Volume 1825
Georges Dodds'
The Ape-Man: his Kith and Kin
A collection of texts which prepared the advent of Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Presents
http://www.erbzine.com/mag18/gossipland.htm
| Main text. | |
| Appendix. | |
| Note A to Page 80. | (untitled). |
| Note B to page 133. | THE MADONNA AND CHILD; OR, MOTHER-WORSHIP.. |
| Endnotes. |
MYU-ME-AE-NIA;
OR,
NEWLY-DISCOVERED WORLD CALLED
GOSSIPLAND.
It may be a matter of profound interest to the great race of man to know how I came to be called Mammoth Martinet. It originated thus: --- My mother, when she carried me; had many strange dreams. I suppose mothers generally, in similar circumstances, have wonderful dreams. But one dream was more remarkable than all the others; which may, nevertheless, be nothing very remarkable. Her dream was to this effect: --- She had given birth to a man-child; but then the man-child, as she handled, dandled, and looked at it, melted away into a huge swallow. And when it spread abroad its wings she thought they widened and widened out till they touched, with their extreme tips, the two opposite sides of the horizon, darkening the face of the whole country. It flew away, brushing all the clouds from the face of the sky like so many cob-webs, finally disappearing, and never returned.
Dreams often make deep impressions upon youth, old age, and superstitious people. Many a musing had I on this dream. I would sit for hours on the rocks of the ocean, stretching my eyes far into the blue depths of sea and sky; and when the sun was setting amid the immense of crimsoned, gold-edged, ragged clouds, I fancied I had a glimpse of the far-off regions Fate had destined me to visit.
My father was a seaman, sailing ships. Many a thrilling story of adventure had he to tell. But I may as well say --- lest there should be any mistake in the matter, and seeing my object is to write true history --- that it was not he who saw all the old moons lying behind the outermost edge of the world; neither was it he who brought up some of the wheels of Pharaoh's chariot out of the Red Sea. I don't exactly know whether he did ever try the whaling in the Red Sea. I cannot remember. That is all I will venture to say, as I wish to be accurate. But I will tell you one thing which he told me, and which determined my future. He once had got so far north in his whale pursuits that he got a sight of a beautiful open sea, where were scattered up and down in it rich emerald isles. It appeared the outskirts of a new world; and he told me that others had got a sight of it before his day. It was believed to lead into the centre of our world. The thought haunted me. "What!" I would say to myself, "a world within a world?" My resolution was taken. A sailor I should become. I would sail, too, in a whaling vessel.
My mother was by religion a Roman Catholic. If my father was of any religion it was the Protestant; practically he was of no religion. The highest ambition of my mother was that I should be a priest. My father contended that "the boy should be allowed to choose for himself." And he did choose. But all my training and studies were directed towards qualifying me for the priesthood. As my taste, however, did not lie in that direction, I made but little proficiency in them. I hated the drudgery of learning Latin, Greek, and Mathematics; not but that I relished the stories of Virgil and Homer, old translations of which I found in manuscript in the library of the monastery. I devoured the wild romance of the Iliad; the love songs of Ovid I abominated. I cannot to this day explain to my satisfaction the existence of so many manuscript translations of this libidinous poet. Every monk that had lived in the monastery for centuries seemed to have translated his poems in his own handwriting, especially the most prurient, with copious notes. The notes were often paraphrases, and, to my mind, were, as a rule, more disgusting than the text itself. True, they were interspersed with pious reflections and condemnations; but it appeared to me that their motives were very contradictory; it was as if they did, at bottom, relish the pruriencies of the love songs, and yet they had a better nature or principle, which condemned both the songs and themselves.
I may as well tell you that though the writings of Aquinas, Scotus, and Den were placed in my hands, and we had prelections and examinations on them, I made but little acquaintance with them. A nature so romantic as mine was but little fitted to grapple with the subtleties and casuistries of such scholastics. Robinson Crusoe was infinitely more congenial to me. I would not have given one half-hour with Jack the Giant-killer or Bluebeard for a twelvemonth with the lucubrations of the seraphic Doctor. This was fast bringing me into disgrace with the holy fathers of the monastery. But when it was discovered that I was an omnivorous student of the legends of the saints, and that I could repeat them by the hour, I took a distinguished place among the neophytes. The more unnatural and improbable the legend, the more eagerly I read it and implicitly believed it. What the other students would laugh at as a tale written by some lunatic I would receive and believe in, though the Bible itself had condemned it. Honours were showered on me, and I was brought under the notice of the highest dignitaries of the Church as a young man of most remarkable promise. I was counselled to persevere as I had begun, and coaxed, at the same time, to turn a little more of my attention to the classics and theology. Assurances were given me that I was bidding fair for reaping, in a ripe old age, the triple crown of the Ecclesia Romana. Seldom a day now passed but I was plied with such like encouragements, and I was watched with most assiduous interest. I was cloyed with the most winning smiles of the burly fathers as I encountered them in the corridors, or as they passed through the library, where I sat dozing my brains with the wildest creations of the human fancy. I was pronounced a prodigy --- a coming star --- a son of inspiration. But their thoughts were not my thoughts. It is with tears I think of all the kindnesses they showered on me and the honours they beckoned me on to. This day might I have been sitting in the apostolic chair of Peter, had I but been of their mind. But another arena of distinction and fame lay before me; I could not but press towards it. The restraints of cloistered life were not congenial to a wild nature like mine. The very legends I devoured fostered this love of roaming in the wide world. Hence I stole from the monastery of St. Kildaine, and made for the seaport that lay in sight of it. I engaged with the captain of a whaler as cabin-boy; for though I was now merging into manhood, I knew nothing of a seafaring life and duties. It was not long, however, before I was discovered to be of considerable aptitude, and soon was ranked with the forecastle hands.
My experiences as a sailor may be learned from the lips of thousands who have sailed in whalers. I shall not, therefore, waste my pains and your time on so commonplace a subject. I shall only begin where others end --- viz., the real point of my divergence from ordinary mortals.
The excitement of whaling was to me, at first, something very overpowering; but little did I imagine it would lead to such a strange issue. These are the real facts of the case, if only you can believe them.
There was sighted by our ship's crew a huge whale. Two boats were manned for the pursuit; harpoon in hand, I stood at the prow of one of them. We neared --- I struck, and the usual scene occurred. We captured our monster victim; it lay like an island on the surface of the water. While the boat's crew stood on its back at their usual operations, another whale, unnoticed, neared us. I saw at once our danger. Seizing the harpoon, I let fly. There being none in the boat with me, I was alone dragged away between two billowy furrows. The boat being light, I was soon miles off from the ship. I thought little of it at first, as I knew I would be followed by-and-bye; but as hours passed, and our pace slackened not, I became alarmed. I had no other harpoon. The prow of the boat was level with the waves. Had I moved forward to cut the rope, the boat had been filled in a twinkling, and I had gone to the bottom. Night overtook me in this plight. The pace of the whale slackened at length, but I had no inducement now to lose the rope. I thought it might tug me back to the vessels, the neighbourhood of some others, or the sight of some shore. Thus I moved, and rested by fits and starts, for longer and shorter periods, over a space of weeks. Through many a shoal of vast icebergs did we wind and glide. Sometimes we ran for days up between the rents of the interminable floes. At length we came upon an open sea; the icebergs grew smaller and less numerous. By-and-bye I lost all sight of them. Green islands here and there lifted up their heads out of the blue waves. Clothed with rich verdure, from their highest summits to their sea-bathed margin, they looked Elysian isles.
So engrossed was I with the new and fair scenes that kindled in my eye, I failed to observe one strange phenomenon. The sea beat inward towards the earth's centre with a resistless but waveless current. I had long passed the dividing line between the outer and inner earth before I observed it. What a boundless sight burst on the view! I stood not now in a convex world, with a few leagues visible to the naked eye; I stood within a hollow ball, every point of whose vast surface was visible. There was no sky. Wherever you looked you saw sea or land. There was no sun or moon. The whole atmosphere seemed impregnated with glittering points of glory. The light was something ineffably intense, and yet, withal, so soft and pleasing, that the eye revelled in it. So powerful was it, that when you looked across the nearly seven thousand miles that lay between you and the opposite side of the hollow globe, it looked nearer than seven miles would do under our sun. This gave to the eye a vast range; one sweep of the eye, and the panorama of twenty thousand miles passed under your review. There was this strange peculiarity in the light or atmosphere, or both, I know not which; it seemed to intensify; and then tarify immensely at times. When you looked at any object, though seven thousand miles off, it would occasionally enlarge, and come so near that you thought you could touch it; then, at other times, it would shrink up to such a minute point, it looked as if twenty thousand miles intervened. From this peculiarity it was almost impossible to enjoy any privacy. You could be brought under the eye of one, ten, a hundred, or ten million of the inhabitants at any moment. Every eye of the countless inhabitants of that world could be turned on you at once; and whether the eye had any effect on the atmosphere or no, I cannot positively say --- I am anxious to keep strictly within the limits of what I do know --- but it was strangely agitated in that portion of it lying between the person or persons looking and the object looked at. The object would expand into various degrees of dimensions, in proportion to the measure of intensity with which you looked at it; sometimes into titanic vastness, and at others into microscopic minuteness. The longer I lived in Myu-me-ae-nia, I was the more persuaded that the atmosphere had a close affinity with the state of the mind. If you were in a dull and melancholy state, the air thickened into clouds above and around you. It was a strange sight to me at first, though familiarity wore off the wonder, to see one followed by a bank of mist; and so closely did it muffle him, that he could not see more than a few steps before him. Another had thick clouds stretched over him, the lightning flashing out and the thunder crashing above him. In the case of others, the arrowy, hustling hail might be seen blinding him, or the snow falling in thick flakes around him. Another might be seen walking, vestured in a little atmosphere of light, looking by all the world as if some unseen sun reserved all its beams for him, showering its wealth about him.
Another peculiarity of the atmosphere was its highly stimulating character. It excited to an eager curiosity and to a resistless love of chattering. When I first entered this new world I could not understand the change that had come over me. I used to be so reserved and reticent, I was looked on as unsocial and sullen; but here my tongue went like the perpetual motion. I talked to myself --- I seemed to think aloud; every idea and emotion, as it rose within me, was blurted out. I wanted some one to listen to me, and tell me something new. I talked to every object that attracted my attention, and my ears had acquired a keen --- painfully keen --- power of hearing. The whole wide air seemed a whispering gallery; it was full of sounds, and yet each sound was pitched on a different key. There was an endless scale of whispering voices eddying about you everywhere; and how the ear could wander at will through them, like a bee over a meadow, choosing which to extract its sweets from! And though the atmosphere of this world was a Babel of voices, yet it did not irritate or confuse you, as one would naturally have supposed. So far from that, it kept up a constant round of tip-toe excitement. The voices, also, were all melodious. It felt a great hive, every voice being a bee, storing up in its own atmospheric cell a richer than Hymettean honey. Sounds reached your ear, if only you gave attention, from the remotest corner of Myu-me-ae-nia. No matter how low your whisper was, it went circling round the whole concave, as if seeking an outlet. The only chance you had for your words escaping others' ears was if they were all taken up too much with other matters. You would have thought an invisible electric net-work of wire had been laid by some wicked spirits from every mouth to every ear in Myu-me-ae-nia. To keep a secret there was almost a perfect impossibility, if only you uttered it at any time in confidence to your nearest, dearest, and most trustworthy friend. Nay, what puzzled me above everything was, that your very thoughts, though unuttered --- aye, thoughts you never had in your mind at all at any time --- would go circling round, and come back to your own ear; yea, sayings you had never said got wind, and stamped your character. And the climax of all was this --- your protestations against such unsaid sayings came back the hideous ghosts of what left your lips. But can you wonder at it? Dividing out along such myriad discursive lines, meeting all ears, was it surprising if some sounds were lost, while endless echoes altered the key of others ere they were all gathered up in converging lines to your ear? The wonder was if truth was ever heard within that world. The atmosphere was such in its elastic character, that, like waves of ocean, no sound repeated itself without some lessening or enlarging of its just dimensions. Silence was safest there; and yet silence was a barking Cerberus, with thrice three hundred tongues.
It would be difficult to believe it, but if you inclined your ear to any sound it grew and multiplied upon you. It was "like the letting in of waters;" I have felt that, when listening to a varied sound, I had caught the first glimpse of its meaning; my whole soul scooped more and more towards it till a widening flood was deluging me. I was like Leviathan drawing in a river --- no --- "an eternity" of sound into my ears. Whether you would or no, in Myu-me-ae-nia you must hear. But no one feels disinclined in that world to hear. It seems one of the chief employments and enjoyments of the Myu-me-ae-nians. You never saw one there walking or sitting by himself. When I landed on these shores I was much gazed at because, I dwelt so much apart. Many a strange and uncouth rumour ran concerning me on that account. But it was as strange to me to see mortal beings always in groups; it looked as if they could not trust themselves alone. They recoiled from solitude as a child would do at midnight from a churchyard. From the small coterie of two or three to the vast assemblage of thousands were they everywhere rallied together.
Another peculiarity of that wondrous world was the ever varying dimensions of its inhabitants. At one time they stood before you like Titans, at another like ordinary-sized men, while at others they shrank up into mere points. I have seen them expanding from a pin-point till they seemed furlongs in height. Nothing so appalled me as the first sight of this phenomenon. When I was sailing up what seemed the estuary of a whole universe I was amazed to see the shores crowded with countless myriads of small living objects. At first they looked like dwarfs; but as I neared the shore, and they increased in number, they dwindled to the size of toads. But when I sprang upon the beach they were not so large as locusts; and so numerous were they, I could scarce find a place to plant my feet on without treading on them. The agility of their movements excited my curiosity; moreover, when they crowded closer together they became like ants, or rather midges. But oh! the hum! It was not the hum of insect clouds that dance in our summer evening sky; it was something grander than that. It struck me like the hum of a great city, while I stood on some mountain that overhung it --- nay, like the hum of a universe. Well, as I have said, I was greatly puzzled as to what these living things might be. Surprise gave birth to curiosity. I stooped to catch one of these strange creatures; I would fain examine it. But lo! swifter than roes they all fled back, and as they did so they expanded in size. I pursued; and, as I neared, they grew and grew, till, like sons of Anak, they covered hill and dale. Paralyzed with fear, I stood and quaked, shaking like an aspen leaf. I was hemmed in on every side by an extraordinary race of beings. What could I do? Had I been near the shore I had leapt back into my boat, and tried to flee. But, as it was, what now? Were they cannibals, demons, fairies, satyrs, nemeses, or what were they? Endless conjectures rushed upon me, which it would be worse than useless to rehearse here. It was not time for meditation, but for action.
One thing I observed as they expanded --- they seemed to me to be transparent. As you have seen stars gleaming dimly through a fleecy cloud, so could I see objects behind them. But as they shrank and condensed into more reasonable proportions, they were more opaque, though not perfectly intransparent. You can imagine the eerie feelings this discovery awakened within me. It occurred to me they were insubstantial, and therefore they could do me no physical harm. This gave me a kind of physical relief. It is wonderful how courageous one can become if only you are sure you win escape with skin and bone uninjured.
Another discovery I made, which mightily relieved me, and put my courage into high mettle. It was that they were more afraid of me than I was of them. One could chase a thousand of them, and two put ten thousand to flight. Not but that they wore an air of bravery and daring. When they stood in full height there was a noble and imposing appearance about them; in fact, it was a long time ere I could divest myself of all fear of them, though there was a latent hesitation about them that made you suspect them of poltroonery. I thought, at first, it was my strange and uncouth appearance among them that caused that; for I must inform you, for your better understanding of my situation, that they were all bristling with armour. It would he impossible to conceive of a living creature more terribly arrayed for war. Why, each looked to me at first, when they stood upright in their great height, as "the tower of David, builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers --- all shields of mighty men." But one extraordinary characteristic of their armour consisted in this: it all enlarged and contracted in the same proportion and in sympathy with those wearing them. Another thing noticeable about their armour lay in this: while they wore many and large shields --- for they had shields to cover every part of their bodies --- they bristled all over with burning darts, like a hedgehog, the sharp points of which were tipped with fire. Notwithstanding the many years I spent among them I never could learn how they manufactured these in such exhaustless quantities, and stuck them about them ready for use. It seemed a subject they did not like to be touched on --- a secret they never would impart. I had always a suspicion that these arrows were a native growth of their etherial bodies like feathers in a bird, and that they tipped them in a lake of fire I shall subsequently mention. They had bows and cross-bows of all sizes hanging about them, as well as two-edged swords, with so keen an edge that the most powerful microscope could not detect its outline. These swords have I seen making a long gash upon the back of a Myu-me-ae-nian when one passed by, and it was some time ere he was aware that he had been injured. And I may mention here that I scarcely ever saw one Myu-me-ae-nian hurling a dart or giving a sword-cut but behind the back of his victim. I only remember three or four exceptions to this rule. But to return. It was only when the poison in which all their swords are bathed began to take effect they knew they had been wounded. So much so was this the case, that I have seen many accused of inflicting a wound while they were entirely innocent and ignorant of it.
One national custom of these Myu-me-ae-nians was this: they were for ever twanging from their bows, large or small, some of their burning arrows, or they were hurling their javelins, or aiming secretly sword-cuts. The air was constantly gleaming with all manner of missiles; not that they carried on any great battles that I saw or ever could learn. Nay, they professed universally to hate war and strife. They loved peace above all things. They denounced all revenge, spite, hatred, enmity, cruelty, cunning, maliciousness, &c.; and yet, in the midst of their tirades against the bad dispositions of others --- and all were bad but themselves --- they could never sit, or stand, or ride, or walk, without twanging their bows. As if altogether beautifully unconscious of it --- as if it were a mere pastime, and as if they could not help it --- they were whirring away some cutting missile to some one or other in Myu-me-ae-nia. As you stood, or sat, or walked beside them, you had to maintain a constant vigilance, and jerk your body in every conceivable direction to let the darts pass by. So did they all in that world. You never saw a being at rest. They rock to and fro perpetually, like a ship at anchor when a bursting sea tumbles at all angles around it, to escape the hissing darts. Even when eating, the same thing went on. Between every supply they took, they proceeded with shooting, and hurling, and rocking.
I never could say I saw, as a rule, a genuine friendship among them; for though I have seen them living, walking, eating, hunting in groups, yet there was a constant rolling of their sharp, burning, restless eyes, as if each suspected a traitor in the other. Even when they would salute one another in token of love and friendship they would watch the hands and movements of each other. But they seldom long kept together in friendship. A few hours or days sufficed to alter the face of the whole group. Like as I have watched the clouds of our skies melting away, while I gazed, from one shape, into another, so was it with all the coteries I ever observed in that world. Those who were fast friends this moment were hurling darts and arrows in fierce fury at each other secretly the next.
Speaking of their artillery, I must not omit to mention one thing. It was this: Either they were not designed to kill outright, or they could not do it. And of all these weapons of attack, none inflicted, evidently, such pain as the minute arrows that were tipped with the strange fire. I have seen them writhing most terribly when one of these pierced them, while a spear that passed right through them only made them wince and stagger for a moment. Being transparent to my eye, I could follow the course of the little arrow. It generally had just sufficient force to get under the epidermis or outer skin. Every movement of their body --- and I have told you how they rocked incessantly --- made it work its way in deeper and deeper towards the more vital and sensitive parts. It scoriated a path for itself with its burning point till it reached the heart. Whenever it pierced that organ there was a terrible effervescence, with great agitation among all the vital spirits of their bodies, till at length the arrow was entirely dissolved or absorbed --- I cannot tell which: perhaps both. You could see the blood or vital spirits as they now flowed out through the nervous system, considerably altered, thickened, and blackened, producing a changed condition, more or less, of the whole external appearance. I have seen some of the noblest Myu-me-ae-nians with scores of these burning little arrows at all stages of progress, making their way inwards to the vital centre. Once I saw the king and his prime minister bristling all over, like a porcupine, with these infixed arrows; and the air around them was crowded with myriads more on the way, as I have seen myself in this world on a summer eve surrounded with a cloud of insects. For a circuit of leagues on every side of them the air was gleaming with them. If you watched the angle at which they were flying you would find that they came from every point of the wide area of Myu-me-ae-nia. The privilege of a king and a prime minister there seemed to me to be common victims for all their subjects; and none but those who experienced the suffering these gave could understand it. Death had been infinitely preferable to this deathless death and torture.
Can you be surprised, therefore, if when I first arrived amid such new and strange scenes I was appalled. Not that they essayed their artillery on me on my immediately landing, though they could not resist hurling them at all shades of distances near to me. They could not forego this inveterate habit of theirs, no matter who was the person concerned. But not knowing what manner of being I was --- harmless or dangerous --- they experimented in safety. They wished to test me, whether I was open to fear or not. My trepidation they mistook for defiance; my swoon they interpreted to be treachery and deceit; the pallor of my cheeks and the blueness of my lips they understood to be rage. It was well for me that it was so, for it laid the ground-work of my future ascendancy over them. When I flung myself on my knees and implored their protection they fled; when I rose and pursued them they rallied, and hurled each a volley of arrows with such accurately measured distance that it formed a burning wall for a few seconds between them and me, while none of them reached or touched me. This, I afterwards learned, was designed. I saw, at length, that by concealing my true motives, and appearing to them other than real, I would gain my end. Therefore, without running, I advanced. They all enlarged their dimensions, till the whole plains and mountain-sides appeared covered as if with immense moving towers flashing in brass and steel. As I still neared them they grew higher and more majestic; their frown blackened like a thunder-cloud with a glowing furnace-fire slumbering behind it. My knees quaked: I was speechless from fear. Still I advanced. I saw it was to be the turning point of my history in that strange country. And now the arrows flew thicker. They aimed them nearer. They fell still, however, within a few feet of me. By-and-bye they shot them so near as to let them fall at my feet: and now they singe my hair. They fizzed on my clothes and riddled them. I still advanced. The arrows begin to pierce me. Like one with a wasp's or hornet's nest clustering round and stinging him at ten thousand points, so was I. I reeled for a moment. I debated now whether I should advance or recede; it was but death in any case. So I reasoned. "Let me, then, advance." My resolve was made. And now the storm of battle thickened. Brave warriors! --- myriads against one! The earth shook beneath me, from the stamp of their feet in anger. The air burst out at every point around me like as with forked lightning; the whole atmosphere seemed as if it had taken on fire --- that part of it, at least, which surrounded me. This only maddened me to desperation. I rushed forward, determined to bring this fearful conflict to an end by provoking them to destroy me. But lo! what took place? As I dashed wildly at them all, all ablaze, still unsubdued and unquailed, the storm abated --- the fire of artillery slackened. The Myu-me-ae-nians were awestruck. They had never seen it thus before; and as I neared them they shrank down into smaller dimensions, till, when I stood in the midst of them, they collapsed in appearance into an army of ants. What contempt now seizes my scorning soul! I thought I could rush in among them, and tread them by the thousand or ten thousand to death. Without a single weapon, I had conquered the terrific fire of myriads. Brave them; suffer, as if you did not; betray not lacerated emotions --- you conquer them. "Base poltroons!" cried I. Happily they did not understand my language. Prudence is the better part of valour. "Revenge," said I, "is not true wisdom. Insignificant as each really is, yet by sheer force of numbers they could overpower me. Let me not, then, retaliate. Let me show I neither fear nor despise them. Thus will I secure their friendship --- at least neutrality." It was well I did so; for what could I have done against so many? They were not mortal. I could not have crushed a single one of them out of existence. I had, therefore, been baffled in this had I tried it; and if I had tried, and failed --- as I must have done --- they had learnt my rage and impotence; they had known how to despise and torment me. But by acting as I did, concealing my true feelings and sufferings, I became a riddle to them. I sat down among them to rest myself, to show that I was neither afraid nor vindictive, and soon fell asleep.
Days must have passed, according to our mode of calculation, ere I awoke. I became conscious, on awaking, that I had passed through the delirium of a fever. Want, excitement, and the poisoned arrows had done their work. I was weak as a new-born babe; I could neither lift hand nor foot; I was scorched with a terrible thirst; an awful hunger gnawed within me. But how was I to tell my wants? I could not understand the speech of Myu-me-ae-nia, nor they mine.
Such were some of my half-conscious musings as I languidly lifted my heavy eyelids. But what was my surprise when I caught sight of a most beautiful creature that was bending tenderly by my side, shaking a large branch that rained a rich balm upon me! It showered over me like a thin white mist creeping along a winding valley stream in the summer morn or eve. I felt the ebbing waves of life begin to rally, and, gathering up their disorganized forces, rush back in delirious might through every vein and nerve of my body. Nor was it so much as if I had won back my former self and strength, but as if I had regained it a hundredfold intensified. I was braced with a vitality, an elasticity, a vigour, a joyousness I never had tasted of before. It was as if I had now reached the first and outermost zones of immortality.
Never shall I forget the glow of ineffable delight that kindled in the ravishing face of that Myu-me-ae-nian fair one. To see that I had come to consciousness again yielded her a keen sense of satisfaction. By all the claims that a stranger in calamity can wring sympathy out of the hearts of others had I touched her with pity. She had viewed with awe and admiration the unequal contest I had maintained, and when I fell a victor her heart was mine. I did not know this at the time, nor was she herself aware of it; but the sequel of my Myu-me-ae-mian life revealed it.
Ree-mia-me-an, which means "The blossom of beauty," was the most perfect ideal, taken as a whole, both in mind and body, that I have ever witnessed. I should here mention that in Myu-me-ae-nia, more than in our world, the mind projects itself into the forms of the body; the body there mirrors out to the eye the internal moods and character. At the beginning of our own history this attribute seems to have been possessed, and explains the brand put on the forehead of Cain. But as time rolled on the grosser part of our nature overlaid the more spiritual, till this law has become almost effete. Hence it is the most consummate villains can smile and stab you at the same moment, without your suspecting their aims.
Oh! it was the first real sip of the cup of unmixed bliss that I ever enjoyed when my eyes met the liquid celestial light of the eyes of Ree-mia-me-an. Like the huge waves of the German Ocean thundering against the chalk cliffs of old England, so my heart tumultuated behind my ribs. Every feature of her face was beautiful. They were all so perfect in their lines and mutual proportions --- withal so soft, ethereal, noble; expression, love, purity, independence, transparency, trueness lay behind each. As you have seen the clouds catching and reflecting back to earth the glories of the departed sun as it lay far beneath the western waves --- so every feature in her face was the tell-tale of the emotions, thoughts, and workings of her hidden but glorious soul. I could but lay and gaze upon her. The sight of her completely prostrated me with delight. It relaxed the whole knit-up energies of my manhood. The romance of my soul was for once satisfied; aye, more than satisfied. I was as one that dreamed. I have seen on earth beautiful faces, but the self-consciousness of their beauty was too apparent to suffer you long to admire them. But the wealth of joy that was here had no alloy. Her beauty grew upon you with time. Unlike our fair sisters in this world, time fades not the eye, the cheek, the rosy living light and health-freshness of a Myu-me-ae-nian. It is character alone --- the mouldings of the soul it is which chisels out the lines of life in the countenance of a Myu-me-ae-nian. The soul development in the deeper and more delicate lines, and finer tints of wisdom and virtue imparted fresher and more sparkling loveliness to her face, and more graceful movement to her whole gait. I knew not then that this fair one was older than our Christian era. A maiden of sixteen had looked older in our world; and yet she was looked upon as but in her teens.
Can the oldest and most confirmed bachelor on earth condemn me for becoming at once the blindest votary of such a beauty? Pity bound her to me --- love, me to her. How free and artless were her manners. It was the overflowing fulness of a generous heart held her in angel ministries at my side. She watched and tended me as a mother would do some helpless babe that was left by some heartless mother at her door. To her I was an uncouth stranger; but yet we had affinities, she knew. Whatever the outward casket, the inward jewel --- the soul --- had something akin to her own. To her, what was I but an infant? If a she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, might not an almost divine creature nurse one of Adam's descendants? Oh! delightful nurse! My soul grew great as it fed on hers. We had not a mutual language, but her keen intuitions enabled her to read my wants, my thoughts, my feelings. I saw she grew embarrassed as my young affections burst up in twining arms about her. A friend she wished in me --- but not a lover. As, however, the lover became more dominant, she grew more guarded. I saw that if she could think I needed not now her nursing care she would leave me; but I was as bent that this she should not know. My very love for her favoured the feint: in fact I was as much enfeebled --- aye, more so --- by Cupid's darts than I had been by the Myu-me-ae-nian. Many a rich dew she flung over me; but nothing so refreshed me as the beholding of her queenly --- nay, angelic form. Never did I know till then the kindling joys of life --- of pure being. What immortal yearnings, like the hungry waves of the Atlantic, multiply within us. They create an ever-more restlessness, which eats out of us the calm, the peace, the satisfiedness, so necessary to our full-orbed happiness. If the lot of man supplied the objects suited to the various yearnings, then would there be rest. But where is there such a happy contingency? Where is there one being that finds in another created being, in our unhappy world, all that they would desiderate? Is there not always some deficiency or excrescence, some infirmity of temper, some confirmed habit that spoils the ointment more or less? Could it be matter for surprise, then, that when one concentrated in herself such a fulness of attributes as met every craving of the soul as it rose into prominence, she took such a mysterious hold of my whole manhood? I was henceforth a satellite, held in the luminous, soft, but adamant chains of a great gravitating law, that knit every grain of my being to every grain of her own. She was a fulness to me: I felt it. The longer I lay in the lapping outgoings that betrayed her true self I felt it. She rose up within me as a deepening tide covering the black, tangled, and unsightly basin of my existence. But how was I to retain that gleaming, pellucid, and delicious tide? That was now the hungry torment that gnawed upon my liver as Etna did upon Prometheus. But while I sunned me in her ingenuous friendship, I drank the joys of Paradise. Months, according to our calculation, must have passed while she nursed me. But it was brought to a close in the following manner.
Nim-rim-tan-wa-tan-wa, or "the sheen of resplendent virtues," came at the head of a band of Myu-me-ae-nian maidens singing and dancing in circular fashion. I knew not at the time what they sang, but afterwards I came to know. They celebrated the praises of modesty, of virtue, of maidenhood, as it was woven into the traditions of some great Myu-me-ae-nian virgin, in contrast to the shame of another famous character, who fell before the subtle solicitations of an accomplished villain. Their songs were so pointed as to throw a slight upon us both, while they seemed to be unconscious of our presence. They so skilfully regulated their movements as to make a complete circuit round us, and then, as they were about to dart away into another, to stumble immediately upon us. The air of surprise, of flurried timidity, and the look of virtuous and indignant shame they cast upon us, was most theatrically effected. At the time, I did not suspect it as the result of a deep-laid plot; neither did I understand its meaning. But I detected a something in them, especially in Nim-rim-tan-wa-tan-wa, which gave them an inferiority in my estimation to Ree-mia-me-an. There was a soft and luxurious beauty and grace about them all; but there was a deficiency of naturalness I felt, yet could not explain. The absolute inartificialness of Ree-mia-me-an had, from the first, thrown an ineffable charm over all the perfect qualities she was endowed with. But to my mind there was not that in this choir of maidens. There seemed a studious aim at effect in every gesture, movement, look. I would not have observed it so readily had not contact with Ree-mia-me-an, so tutored my eye and perceptions. What indignant reproof they administered to her! They commended her for her past integrity and purity; but it was all with a view to foil her present shame. They left no room for doubt that she had fallen. They painted in the blackest and most odious colours the disgrace she had brought on their race; and as for myself, they had the most infamous narratives to record. They told of my antecedents, and how it had come to their knowledge I was banished from my own world for my immoralities.
As long as they had dwelt on her own follies she encountered it with an unruffled and celestial smile. The consciousness of her own innocence rendered her proof to their insinuations. They saw she was impervious to them all. But when they touched upon me they smote her in her seven streams. What guarantee had she but that there might be some truth in what they so boldly asserted regarding me? It was here where she fell into the snare they had laid for her. It would be impossible to paint the wondrous mixture of pity, love, agony, and doubt that gathered in her eye when she rose, beckoned me an adieu, and vanished into the distance. I could not divine the meaning of it. My heart was smitten and withered by her sudden withdrawal. I knew not but some unhappy event had summoned her to her own family circle. But oh! 'twas to me as if the firmament had been stripped of its sun and moon and stars, and all nature had gathered blackness. The desolation of my heart was beyond all conception.
Nim-rim-tan-wa-tan-wa now strove to take the place of Ree-mia-me-an. She put on the softest, richest, and most fascinating smiles and airs. She imitated the tender solicitudes of Ree-mia-me-an. She gave me to understand that she had come to rescue me from the treacheries of a deep and deceitful maiden. At first I met her insinuations with a deep and gathering scorn; but she played the game so skilfully, with such seeming simplicity and purity of motive (backed by her maidens, who appeared the very embodiment of all that was sincerest, gentlest, truest, and most guileless) that I began to waver. An agony of doubt awoke within me regarding Ree-mia-me-an. They perceived the first fiery glancings of the ray of jealousy and suspicion, as they tried to impress me with the conviction that she was the betrothed of another. They fed and fanned the ember fires. With inimitable art they plied me, till my heart became like a cage of every wild beast. I was strongly tempted, in a spirit of revenge, to dismiss Ree-mia-me-an from the last retreats in which she lurked in my hankering affections, and abandon myself to the fascinations of Nim-rim-tan-wa-tan-wa. But who has loved --- really, deeply, strongly loved, from the great tap roots of manhood? Let him essay to shake loose that love --- and will he succeed without loosening to a great extent the very hold he has on life itself? It is like the throes of an earthquake beneath the broad and deep foundations of a grim fortress --- a fortress that has rolled back for ages the tide of battle --- but is sore rent by this spasm of nature. Thus was it with me; but one of those fortuitous and unforeseen contingencies that sometimes take place in life, decided the case for me. Whilst I was thus meditating upon my future action, an immense assembly of Myu-me-ae-nians began to congregate around us. The report of my arrival in that world, where nothing can be hid, had penetrated into the remotest corners of it. The most extraordinary descriptions had gone abroad. I was reported to be the most marvellous being that ever was, or possibly could be. At one time --- so report said --- I could shrivel myself up into a minute point; at another, I could stand so tall that they could not see from the feet to the head of me. It did appear ridiculous to me when I came afterwards to learn this. They did not understand that it was their own peculiarity of expansion and contraction that gave rise to this appearance of mine in their eyes. When they hung about me as motes, of course I must have appeared to them enormously large; but when, again, they rose to a size of furlongs in height, I must have appeared to them a very minute thing. For they, though they contracted and expanded after this extraordinary fashion, were never aware of it; for everyone contracted and expanded, by force of sympathy, who were together at the time. When I came to learn this impression they had concerning my believed alterable dimensions, I never tried to undeceive them: it would have been of no use; besides, if I had succeeded, it would have tended to weaken my influence over them. For, with created and intelligent beings, however high they stand in the ranks of creatures, nothing exercises such a control as an element of the mysterious, mythical, or marvellous. Hence it is, so many of our aristocracy are anxious to trace up their ancestry, to some one or other of the sea kings. It is upon this very principle, the priests of our Holy Mother Church, play upon the credulous and vulgar. The priests of paganism, with their secret rites and arcana, did the same thing.
Though there is a vast fertility in Myu-me-ae-nia, it is all insubstantial as compared with what we have in this world. I came upon an apple tree in the course of the day (you see I must still speak of days, though there are no nights there), I put forth my hand to pluck one of its apples, but my hand passed through it. I thought at first it must have fallen to the ground; but no, there it hung still. I essayed again to pluck it, but the same failure signalised the attempt. The Myu-me-ae-nians, instead of laughing, were awe-struck. I now began more minutely to examine the tree --- and lo! it was transparent. I went forward to place my hand on the bark; my hand went into the tree. I walked right through it --- felt nothing: I turned and looked --- there it was, perfect as if I had never touched it. As we journeyed on --- for I followed the multitude --- we came to a great high hedge of prickly thorn. I had never before seen one so high and thick and prickly; but it, too, as I neared, was transparent. I went up and tried if I could walk through it; there was no obstruction-not a thorn or branch could I feel, though I saw them in myriads; and yet, not one in all Myu-me-ae-nia could walk through it as I did; it lacerated them, though it could not hurt me. The same was equally true of their rivers. While journeying with the King and his people to the capital of Myu-me-ae-nia, we came upon a beautiful cascade. I had never seen one of such enormous height. Though it fell from the highest peak of Teneriffe, it could never have equalled this; and then, it looked like a vast fall of quicksilver; the roar was something terrible. I stood and gazed in wrapt amazement; how long, I cannot tell. Time in that world is of no account. They are not tied up to beggarly quarters of an hour, or a day, week, month, &c. If they want to speak to you there a minute --- only a minute --- that means a month, or three months, as likely as not. Well, I say, I don't know how long I stood. I drew neat by-and-bye to the edge of the great basin, where the bubbling and foaming waters were playing; and what a sight! Looking down into it, you would have thought you were looking down, through and through, into our own great unfathomed sky. What great blocks of all manner of precious stones, each of them, in appearance, as large as the Pyramids of Egypt. This did look marvellous! How long I gazed down to see whether or not these were not stars magnified, that lay at the bottom, I cannot tell; nor does it matter. Being thirsty, I bent down to drink. To my surprise, I could have as soon caught my own shadow, and drunk it. I thought I would venture down a little way into this great bathos. You can have no idea of the horror displayed by the Myu-me-ae-nians at my rashness. They made all manner of grimaces and gesticulations to discourage me from what seemed to them a most perilous undertaking; however, I ventured down. What was my surprise! Instead of being immeasurably deep --- thousands of leagues to the bottom --- it was not more than a few feet; and as for the precious stones being as large as pyramids, they were not as large as the diamonds I wear in my shirt studs; besides, when I tried to pick them up, they were only shadows of stones. "Vile mockery!" I said within myself, "this world is all a sham." I walked in among the enchanted mist, and its very roar was gone. You needed to go to a distance from it to hear its hollow thunderings. After I had wandered about in this phlegethon a little time, I turned round to look on the Myu-me-ae-nians – what they were thinking. There they were, clustering on the edge like a swarm of midges. I now wandered in till I stood beneath the cataract: it was no more to me than a column of wreathed smoke. It indeed flashed with a clearer than crystal brilliancy; it glittered in grit luminousness as if it were a column of finely-powdered diamond dust.
I afterwards learned that I had appeared to the assembled Myu-me-ae-nians a most dazzling picture. It is said I literally shone as if a mass of burnished silver; and to what an enormous size I had expanded! Had they believed in a God, they would have worshipped me there as such.(1) But of all this I knew nothing at the time. When I had satisfied my curiosity I returned to the edge whence I had entered. As I came out, the Myu-me-ae-nians all gradually expanded to their normal stature. I now looked back again into the boiling gulf of glittering mist. It appeared anew in all its terrible vastness. Though I knew it was all a deception, yet I could not resist the impression of its awful vastness in size, depth, and greatness of precious stones, so long as I remained outside.
We now journeyed onwards to Lli-me-muia, the royal city of that world. The highway leading to it was something very magnificent. It could not be less than ten leagues in breadth. It was covered with a kind of grass, that felt to the foot like down; nay, rather, as if you were treading on sunbeams. The richness of the green hue was truly ineffable, and it was enamelled with a profusion of flowers, unrivalled by this earth for form and beauty. You did not bruise a flower by treading on it: its finest gossamer-like petals were as uncrumpled as the delicate wings of the little insects in the vice-like grasp of the amber stone. But lo! what a countless multitude thronged this highway. We came at length, in our journey, to the banks of a broad, deep, pure river. It looked like molten quicksilver. The banks to the water's edge hung in awful wealth of verdure and shrubbery, while it literally blazed with flowers. A bridge was thrown across this river. Far as the eye could reach, ran a row of colossal pillars, as if made of burnished gold. From one pillar to the other was stretched, what appeared, an enormous slab of ivory --- thus was that great broad river bridged. The king led the way, mounting the great steps leading up to it; but when he planted his foot upon it, he shrank to a minute stature. I looked around, and lo! all the countless multitude had done the same. I now planted my foot --- rather tried it --- on the broad staircase. My, foot went through it. There were the steps --- there the bridge; but they were neither steps nor bridge for me. The thought occurred "What if this river is no river to me?" I made for its banks, and slipped down amid its gliding currents. It was a glittering, moving mirage! What horror seized the Myu-me-ae-nians, from the king to the humblest. They thought I should now be lost: it gave them great distress. I was now become an object of intense interest. They did not wish to lose me; but I was in happy ignorance of all this. Yes, they were sure I would either be swallowed up in some of the vast whirlpools, or be devoured by one of the monster Mmou-me-noo-oos. Certainly I was not prepared for a re-encounter with one of these scaly monsters. They must be a reality, though, I am happy to say, the one I met did me good service: it devoured the last remaining fears I had for anything I should ever after see or encounter in Myu-me-ae-nia. Whether it has ever been able to digest them, I never could learn.
I can well conceive the awful terror they inspire to a Myu-me-ae-nian, but only to a Myu-me-ae-nian. I was walking along, thinking only of the agreeable surprise I was to give the Myu-me-ae-nians on the other side, when I was startled from my reverie by a great rushing and splashing sound. This was nothing less than shoals of fishes --- or what seemed to be such --- driving along at an enormous rate. They came in such abundance that I fancied, for the time, they cast a deep shadow all around me. I could scarcely see the ivory bridge by which I was guiding my steps to the other side. Such is the force of imagination! The rush so increased, and the multitudes, that I became uneasy. At length I caught sight of two immense eyes: each looked as large as a lunar rainbow. The body of the fish appeared to stretch away behind for leagues. It seemed, with its huge mouth, to take in whole shoals at once. At fearful speed it came bearing down in my direction, like a huge railway train, as if to dash me to atoms, or snap me up as a petit morceau. Strange to relate, however, --- and this, I assure you, is as true as my whole story --- it dwindled down as it came nearer; and when it fairly reached me it was no larger than a shrimp! Nay, it was but the transparent skeleton of a shrimp. I was quite indignant at the vile deception. I tried to catch and crumple in pieces this queer pigmy monster, that created such dismay among the finny tribes of Myu-me-ae-nia.
When I reached the side of the river on the edge of which rests the city of Lli-me-muia, I came to a great broad flight of steps that seemed made of vast blocks of sapphire. Monsters, that appeared a cross-breed between lions and sphynxes, were cut out of the same material, resting at various landings in the noble balustrade that ran up the middle and at either side of this stair. It had such a Titanic vastness and massiveness, I stood and gazed in mute wonderment. But here again I was doomed to fresh disappointment; for, when I placed my foot on the first step, the whole dwarfed down in a twinkling, so that I passed up over the entire flight at one bound. All the inhabitants of Lli-me-muia looked on bewildered, and said it had never been so seen before. True, they did not perceive that it shrank up to such small dimensions; for they and all Lli-me-muia shrank in sympathy to proportional minuteness. But it gave them an overwhelming sense of mysterious greatness as attachable to my personage. Their surprise was not to end here. At the top of this stair were great gates of immeasurable height, never opened but when the king gave orders. This gate was of most curious workmanship. The history of Myu-me-ae-nia for untold milleniums was recorded on it in symbolic characters. As the king had not arrived, and might not for some considerable time, I stood and closely inspected it. I could not decipher its hieroglyphics, but it was a marvel of curiosity, apart from its interpretation. I next approached it to feel its consistence, when lo! it was not. Whatever it was to those of Lli-me-muia, its immense framework was to me but as the fretwork of light and shadow thrown by forest trees upon the ground beneath a gorgeous summer's sun. I walked through it, and yet it remained perfect as before. Not one of its minutest parts was displaced. All Lli-me-muia was in dismay. Thus, in spite of myself, I provoked attention and wonderment. I would fain have avoided such notoriety; but I could not help myself. I sought only to be true to myself, and act according to the true nature of things. But this, so far from securing my much desired obscurity, only drew to myself increased observation. I was in utter dismay at myself lest I might, through these outrages upon the laws of that new world, bring myself into trouble. I was not studious of such contrariety to all the use and wont --- the ideas and prejudices --- of that fair and enchanted realm. I say this much, specially for the sake of the Myu-me-ae-nians, should this narrative of mine --- as it is sure to do --- come at any time under their notice. I can certify to them I bore them no ill will, but only wished my most generous aspirations for them could be accomplished.
Lli-me-muia was, in truth, a superb city. The meaning of the name Lli-me-muia is "the gates of wisdom." It is needless for me to remind you that I did not know this, or even the name and distinguished character of the city when I first saw it. You must have already perceived that much of the narrative I have already given antedates my chronological knowledge. But I am cherishing the hope that the forbearing reader will not dispute with me on account of these anticipations. But to return. I was much delighted with this "gate of wisdom." Every residence in the city was like what the ancient city of Babylon must have been for size and magnificence. Hanging gardens here, rising tier above tier in endless succession, characterised every residence in this great city. The palaces, for such they were, were all built of a pure material, in appearance like purest alabaster. But what enormous piles they were! I would not venture to say how high they rose lest I might be suspected of exaggerating, and so destroy all faith in the veracity of my narrative. But if I said the most modest building was at least some furlongs high, I shall not be likely to stagger your credulity nor outstep modesty. None but those whose sceptical incredulity I count it an honour to provoke would hesitate to award me their implicit belief. But one thing I must notice as a sad disfigurement was this --- their doors and windows were mere port or pigeon-holes. True, they had a false door, that was in due proportion to the whole building, and so likewise windows. But the real doors and windows were such as I have described. They seemed to live as if in constant terror of attack; at least that was the conclusion I came to in my own mind. None but a Myu-me-ae-nian could enter at such doors. They could be easily guarded.
I had at the time a great curiosity to get a peep into those dwellings, but when I looked at their doors I abandoned the idea. Many a pressing invitation was I favoured with; but as I saw no possibility of entering, I politely refused, preferring to live entirely in the open air. For in that world, save as places of retreat and secresy, houses are altogether unnecessary. It is true the climate has its variations. For example, it has its rain; but, like so many other things mentioned, it was no rain for me. I cannot describe to you the queer feelings I experienced the first time I saw the rain begin to fall. There was a sudden change in the atmosphere that made all the Myu-me-ae-nians in my company seek for shelter under the huge trees, or some of the great overhanging rocks you occasionally met with. Curious to know what all this meant, I stood and gazed with open mouth up into the depths of the atmosphere. There I saw large things like balloons come floating down in countless numbers. They looked as if they would come and smother me all at once, or drown me in one of their immense drops. At an earlier stage of my history they might have frightened me out of my senses; but I had got over such fears. Just as I supposed, they turned out anything but formidable; for as they approached me they diminished in size till they fell as an impalpable mist about me. It required many of them heaped together on the pile of my pilot cloth coat to form a globule as large as a dew-drop. Nay, I have often doubted whether it was they or my own breath, while watching for them in their accumulative value, that beaded the piles with the small drops; and to this day I have not been able to decide the case.
It was not till I had spent some considerable time in Myu-me-ae-nia I made the following discovery; viz., that I could enter their abodes at pleasure, indifferent to door or window. It happened thus: --- I was reconnoitring the vast palace of the king Eng-wy-we-wa, which means "the morning womb of knowledge." ("Morning" is not the exact rendering, but that is the nearest idea we have to represent their meaning.) The pillars of the palace were of a mould different from all I had ever seen or read of. There was a massive yet ethereal elegance about them that is altogether indescribable. The nearest idea I can give you of them is the long shafts of sunbeams you sometimes see sent through the volcanic-like openings of vast collected or huddled clouds on a summer's day, only there was this difference --- they were carved all over with beautiful figures, which looked more like things of life bedded within them. I was so puzzled and enamoured of them, I could not resist the impulse to touch them. and run my fingers over the luxuriously moulded figures. What was my astonishment to find they were as impalpable as the bridge that crossed the river Yo-weem-le-ai-ai --- that is, "the milk of the mountains of Ai-ai." It then dawned upon me as just possible the walls of the palace might be as insubstantial. I neared and touched, or tried --- they were like a dream. I passed through and through them at pleasure; and yet, unlike the fairy castles of indolence, they melted not away to reappear under new forms. There they stood as they had done for ages, with the same elegance and minute traceries.
What a thought! A city --- aye, a vast world --- lay at my feet. At pleasure I could pry into its secrets. What consternation this created throughout the wide-wide world of Myu-me-ae-nia! For there rumours, as I have told you so often, spread indeed like wildfire. Terrible, frightful, --- horrid, I may say --- were the pictures drawn of me in their perfervid minds. From the throne to the hut I was an object of hobgoblin awe. One thing, however, consoled them --- I did not understand their language. My intercourse with them was conducted for a long time by signs. By-and-bye, as my face grew familiar among them --- and as they discovered I was actuated by no sinister motives --- they grew to regard me with favour. Like all real cowards, discovering I was unarmed, and therefore harmless, they ceased to dread me. My popularity soon grew oppressive to myself; and one thing that tended mightily to this was, that they found if I got a secret I kept it. Nothing did they dread or execrate so much as betraying secrets. And yet there was only a few choice souls in all Myu-me-ae-nia who could keep a secret; and even them I was not entirely confident about. Of all beings I ever knew, or ever hope to know, none could keep secrets so badly. I told you already the peculiar effect the atmosphere seems to have upon you; but whether it is due mainly or originally to the atmosphere, and not to the atmosphere through its resistless sympathy with the minds of the people, I was never able accurately to decide. I trust this subject will yet be taken up and discussed in some of the meetings of the British Association of Science.
What tended to repress in me the temptation of blabbing everything may be mentioned in the interests of truth. In the first place, my voice sounded so harshly in that clear, elastic, ringing atmosphere, that when I tried to speak in my softest tones it sounded round Myu-me-ae-nia like the roar of a storm at sea. I was startled by it myself; and as for the Myu-me-ae-nians, it created much dismay among them. Never did I listen to such soft, bewitching, spiritual, and æolian voices as those of the inhabitants of that new world. Talk of wiling a bird off a bush! The nightingale, among birds, does not so sweetly utter her thoughts as every one in Myu-me-ae-nia does. So conscious are they of this that they cannot help chattering continually. It is quite a monomania with them to hear their own voices. If Narcissus fell in love with his own image, so they with their voices. So disgusted did this make me with my own voice, that for a long time I scarce spoke any. I listened, but said nothing. This added to my popularity, but it was like to have been the death of me; for all Myu-me-ae-nia wanted to chatter to me, seeing they got one to listen without interruption. And then everyone wanted to make me a kind of ragstore or great lumber-room for their secrets. This habit of silence very nearly robbed me of the power of speech altogether. Had it not been that occasionally I had to adopt means to defend me from my fond oppressors, I had been unable this day to record my history.
Another element conducing to silence was my difficulty in uttering their language. What an ethereal limpidness characterised their language! It flowed from them whether they would or no. So far as I could make out, their words were all vowels. But how they managed to wreathe them up in such endless forms of sounds I cannot tell. I hope some of our orthoepists and linguists will turn their attention to this matter. Whether this may not serve as a key to those members of the British Scientific Association who are deep in the mysteries and mysticisms of anthropology, is not for me to say. I would merely give the hint, which is perhaps better than a wink to the blind. But to return. I have tried to express, by vowels and consonants, the names of some persons and things; but I would not for a moment have you suppose I have succeeded in conveying a right impression of the sounds. It is the nearest thing our harsh language helps me to. You must hear them for yourself to understand the syren lures they are compounded of. They dropped about you like honey from the honeycomb --- and not that either, but more like a Paradise of most delicious odours wafted around you by the softest zephyrs.
By-and-bye, when I came to understand their language, I was overpowered by the endlessness of their vocabulary. Their synonyms were past finding out; and they dealt in them to a degree that was to me perfectly irritating. Time, as I have said, seemed to them of no account, and hence they never condensed their thoughts as those who aimed at getting to the end of their business in the least possible space. Nay, but they would multiply synonyms without end and metaphors without number; so that you seemed to have wandered through every region in Myu-me-ae-nia before they had got through their first-place sentence. I am sure I have sat and listened to as glowing and brilliant a fireworks of mere words and images as would have equalled for length the whole Iliad or Odyssey of Homer, and yet, perhaps, it was all about her baby cutting her teeth, or some of the wonderful things it said or did. I could not have endured it all had I not fallen into the habit of shutting my eyes and going to sleep. Their voices acted as a lullaby; and as engineers will sleep soundly among the eternal rattle of hammers or the crashing noise of machinery, but awake whenever the sounds stop, so was it with me. As I never spoke --- was never expected to answer --- I got credit for listening when I heard nothing. Thus I gained an easy popularity and a refreshing sleep. All who intend visiting Myu-me-ae-nia I would advise to cultivate this habit, otherwise they will chatter you to death in a very short time.
I must confess I was disgusted with a language that consisted so much of mere sound, however beautifully musical it is. There they would sit by the day winding out a cataract of musical sounds all about the merest trifles, while they were jerking their bodies convulsively into all manner of attitudes to evade the burning darts that thickened around them, and ceaselessly shooting, now in this direction, now in that, and anon in a third, their burning arrows, or hurling darts and javelins. To me their lives appeared ignobly wasted and frittered away. In vain did I seek for hints of knowledge among them. A sparrow might carry in its bill all the real knowledge you could acquire from the great mass of the Myu-me-ae-nians in a century --- I had almost said a millennium. From the noble to the humblest serf in the kingdom it was, except in the case of a few individuals, an endless chatter about everything and everybody, ending in no good whatever. It did not put you in possession of a true knowledge concerning even persons or things; for it never was so much about what they themselves knew and had seen, but what so-and-so and such-and-such had said, or heard, or fancied, or understood about such-and-such a person, event, or thing. And if they spoke in their own name it was a mere endless list of hints, doubts, suspicions, innuendos, conjectures, beliefs, fancies, feelings, prejudices, or desires. There was ever a hitch or flaw that vitiated all their information. No two persons ever coincided in their descriptions or information concerning the same person or object. It was so overlaid with words and interlarded with suspicions, rumours, impressions, &c., that had you had even the sieve of Wisdom herself you could not have riddled away the chaff and got at the grains of truth. You might riddle a mountain of words as high as a Himalaya before you got at the single grain of truth or information round which they were gathered. Words there seemed to be used like the stones of the Israelites thrown on Achan --- for a monument to cover the dead body of Truth. Of course I do not include the choice few I will yet tell you of.
Another thing in the language I disliked was the perversion of it. For example, one of the words used for slander was Yem-yoom-la-lui. Now the real meaning of that word, in plain English, is "The divine vindication of truth." One name for virtue was Ooa-ooa-aoo; that is, "The simpering simper of prudery." The fear of God was rendered by such a word as this --- Amma-amnia-oho. The real meaning is "The morbid dotings of old age." A lie was called Ya-nein-a-mel-wa; which, rightly rendered, is "The irresponsible falterings of nature." God was called Ye-hoa-el-o-eem-im; that is, "The last refuge of ignorance in explaining unknown causes." Truth was called Mea-mea-me-em-wa; that is, "The lunatic asylum of fastidious minds."
Some of their words were rather ludicrous in their signification. For example, one word for king was Myu-whea-mem-lei; that is, "The pickpocket of nations." The name they gave to myself was Moho-yoho-me-oo-oo; that is, "The variable quantity of what is it." The tongue was called Ee-ee-a-em-mem-wa-wa; that is, "The spinningwheel of thinking, automatic entities."
I have done enough to indicate the peculiarity of their language. It ignored the eternal distinction that subsists between right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and vice. It tended to destroy all seriousness. There was a levity and frothiness accompanying all their words and combinations of words that rendered their conversation trifling and contemptible to a thinking mind.
Again, not their words only were at fault --- their themes of conversation were almost invariably unprofitable. It was an endless talk about other people's affairs, or about matters that did you not a whit of good to know anything about. And yet never did a people live in a world more replete with subjects of most profitable conversation and investigation. Take, as an example, the Mountain of Roses. Anything more magnificent than this natural scenery it would be impossible to imagine. It was so vast that it could be seen from every point of the Myu-me-ae-nian world. It had various zones, which formed distinct bands or stripes of various particular hues. Each stripe or zone might be about one hundred miles in breadth. Not that roses alone grew in this mountain, but that they predominated. And, it was this peculiarity I am about to mention gave it its chief characteristic. Throughout the extent of each zone only one genus of rose could be found. You had endless species of the same genus of rose. The flowers that grew there --- and nothing else but flowers seemed capable of growing on the mountain --- were all native, indigenous; they needed no hand to tend and prune them. An amazing luxuriance prevailed there.
Meandering paths branched away at every step in endless number. Though you should live as long as Methusaleh, you could not get through every track of labyrinthine delights and sweetnesses. Here, too, there was another enhancing association: it was the presence of birds of every size, varied plumage, and ravishing song. Each zone had its own variety of feathery minstrels; the air throbbed with music. And then the bees, butterflies, and countless hosts of insects I could not name, made the air all alive. A dew --- though there is no night in Myu-me-ae-nia --- settled continually on the flowers and soil. It was like a great hot-house, only with this difference --- it did not oppress you. It regaled every sense. The eyes feasted on new varieties of flowers grouping together in ever diversified combinations. As you moved on you never saw the same roses mixed up with the same flowers. And what a Paradise of perfume! Not that it by any means satiated you. And the insects, so far from being troublesome, enhanced all by lending glittering animation to the lovely scene; being of all varieties in shape, hue, and piping tone, they greatly enlivened it. One would have thought that Botany and Natural History would have been prosecuted in such a world --- at least by those living in the neighbourhood of this marvellous museum. But no! If the Myu-me-ae-nians were at all alive to the beauties and wonders of this mountain, they never expressed it by word or emotion. I have seen them wandering in companies through its rich mazes, and never so much as lifting their eyes from among their feet or standing to admire any flower or flowers. Jerking, shooting, chattering, they never listened to the burst of melody that swept around them in waves of gushing joy from myriads of feathery throats in softest pleasurable ecstacy.
I had almost forgotten one peculiarity in these flowers; it was this --- the colour of each flower seemed to float as a kind of dreamy mist about the flower rather than to be an inherent quality of it. This made the whole of the mountain atmosphere, as you walked through it, a kind of kaleidescope. If you looked from any point of the mountain away to any point in the distance, the air between the object looked at and you had a wondrous mixture of blending dreamy hues, arising from the flowers you happened to be surrounded with. But I should have remarked that the roses, birds, insects, &c., of this mountain had the same insubstantialness as the pillars and walls of the king's palace and many other things I have referred already to. I have tried to pluck a rose, but my hand passed through it like a shadow; and yet there it hung, visible, beautiful, fragrant. I could look away down among its petals as distinctly as I can among those of our own world. Often have I tried to gather up some of the withering petals that strewed the ground, or some of the beautiful feathers dropped from the wings of some of the birds. I might as well have tried to pick up the shadow of the star that I saw lying at the bottom of the well by whose mouth I stood. It lay there, and moved to and fro when a breeze swept softly past, but get hold of it I could not. Often have the Myu-me-ae-nians stood by and laughed most uproariously at my abortive efforts; then one or other would step forward and pick it up.
The royal city of Lli-me-muia --- as I have given you already to understand --- stood on the banks of the river Yo-weem-le-ai-ai, or "The Milk of the Mountains of Ai-ai." I shall not now speak of these remarkable mountains; it may afford us a pleasant excursive discourse anon. Not only was the city bounded on the one side --- for there was no north or south, east or west in Myu-me-ae-nia-by the river; it was bounded on the other by the winding base of the mountain of roses. Hence it was notably situated. From any spot ill the concave world, in the twinkling of an eye, you could fix your gaze on the seat of royalty. I think I have told you how it was an exceeding great city. It spread over the whole area that lay between the bending serpentine river and the mountain's base for hundreds of leagues. At a distance it was one of the most ravishing, picturesque sights that could be seen anywhere. There were the huge piles of building shining like pure alabaster. Round them lay a perfect Paradise of verdure, flowers, and arboreal wealth. Over all kindled, in endless hues of beauty, that atmosphere or mist which the mountain flung as an enchantment for hundreds of leagues all around it. From whatever point of Myu-me-ae-nia you looked at the royal city it swam like a thing of beauty in a very ocean of rarest colourings. From every varied point of that concave world it was draped with arras of new and inimitable dye.
It may be thought that a city of such vast dimensions would be too vast for ordinary civil purposes. And so it would be in a world like ours. But where the inhabitants were of such an extraordinary character as I have indicated it was quite different. When they drew themselves up to their fullest possible dimensions it was a perfectly easy feat to tread over a league at a few steps. Besides, time was of little account among them. A small piece of business which we would think should be accomplished in a day was quickly done by them, if overtaken, in a year of our measurement.
Speaking of locomotion in that world, the atmosphere is of such an elastic character, you did not walk --- you properly could not; you rather bounded. It might be a delusion, but I never felt that my feet and the solid earth came into contact. If I lay down to rest or sleep, I felt like one with a layer of thick India-rubber-like air between me and it. It was so in walking. If you planted your feet smartly and heartily down in walking, you vaulted forward in the same proportion. The very air seemed to press about you and hold you up. I could walk hundreds of leagues in a day without feeling exhausted. Exercise there was quite a joy. It sent streams of healthful pleasure through your whole framework. Now to some this may appear too much of a good thing. Some may shrug their shoulders here, saying, "Ah! we have caught you napping at length. Your whole story is nothing less than a tissue of lies. In a word, it is all a fable." Now, in reply, I say it is easy to make charges; not so easy to prove them. However, seeing that there is seemingly a great dearth of subjects among our scientific men --- so much so, that, for the sake of keeping up appearances that science is not a mine wrought out, they are taking to prove all sorts of puerile absurdities and fancies, I would propose this for their profound study. Supposing there be such a world as Myu-me-ae-nia (for in the interests of science it is well to take nothing on trust); supposing, then, such a world possible --- a concave world, lying in the very heart of this convex world --- would not the centre of gravity tend to draw the inhabitants upwards and inwards to the radial point where all the diametrical lines crossed each other? In a word, would not our centre of gravitation be theirs? And if so, would not that account for the lightness with which every one trode in Myu-me-ae-nia? Gravitation drags us by the feet downwards in our world; gravitation would drag them by the head upwards in such a world. Eh? Having stated facts and started these conjectures that occurred to me in connection with them, surely I may leave them for mature consideration among our men of science. I hope the whole subject of Myu-me-ae-nia will be fairly broached at an early meeting of the British Association. In the interests of every-ology, I implore the eminent members of that Association to give it their attention. This world of ours has been so ransacked, our men of science need a new world to conquer; otherwise the harrying process will commence that will involve all truth, or real distinctions between truth and error, in total ruins. The common herd of mankind is following apace at such enormous strides they will soon be abreast of our profoundest philosophers. To keep ahead of them, even in appearance, will require no ordinary efforts. The danger is that this will tempt the would-be leaders of science and philosophy into regions of scepticism, as it will provoke them, for the sake of appearances, to travel beyond the laws of nature and deal in mystifications. But surely my steps have been heaven-directed. Not an hour too soon have these discoveries of a new world been made. Here, ye profound thinkers and never-tiring explorers into all realms of nature --- here you may strike out, and leave for ages behind you the vulgar hydra-headed mob.
I have again, however, wandered away from my description of Lli-me-muia, and especially from my connection with the king. By signs and movements he conducted me to the door of his magnificent palace. He urged me --- though I could not understand him at the time --- to use my contractile power, and enter at his palace-door. I understood he wanted me to enter, but that was all. I should not omit here to mention that as he neared his palace-door he gradually shrank to dimensions proportionate to the palace-door. Of course when he was contracting, to his eyes I was expanding. I would not, as I thought at that time I could not, enter. He then retired with me in another direction. As he advanced he now expanded, and so did all his retinue. He led me to a vast peristyle or colonnade, the pillars of which looked like pure agate, rising to an enormous height. A canopy of curious workmanship rested upon these pillars. In the centre of this pillarade rose a massive platform as of pure gold. The blocks of which it was made were as large as an ordinary shepherd's hut in our own world. I thought, at first, it would be a temple for the worship of God or some god; but instead of that it was a doll-house. Here, on a throne, was placed a large doll. At the time I did not understand what it was, but by-and-bye I came to learn that it was the king's doll. It was a great favourite with him. He wished me to occupy the vacant throne that was beside it. His intention was to keep me beside his doll as a plaything. Of course I did not understand the high honour he intended to pay, and consequently lost the royal appointment. The name of this doll was Gnang-we-ya-am; that is, "The mountain of resplendent glory." But the plain English for the word is "Glory." The thought was very natural, though at the time I did not comprehend it. If he could have me as his possession, while I did all those things that they esteemed so marvellous, it would contribute vastly to his glory in the kingdom. The love of glory amounted to a passion among them, and that in the measure that they did nothing worthy of it.
I did not know then, what I soon came to learn, that everyone in that new world had their doll and doll-house. All the nobles and aristocracy had their dolls, of course, because the king had; the middle classes had their dolls, because the nobility had; and the common people had theirs, because the gentry had. Pshaw! vulgar aping is in all worlds. It was rather ludicrous to me, at first, to see this childish custom. At all hours of the day you might catch them toying away with their dolls. If they went to any feast each took his or her doll with them. And what struck me in connection with these dolls was this --- they contracted and expanded as their owners did.
It may be to you a matter of curiosity how the king and I got on in the matter of the doll. I really did not know what to think. I waited to see if he was going to worship it, supposing it then a ludicrous god. My mind then ran back to early days when I had worshipped with my mother in Popish Chapels. I began to wonder if Mother Church had established a branch of her missions in that country. You can learn my chagrin when my pious thoughts were upset. But I consoled myself with the thought that, mayhap, it was destined that I should be the pioneer of the true faith in that new world.
I must return to the king. Perceiving that I was by no means disposed to accept his honours, he guided my steps in another direction. After winding through endless bye-paths, where nature rioted in beauty and fruitfulness, we came upon two immense structures. They were formed after the fashion of Druidical temples, but on a scale compared with which the temples must have been mere trifles. Here you had concentric pillars ranged within one another to the number of twenty rows. The circles were arranged thus: two rows of exact height, the pillar without standing opposite to its corresponding pillar within. These could not be less, each of them, than a furlong high. The next circle consisted of two similar rows, but still higher; and thus it progressed to the centre. Over all these was thrown one roof in the manner of concentric waves, each rising higher than another. The whole did not culminate in a cone, but in an immense dimple. What the material was of which the roof was made I could never learn, but it had this peculiarity --- it was pervaded with endless shades of brilliant colouring. This colouring, like the ribbon-bands of dissolving views, were continually running out and then running in in cross-checks. Again, they would shoot out from the centre to the circumference in streamers of boreas-like but more wonderful lights.
The pillars of this house were somewhat peculiar. They were carved all over with every conceivable shape of beasts, with a transparent outline of a Myu-me-ae-nian behind each, the form of the animal so far skilfully taken advantage of, as it served to shape in with the Myu-me-ae-nian figure. I was curious to know the reason for such double engravings, but could not make myself sufficiently understood. I had a theory of my own. I thought it was to represent the animal development whence each distinctive peer family had emerged at the beginning. I was something of a Darwinian long before Darwin was born. I had observed that in our own world some men bore a wonderful resemblance, so far as a human face or head-piece can do, to some animals. I also noticed that the peculiar dispositions and temperament corresponded, more or less, to the animal root. There was the bull-dog head and face. It was accompanied with a fierce combative disposition. There was the leonine face. The cunning, sudden, ferocious, and terrible movements of that animal radix were characteristic of the man. Then, again, you had the monkey, serpentine, &c., correspondents. Let these suffice as specimens.
Another explanation than this may yet be given of the Myu-me-ae-nian engravings on the pillars of the peers' chambers. But it is for the Darwinian disciples to consider whether it is truer to nature than their own. I came afterwards to understand that these double engravings were the coat-of-arms of the various peer families. If but some of our most accomplished antiquarians were sent by the British Association of Science to examine and study these pillars, it might serve to lay broader and deeper the foundations of physical science. It might rescue Darwinianism from an untimely, dishonoured, and undeserved grave.
This strange building was called the Gnam-na-ma-meu-moi. This word had two very different meanings. The one was "The celestial chamber of the ancients," the other "The infernal chamber of confirmed imbeciles." The word "infernal," however, had not the same terrible significance as employed by us. It supposed a world under their feet. In other words, it was our world. They thought if there were such a world as ours the inhabitants must be all idiots. How near they came to the truth in their noble compliment to us you are just as able to judge as I. This "celestial chamber of the ancients" was the gilded chamber of the hereditary peers of Myu-me-ae-nia. And, looking at this chamber in its mere material associations, it was truly an imposing one. A throne of inimitable grandeur --- a perfect compost, to appearance, of every kind of precious stone --- rose in the centre. It was of enormous dimensions, stayed on either side by huge creatures, compared with which the ancient mastodons were but pigmies. The seats of the peers were a collection of lesser thrones, rising tier upon tier around the throne till the highest tier stood all but on a level with the royal throne. The thrones of the peers were ranged in nearness to, or distance from, the royal throne, according to their antiquity. Whether it was a libel among the commoners, originated by their spleen and envy, I could never make out; but it was asserted the antiquity was but a polite word covering hopeless imbecility. The more hopelessly imbecile any family in the peerage was, these were placed highest in office, dignity, privilege. Now, whether this was really the motive for giving precedence I could never make out, for certain. I was tempted, from what I saw, to believe there might be something in it; but I was hindered from arriving at such a sweeping conclusion from finding not a few among the first peerage families who were certainly above the average standard of Myu-me-ae-nians. But certainly the great herd of peers in Myu-me-ae-nia were as great imbeciles as I ever met with in Myu-me-ae-nia or anywhere else. Take this as a sample. Each of the peers took with him to the celestial chamber his huge doll. There you might find them in groups instead of discussing the great questions affecting the interests of the nation, discussing the superior merits each of his own doll. They would sit busking them and unbusking them for days together of our time. The business of the realm, meanwhile, was only talked of in a desultory way by some half dozen of the peers. These could not get the house to attend to it, and so they had to resign themselves, and keep up what show of business they could.
I was present upon one memorable occasion. It had been long talked of --- I suppose for a century of our time --- that the peers were to introduce a bill for regulating the training of the common children of Myu-me-ae-nia in the use of the bow with the burning arrow, the cross-bow, the sling, the dart, the javelin, &c. At length, after many an abortive attempt to arrest the attention of the house, one of the peers drew himself up to a great height. His audience, by sympathy; dilated with him. It looked now like an assembly of the gods on Mount Olympus. The dolls were forgotten for a few minutes. The speaker waxed eloquent; and I have already admitted that on any small question of this sort the eloquence of the Myu-me-ae-nian was unrivalled. In proportion as his eloquence gathered volume; his person expanded till you could read the emotion as they came along the ducts of the vital spirits. But all of a sudden, when he was just nearing the zenith of his oratorical splendour, a fire-tipped arrow pierced his epidermis; and lo! now a perfect shower of them fell on him, coursing their scoriating way inward to his vital column. He collapsed in a moment; and, shrivelled up, as well as crestfallen, he shrank back, a diminutive object, to his throne. He was succeeded by one, and another, and another, who essayed to gain the favour of the house to a fair consideration of the great bill; but it was only to experience the same warm and far from agreeable reception. Envy seemed the law of that house. If any possessed a superior mind, and was inspired with great, generous, and patriotic emotions, he was the continual point of attack for the great mass of peers, till they dwarfed him either really or feignedly to their own level. It was never known, so I was told, that one wholesome law had ever emanated from that peer chamber; nay, but all the oppressive legislation that the middle and poorer classes groaned under had proceeded thence. In what glorious contrast does the British House of Hereditary Peers stand! Wonder not if I was proud of my native country when I saw such imbecility gathered around that awful throne. "Ah!" thought I, "if but our British peers could be placed in these seats of legislature! Before their collective wisdom all class legislation would perish in a day. Their patriotic and disinterested spirit would wipe away all inequalities from the statute-book of Myu-me-ae-nia. They would scorn to pass their time in that chamber, like a parcel of old chattering wives, having only regard to their own 'mountain of glory,' as they called their dolls. Would they exhaust all their eloquence in decrying the lower chamber, where the representatives of the people meet, and crying up their own dignity, &c.? They would show to the peers of Myu-me-ae-nia wherein true peerage consists; viz., in a noble superiority to all class jealousy or lordly arrogance; how that it consisted in acknowledging and encouraging real merit and worth in whatever rank it was found --- in smoothing the way for industry, intellect, character, and genius, to rise along the ladder of elevation till it could reach the highest honour and privileges --- how that it sought, in the most generous spirit, to make the social links, from the throne to the hut, run into one another in the strongest, sweetest, and most reciprocal bonds; scorning all artificial outworks as a true line of unalterable demarcation between the lower and higher ranks of society." "This," I said to myself "is what the peerage of England would do if only they were in Myu-me-ae-nia. Is not this what they do in England? Who will make bold to say it is from any fault of theirs if feudal oppressions and class privileges adhere to their caste? Have they not fought with unwavering perseverance for ages to get rid of all those artificial, tyrannous, and unjust privileges which go far still in old England to irritate class against class? Have not the people kept them back from throwing away all these class invidiousnesses? So unlike Myu-me-ae-nia! There the commonalty chafe continually against the despotism of an imbecile Peer Chamber."
After surveying the Peer's Chamber I was next conducted by the king to the Myu-me-noo-oo-oo; that is, "The Elected Chamber of the Commons of Myu-me-ae-nia." The building was after the same design as the former, though certainly in a more modest style. There was not the same elegant, sluggish, and torpid ease of the Upper Chamber; but, strange to say, there was there, too, the invariable doll. That doll seemed of greater importance than all the affairs of Myu-me-ae-nia. Some, it is true, paid less heed to it; still it was not unheeded by any one. It was no uncommon thing --- if it was wished to disconcert a speaker and shorten his eloquence --- to smuggle away or mutilate his doll. Immediately, when this was observed by the individual interested, all his eloquence collapsed, and it could not be resumed till the doll was replaced or repaired.
The air of this chamber did wear the appearance, at least, of more activity and business. But close inspection and long observation led me to conclude that, for the most part, their time was spent in mere talk, bickering, reviling, slandering, undermining, deceiving, self-aggrandising, and such like. The interests of the nation were only made the stepping-stones to notoriety, greatness, applause, honour, wealth, &c. Not that I mean to say all the members of that Chamber set themselves up deliberately for these ends. There were noble and honourable exceptions, but they were few. And had it not been that I had watched it personally and from no prejudiced point of view --- having no interests at stake one way or another --- I could not have believed it.
One thing that irritated me at these Myu-me-ae-nian legislators was this --- they spent such an enormous amount of time in tall vapouring talk before they could conclude any measure whatever; and, in proportion to the insignificance of the measure, the greater the host of small speakers that winded out meaningless vocabularies in discussion about it. They would touch upon everything and everybody in Myu-me-ae-nia, without ever touching upon the subject matter. Terrible fireworks of sheer nonsense, ignorance, bombast, were poured around it. With the exception of some half-dozen, it had been a real gain to the nation if the thousands of representatives who were there blocking up the wheels of the state coach had been handsomely pensioned to stay at home. They seemed to be present for no other purpose than to afflict, sting, goad, and tie up the hands of these half-dozen noble leaders. Wherever these half-dozen moved, the eyes of the whole Chamber followed them --- aye, and their arrows and javelins too. Not one of all the thousands but gave them a sword-cut from behind when they could. They were literally riddled. The gadflies of all Myu-me-ae-nia were represented in that Chamber. Hence it seemed to be the safety-valve of that whole world's spleen, jealousy, rivalry, envy, hatred, malice, &c., &c. Each member, save these half-dozen, seemed to have no other mission than to prevent any great and truly national legislation. Class, trade, or local legislation formed the ruling elements. Hence it was no noble measures were almost ever passed worthy the time, talk, and passion spent upon them. Hence, too, the world of Myu-me-ae-nia is but in its infancy, though untold millenniums have passed over it. That noble race of beings are little removed beyond the irrational creatures whence they have been developed; for some take it now as demonstrated beyond all doubt that the development theory is founded in the adamant facts of past history. If the minds of the Myu-me-ae-nians were capable of the dilating volume of their bodies, no race could equal them. But, I must confess, it seemed to me their minds were in keeping with their bodies only when their bodies were at the minimum. Now I lay the credit of much of this to their legislation. Could they have been placed under a government and judicial code worthy of them --- could nobler institutions and social habits have been initiated and established among them, such as prevail in England, I have no doubt that, in the course of ages, they would take no mean place in the universe of intellect.
I forgot to say that the king, while he condescended to conduct my steps from the Peer Chamber to that of the Commons, allowed me to enter alone. Royalty never vouchsafes to enter there. Whether he returned to his palace or no I cannot tell; neither did I ever take the trouble to inquire. I saw sufficient by-and-bye to convince me that his royal highness was looked on as a mere pendicle of the commonwealth, or rather a gilded pinnacle gracefully finishing off the pyramid of Myu-me-ae-nian society. Everyone in Myu-me-ae-nia, thought himself the best and wisest in all that world or anywhere. The king despised them all --- peers, commons, people; and they, to an unit, as heartily despised him. Of course this was never shown openly; far from it. Nay, no king ever lavished more praise upon the three estates of his realm than did Eng-wy-we-wa; and no peers, commons, people flatter a king more than those of that realm. But the taller the flattery the more oppositely ought it to be understood and valued. Time served to show me this. When I came to have access to every palace, castle, hut in Myu-me-ae-nia, I then saw the two faces of society. Not that I have any reason to complain of the treatment I received; for from the king to the peasant I was flattered, but not hollowly. They said --- and I believed them; what else could I do, unless I had just said that they were liars? --- that I was beyond all praise. I knew their estimate was correct I must confess it often amazed me that, notwithstanding the lowness of their intellectual condition, they were able to appreciate myself. It was the only true thing I found the mass of them capable of during the whole of my sojourn; but that, so far from weakening my faith in their sincerity, only tended to confirm it. I was so conscious that what they said was true, I could not hesitate to believe that they really and ex animo meant what they said. And this must form a groundwork of hope for those who feel an increasing interest in this extraordinary people. It shows that there is a latent modicum of truthfulness in that people, which, if taken advantage of, might form a basis of operation for the army, which I hope will soon volunteer to assail the citadel of error in that world.
I was not long in the Chamber of the Commoners till I was surrounded by one bevy after another of honourable members. They came to do me honour, as, long before I had arrived; the report of me had reached them. Me-ma-muia-yang, the prime minister, was the first, with his noble group, to salute me. His name, in our language, means "The chief with the golden mouth." He, by-and-bye, allured me away to his castle. This immense building had, more of the Grecian style than any I saw in all Myu-me-ae-nia. I learned it had been built twenty centuries at least before my arrival. No house in Myu-me-ae-nia was of a later date than that; so they assured me. Of course in this they may unwillingly have misled me, for time with them is not measured by days and nights; it is only by the number of times the Ta-ta tree bears fruit they reckon. The door of Me-ma-muia-yang's castle was like the rest --- too small for my entering. Not having at that time made the discovery I subsequently did, I refused his invitation. He immediately led me to a favourite bower of his. Here he set to learning me the language of Myu-me-ae-nia. He pointed to various things, telling me their names, till I had got them by heart. After I had mastered as much as enabled us to carry on a broken conversation, he immediately posed me with questions about my origin, people, race --- everything, in short, that his world could suggest to his mind. Of all the Myu-me-ae-nians he had the least tautology in his speech, though I thought him capable of infinite improvement. It occurred to himself that my use of the Myu-me-ae-nian language was more condensed, though less eloquent and elegant, than as they used it. He was staggered by what I told him of our world. He asked me what I thought of their Chambers of Peers and Commons. Without passing any opinion upon them I told him of a thought that had occurred to me. It was that some of both Chambers in our world might be sent to the respective Chambers in theirs, and some of both their Chambers, respectively to ours. The benefit, I thought, would be mutual. He was intensely delighted with the idea; "For," said he, "we would be very glad to get rid of a host of the most imbecile of both Houses." "And ditto," said I, "with dots." He was rather puzzled with that phrase. I forgot I was in Myu-me-ae-nia when I said it. He wished to know its meaning. I waived that, lest he might think it anything but complimentary; but in his sweet simplicity he overlooked the compliment he was paying us. And yet, the best of the matter was, we were both sincere, having more an eye to our own respective national interests than those of each other.
We closed a long interview with mutual esteem, and friendship. He was pleased with me, and I with myself, that I had met with one capable, in some measure, of reciprocating my good intentions. Talking there is like dreaming here; it kills time amazingly. I am sure we must have sat months together, without fatigue, hunger, or cloy. Me-ma-muia-yang wound up by urging me to visit the whole of Myu-me-ae-nia, and on my return to oblige him with the results of my reflections and observations. He informed me that he had such a high opinion of me and of my superiority to their race --- which showed a great amount of natural sagacity and penetration in him --- that he would secure for me the highest place of peerage in the realm if only I would sojourn among them. You may guess how much I was flattered by this intended honour. Artfully smothering my chagrin, I declined the honour. "Chiefest place of imbecility!" thought I. A fine compliment, with a vengeance! I almost felt small for a moment; but rallying myself with the thought that this was only a Myu-me-ae-nian, and that a midge could never judge of an elephant, I regained my self-importance and looked very large. He did not mean it as an insult. His thought, as I learned afterwards --- and it raised my opinion of him mightily --- was to get the benefit of my wisdom in both Chambers. Had I understood it --- as I did not --- I would still have refused the honour; for what could one do, with all the wisdom of a universe, in such a Hereditary Chamber? The inertia and imbecility of ages would checkmate you at every step. How different would such an honour in my own country have been! Need I answer?
He then insisted that I would condescend to take a place in the Commons Chamber. He assured me he would count it the joy of his life if I would take the place of leader. He would stand my second in everything, so would his noble colleagues. I thanked him, assured him he had an exaggerated estimate of my talents, learning, knowledge, wisdom, and superiority. Of course I was only fishing for more compliments, and to whet his opinions of me. It is nothing less than absurd to suppose, when a man is thrusting away compliments in pretended modesty, that he really means to disabuse your mind of the opinion you profess to entertain. He only intends to make you lay them on more thickly. Not that I care for compliments if they are not true. Here they were true, and I wanted to deepen that thought upon him. I told him I was not so insane as to hold up my carcase for such riddling as he and his colleagues endured. At this he heartily laughed, but pleaded, on his part, patriotism. I promised to do all the good I could for benefitting their race. This infinite humility profoundly affected him.
He then ordered his chariot for my use. But such a chariot! It had no wheels. It looked, by all the world, like a great cluster of rolling clouds lined with rosy sunbeams. It was drawn by creatures like to which we have nothing in our world. They were immense beasts --- something like what I could fancy the incarnation of a whirlwind would be. I understand them to have been a cross-breed between the ancient great-winged dragons and the horses that drive the chariot of the sun. The charioteer, when he sat in his place and held the reins, was drawn up to his highest elevation. The thong of his whip could not be less than one of the streamers that shoot up from the horizon to the cope of heaven on a clear wintry night. Me-ma-muia-yang asked me to enter it, and take my use of it till I had traversed all Myu-me-ae-nia. He now shrank for a moment to his smallest stature --- something like a midge --- then dilated till he stood furlongs high, when he returned to his normal state. This is the mode of most honoured salutation in that world. Likewise, by sympathy, his chariot, horses, charioteer, whip, all shrank to proportionate smallness; then they dilated till you would have thought a third of the Myu-me-ae-nian world was overshadowed by them, when they returned again to their normal size. I now stepped into the chariot; but alas! I was like Paddy in the sedan chair. Me-ma-muia-yang was mortified to see how little he could do for me. I was so tickled with my parallelism with the Irishman that I literally roared with merriment. This so frightened the horses --- if horses I can call them --- that they dashed off and rushed round the whole circuit of Myu-me-ae-nia before they could be stopped; and though this was a journey of at least twenty thousand miles, they were back before the last echoes of my laugh had died away. They who would hesitate to believe this should overthrow the story of Mahomet's journey through the seventy thousand heavens, which hundreds of millions of men believe in to this day. Turks, at least, will believe my story of the horses. It is intolerable that when travellers tell anything marvellous there is a race of captious sceptics who are ever ready to charge them with drawing the longbow. But that this is true story, I, Mammoth Martinet, am ready to swear to on the Sacred Books of the Koran.
Now before I started on my journey I thought it but proper I should call on my friend his royal highness the king. Me-ma-muia-yang offered to be my guide. After many windings we arrived at the sacred palace gate. To his amazement I walked right through it. Horrorstruck, he looked after me, and then examined the framework, if injured or otherwise. I went on some distance ere I was aware I had left him behind, or that he could not pass through as I did. Having turned, I observed his position. I waved him to come on. He shook his head, saluted me, and returned.
When I entered the palace, the queen rushed to greet me. The palace astonished me more within than without. The walls rose to an enormous height, and ran for leagues in one direction. But the whole building was very ancient; it could not be less than millions of years --- so I was told. "But," you say, "they are such great liars!" What say you, then, to Egyptian and Chinese chroniclers? None can visit the royal palace of Lli-me-muia without being convinced that it is of a date that would baffle all chronologists to express. It would fully repay the travel of all antiquarians. I was asked to read the names of all the kings that had inhabited that palace, as left in symbols on the palace walls. I might as soon have thought of counting all the blades of grass on a continent. Anyone who will doubt its vast antiquity after that may go to Jericho till his beard be grown.
It is very gratifying to me to be able thus to substantiate the views of those who, on geological grounds, repudiate the version of Moses about the creation of the world. The vast age of the earth is put beyond all doubt from Myu-me-ae-nian revelations. That the Mosaic history begins at a very recent date in the age of the world must now be unquestionable; and it is but one out of the evermultiplying proofs confirmatory of the law of development. Science need no longer stand by blushing while timidly enunciating her conclusions built on her glimpses into nature.
The roof of the palace looked, by all the world, like one sky. To give you an idea of the height of it --- I have seen the Me-wa-na-wau-wa, a bird that stood at least thirty feet high, rising and soaring upwards like our lark, till I could scarcely see it, and it did not seem half way up to the roof. Of course you may remind me that things deceive there by shrinking. And so they do. Let us pass it. The whole interior of the palace was like an enormous greenhouse, only it had in it all manner of curious birds and beasts. Rivers, large and small, ran through it. It was an endless maze of walks winding among all manner of flowers and fruit trees. There were grottos, alcoves, parterres, groves, &c., in countless number. Some of the trees all but touched the roof of the palace. They were truly magnificent. An ordinary little town in this world might have stood within the bark of one if hollowed out.
The queen conducted me to her private grotto. But, oh! how shall I describe it? What murmuring music of sparkling waters, or something very like it! And what a chatter of birds, small and great! It was quite a concert of itself. I could have sat and listened for ever to it. But the sweetest music of all was the queen's voice. What a charming and elegant creature! What an amount of fine frolic she had! I was not surprised afterwards, when I learnt that the king was sometimes never seen outside the palace walls for a period of six months. It was a great complaint in Myu-me-ae-nia that he did not travel more through his kingdom. It caused such a stagnation in the trade of the empire that it often brought the kingdom to the verge of bankruptcy. The staple trade of the empire --- I may here mention, as I shall by-and-bye show --- is the weaving of gossip. It is carried to great perfection there. Unless you had lived in the kingdom you could not possibly form a conception of the enormous quantities that are produced and consumed.
The queen and I were soon deep in the mysteries of bonnets, dresses, shawls, petticoats, hoops, lace, shoes, stockings, pocket-handkerchiefs, rings, ribbons, brooches, band-boxes, &c. She thought our ladies must be a most absurd-looking class of intelligent beings when plastered over with such a universe of things. "Surely," she said, "the queen of your world will not wear such things?" "Queen of our world!" I exclaimed; "why, we have almost as many queens as you have birds hopping and singing about in this grotto of yours." How she did draw herself up, and assume a majesty I was not prepared for! But she again collapsed into her normal proportions, and resumed her interrogatories.
"Do you believe in a God?" she asked.
The question startled me. The associations of youth were upon me. I immediately responded:
"In our world we almost all believe in a God. Some believe in more than one. A very few believe in none; but we do not give them credit for being very sincere in their unbelief."
"My daughter," she replied, "has led the way to higher thoughts among us. Our world, as a whole, has sunk to Atheism; but some few of us start back appalled from the natural fruits of such principles. We see the nation sinking. The pyramid is resting unstably on its cone instead of its broad foundation."
Here that countenance, which was so radiant, soft, beautiful, gathered a fear, a despair, a horror, that could not be described. The change was so rapid and so complete that I felt shrivelled up. I asked for a few of the most prominent specimens of the fruits of the Atheistic principles.
"Look around society," she replied, "as it is in this Myu-me-ae-nian world, and what do you see? The days were when we lived together in sweetest and most natural relations. There was no war of classes, there was no unnatural rebellion of one against another; but what do we now see? Each one more eager than another to steal a march upon his neighbour or superior; a restless grasping at the rights of others; a discontent with their present lot; and a resorting to unscrupulous methods of compassing what is not legitimate. The tendency is to level all ranks, and thus outrage the inexorable laws of nature. Not the throne only is threatened with subversion, but every gradation of rank between the throne and the lowest stratum of society; each intervening aims at levelling what is above it. But they see not that they are giving increased momentum to a deepening flood that will at length engulph themselves. We are trembling on the edge of a bottomless abyss of ruin. We cannot see to what descent we shall be swept downwards."
Never shall I forget the agony that pictured itself on that divine face. Such consummate beauty in sorrow --- aye, in the throes of despair --- was the most relaxing and grief-extorting sight I had ever witnessed. To see a loveliness that is only natural when wreathed in smiles, dissolving itself in tears, would make even an angel weep. How I wished I dared kiss these tears away, and hush back into the realms of tranquillest joys that bursting heart!
"But how," I asked, "did the idea of a God lead you upwards to a higher landing-place, thus forming an arrest on what you consider a downward career?"
"That," she said," is to me inexplicable. But you must understand that, save to my daughter, those among us who now lean to the belief in a God, do so on the strength of a probability. We long to have the assurance that God is. We have argued with ourselves that if the bare idea of a God has such an elevating effect, it is presumptive proof that such a God exists. And if he does exist, what must the real knowledge of him not effect in the way of sublimating a life?"
"Ah! your majesty," I responded, "your inference is most natural. But what will you think if I tell you that there are myriads of beings who profess to believe in a God, and to a certain extent have a knowledge of his character, who yet are the most depraved and degraded of beings? In our world, in my own native country, we have countless thousands who never doubted the existence of a God, and yet you have none more degraded or more rebellious in all Myu-me-ae-nia than they."
"There is, then, really a God?" she asked, as if she would dig the reality out of my soul.
"We believe there is," I answered.
"You believe, do you?" she said.
"I have always been taught to believe it," I rejoined.
"And you joy in the belief of it?" she further added.
"Well, I should," I said.
"And you do?" she asked.
"Should I not?" I retorted.
"Oh! my daughter, where are you?" she cried, as she looked round in an ecstacy; "it is true --- it is true, my daughter; there is a God! Oh, that we knew him! We must know him! You will tell us of him, will you not?" she continued, in the same excited strain. I must confess I was thrown into a perplexity and confusion. How could I refuse to inform so charming a being anything that I had the least inkling of, if only I could thereby sit in the fascinating beams of her friendship? And yet how was I to do it? How was I to tell her of One I have been taught to believe in, from, my infancy; and in whom I less and less believe to this very hour? I know my scepticism is but madness, and yet I love --- strangely love --- the madness. To shake off the conviction that there is a God, I cannot. I have tried it --- am trying it --- yea, and will try it; but do I --- will I succeed?
I promised to tell her all I knew. I expressed my sorrow that the limits of my knowledge were so very narrow. I told her, however, of a book that could reveal to her all she wished to learn, and gave her my word of honour that if ever I returned to my native world I would bring her one of them.
How can I depict to you the celestial joy that gathered about her face as I uttered these words? She became radiant with a delight I never knew anything of --- perhaps never shall. I envied her such keen and rich emotions. I thought there were hidden wells of being, which, if we could but tap them, life would be ransomed from much of its aridity, barrenness, and desolateness. But what bore shall reach them? What adamant layers lie between them and the surface! In some more, in many fewer, than in others. What! I thought, are there in me capabilities of joy like this --- aye, even deeper? Her ecstacy arises, not so much from what she has as expects to have. Is not this prophectic [sic] of still grander things? If their forecast shadow thrills so much the soul, what will the things themselves?
It was at this moment that his royal highness Eng-wy-we-wa entered the grotto, leading by the hand his daughter Ree-mia-me-an. Not till now did I know that the lovely being who had hung over me, and nursed me was the daughter of the king. I was, therefore, quite unprepared for the rencontre. Like warring winds pouring to one central spot from every point of the compass, so diverse emotions upon my heart. I scarce knew how to rally my lost self-possession and conduct myself in that critical hour. But others soon rescued me from my dilemma.
The king advanced to me with such a hearty good-will, that he soon put me at ease. Ree-mia-me-an did the same. But it was as if we had never met before, or, if so, as casual strangers meet. The queen related somewhat of our conversation about the existence of a God. The king manifested a very lively and intelligent interest. His mind seemed to revel in intellectual subtleties. He had an imagination of a brilliant character and a keen sense of the sublime and beautiful. To my thinking, his pleasure mounted no higher than a sentiment. His admiration for the queen predisposed him to entertain the thoughts which had seized and now swayed her whole being. But for this, I question if he had troubled himself with the idea of a God. Were I to be allowed to form an opinion concerning another, I should say that he rather irked at the practical outcome of such a doctrine. When in the neighbourhood of the enthusiastic queen and his princess, he was, more or less, carried onward in their direction --- but only then.
I afterwards discovered that a profitable bearing of the doctrine which had impressed his logical mind was its influence, politically, upon the people for governing them. Conscious in himself of the subduing influence of such an idea upon his own spirit --- observing how it had developed a mental and moral stamina in his daughter that was unrivalled in all Myu-me-ae-nia, it occurred to him that if this doctrine could have its shadow thrown over the popular mind it would restore it to a healthier condition.
But how shall I relate the kindling and lofty emotions that gathered round Ree-mia-me-an like the advancing glories of a summer morn around the face of nature? It told at once that it was no mere cold intellect illuminated by a resplendent imagination, and made to glow like a winter evening sky with the rising and falling fires of a volcanic sentiment. Her whole being seemed impregnated with this sublimest of all thoughts --- or, if you will, facts. She looked, as I gazed on her, as one that stood on some awful Himalaya impalpable to the eyes and touch of men, where she caught, and was made luminous in the glories of another but invisible world. Her whole conversation and bearing showed that it was a thought that had filtered its way through every moral stratum of her existence; and which was, by a spiritual alchemy, transmuting them into its own essential qualities. If it were possible that the beholding in such practical results and value the ennobling power of divine religion would convert one from unbelief to the true belief of it, I, for one, ought to be numbered among its converts. But, alas! though you should witness vice itself transmuted into virtue, even such a miracle would not suffice to transmute your vicious into a virtuous nature. I need not go beyond myself for proof of this.
"And you believe in God in your world?" asks Reemia-me-an.
"Not all, but myriads do," I rejoined. "And do you?" I asked.
"Believe in him! Yes," she responded. "From my earliest conscious moments his shadow hung over my young spirit. With bright and beaming face he looked out on me from the invisible, above and behind all the loving faces that crowded round me. No face to me was half so loving and so beautiful. I loved to dwell upon it; I felt it did me good to do so. It helped me to realize how deeply, truly, awfully I was beloved. A mother's love was but as a glistening and perishable dew-drop beside this ocean. Every day it seemed to come nearer to me; and, as it did so, I drank into its richer beauties. All else I gazed on lost somewhat with growing familiarity; not so this."
"You never doubted, then?" I said.
"Doubted!" she replied; "I never thought of doubting. I could not doubt. Nay, suppose you could demonstrate to me that it was but a figment of the mind I revelled in, yet would I cling to it even on the brink of annihilation. True, it is not only ravishing as a thought, but there is in it a vitality I cannot describe. I feed on it; I feel it lies in at the very roots of my being, and that they, with their immortal affinities, assimilate the living fulness of such a God. So keenly sensible am I that I live in, and am nourished by, this great God, that when I think of his withdrawing himself from me by any possibility it is with horror. I sometimes try to