Part 72

But waving these profanations, the reliques of a darker age, let me have a word with Astrophel on parting. The seeming fulfilment of many a sibylline prophecy is perfectly clear as to its source. There may be coincidence, as in the dream; or faith and inducement may 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 a general 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 the BOAR.” He hunted and killed boars incessantly, but the purple was not offered to him. At length, the Emperor Numerianus was murdered by Arrius Aper. 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. Its effect was 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 body under 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 ideas in 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 the innocence of 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 the aqua tofana of the Italians.

And superstitious fear may induce a sudden death. 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 was convulsed, 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 the face is 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 the wrong 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.”

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.