Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860», sayfa 9

Moral.—If you ever meet with such an agreeable person as this Spaniard appears to have been,—look out!

In this connection, the reader will recall the similar power of Vathek, in Beckford's romance, who killed with his eye,—and the story of Racine, whom a look of Louis XIV. sent to his grave.

The famous Albertus Magnus, master of medicine and magic, devotes a long chapter to the subject of eyes, giving us, at length, descriptions of those which we may trust and those which we must fear, some of them terrible and vigorous enough. From among them I select the following:—"Those who have hollow eyes are noted for evil; and the larger and moister they are, the more they indicate envy. The same eyes, when dry, show the possessors to be faithless, traitorous, and sacrilegious; and if these eyes are also yellow and cold, they argue insanity. For hollow eyes are the sign of craft and malignity; and if they are wanting in darkness, they also show foolishness. But if the eyes are too hollow, and of medium size, dry and rigid,—if, besides this, they have broad, overhanging eyebrows, and livid and pallid circles round them, they indicate impudence and malignity."¹⁹ If this be not enough to enable you, O my reader, to recognise the Evil Eye at sight, let me refer you to the whole chapter, where you will find ample and very curious rules laid down, showing a singular acuteness of observation.

Things have, indeed, somewhat changed since the days of Didymus, in this respect, that men are now thought to be more potent for evil jettatura than women; but his general views still coincide with those entertained at the present time in Italy. Ever since the establishment, or rather decadence, of the Church in the Middle Ages, monks have been considered as peculiarly open to suspicion of possessing the Evil Eye. As long ago as the ninth century, in the year 842, Erchempert, a frate of the celebrated convent of Monte Cassino, writes,—"I knew formerly Messer Landulf, Bishop of Capua, a man of singular prudence, who was wont to say, 'Whenever I meet a monk, something unlucky always happens to me during the day.'" And to this day, there are many persons, who, if they meet a monk or priest, on first going out in the morning, will not proceed upon their errand or business until they have returned to their house and waited awhile. In Rome there are certain persons who are noted for this evil power, and marked and avoided in consequence. One of them is a most pleasant and handsome man, attached to the Church, and yet, by odd coincidence, wherever he goes, he carries ill-luck. If he go to a party, the ices do not arrive, the music is late, the lamps go out, a storm comes on, the waiter smashes his tray of refreshments,—something or other is sure to happen. "Sentite," said some one the other day to me. "Yesterday, I was looking out of my window, when I saw – coming along. 'Phew!' said I, making the sign of the cross and pointing both fingers, 'what ill-luck will happen now to some poor devil that does not see him?' I watched him all down the street, however, and nothing occurred; but this morning I hear, that, after turning the corner, he spoke to a poor little boy, who was up in a tree gathering some fruit, and no sooner was out of sight than smash! down fell the boy and broke his arm." Even the Pope himself has the reputation of possessing the Evil Eye to some extent. Ask a Roman how this is, and he will answer, as one did to me the other day,—"Si dice, e per me veramente mi pare di sì": "They say so; and as for me, really it seems to me true. If he have not the jettatura, it is very odd that everything he blesses makes fiasco. We all did very well in the campaign of '48 against the Austrians. We were winning battle after battle, and all was gayety and hope, when suddenly he blesses the cause, and everything goes to the Devil at once. Nothing succeeds with anybody or anything when he wishes well to them. See, here the other day he went to Santa Agnese to have a great festival, and down goes the floor, and the people are all smashed together. Then he visits the column to the Madonna in the Piazza di Spagna, and blesses it and the workmen, and of course one falls from the scaffolding the same day and kills himself. A week or two ago he arranged to meet the King of Naples at Porto d'Anzo, and up comes a violent storm and gale that lasts a week; then another arrangement was made, and then the fracas about the ex-queen of Spain. Then, again, here was Lord O– came in the other day from Albano, being rather unwell; so the Pope sends him his special blessing, when pop! he dies right off in a twinkling. There is nothing so fatal as his blessing. We were a great deal better off under Gregory, before he blessed us. Now, if he hasn't the jettatura, what is it that makes everything turn out at cross purposes with him? For my part, I don't wonder the workmen at the Column refused to work the other day in raising it, unless the Pope stayed away."

No less a person than Rachel seems also to have been affected with this same superstition in regard to the Pope, if we may place confidence in the strange story which Madame de B– relates in her memoirs of that celebrated daughter of Israel. According to her account, Rachel had been on a visit to her sister, who was quite ill in the Pyrenees, when one day the disease appeared to take so favorable a turn that Rachel left her to visit another sister. There she met several friends, and, (to continue the story in Madame de B–'s words,) "exhilarated by the good news she had brought, and the hopes all hastened to build on the change, she began to chat and laugh quite merrily. In the midst of this exuberant gayety, her maid broke into the room in a state of great excitement; a fit had come on, the patient was in much danger, the physician desired Mdlle. Rachel's immediate presence. Rising with the bound of a wounded tigress, the tragédienne seemed to seek, bewildered, some cause for the blow that had fallen thus unexpectedly. Her eye lighted on a rosary blessed by the Pope, and which she had worn round her arm as a bracelet ever since her visit to Rome. Without, perhaps, accounting to herself for the belief, she had attached some talismanic virtue to the beads. Now, however, in the height of her rage and disappointment, she tore them from her wrist, and, dashing them to the ground, exclaimed, 'Oh, fatal gift! 'tis thou hast entailed this curse upon me!' With these words, she sprang out of the room, leaving every one in mute astonishment at her frantic action." On the 23d of June, immediately after, the sister died.

And yet the Pope does not at all answer to the accredited portraits of those who have the Evil Eye. He is fat, smiling, and most pleasant of aspect, as he is good in heart. But, certainly, nothing has prospered that he has touched. Read Dumas' description, and see if you should have recognized the Pope as a jettatore. "Le Jettatore," says he, "est ordinairement pâle et maigre. II a un nez en bec de corbin, de gros yeux qui ont quelque chose de ceux de crapaud, et qu'il recouvre ordinairement pour les dissimuler d'une paire de lunettes." But it is the exception that proves the rule, say those who insist on the jettatura of Pius IX.

Dumas also speaks of a work on the jettatura, which I have vainly endeavored to procure, written by Nicola Valetta; and from what one can gather from the heads of the chapters which Dumas gives, it must be a very amusing book.²⁰ These heads are as follows. They speak for themselves, and show the fear entertained of a monk. He examines:—

"1. If a man inflicts a more terrible jettatura than a woman?

"2. If he who wears a peruke is more to be feared than he who wears none?

"3. If he who wears spectacles is not more to be feared than he who wears a peruke?

"4. If he who takes tobacco is not more to be feared than he who wears spectacles? and if spectacles, peruke, and snuff-box combined do not triple the force of the jettatura?

"5. If the woman jettatrice is more to be feared when she is enceinte?

"6. If there is still more to be feared from her when she is certain that she is not enceinte?

"7. If monks are more generally jettatori than other men? and among monks what order is most to be feared?

"8. At what distance can jettatura be made?

"9. Must it be made in front, or at the side, or behind?

"10. If there are really gestures, sounds of voice, and particular looks, by which jettatura may be recognized?

"11. If there are prayers which can guaranty us against the jettatura? and if so, whether there are any special prayers to guaranty us against the jettatura of monks?

"12. Lastly, whether the power of modern talismans is equal to the power of ancient talismans? and whether the single or the double horn is most efficacious?"

Luckless, indeed, is he who has the misfortune to possess, or the reputation of possessing this fatal power. From that time forward the world flees him, as the water did Thalaba. A curse is on him, and from the very terror at seeing him accidents are most likely to follow. Keep him from your children, or they will break their legs, arms, or necks. Look not at him from your carriage, or it will upset. Let him not see your wife when she is enceinte, or she will miscarry, or you will have a monster for a son. Never invite him to a ball, unless you wish to see your chandelier smash, or the floor give way. Invite him not to dinner, or your mushrooms will poison you, and your fish will smell. If he wishes you buon viaggio, abandon the journey, if you would return alive. Nor be deceived by his good manners and kind heart. It is of no avail that he is amiable and good in all his intentions,—his jettatura is without and beyond his will,—nay, worse, is contrary to it; for all jettatura goes like dreams, by contraries. Therefore shudder when he wishes you well, for he can do no worse thing.

If you do not believe what I tell you, read the wonderful story of Count – which is told by Dumas in his "Corriccolo," and at least you will be amused, if not convinced. Listen, however, to this one historical incident, and believe it or not, as you please. Ferdinand of Naples died on the night of the 3d of January, 1825, and was found dead in the morning. The physicians attributed his death to a stroke of apoplexy; but that was in consequence of their pretended science and real ignorance. The actual cause of his death was this,—and if you do not believe it, ask any true Neapolitan, or Alexander Dumas, if you put more faith in him.—A certain canonico, named Don Ojori, had for many years desired an audience of Ferdinand, to present him a certain book, of which Don Ojori was the author. The King had his good reasons for refusing, for Don Ojori was well known to be the greatest jettatore in Naples. Finally, on the 2d of January, the King was persuaded to grant him the desired favor the next day, much against his will. The canonico came, and after a long audience left his book and many prayers for the King's prosperity. But Ferdinand did not survive the interview a whole day; and if this be not proof that Don Ojori bewitched him to his destruction, what is?

* * * * *

PYTHAGORAS

 
Above the petty passions of the crowd
I stand in frozen marble like a god,
Inviolate, and ancient as the moon.
The thing I am, and not the thing Man is,
Fills these blank sockets. Let him moan and die;
For he is dust that shall be laid again:
I know my own creation was divine.
Strewn on the breezy continents I see
The veined shells and glistening scales which once
Enwrapt my being,—husks that had their use;
I brood on all the shapes I must attain
Before I reach the Perfect, which is God,
And dream my dream, and let the rabble go:
For I am of the mountains and the sea,
The deserts, and the caverns in the earth,
The catacombs and fragments of old worlds.
 
 
I was a spirit on the mountain-tops,—
A perfume in the valleys,—a simoom
On arid deserts,—a nomadic wind
Roaming the universe,—a tireless Voice.
I was ere Romulus and Remus were;
I was ere Nineveh and Babylon;
I was, and am, and evermore shall be,—
Progressing, never reaching to the end.
 
 
A hundred years I trembled in the grass,
The delicate trefoil that muffled warm
A slope on Ida; for a hundred years
Moved in the purple gyre of those dark flowers
The Grecian women strew upon the dead.
Under the earth, in fragrant glooms, I dwelt;
Then in the veins and sinews of a pine
On a lone isle, where, from the Cyclades,
A mighty wind, like a leviathan,
Ploughed through the brine, and from those solitudes
Sent Silence, frightened. To and fro I swayed,
Drawing the sunshine from the stooping clouds.
Suns came and went,—and many a mystic moon,
Orbing and waning,—and fierce meteor,
Leaving its lurid ghost to haunt the night
I heard loud voices by the sounding shore,
The stormy sea-gods,—and from ivory conchs
Wild music; and strange shadows floated by,
Some moaning and some singing. So the years
Clustered about me, till the hand of God
Let down the lightning from a sultry sky,
Splintered the pine and split the iron rock;
And from my odorous prison-house, a bird,
I in its bosom, darted: so we fled,
Turning the brittle edge of one high wave,—
Island and tree and sea-gods left behind!
 
 
Free as the air, from zone to zone I flew,
Far from the tumult to the quiet gates
Of daybreak; and beneath me I beheld
Vineyards, and rivers that like silver threads
Ran through the green, and gold of pasture-lands,—
And here and there a hamlet, a white rose,—
And here and there a city, whose slim spires
And palace-roofs and swollen domes uprose
Like scintillant stalagmites in the sun;
I saw huge navies battling with a storm
By ragged reefs along the desolate coasts,—
And lazy merchantmen, that crawled, like flies,
Over the blue enamel of the sea
To India or the icy Labradors.
 
 
A century was as a single day.
What is a day to an immortal soul?
A breath,—no more. And yet I hold one hour
Beyond all price,—that hour when from the heavens
I circled near and nearer to the earth,
Nearer and nearer, till I brushed my wings
Against the pointed chestnuts, where a stream
That foamed and chattered over pebbly shoals
Fled through the bryony, and with a shout
Leaped headlong down a precipice: and there,
Gathering wild-flowers in the cool ravine,
Wandered a woman more divinely shaped
Than any of the creatures of the air,
Or river-goddesses, or restless shades
Of noble matrons marvellous in their time
For beauty and great suffering; and I sung,
I charmed her thought, I gave her dreams; and then
Down from the sunny atmosphere I stole
And nestled in her bosom. There I slept
From moon to moon, while in her eyes a thought
Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like the dawn,
A mystical forewarning! When the stream,
Breaking through leafless brambles and dead leaves,
Piped shriller treble, and from chestnut-boughs
The fruit dropped noiseless through the autumn night,
I gave a quick, low cry, as infants do:
We weep when we are born, not when we die!
So was it destined; and thus came I here,
To walk the earth and wear the form of man,
To suffer bravely as becomes my state,—
One step, one grade, one cycle nearer God.
 
 
And knowing these things, can I stoop to fret
And lie and haggle in the market-place,
Give dross for dross, or everything for nought?
No! let me sit above the crowd, and sing,
Waiting with hope for that miraculous change
Which seems like sleep; and though I waiting starve,
I cannot kiss the idols that are set
By every gate, in every street and park,—
I cannot fawn, I cannot soil my soul:
For I am of the mountains and the sea,
The deserts, and the caverns in the earth,
The catacombs and fragments of old worlds.
 

* * * * *

CLARIAN'S PICTURE

A LEGEND OF NASSAU HALL

"Turbine raptus ingenii."—SCALIGER.

Mac and I dined together yesterday,—as we are used to do at least once or twice every year, for the sake of our ever-mellowing friendship, and those good old times in which it began. Like all who are ripe enough to have memories, we delight to recall the period of our vernal equinox, and to moralize, with gentle sadness and many wise wags of our frosty polls, upon the events in which that period was prolific; and so, when the cloth was removed yesterday, and we sat toying with our cigars and our Sherry, our talk insensibly drifted back to those merry college-days when we not infrequently "heard the chimes at midnight."

"Ah, old fellow," quoth I to my chum, "those good old days are gone by, now, and Israel worships strange gods. Old Nassau will never be what she was before the fire of '55. Those precious heirlooms of our day are sunk from sight forever, dear and mossy as they were,—swept down, like cobwebs, before the flame-besom. 'Fuit Ilium!' The old bell will never again ring out the gay 'larums of a 'Third Entry' barring-out. Homer's head no longer perches owl-like and wise over the central door-way. 'Ai, Adonai!' No more wilt proud fingers point to the spot whereat entered—not like 'Casca's envious dagger'—that well-aimed cannon-ball which pierced the picture-gallery, punched 'Georgius Res' on the head, and frightened away forever the Hessians that were stabled there, fouling the nest of stout old John Witherspoon. They call other rolls now in chapel and in class-room, and chant other songs at their revels and their feasts. 'Eheu, Posthume!'"

"Pshaw, Ned Blount! there's corn in Egypt still. Out of that bug-riddled old barn we used to know a new and comely Phoenix has been born unto Princeton; the fire hath purged, not destroyed; and we wiseacres who flourished in the old 'flush times' yet survive in tradition, patterns for our children, very Turveydrops of collegiate deportment. The belfry clangs with a louder peal; even Clarian's Picture, though it hath utterly perished to the eye of sense, lives vivid in a thousand memories, and, having found in the tenderness of tradition and legend an engraver whose burin is as faithful as Raphael Morghen's, has left the damp dark wall, like Leonardo's Cenacolo, to accompany all of us to our firesides."

Clarian's Picture! what memories the mention of it stirred up!

"Poor Clarian!" I murmured.

"Poor, indeed I" repeated Mac, with a sneer. "He is only worth a lovely wife and six children, with half a million to back them. And he only weighs two hundred pounds, with I forget how many inches of fat over the brisket. Poor, indeed! 'Tis pity you and I have not experienced a slight attack of that same poverty, Ned Blount!"

"Poor Clarian!" repeated I, sturdily. "To think that a man who could paint such a picture, a soul of imagination so compact, a so delicate ether-breathing spirit, should settle down at last into a mere mechanical, a plodding, every-day merchant, whose finest fancies are given to the condition of the money-market, who governs his actions by a decline of Erie, and narrows his ideas down to the requirements of filthy lucre, like a mere 'wintry clod of earth'! Ay, poor Clarian, poor anybody, when we wake from our bright youth-dream and tread the rough pathway of a reality like this!"

"Potz tausend! the man is fou!" shouted Mac. "Come, drink your wine, Ned, and we'll have our coffee. It is quite time, I think,—and he used to be a three-bottle fellow," muttered my dear old friend, sotto voce. "'Heu, heu! tempora mutantur, et nos'—well, well, well!"

* * * * *

Clarian's Picture! What a gush of recollection the words evoke! I was in the heyday and blossom of my youth then, and now—well, 'tis some years since; yet how vividly I remember that pleasant noontide of a day of early summer, when, as a party of us students were lounging about the gates that opened from our shady campus upon the street, "Dennis" handed me a note from Clarian, in which my little friend announced that his picture was finished at last, and invited Mac and myself to call and see it "exhibited," at nine o'clock that very evening. We were talking about Clarian and his picture, at the time,—as, indeed, we had been doing for a month,—and when I mentioned the purport of the note, curiosity rose to the tiptoe of expectation, and numerous surmises were set afloat. I could have satisfied their queries as to the subject and character of the picture, for Mac and I had seen it only a few days before, but Clarian expected us to be secret about it; so I only listened and smiled, while the eager talk ran on, and a thousand conjectures were hazarded.

"So the magnum opus is finished at last," said Clayt Zoile, showing by his manner, as he joined us, that he at least had not received an invitation; "a precious specimen of Art it will prove, I doubt not, after all the outcry about it. 'Montes parturiunt' etc."

"You'll lose your wish this time, Clayt," drawled Mounchersey, carelessly; "Mr. Cosine told me yesterday that 'Boss' has called on Clarian about his cutting so many prayers and recites, and that, after seeing the unfinished picture, he gave the youngster carte blanche as to time, till it is completed;—so it must be something worth looking at"

"I guess Ned Blount's glad the picture is finished," said Tone Ninyan, turning to me,—"a'n't you, Ned?"

I confessed I was not by any means sorry, for Clarian's sake.

"No," laughed Zoile, "Ned isn't sorry,—be sure of that; for he wants his dear 'Whitewash' restored again to the bosom of society, lest the walls of his reputation should by chance suffer from fly-speck."

These words created a laugh at my expense; for Clarian had shown himself, in his warm, generous way, such a zealous advocate of my immaculate perfection, that he was quite generally known by the sobriquet of "Ned Blount's Whitewash."

Just then Mac came along, on his way to the post-office, and I joined him, showing him Ciarian's note.

"Hum," growled my good old chum, as he read it, "don't want to be disturbed to-day; sick, is he? I'd like to know who's to blame, if he isn't. Wishes me to bring my Shakspeare along;—it's a wonder he had not said Plotinus, or Jacob Böhme's 'Aurora'; they're more in his style. The deuse take that boy and his picture, Ned! What if we two fools have been playing too roughly with such plastic clay? I wish to-night were come and gone safely. I'll go see Dr. Thorne, and ask him to accompany us to-night. He claims to be something of a connoisseur, and the picture is really worth seeing, if the lad has not spoiled it with his 'final touches'. And anyhow, the boy will be a study for a psychological monomaniac like Thorne."

"You apprehend, then…."

"Sapperment, you owl-face! I apprehend nothing; only it will be as well to have Thorne present, for the boy is out of sorts, and his nerves were never very strong. Now look here, Ned Blount! don't put on that lugubrious phiz, I pray you;—and, moreover, don't you ever dare introduce any more of your Freshmen protégé's to me; for, I warn you, I'll insult them, and you, too,—I will, by Jove!"

I was not less impatient than Mac for the night to come, for I was very anxious about Clarian, dreading lest some catastrophe was about to overtake him,—and the thought was by no means pleasant. For, as Mac had said, the lad was a protégé of mine; he had been given into my charge by his sweet lady-mother; he had looked up to me as his senior and his friend; and I could not help feeling, that, if anything untoward should happen to him, it would be partly my fault.

From the very first I had been strongly attracted towards Clarian. Indeed, the lad was remarkable for a peculiar spiritual beauty of person and sweetness of manner that made almost every one love him. He was, in fact, lovely, in the etymological sense of that misused word, and people softened towards him as to a young, guileless child. I have known men cease swearing when he drew near, drop ribaldry, and take up some more innocent topic, simply through an unconscious impulse of fitness,—feeling that such things had no business to be repeated in his presence. And they were right; for a purer spirit than Clarian's I have never encountered in man or woman. His face most reminded one of the portraits of Raphael at twenty. He had the same broad, smooth forehead,—the same soft skin, delicate, yet rich as the inner leaves of a pale rose,—the same finely shaped nose, and ripe, womanly mouth, which a Persian, in default of a more tangible analogy, would have likened to the seal of Solomon. But his lower face was somewhat less full than Raphael's, the chin being shorter and sharper, and the jaw curving less sensuously. His hair was of the purest chestnut hue, rich and silken, showing here and there a thread of gold; he wore it long, and flowing in half-ringlets upon his neck and shoulders. Clarian's eye was large and dark, tender, rather sad, with now and then a speculative depth, now and then a hint of the Romeo fore-doom, now and then a warm eloquence, when meeting yours, that reminded strangely of a woman loving and in love. Other womanly traits he had, such as the ingenuous blush with which he asked or did a favor, and a certain not very boyish fondness for softness and elegance of dress. Not that Clarian was effeminate, or in any material respect deficient in manly character; but his mother was a widow, and he her only son, and consequently he had been brought up like a girl, at home, without any slightest opportunity to acquire those rough-and-tumble experiences of ordinary boyhood which are so necessary to fit us for battling in the world; for the world, though not unfeeling at core, wears yet a sufficiently rough rind, and pretends but little sympathy with persons of Clarian's stamp.

Hence, when Clarian came to college, he knew very little of life indeed,—and, moreover, he cherished not a few ascetic notions, deeming this world "all a fleeting show," from whose vain illusions it was one's chief duty to shield one's self. He had never read a novel, save "some of Scott's,"—nor ever seen or read a play, not even of Shakspeare's. How I envied him this new world, in whose usages I had been blasé long before I was of an age to appreciate its beauties,—this bright, fancy-fostering world, to which he was to go all fresh and unsophisticated, like a bride to the nuptial sheets! In literature of a more solid kind his practice was quite considerable: he had surveyed many fields of Art, History, and Theology, all of which, however, had first been submitted to the test of that anxious maternal Index Expurgatorius, lest some drop of infidelity or impurity should trickle in unawares, to darken or embitter the pure crystal waters of his soul. Ah, thou poor fond mother, so unreasoningly ignoring the fact that each of us must somehow eat his "peck of dirt"!

Thus intrusted to my charge, and having such attractive elements in his character, I naturally took great interest in Clarian, and particularly spared no effort to give him use in college ways. I saw that the lad was not one to bear being laughed at, and so did all I could to screen him from the embarrassments of ignorance,—taught him our customs, our fashions, and gave him lessons upon that immemorial dialect in which college sublegists delight. I chicaned to secure him a fine room, which his lady-mother furnished "like a bridal chamher", if our Nassau cynics were to be credited,—introduced him where it was necessary, and exercised generally towards him that distinguished patronage which one who "knows the ropes" is able to bestow upon a very Freshman.

A fine generous fellow was Clarian, for all his apron-string antecedents,—bold as a lion, and as trustworthy as he was enthusiastic. He was of rather too nervous a temperament to be precisely healthy in all mental respects, but nevertheless had a fine comprehensive mind, very capable of sustained and concentrated effort. He had been well taught, and, unfortunately, was so far advanced beyond the studies of his class as to have a great deal of leisure. In consequence he turned to reading, and here, again unfortunately, he put himself under my guidance, and suffered me to govern him in his choice of books: unfortunately, I say, for I was then a worshipper of that clay-footed Nebuchadnezzar-image, Metaphysics, which I fondly deemed all of gold, and the most genuine of things. So, when Clarian came to me, I was eager enough to put to his lips the wine of which I was drunken. The boy took his first sip from Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria",—that cracked Bohemian glass, which, handed in a golden salver that might have come from the cunning graver of Cellini, yet forces one to taste, over a flawed and broken edge, the sourest drop of ill-made vin du pays, heavily drugged and made bitter with Paracelsian laudanum. Under that strange patchwork quilt so imaginative a soul as Clarian could not fail to dream. It was a great pity I had not been more circumspect, for the boy was already too deeply steeped in those Acherontic waters. His mother, like many other women, had loved to wander along the dreamy paths of sentimental theology, clothing from her own beautiful mind the dim, unsubstantial spectres that beckoned her, and accepting all their mystic utterances, in blind faith, for genuine oracles of God. Into these by-ways he had followed her, and his clearer vision had just sufficed to reveal to him the ghosts, without teaching him how to master or dispel them. Thus, Cowper's sweetness, which charmed her, became to him Cowper's dejection and despairing sadness, perplexing enough to his young brain. Where she took up and fed her soul upon John Wesley's conclusions, the boy found himself involved in John Wesley's perplexities, and struggling in desperate wrestle with the haunting shapes to which John Wesley had given successful battle. Thus prepared, no wonder my eager little friend plunged headlong into the sea of doubts, impatient to cry, "Eureka!" and plant his foot upon the Islands of the Blessed. The new excitement completely swept his feet from under him. 'Twas but a step from Coleridge and Esemplastic matters to Plotinus, and in a month he had taken that step,—the more readily, that he was a right good Grecian, and found no unpleasant philological difficulties in the "Enneades". Thence he went on in feverish unrest, wildly running up and down all Niffelheim in quest of some centre-point upon which he could stand firm and look around him. He had an excellent mind, and, unexcited, could take sufficiently common-sense views of most matters; but this was too much for him. He made substance of shadows, and then exhausted himself in giving them battle. He became anxious, uneasy, nervous,—showing very plainly, that, in his search after the Alkahest, he had injured his powers by making trial of too many drugs.