Part 43 (2/2)
(5) Facts in Mesmerism.
(6) La Magic et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquitd et an Moyen-Age. Par L. F.
Alfred Maury, Membre de Inst.i.tut. p. 225.
(7) ”She had no illusions when within doors.”--Abercrombie, On the Intellectual Powers, p. 277. (15th Edition.)
(8) Muller, Physiology of the Senses, Baley's translation, pp.
1068-1395, and elsewhere. Mr. Bain, in his thoughtful and suggestive work on the ”Senses and Intellect,” makes very powerful use of these statements in support of his proposition, which Faber advances in other words, namely, ”the return of the nervous currents exactly on their old track in revived sensations.”
(9) Perhaps it is for the reason suggested in the text, namely, that the magician requires the interposition of a third imagination between his own and that of the consulting believer, that any learned adept in (so-called) magic will invariably refuse to exhibit without the presence of a third person. Hence the author of ”Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magic,” printed at Parisy 1852-53--a book less remarkable for its learning than for the earnest belief of a scholar of our own day in the reality of the art of which he records the history--insists much on the necessity of rigidly observing Le Ternaire, in the number of persons who a.s.sist in an enchanter's experiments.
(10) I may add that Dr. Kerner instances the effect of laurel-berries on the Seeress of Prevorst, corresponding with that a.s.serted by Julius Faber in the text.
(11) See for these unguents the work of M. Maury, before quoted, ”La Magic et l'Astrologie,” etc., p. 417.
(12) It seems extremely doubtful whether the very few instances in which it has been a.s.serted that a savage race has been found without recognition of a Deity and a future state would bear searching examination. It is set forth, for example, in most of the popular works on Australia, that the Australian savages have no notion of a Deity or a Hereafter, that they only wors.h.i.+p a devil, or evil spirit. This a.s.sumption, though made more peremptorily, and by a greater number of writers than any similar one regarding other savages, is altogether erroneous, and has no other foundation than the ignorance of the writers. The Australian savages recognize a Deity, but He is too august for a name in their own language; in English they call Him the Great Master,--an expression synonymous with ”The Great Lord.” They believe in a hereafter of eternal joy, and place it amongst the stars.--See Strzelecki's Physical Description of New South Wales.
(13) See the observations on La Place and La Marck in the Introduction to Kirby's ”Bridgewater Treatise.”
CHAPTER LXXII.
I turned back alone. The sun was reddening the summits of the distant mountain-range, but dark clouds, that portended rain, were gathering behind my way and deepening the shadows in many a chasm and hollow which volcanic fires had wrought on the surface of uplands undulating like diluvian billows fixed into stone in the midst of their stormy swell. I wandered on and away from the beaten track, absorbed in thought. Could I acknowledge in Julius Faber's conjectures any basis for logical ratiocination; or were they not the ingenious fancies of that empirical Philosophy of Sentiment by which the aged, in the decline of severer faculties, sometimes a.s.similate their theories to the hazy romance of youth? I can well conceive that the story I tell will be regarded by most as a wild and fantastic fable; that by some it may be considered a vehicle for guesses at various riddles of Nature, without or within us, which are free to the license of romance, though forbidden to the caution of science. But, I--I--know unmistakably my own ident.i.ty, my own positive place in a substantial universe. And beyond that knowledge, what do I know? Yet had Faber no ground for his startling parallels between the chimeras of superst.i.tion and the alternatives to faith volunteered by the metaphysical speculations of knowledge? On the theorems of Condillac, I, in common with numberless contemporaneous students (for, in my youth, Condillac held sway in the schools, as now, driven forth from the schools, his opinions float loose through the talk and the scribble of men of the world, who perhaps never opened his page),--on the theorems of Condillac I had built up a system of thought designed to immure the swathed form of material philosophy from all rays and all sounds of a world not material, as the walls of some blind mausoleum shut out, from the mummy within, the whisper of winds and the gleaming of stars.
And did not those very theorems, when carried out to their strict and completing results by the close reasonings of Hume, resolve my own living ident.i.ty, the one conscious indivisible me, into a bundle of memories derived from the senses which had bubbled and duped my experience, and reduce into a phantom, as spectral as that of the Luminous Shadow, the whole solid frame of creation?
While pondering these questions, the storm whose forewarnings I had neglected to heed burst forth with all the suddenness peculiar to the Australian climes. The rains descended like the rus.h.i.+ng of floods. In the beds of watercourses, which, at noon, seemed dried up and exhausted, the torrents began to swell and to rave; the gray crags around them were animated into living waterfalls. I looked round, and the landscape was as changed as a scene that replaces a scene on the player's stage. I was aware that I had wandered far from my home, and I knew not what direction I should take to regain it. Close at hand, and raised above the torrents that now rushed in many a gully and tributary creek, around and before me, the mouth of a deep cave, overgrown with bushes and creeping flowers tossed wildly to and fro between the rain from above and the spray of cascades below, offered a shelter from the storm.
I entered,--scaring innumerable flocks of bats striking against me, blinded by the glare of the lightning that followed me into the cavern, and hastening to resettle themselves on the pendants of stalact.i.tes, or the jagged b.u.t.tresses of primaeval wall.
From time to time the lightning darted into the gloom and lingered amongst its shadows; and I saw, by the flash, that the floors on which I stood were strewed with strange bones, some amongst them the fossilized relics of races destroyed by the Deluge. The rain continued for more than two hours with unabated violence; then it ceased almost as suddenly as it had come on, and the l.u.s.trous moon of Australia burst from the clouds s.h.i.+ning bright as an English dawn, into the hollows of the cave. And then simultaneously arose all the choral songs of the wilderness,--creatures whose voices are heard at night,--the loud whir of the locusts, the musical boom of the bullfrog, the cuckoo note of the morepork, and, mournful amidst all those merrier sounds, the hoot of the owl, through the wizard she-oaks and the pale green of the gum-trees.
I stepped forth into the open air and gazed, first instinctively on the heavens, next, with more heedful eye, upon the earth. The nature of the soil bore the evidence of volcanic fires long since extinguished. Just before my feet, the rays fell full upon a bright yellow streak in the block of quartz half imbedded in the soft moist soil. In the midst of all the solemn thoughts and the intense sorrows which weighed upon heart and mind, that yellow gleam startled the mind into a direction remote from philosophy, quickened the heart to a beat that chimed with no household affections. Involuntarily I stooped; impulsively I struck the block with the hatchet, or tomahawk, I carried habitually about me, for the purpose of marking the trees that I wished to clear from the waste of my broad domain. The quartz was shattered by the stroke, and left disburied its glittering treasure. My first glance had not deceived me.
I, vain seeker after knowledge, had, at least, discovered gold. I took up the bright metal--gold! I paused; I looked round; the land that just before had seemed to me so worthless took the value of Ophir. Its features had before been as unknown to me as the Mountains of the Moon, and now my memory became wonderfully quickened. I recalled the rough map of my possessions, the first careless ride round their boundaries.
Yes, the land on which I stood--for miles, to the spur of those farther mountains--the land was mine, and, beneath its surface, there was gold!
I closed my eyes; for some moments visions of boundless wealth, and of the royal power which such wealth could command, swept athwart my brain.
But my heart rapidly settled back to its real treasure. ”What matters,”
I sighed, ”all this dross? Could Ophir itself buy back to my Lilian's smile one ray of the light which gave 'glory to the gra.s.s and splendour to the flower'?”
So muttering, I flung the gold into the torrent that raged below, and went on through the moonlight, sorrowing silently,--only thankful for the discovery that had quickened my reminiscence of the landmarks by which to steer my way through the wilderness.
The night was half gone, for even when I had gained the familiar track through the pastures, the swell of the many winding creeks that now intersected the way obliged me often to retrace my steps; to find, sometimes, the bridge of a felled tree which had been providently left unremoved over the now foaming torrent, and, more than once, to swim across the current, in which swimmers less strong or less practised would have been dashed down the falls, where loose logs and torn trees went clattering and whirling: for I was in danger of life. A band of the savage natives were stealthily creeping on my track,--the natives in those parts were not then so much awed by the white man as now. A boomerang(1) had whirred by me, burying itself amongst the herbage close before my feet. I had turned, sought to find and to face these dastardly foes; they contrived to elude me. But when I moved on, my ear, sharpened by danger, heard them moving, too, in my rear. Once only three hideous forms suddenly faced me, springing up from a thicket, all tangled with honeysuckles and creepers of blue and vermilion. I walked steadily up to them. They halted a moment or so in suspense; but perhaps they were scared by my stature or awed by my aspect; and the Unfamiliar, though Human, had terror for them, as the Unfamiliar, although but a Shadow, had had terror for me. They vanished, and as quickly as if they had crept into the earth.
At length the air brought me the soft perfume of my well-known acacias, and my house stood before me, amidst English flowers and English fruit-trees, under the effulgent Australian moon. Just as I was opening the little gate which gave access from the pastureland into the garden, a figure in white rose up from under light, feathery boughs, and a hand was laid on my arm. I started; but my surprise was changed into fear when I saw the pale face and sweet eyes of Lilian.
”Heavens! you here! you! at this hour! Lilian, what is this?”
”Hus.h.!.+” she whispered, clinging to me; ”hus.h.!.+ do not tell: no one knows.
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