The vision re-appeared on the tomb as quick as thought. "Follow the advice of Hiermanfor," he said, "he will supply my place. I have mistaken him like thyself; however, thou shalt know him too as he is known to me; and then we shall be united by stronger ties."
The vision disappeared, and I heard the _Unknown_ calling to me from the other side of the chapel.
I felt like one who is suddenly roused from a dream, and looked around me with uncertain, examining eyes, searching for the Irishman. He perceived it and came towards me.
The sudden change of the most opposite sensations, particularly the last scene, had affected me very much, and I sat myself down upon a tomb. "Is it not true, Hiermanfor?" said I after a long silence, "I have dreamed?"
"Dreamed?" he replied with astonishment, "and _what_ have you dreamed?"
"Methought my tutor was standing upon this tomb, and talking strange things."
"I have had the same _vision_."
"Hiermanfor! don"t sport with my understanding."
"It is as I have said."
"It cannot be!" I exclaimed vehemently, "it was an illusion. Don"t think that I am still as credulous as I have been. Confess only that the vision was a new illusion, whereby you wanted to try me."
"An illusion requires the a.s.sistance of machines: and I give you leave, nay, I beseech you to search for them. You may ransack the whole burying ground, but your labour will be lost."
"That may be! It has perhaps been one of your finest artifices, but nevertheless it was mere delusion."
"It was delusion, because you will have it so."
"Hiermanfor! what do you wish me to believe?"
"Whatever you _can_ believe."
"Here the figure of my tutor was standing, and there I stood and conversed with him."
"You may have been dreaming, it was perhaps one of my finest artifices."
"What can you say against it?"
"Nothing, my Lord, nothing!"
"I conjure you, what can you say against it?"
"On one part I could find it improbable that two people should have the same dream while they are awake; on the other, that the most consummate juggler would find it difficult to produce by day-light, and on an open spot, an airy vision which resembles your friend exactly, talks in a sensible manner, answers questions which are put to it, and appears a second time at your desire."
"True, very true! however the apparition is not less mysterious to me if I deem it _no_ illusion."
"You will comprehend it one time, said Antonio."
"But when? I am dying with a desire to have the mystery unfolded."
"May I speak without reserve, my Lord."
"I wish you always had spoken without disguise, and acted openly."
"What I am going to say may perhaps offend you; Yet I must beg you to give me leave to speak freely. I am not going to address Miguel, but the Duke."
"Frankness and truth are equally acceptable to the latter as they are to the former; speak without reserve."
"It is not fondness of truth, but vain curiosity that has driven you upon the _dangerous ocean_ of knowledge, where you are cruising about without either rudder or compa.s.s, in search of unknown countries, and enchanted islands. I met you some time since on your voyage, and captured you. You could as well have fallen in with somebody else, who would have forged heavier fetters for you. I have not misused my power over you. You have indeed worked in the fetters which I have chained you with, but not in my service, not for me, but for your country, which you, I am sorry to say, would never have done voluntarily. You have attempted nothing, at least very little, to break those chains, but you struggled hard to avoid serving your country. I endeavoured to keep you in its service by strengthening your chains; however, unforeseen accidents liberated you from your bondage, and then I appeared first to you a lawless corsair, who had made an unlawful prize of you, although you had supposed me, before that time, to be a supernatural being, to whose power you fancied you had surrendered voluntarily. My dear Duke, I am neither a villain, nor am I a supernatural being; however, you are not able to judge of me. It is true that I possess important arcana, by the application of which I can effect wonderful things; but I am not allowed to make use of them before I have tried in vain every common means of attaining my aim. According to my knowledge of your Lordship, the artifices of natural magic were sufficient for carrying my point; but now, as the veil is taken from your eyes, and those delusions by which your will has been guided, have lost their influence upon you, now I could make use of my superior power, by which I have been enabled to effect the apparition of your tutor. However, you judge of my deeds equally wrong as of myself. At first you mistook real delusions, for miracles, and now you mistake the effect of a great and important arcanum, for delusion. Whence these sudden leaps from one extreme to the other? What is it that constantly removes from your eyes the real point of view from which you ought to see things? The source of this evil is within yourself; I will point it out to you, lest you discover it too late. You have an innate propensity, which has been nursed up by your lively imagination, a propensity which is agitating powerfully within you, and struggles for gratification, the propensity to the wonderful.
Your tutor strove too late to combat it by the dry speculations of philosophy, instead of guiding and confining it in proper bounds. My G.o.d! your friend is an excellent man, who had your real happiness at heart; however, his philosophy was not altogether consistent.
A preconceived contempt of all occult sciences prevented him examining them with impartiality, and declaring all events contrary to the common course of nature, to be the effects of imposition. He committed a sin against philosophy, premising as demonstrated, what was to be proved.
Your own feeling, my Lord, made you sensible of the defects and exaggerations of his arguments; your reason was not sufficient to rectify, or to refute them; and thus you have adopted the principles of your tutor, not from conviction, but from a blind confidence in his learning and honesty, and believing the a.s.sertions of your instructor, you believed in his philosophy."
"Hiermanfor! I think you are right."
"Give me leave to proceed. It was consequently not philosophical conviction that made you suspect your inclination to the wonderful; but faith was opposed to faith. The former was founded on the authority of your tutor, and the latter on the secret voice of your heart. Regard for your friend, and the ambition of being looked upon as a philosopher, impelled you to adopt the principles of your tutor, and an innate instinct spurred you to yield to the voice of your heart, and thus you embraced by turns, the opinion of your instructor and the faith which originated from your heart, according to the strength of motive which prevailed on either side. However, these motives were never pure undoubted arguments of reason, but mere sentiments, which made you shift from one side to the other, in the same measure in which your sentiments of one or the other kind, received nourishment or additional strength from without. As soon as I began to play off my magical machineries your belief in miracles began to prevail; but as soon as your tutor recapitulated his lectures, philosophy resumed her former sway. You were a ball which flew alternately in his and my hands, because you wanted firm conviction, to fix yourself upon. Nevertheless I should have succeeded at last in getting an exclusive power over you merely by means of my delusions, because your predilection for the wonderful, and your imagination, which found an excuse and a gratification in my works, would have prevailed over the philosophical sentences which you have been taught. Paleski discovered to you what you ought to have discovered yourself, that my arts were mere delusions, and now you conclude that I can produce nothing but delusions. Perhaps you go still farther, and deny even the possibility of apparitions, because I have raised in Amelia"s house a ghost who was none. At bottom you keep firm to your character; you came over to my party because your _feelings_ found their account in doing so; you find you have been deceived, and you fly back again to the opposite party because you _fancy_ to find truth there.
However you are really guided only by a blind instinct, by sentiment and opinion. And with _these_ guides do you fancy you can penetrate to the sanctuary of truth and happiness?----Unhappy young man! you are doomed to deceive yourself and to be deceived."
After a short pause the Irishman resumed:
"Pardon my frankness, my Lord! I have done."
(_To be continued._)
_For the +New-York Weekly Magazine+._
CHARACTER OF A POOR MAN.
Rhebo is hollow-eyed, lank and meagre of visage. He sleeps little, and his slumbers are very short. He is absent, he muses, and, though a man of sense, has a stupid air. He imagines himself troublesome to those he is conversing with. He relates every thing lamely, and in a few words.
No one listens to him, he does not raise a laugh. He applauds and smiles at what others say to him, and is of their opinion. He runs, he flies, to do them little services. He is complaisant, bustling, and a flatterer. There is no street how crowded soever, but he can easily pa.s.s through it without the least trouble, and slips away unperceived. When desired to sit, he scarce touches the frame of the chair. He speaks low in conversation, and is inarticulate; yet sometimes he discourses freely on public affairs, and is angry at the age. He coughs under his hat, and spits almost upon himself, he endeavours to sneeze apart from the company; and puts no person to the trouble of saluting, or paying him a compliment.----He is poor.
GLEANINGS.
A good author should have the style and courage of a captain, the integrity of a dying man, and so much sense and ingenuity, as to impose nothing, either weak or needless, on the world.
The best of authors are not without their faults, and if they were, the world would not entertain them as they deserve. Perfection is often called for, but n.o.body would bear it. The only perfect man that ever appeared in the world was crucified.
The man whose book is filled with quotations, may be said to creep along the sh.o.r.e of authors, as if he were afraid to trust himself to the free compa.s.s of reasoning. Others defend such authors by a different allusion, and ask whether honey is the worse for being gathered from many flowers?
A few choice books make the best library: a mult.i.tude will confound us, whereas a moderate quant.i.ty will a.s.sist and help us. Masters of great libraries are too commonly like booksellers, acquainted with little else than the t.i.tles.
He who reads books by extracts, may be said to read by deputy. Much depends on the latter, whether he reads to any purpose.