Part 5

The Stranger.--I agree with you in your opinion. If my servant had not been with me, and my dream had been a little less improbable, it would have been difficult to have persuaded me that I had not been visited by an apparition.

I mentioned the dream of Brutus, and said, "His supposed evil genius appeared in his tent; had the philosophical hero dreamt that his genius had appeared to him in Rome, there could have been no delusion." I cited the similar vision, recorded of Dion before his death, by Plutarch, of a gigantic female, one of the fates or furies, who was supposed to have been seen by him when reposing in the portico of his palace. I referred likewise to my own vision of the beautiful female, the guardian angel of my recovery, who always seemed to me to be present at my bedside.

Amb.--In confirmation of this opinion of Onuphrio, I can mention many instances. I once dreamt that my door had been forced, that there were robbers in my room, and that one of them was actually putting his hand before my mouth to ascertain if I was sleeping naturally. I awoke at this moment, and was some minutes before I could be sure whether it was a dream or a reality. I felt the pressure of the bedclothes on my lips, and still in the fear of being murdered continued to keep my eyes closed and to breathe slowly, till, hearing nothing and finding no motion, I ventured to open my eyes; but even then, when I saw nothing, I was not sure that my impression was a dream till I had risen from my bed and ascertained that the door was still locked.

Onu.--I am the only one of the party unable to record any dreams of the vivid and peculiar nature you mention from my own experience; I conclude it is owing to the dulness of my imagination. I suppose the more intense power of reverie is a symptom of the poetical temperament; and perhaps, if I possessed more enthusiasm, I should always have possessed more of the religious instinct. To adopt the idea of Philalethes of hereditary character, I fear my forefathers have not been correct in their faith.

Amb.--Your glory will be greater in establishing a new character, and I trust even the conversation of this day has given you an additional reason to adopt our faith.

Ambrosio spoke these words with an earnestness unusual in him, and with something of a tone which marked a zeal for proselytism, and at the same time he cast his eyes on the rosary which was suspended round the neck of the stranger, and said, "I hope I am not indiscreet in saying our faith."

The Stranger.--I was educated in the ritual of the church of England; I belong to the Church of Christ; the rosary which you see suspended round my neck is a memorial of sympathy and respect for an illustrious man. I will, if you will allow me, give you the history of it, which, I think from the circumstances with which it is connected, you will not find devoid of interest. I was passing through France in the reign of Napoleon, by the peculiar privilege granted to a scavan, on my road into Italy. I had just returned from the Holy Land, and had in my possession two or three of the rosaries which are sold to pilgrims at Jerusalem as having been suspended in the Holy Sepulchre. Pius VII. was then in imprisonment at Fontainebleau. By a special favour, on the plea of my return from the Holy Land, I obtained permission to see this venerable and illustrious Pontiff. I carried with me one of my rosaries. He received me with great kindness. I tendered my services to execute any commissions, not political ones, he might think fit to entrust me with in Italy, informing him that I was an Englishman. He expressed his thanks, but declined troubling me. I told him I was just returned from the Holy Land, and bowing with great humility, offered to him my rosary from the Holy Sepulchre. He received it with a smile, touched it with his lips, gave his benediction over it, and returned it into my hands, supposing, of course, that I was a Roman Catholic. I had meant to present it to his Holiness, but the blessing he had bestowed upon it and the touch of his lips, made it a precious relic to me and I restored it to my neck, round which it has ever since been suspended. He asked me some unimportant questions respecting the state of the Christians at Jerusalem; and on a sudden, turned the subject, much to my surprise, to the destruction of the French in Russia, and in an exceedingly low tone of voice, as if afraid of being overheard, he said, "The nefas has long been triumphant over the fas, but I do not doubt that the balance of things is even now restoring; that God will vindicate his Church, clear his polluted altars, and establish society upon its permanent basis of justice and faith. We shall meet again. Adieu!" and he gave me his paternal blessing. It was eighteen months after this interview, that I went out with almost the whole population of Rome, to receive and welcome the triumphal entry of this illustrious father of the Church into his capital. He was borne on the shoulders of the most distinguished artists, headed by Canova; and never shall I forget the enthusiasm with which he was received--it is impossible to describe the shouts of triumph and of rapture sent up to heaven by every voice. And when he gave his benediction to the people, there was an universal prostration, a sobbing and marks of emotions of joy almost like the bursting of the heart. I heard, everywhere around me, cries of "The holy Father! The most holy Father! His restoration is the work of God!" I saw tears streaming from the eyes of almost all the women about me, many of them were sobbing hysterically, and old men were weeping as if they had been children. I pressed my rosary to my breast on this occasion, and repeatedly touched with my lips that part of it which had received the kiss of the most venerable Pontiff. I preserve it with a kind of hallowed feeling, as the memorial of a man whose sanctity, firmness, meekness and benevolence are an honour to his Church and to human nature; and it has not only been useful to me, by its influence upon my own mind, but it has enabled me to give pleasure to others, and has, I believe, been sometimes beneficial in insuring my personal safety. I have often gratified the peasants of Apulia and Calabria by presenting them to kiss a rosary from the Holy Sepulchre which had been hallowed by the touch of the lips and benediction of the Pope; and it has been even respected by and procured me a safe passage through a party of brigands who once stopped me in the passes of the Apennines.

Onu.--The use you have made of this relic puts me in mind of a device of a very ingenious geological philosopher now living. He was on Etna and busily employed in making a collection of the lavas formed from the igneous currents of that mountain; the peasants were often troublesome to him, suspecting that he was searching for treasures. It occurred to him to make the following speech to them: "I have been a great sinner in my youth and, as a penance, I have made a vow to carry away with me pieces of every kind of stone found upon the mountain; permit me quietly to perform my pious duty, that I may receive absolution for my sins." The speech produced the desired effect; the peasants shouted, "The holy man! The saint!" and gave him every assistance in their power to enable him to carry off his burthen, and he made his ample collections with the utmost security and in the most agreeable manner.

The Stranger.--I do not approve of pious frauds even for philosophical purposes; my rosary excited in others the same kind of feeling which it excited in my own bosom, and which I hold to be perfectly justifiable, and of which I shall never be ashamed.

Amb.--You must have travelled in Italy in very dangerous times; have you always been secure?

The Stranger.--Always; I have owed my security, partly, as I have said, to my rosary, but more to my dress and my acquaintance with the dialect of the natives. I have always carried with me a peasant as a guide, who has been intrusted with the small sums of money I wanted for my immediate purposes, and my baggage has been little more than a Cynic philosopher would have carried with him; and when I have been unable to walk, I have trusted myself to the conduct of a vetturino, a native of the province, with his single mule and caratella.

The sun was now setting and the temple of Neptune was glowing with its last purple rays. We were informed that our horses were waiting, and that it was time for us to depart to our lodgings at Eboli. I asked the stranger to be our companion and to do us the honour to accept of a seat in our carriage. He declined the invitation, and said: "My bed is prepared in the casina here for this night, and to-morrow I proceed on a journey connected with scientific objects in the parts of Calabria the scene of the terrible earthquakes of 1783." I held out my hand to him in parting; he gave it a strong and warm pressure, and said, "Adieu! we shall meet again."

DIALOGUE THE FOURTH. THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITY.

The impression made upon my mind by the stranger with whom we became acquainted at Paestum was of the strongest and most extraordinary kind. The memory of his person, his dress, his manners, the accents of his voice, and the tone of his philosophy, for a long while haunted my imagination in a most unaccountable manner, and even formed a part of my dreams. It often occurred to me that this was not the first time that I had seen him; and I endeavoured, but in vain, to find some type or image of him in former scenes of my life. I continually made inquiries respecting him amongst my acquaintance, but I could never be sure that any of them knew him, or even had seen him. So great were his peculiarities, that he must have escaped observation altogether; for, had he entered the world at all, he must have made some noise in it. I expressed so much interest on this subject, that at last it became a source of ridicule amongst my acquaintance, who often asked me if I had not yet obtained news of my spirit-friend or ghost-seer.

After my return from Naples to Rome, I was almost immediately recalled to England by a melancholy event--the death of a very near and dear relation--and I left my two friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, to pursue their travels, which were intended to be of some extent and duration.

In my youth, and through the prime of manhood, I never entered London without feelings of pleasure and hope. It was to me as the grand theatre of intellectual activity, the field of every species of enterprise and exertion, the metropolis of the world of business, thought, and action. There I was sure to find the friends and companions of my youth, to hear the voice of encouragement and praise. There, society of the most refined kind offered daily its banquets to the mind with such variety that satiety had no place in them, and new objects of interest and ambition were constantly exciting attention either in politics, literature, or science.

I now entered this great city in a very different tone of mind--one of settled melancholy; not merely produced by the mournful event which recalled me to my country, but owing, likewise, to an entire change in the condition of my physical, moral, and intellectual being. My health was gone, my ambition was satisfied, I was no longer excited by the desire of distinction; what I regarded most tenderly was in the grave, and, to take a metaphor derived from the change produced by time in the juice of the grape, my cup of life was no longer sparkling, sweet, and effervescent;--it had lost its sweetness without losing its power, and it had become bitter.

After passing a few months in England and enjoying (as much as I could enjoy anything) the society of the few friends who still remained alive, the desire of travel again seized me. I had preserved amidst the wreck of time one feeling strong and unbroken: the love of natural scenery; and this, in advanced life, formed a principal motive for my plans of conduct and action. Of all the climates of Europe, England seems to me most fitted for the activity of the mind, and the least suited to repose. The alterations of a climate so various and rapid continually awake new sensations; and the changes in the sky from dryness to moisture, from the blue ethereal to cloudiness and fogs, seem to keep the nervous system in a constant state of disturbance. In the mild climate of Nice, Naples, or Sicily, where even in winter it is possible to enjoy the warmth of the sunshine in the open air, beneath palm trees or amidst evergreen groves of orange trees covered with odorous fruit and sweet-scented leaves, mere existence is a pleasure, and even the pains of disease are sometimes forgotten amidst the balmy influence of nature, and a series of agreeable and uninterrupted sensations invite to repose and oblivion. But in the changeful and tumultuous atmosphere of England, to be tranquil is a labour, and employment is necessary to ward off the attacks of ennui. The English as a nation is pre-eminently active, and the natives of no other country follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy. And, as human powers are limited, there are few examples of very distinguished men living in this country to old age: they usually fail, droop, and die before they have attained the period naturally marked for the end of human existence. The lives of our statesmen, warriors, poets, and even philosophers offer abundant proofs of the truth of this opinion; whatever burns, consumes--ashes remain. Before the period of youth is passed, grey hairs usually cover those brows which are adorned with the civic oak or the laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of the man of pleasure, their tints are not even preserved by the myrtle wreath or the garland of roses from the premature winter of time.

In selecting the scenes for my new journey I was guided by my former experience. I know no country more beautiful than that which may be called the Alpine country of Austria, including the Alps of the southern Tyrol, those of Illyria, the Noric and the Julian Alps, and the Alps of Styria and Salzburg. The variety of the scenery, the verdure of the meadows and trees, the depths of the valleys, the altitude of the mountains, the clearness and grandeur of the rivers and lakes give it, I think, a decided superiority over Switzerland; and the people are far more agreeable. Various in their costumes and manners, Illyrians, Italians, or Germans, they have all the same simplicity of character, and are all distinguished by their love of their country, their devotion to their sovereign, the warmth and purity of their faith, their honesty, and (with very few exceptions) I may say their great civility and courtesy to strangers.

In the prime of life I had visited this region in a society which afforded me the pleasures of intellectual friendship and the delights of refined affection; later I had left the burning summer of Italy and the violence of an unhealthy passion, and had found coolness, shade, repose, and tranquillity there; in a still more advanced period I had sought for and found consolation, and partly recovered my health after a dangerous illness, the consequence of labour and mental agitation; there I had found the spirit of my early vision. I was desirous, therefore, of again passing some time in these scenes in the hope of re-establishing a broken constitution; and though this hope was a feeble one, yet at least I expected to spend a few of the last days of life more tranquilly and more agreeably than in the metropolis of my own country. Nature never deceives us. The rocks, the mountains, the streams always speak the same language. A shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a thunderstorm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; but these effects are rare and transient: in a few hours or at least days all the sources of beauty are renovated. And Nature affords no continued trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution of humanity; no hopes for ever blighted in the bud; no beings full of life, beauty, and promise taken from us in the prime of youth. Her fruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet; she affords none of those blighted ones so common in the life of man and so like the fabled apples of the Dead Sea--fresh and beautiful to the sight, but when tasted full of bitterness and ashes. I have already mentioned the strong effect produced on my mind by the stranger whom I had met so accidentally at Paestum; the hope of seeing him again was another of my motives for wishing to leave England, and (why, I know not) I had a decided presentiment that I was more likely to meet him in the Austrian states than in England, his own country.

For this journey I had one companion, an early friend and medical adviser. He had lived much in the world, had acquired a considerable fortune, had given up his profession, was now retired, and sought, like myself, in this journey repose of mind and the pleasures derived from natural scenery. He was a man of a very powerful and acute understanding, but had less of the poetical temperament than any person whom I had ever known with similar vivacity of mind. He was a severe thinker, with great variety of information, an excellent physiologist, and an accomplished naturalist. In his reasonings he adopted the precision of a geometer, and was always upon his guard against the influence of imagination. He had passed the meridian of life, and his health was weak, like my own, so that we were well suited as travelling companions, moving always slowly from place to place without hurry or fatigue. I shall call this friend Eubathes. I will say nothing of the progress of our journey through France and Germany; I shall dwell only upon that part of it which has still a strong interest for me, and where events occurred that I shall never forget. We passed into the Alpine country of Austria by Lintz, on the Danube, and followed the course of the Traun to Gmunden, on the Traun See or lake of the Traun, where we halted for some days. If I were disposed to indulge in minute picturesque descriptions I might occupy hours with details of the various characters of the enchanting scenery in this neighbourhood. The vales have that pastoral beauty and constant verdure which is so familiar to us in England, with similar enclosures and hedge-rows and fruit and forest trees. Above are noble hills planted with beeches and oaks. Mountains bound the view, here covered with pines and larches, there raising their marble crests capped with eternal snows above the clouds. The lower part of the Traun See is always, even in the most rainy season, perfectly pellucid; and the Traun pours out of it over ledges of rocks a large and magnificent river, beautifully clear and of the purest tint of the beryl. The fall of the Traun, about ten miles below Gmunden, was one of our favourite haunts. It is a cataract which, when the river is full, may be almost compared to that of Schaffhausen for magnitude, and possesses the same peculiar characters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its awful and overpowering waters, and of beauty in the tints of its streams and foam, and in the forms of the rocks over which it falls, and the cliffs and woods by which it is overhung. In this spot an accident, which had nearly been fatal to me, occasioned the renewal of my acquaintance in an extraordinary manner with the mysterious unknown stranger. Eubathes, who was very fond of fly-fishing, was amusing himself by catching graylings for our dinner in the stream above the fall. I took one of the boats which are used for descending the canal or lock artificially cut in the rock by the side of the fall, on which salt and wood are usually transported from Upper Austria to the Danube; and I desired two of the peasants to assist my servant in permitting the boat to descend by a rope to the level of the river below. My intention was to amuse myself by this rapid species of locomotion along the descending sluice. For some moments the boat glided gently along the smooth current, and I enjoyed the beauty of the moving scene around me, and had my eye fixed upon the bright rainbow seen upon the spray of the cataract above my head; when I was suddenly roused by a shout of alarm from my servant, and, looking round, I saw that the piece of wood to which the rope had been attached had given way, and the boat was floating down the river at the mercy of the stream. I was not at first alarmed, for I saw that my assistants were procuring long poles with which it appeared easy to arrest the boat before it entered the rapidly descending water of the sluice, and I called out to them to use their united force to reach the longest pole across the water that I might be able to catch the end of it in my hand. And at this moment I felt perfect security; but a breeze of wind suddenly came down the valley and blew from the nearest bank, the boat was turned by it out of the side current and thrown nearer to the middle of the river, and I soon saw that I was likely to be precipitated over the cataract. My servant and the boatmen rushed into the water, but it was too deep to enable them to reach the boat; I was soon in the white water of the descending stream, and my danger was inevitable. I had presence of mind enough to consider whether my chance of safety would be greater by throwing myself out of the boat or by remaining in it, and I preferred the latter expedient. I looked from the rainbow upon the bright sun above my head, as if taking leave for ever of that glorious luminary; I raised one pious aspiration to the divine source of light and life; I was immediately stunned by the thunder of the fall, and my eyes were closed in darkness. How long I remained insensible I know not. My first recollections after this accident were of a bright light shining above me, of warmth and pressure in different parts of my body, and of the noise of the rushing cataract sounding in my ears. I seemed awakened by the light from a sound sleep, and endeavoured to recall my scattered thoughts, but in vain; I soon fell again into slumber. From this second sleep I was awakened by a voice which seemed not altogether unknown to me, and looking upwards I saw the bright eye and noble countenance of the Unknown Stranger whom I had met at Paestum. I faintly articulated: "I am in another world." "No," said the stranger, "you are safe in this; you are a little bruised by your fall, but you will soon be well; be tranquil and compose yourself. Your friend is here, and you will want no other assistance than he can easily give you." He then took one of my hands, and I recognised the same strong and warm pressure which I had felt from his parting salute at Paestum. Eubathes, whom I now saw with an expression of joy and of warmth unusual to him, gave a hearty shake to the other hand, and they both said, "You must repose a few hours longer." After a sound sleep till the evening, I was able to take some refreshment, and found little inconvenience from the accident except some bruises on the lower part of the body and a slight swimming in the head. The next day I was able to return to Gmunden, where I learnt from the Unknown the history of my escape, which seemed almost miraculous to me. He said that he was often in the habit of combining pursuits of natural history with the amusements derived from rural sports and was fishing the day that my accident happened below the fall of the Traun for that peculiar species of the large salmo of the Danube which, fortunately for me, is only to be caught by very strong tackle. He saw, to his very great astonishment and alarm, the boat and my body precipitated by the fall, and was so fortunate as to entangle his hooks in a part of my dress when I had been scarcely more than a minute under water, and by the assistance of his servant, who was armed with the gaff or curved hook for landing large fish, I was safely conveyed to the shore, undressed, put into a warm bed, and by the modes of restoring suspended animation, which were familiar to him, I soon recovered my sensibility and consciousness. I was desirous of reasoning with him and Eubathes upon the state of annihilation of power and transient death which I had suffered when in the water; but they both requested me to defer those inquiries, which required too profound an exertion of thought, till the effects of the shock on my weak constitution were over and my strength was somewhat re- established: and I was the more contented to comply with their request as the Unknown said it was his intention to be our companion for at least some days longer, and that his objects of pursuit lay in the very country in which we were making our summer tour. It was some weeks before I was sufficiently strong to proceed on our journey, for my frame was little fitted to bear such a trial as that which it had experienced; and, considering the weak state of my body when I was immerged in the water, I could hardly avoid regarding my recovery as providential, and the presence and assistance of the Stranger as in some way connected with the future destiny and utility of my life. In the middle of August we pursued our plans of travel. We first visited those romantic lakes, Hallsstadt, Aussee, and Toplitz See, which collect the melted snows of the higher mountains of Styria to supply the unfailing sources of the Traun. We visited that elevated region of the Tyrol which forms the crest of the Pusterthal, and where the same chains of glaciers send down streams to the Drave and the Adige, to the Black Sea and to the Adriatic. We remained for many days in those two magnificent valleys which afford the sources of the Save, where that glorious and abundant river rises, as it were, in the very bosom of beauty, leaping from its subterraneous reservoirs in the snowy mountains of Terglou and Manhardt in thundering cataracts amongst cliffs and woods into the pure and deep cerulean lakes of Wochain and Wurzen, and pursuing its course amidst pastoral meadows so ornamented with plants and trees as to look the garden of Nature. The subsoil or strata of this part of Illyria are entirely calcareous and full of subterranean caverns, so that in every declivity large funnel- shaped cavities, like the craters of volcanoes, may be seen, in which the waters that fall from the atmosphere are lost: and almost every lake or rives has a subterraneous source, and often a subterraneous exit. The Laibach river rises twice from the limestone rock, and is twice again swallowed up by the earth before it makes its final appearance and is lost in the Save. The Zirknitz See or Lake is a mass of water entirely filled and emptied by subterraneous sources, and its natural history, though singular, has in it nothing of either prodigy, mystery, or wonder. The Grotto of the Maddalena at Adelsberg occupied more of our attention than the Zirknitz See. I shall give the conversation that took place in that extraordinary cavern entire, as well as I can remember it, in the words used by my companions.

Eub.--We must be many hundred feet below the surface, yet the temperature of this cavern is fresh and agreeable.

The Unknown.--This cavern has the mean temperature of the atmosphere, which is the case with all subterraneous cavities removed from the influence of the solar light and heat; and, in so hot a day in August as this, I know no more agreeable or salutary manner of taking a cold bath than in descending to a part of the atmosphere out of the influence of those causes which occasion its elevated temperature.

Eub.--Have you, sir, been in this country before?

The Unknown.--This is the third summer that I have made it the scene of an annual visit. Independently of the natural beauties found in Illyria, and the various sources of amusement which a traveller fond of natural history may find in this region, it has had a peculiar object of interest for me in the extraordinary animals which are found in the bottom of its subterraneous cavities: I allude to the Proteus anguinus, a far greater wonder of nature than any of those which the Baron Valvasa detailed to the Royal Society a century and half ago as belonging to Carniola, with far too romantic an air for a philosopher.

Phil.--I have seen these animals in passing through this country before; but I should be very glad to be better acquainted with their natural history.

The Unknown.--We shall soon be in that part of the grotto where they are found, and I shall willingly communicate the little that I have been able to learn respecting their natural characters and habits.

Eub.--The grotto now becomes really magnificent; I have seen no subterraneous cavity with so many traits of beauty and of grandeur. The irregularity of its surface, the magnitude of the masses broken in pieces which compose its sides, and which seem torn from the bosom of the mountain by some great convulsion of nature, their dark colours and deep shades form a singular contrast with the beauty, uniformity, I may say, order and grace of the white stalactical concretions which hang from the canopy above, and where the light of our torches reflected from the brilliant or transparent calcareous gems create a scene which almost looks like one produced by enchantment.