romance that lights up the legends of the berry-brown sibyl, whether she be atiraunaprowling in the streets of Madrid, or a gipsy perched upon the heath-brow of Norwood; for theirs arehappyprophecies. Yet if, like Astrophel, I am to be the slave of philosophy, let me at least make “a dying and a swan-like end.”
It was among the heath-valleys, where nature lay in wild repose around the place of my birth, that I first met the glance of a gipsy’s eye. On the northern side of that beautiful sandhill in Surrey, that rears its purple and turret-crowned crest between the chalk hills and the weald, there is a green and bosky glen, the “Valley Lonesome,” Along the waste ofBroadmoor, that spreads between the brow ofLeith-Hilland the Roman camp ofAnstie-bury, comes rippling down the crystal streamlet of theTill, which, blending with a torrent that leaps from a lofty sand-rock, steals away amid mosses and cardamines, and cuckoo-flowers; now gliding between its emerald banks, now swelling into a broader sheet, beneath the beech woods ofWotton, the ancient seat of the Evelyns. There the willows dip their silver blossoms, and the violet, almost hidden beneath them, fills the air with sweetness. There the wild briar wreaths in light festoons its tiny roses, and the passion-flower, entwining its luxuriant tendrils around the aspen and the sycamore, hangs its beautiful blue stars in rich profusion. And there, among the boughs of lofty elms whose shadows in the early morning darken the casements ofTillingbourne, a colony of rooks hang their woody nests; and the murmurs of the ringdove, nestling within the woods of Wotton and the Rookery, are heard in the golden noon and sunset of June, floating around this leafy paradise.
It was on such an eve that my thoughts had faded into slumber; and when my eyelids oped, there was a form of embrowned beauty before me so wild, yet so majestic, that Cleopatra, in the garb of an Egyptian slave-girl, might have stolen upon my sleep: so scant of clothing, so lovely of form and feature, she was like an almond-flower upon a leafless branch. Her expression was full of beautiful contrasts, for, while her eaglet eye went into my being, there was a languid smile on her ruddy lip, as she were about to syllable my own destiny; and, indeed, shedidunfold to me many things which have been most strangely worked out and verified in my life. I wept at some of these foretellings, and she said, “Tears were the pearls that gem the rose-leaves of life.” I smiled at others, and she said, “Smiles were the sunlight that warmed their swelling leaflets into beauty.”
Throughout that summer night, when all were sleeping, save two romantic girls, she unfolded to me the secrets of her tribe, and a mine of mysteries learned from a BohemianMaugrabee. She told me how, and why, the Druids, when the moon was six days old, cut themisseltoewith a golden knife; how thevervainwas gathered with the left hand, at the rising of the dog-star; and thelunariawas valueless, if not picked by moonlight; how theroan-wood, and theBanyan seedling, and the four-leavedshamrock, bore a charm in their tender leaves against every ill of life. In nature, she said, there is no bane without its antidote, were the intellect of man ripe for its discovery. There are corals and green jaspers, carved into the forms of dragons and lizards, hung round an infant’s neck, for the cure of an ague; the crimson-spottedheliotropium, to staunch a flow of blood; a wrapper of scarlet-cloth, to mitigate the virulence of small-pox; the blue-flannel,nine timesdyed, to allay the pains of rheumatism; and the magic wordAbracadabra, to sooth the disorders of a nerve. And, above all, that wondrousweapon-salve of sympathy, which once healed on the instant the wound of Ulysses, and that which the dainty Ariel gave to Miranda, to charm Hippolito to life and health; and that with which the lady of Branxholmesalvedthe broken lance, when William of Deloraine was healed.
It will be long ere from my memory fade this vision of Charlotte Stanley. In pity, Evelyn, leave me this one romance of my young life,—the sheet and taper, nay, the ducking-stool for the witch, if you will, but deign to bestow one smile upon the gipsies.
Remember the story of the Sibylline Tables. If Sextus Tarquin had not frowned on theRomangipsy, she had not burned six of those precious volumes, which, from the massive cabinets of stone made to enclose the three that were preserved, prove that the Roman thought them priceless. One smile, Evelyn, for my sibyl.
Ev.Not in memory of the Sibylline Tables, but for your own sake, dear Castaly. Although the innocence of your nut-brown sibyl is not so clear, and I am somewhat jealous, too, of thatwhite magicof hers, which hath won the belief of so many minds the reverse of illiterate, who, from the Chaldean even to Bacon and William Lilly, have spurned philosophy, and even divinity, and pinned their faith upon a gipsy’s sleeve, and doted on the inspiration of an astrologer.
Ida.Forgetful, it would seem, that the wicked king of Babylon found the devout Daniel, and Hananiah, and Michael, and Azariah,ten times betterthan all his magi and astrologers.
These are the antiquaries who possess the last relic of the true cross; or the last morsel of Shakspere’s mulberry, of which last bit there may be about ten thousand; such are they who would pen learned theses on the disputed place of sepulture of St. Denys, anddeterminethe question, too, although one of his heads is in the cathedral of Bamberg, another in the church of Saint Vitus in the castle of Prague; one of his hands in a chapel at Munich; one of hisbodies, minus one hand, in the keeping of the monks of Saint Emmeram at Regensberg; while the monks of Saint Denys possess another, his head being preserved in the third shrine of the treasury in their cathedral. These may be innocent follies, but superstition, alas! will not always stop here; fanaticism soon descends to self-infliction, or to cruelty, and in that moment it becomes a black stain on the heart of man. Yet, even for the tortures of the Inquisition (so exquisite, that we might believe them the suggestions of a devil), the jesuit, Macedo, has put forth this profane justification: that the bloody tribunal was first instituted by the Deity, in the condemnation of Cain and the bricklayers of Babel.
Ev.Such was the trial ofordealinstituted for the test of innocence. Among the Anglo-Saxons, as all the chronicles of their history will show, this mode of trial prevailed; as in the ordeals of theCross, ofboiling waterand of thehot iron; ofcold water, ordrowning; and of thecorsned, or consecrated cake. Equally savage was the trial for murder, so prevalent in Scotland, especially the institution of theirBahr-recht, or “Right of the bier.” Among the “decisions” of Lord Fountainhall, you may read of legends almost incredible. Philip, the son of Sir James Standfield, was executed because, in lifting the corpse of his murdered father from its bier, blood welled forth from his wound; and the Laird of Auchindrane was tortured, because a corpse chanced to bleed on the approach of a little girl, who, I believe, was merely one of his domestics.
But waving these profanations, the reliques of a darker age, let me have a word with Astrophel on parting. The seemingfulfilment of many a sibylline prophecyis perfectly clearas to its source. There may becoincidence, as in the dream; orfaithandinducementmay impart an energy of action, which may itself work a wonder, or accomplish that end which is referred to a special power.
At the siege of Breda, in 1625, when fatigue and abstinence had well nigh reduced the garrison to prostration and despair, the Prince of Orange practised this pious fraud on his soldiers:—He pretended to have obtained a charmed liquor, so concentrated, that (on the principles of homœopathy) four drops would saturate a gallon of water with restorative virtues; and with so much skill was this administered by the physicians, that ageneral restoration was speedily effected.
You remember, Astrophel, the temptation of Diocletian. From Flavius Vopiscus we learn, that he was paying the Druidess of Brabant, with whom he lodged. “When I am emperor,” he said, “I will be more generous.” “Nay,” said the Druidess, “you shall be emperor, when you have killed theBOAR.” He hunted and killed boars incessantly, but the purple was not offered to him. At length, the Emperor Numerianus was murdered by ArriusAper. This was the eventful moment, and, transfixing the heart of Aper with his sword, he said, “I have slain the boar!” and the imperial crown was his.
Is not this, too, the counterpart of that seeming prophecy of the Weird Sisters, which made Macbeth a murderer and a king?
There was an enchanted stone at Scone, in Scotland, the palladium of Scottish liberty, for it was believed that the lord of that spot on which the stone lay, should bear sovereign sway. King Edward bore this talisman away in triumph; and Scotland,depressed by its loss, became a vassal of the English crown.
And this faith may invest the merest trifle with a spell. Sir Matthew Hale was presiding in his court on the trial of a witch. She had cured many diseases by a charm in her possession; and the evidence seemed conclusive of her guilt. But when the judge himself looked on this charm, behold! it was a scrap of paper, inscribed with a Latin sentence, which, in default of money,he himself, while on the circuit, had given many years before, in a merry mood, to mine host, by way of reckoning.
Among the many analogies to this story in ancient times, there was the potent poison-charm or antidote of Mithridates, King of Pontus. Itseffectwas supreme. And what its composition? twenty leaves of rue, one grain of salt, two nuts, and two dried figs!
Now you will remember that the wizard and the ministers of these charms, even among savages, were also their physicians, and, among pagans and papists, their priests. It is clear that the sensitiveness of mind and bodyunder disease, when the first were consulted, and under the influence of superstitious fear, instilled by the priesthood, rendered them impressible to the most trifling causes.
Even in minds of superior natural energy, from the instilment of superstitious ideasin infancy, a blind faith will often become paramount. Such a mind, and so influenced, was Byron’s; and on such a faith he once stole an agate bead from a lady, who had told him it was an antidote to love. It failed: had it not, Byron might have been a happier man; but the world would have been ’reft of poesy, the brightest, yet the darkest, that ever flashed on the heart and mind of man.
Sir Humphrey Davy, you may recollect, “knew a man of very high dignity, who never went out shooting without a bittern’s claw fastened to his button-hole by a riband, which he thought ensured him good luck.”
To illustrate theinnocenceof your gipsy, Castaly, hear this story.
“About forty years ago, a young lady, afterwards Mrs. W——, rallied her companions aloud for listening to the predictions of an itinerant gipsy, when the latter malignantly threatened her to beware of her first confinement. She was shortly afterwards married; and, as the period of her peril approached, it became evident to her friends that the remembrance of the wizard malediction began to fasten upon her spirits. She survived her time only a few days: and the medical attendants, who were men of eminence, stated it as their opinion, that mental prepossession alone could be admitted as the cause of her death; not one unfavourable circumstance having occurred to explain it.
“And some melancholy illusion of this nature induced fatality in the case of another lady, (Mrs. S.) who, according to the statement of the venerable Mr. Cline, reluctantly submitted to the removal of a small tumour in her breast. Unexpectedly, and without any apparent cause, she died, on the morning following the operation. It was then for the first time ascertained that she had prognosticated her death, and the impression that she should not survive had taken so strong a possession of her mind, that her minutest household arrangements were preconcerted, as appeared by the papers found in her cabinet.”
I believe that many modern instances of gradual and almost imperceptible decay, may be referred to the influence both of melancholy prophecies and visions on the mind, although their agency may be unsuspected, and as obscure as that of the poisonous herbs of the Thessalian Erichtho, or the sorceress of Neapolis, or theaqua tofanaof theItalians.
And superstitious fear may induce asuddendeath. Alfred, a nobleman, was one of the conspirators against the Saxon Athelstan. To justify himself from the accusation, he went to Rome, that he might make oath of his innocence before John, the pope. On the instant he took the oath he wasconvulsed, and, in three days,died.
Then as to the language of the stars:—as the phrenologist is much indebted to the principles of Lavater in forming his estimate of character, so I believe of the astrologer. The aspect of thefaceis not always disregarded in his prophecy, while he seems to observe only the aspect of the stars. And although there is often a very strange precision in his guesses, yet there was once a curious incident in my own presence, from which we may learn something of this secret. On a visit to a learned astrologer, (who might rest his fame on another art in which he is so eminent,) our fortunes, past and future, were told with extreme minuteness, and, I confess, with many coincidences of former times. One was reminded by the seer of a state of deprivation which he endured in the year 18—, in the Mediterranean. The officer remembered in that year being becalmed in a voyage to Malta, and, under a sultry sky with parching thirst, enduring the want of water for many days. This was conclusive of the fidelity of the planets, until we discovered that the horoscope was imperfect, for the officer had given to the astrologer thewrong date of his birth.
Cast.And this, sir, is your Philosophy of Mystery? Oh for the forethought of my sibyl, that I might learn my own fate for listening to this treason against the throne of fancy, on the steps of which I have so long offered up my homage—this ruthless spoliation of her dreamy kingdom!
Ev.Let me for once play the sibyl, fair Castaly, and whisper the penalty in your ear ——
Ida.A lesson in natural philosophy; and the apt scholar, as I read it on her cheek, has in a moment learned it all by heart; o’ershadowing all her bright visions of earth and its romances.
Ev.What marvel that a daughter of earth should be so apt in its philosophy? —
“For half her thoughts were of its sun,And half were of its show’rs.”
“For half her thoughts were of its sun,And half were of its show’rs.”
“For half her thoughts were of its sun,And half were of its show’rs.”
“For half her thoughts were of its sun,
And half were of its show’rs.”
But it is not so easy to shake the throne of fancy, or to lay the genius of romance. He will ever wave his wand of enchantment over the human mind. The poet will still build his air-castles, and the ghost-seer indulge in his wild visions of nonentity.
The wonders of creation will still affect us, according to the quality of intellect or genius, or the constitution or cultivation of the mind. The poor Indian will still “see God in clouds, and hear him in the wind,” and the untutored rustic be startled by the shadow of a shade. To him the slightest change in the regular course of nature will still be a special miracle: thunder, the awful voice of Divine reproof; lightning, the flashes of Divine displeasure; the scintillations of the aurora, the spectral forms of contending armies; and the comet foretel the wreck of mighty empires. Against this untutored devotion I would not breathe a thought,—it is the voice of the Deity speaking to the savage.
But it is the privilege, the duty of intellect, to think more deeply of the physiology of nature; and to learn from the physical sciences, its real utility in the grand scheme of the creation.
Philosophy, rising from the sublime study of these beautiful phenomena, regards them as the pure effect of those elemental laws, by which the integrity of the universe is preserved. And what ought this philosophy to teach us? Not the superstition of the bigot—for the age of special miracles is, for the present, past; not the pride of the fatalist, who refers all to chance and necessity; not the mania of the astrologer, who plumes himself on his prophetic wisdom, and presumes to interpret to the letter the mysterious voice of his Creator; but that true wisdom, which threw over Boyle, and Locke, and Newton, the mantle of humility and devotion.
The autumn floods had descended from the mountains of Gwent; the banks of the meandering Wye were desolate, and her woods leafless; yet the Abbey of Tintern was still majestic and unchanged.
It had been decided, that when the summer sun shone again on Wyndcliff, the wanderers should revisit the beautiful valleys that lay beneath it, in memory of happy hours; but ere this was fulfilled, changes manifold had come over their destiny, from which might be fashioned a true love-story.
For Astrophel, Ida had unconsciously worked a spell of natural witchcraft, and his wild thoughts were ever chastened by the pure light of her devotion. And Evelyn almost confessed to Castaly, that there might be a sort of animal magnetism. He has neglected the study of the atomic theory, for the contemplation of the animated atoms that play around his domestic hearth; and the heart and life of Castaly, a poetry in themselves, have since interwoven many a blushing flower on the classic pages of his philosophy.
THE END.
LONDON:GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,ST. JOHN’S SQUARE.
LONDON:
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,
ST. JOHN’S SQUARE.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
PRACTICAL REMARKS ONTHE DISEASES OF THE SKIN,ON THEEXTERNAL SIGNS OF DISORDER,AND ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL PECULIARITIES DURINGINFANCY AND CHILDHOOD.
PRACTICAL REMARKS ON
THE DISEASES OF THE SKIN,
ON THE
EXTERNAL SIGNS OF DISORDER,
AND ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL PECULIARITIES DURING
INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD.
“Much useful information conveyed in very few words.”—Lancet.“Mr. Dendy has drawn from his opportunities, as Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, valuable materials for various disquisitions on the diseases of infancy.”—British and Foreign Medical Quarterly Review.8vo. Price 6s.6d.
“Much useful information conveyed in very few words.”—Lancet.
“Mr. Dendy has drawn from his opportunities, as Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, valuable materials for various disquisitions on the diseases of infancy.”—British and Foreign Medical Quarterly Review.
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THE BOOK OF THE NURSERY.PRECEPTS FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF INFANTS,AND FOR THE PREVENTION AND DOMESTIC TREATMENT OFTHE DISEASES INCIDENTAL TO CHILDHOOD.
THE BOOK OF THE NURSERY.
PRECEPTS FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF INFANTS,
AND FOR THE PREVENTION AND DOMESTIC TREATMENT OF
THE DISEASES INCIDENTAL TO CHILDHOOD.
“All should study this book, and instal it in their nurseries.”—Metropolitan Magazine.“Mr. Dendy has done valuable service to the rising generation.”—Literary Gazette.
“All should study this book, and instal it in their nurseries.”—Metropolitan Magazine.
“Mr. Dendy has done valuable service to the rising generation.”—Literary Gazette.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Page of other books by this same author was moved from the front of the book to the end of the book. Archaic spellings have been retained as in the original. Punctuation and obvious typesetting errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have been corrected as noted below.
page 5, St. Hilary at Poictiers ==> St. Hilary atPoitierspage 30, The Welch guide was ==> TheWelshguide waspage 33, to be a meanless ==> to be ameaninglesspage 48, Praise God Barebones ==> Praise GodBarebonepage 53, of Halloween and Hogmany ==> of Halloween andHogmanaypage 54, Stonehenge and Abury, ==> Stonehenge andAvebury,page 54, when we have past ==> when we havepassedpage 67, the niflheiner, or hell ==> theniflheimr, or hellpage 95, shall be crowned King ==>shall I becrowned Kingpage 95,WestermisterAbbey, likely refers to Westminster Abbeypage 95, in the of Hyde the Park ==> inthe Hyde Parkpage 159, Hogmany, or New-year’s Eve, and ==>Hogmanay, or New-year’s Eve, andpage 160, around the Feroe Islands. ==> around theFaroeIslands.
page 5, St. Hilary at Poictiers ==> St. Hilary atPoitiers
page 30, The Welch guide was ==> TheWelshguide was
page 33, to be a meanless ==> to be ameaningless
page 48, Praise God Barebones ==> Praise GodBarebone
page 53, of Halloween and Hogmany ==> of Halloween andHogmanay
page 54, Stonehenge and Abury, ==> Stonehenge andAvebury,
page 54, when we have past ==> when we havepassed
page 67, the niflheiner, or hell ==> theniflheimr, or hell
page 95, shall be crowned King ==>shall I becrowned King
page 95,WestermisterAbbey, likely refers to Westminster Abbey
page 95, in the of Hyde the Park ==> inthe Hyde Park
page 159, Hogmany, or New-year’s Eve, and ==>Hogmanay, or New-year’s Eve, and
page 160, around the Feroe Islands. ==> around theFaroeIslands.
[End ofThe Philosophy of Mysteryby Walter Cooper Dendy]