Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I knew her by her Roman
symbols. Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for
very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you.
Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the newborn infant the
earliest office of ennobling kindness--typical, by its mode, of that
grandeur which belongs to man every where, and of that benignity in
powers invisible, which even in Pagan worlds sometimes descends to
sustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for
the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the
ground. _That_ might bear different interpretations. But immediately,
lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant,
either the paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near
kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look erect
as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the stars,
saying, perhaps, in his heart--"Behold what is greater than yourselves!"
This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that
mysterious lady, who never revealed her face, (except to me in dreams,)
but always acted by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb (as
still it is the Italian verb) _levare_, to raise aloft.
This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has arisen that some
people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the
education of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a
prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be
supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non-development
of his powers. She therefore watches over human education. Now, the word
_educo_, with the penultimate short, was derived (by a process often
exemplified in the crystallization of languages) from the word
_educo_, with the penultimate long. Whatsoever _educes_ or
developes--_educates_. By the education of Levana, therefore, is
meant--not the poor machinery that moves by spelling-books and grammars,
but that mighty system of central forces hidden in the deep bosom of
human life, which by passion, by strife, by temptation, by the energies
of resistance, works for ever upon children--resting not day or night,
any more than the mighty wheel of day and night themselves, whose
moments, like restless spokes, are glimmering[12] for ever as they
revolve.
If, then, _these_ are the ministries by which Levana works, how
profoundly must she reverence the agencies of grief! But you, reader!
think--that children generally are not liable to grief such as mine.
There are two senses in the word _generally_--the sense of Euclid where
it means _universally_, (or in the whole extent of the _genus_,) and a
foolish sense of this world where it means _usually_. Now I am far from
saying that children universally are capable of grief like mine. But
there are more than you ever heard of, who die of grief in this island
of ours. I will tell you a common case. The rules of Eton require that a
boy on the _foundation_ should be there twelve years: he is
superannuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at six. Children
torn away from mothers and sisters at that age not unfrequently die. I
speak of what I know. The complaint is not entered by the registrar as
grief; but _that_ it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has killed
more than ever have been counted amongst its martyrs.
Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the powers that shake
man's heart: therefore it is that she doats upon grief. "These ladies,"
said I softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was
conversing, "these are the Sorrows; and they are three in number, as the
_Graces_ are three, who dress man's life with beauty; the Parcae are
three, who weave the dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom
always with colours sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and
black; the _Furies_ are three, who visit with retributions called on the
other side of the grave offences that walk upon this; and once even the
_Muses_ were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to
the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows,
all three of whom I know." The last words I say _now_; but in Oxford I
said--"one of whom I know, and the others too surely I _shall_ know."
For already, in my fervent youth, I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark
background of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters.
These sisters--by what name shall we call them?
If I say simply--"The Sorrows," there will be a chance of mistaking the
term; it might be understood of individual sorrow--separate cases of
sorrow,--whereas I want term expressing the mighty abstractions that
incarnate themselves in all individual sufferings of man's heart; and I
wish to have these abstractions presented as impersonations, that is, as
clothed with human attributes of life, and with functions pointing to
flesh. Let us call them, therefore, _Our Ladies of Sorrow_. I know them
thoroughly, and have walked in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they
are, of one mysterious household; and their paths are wide apart; but of
their dominion there is no end. Them I saw often conversing with Levana,
and sometimes about myself. Do they talk, then? Oh, no! Mighty phantoms
like these disdain the infirmities of language. They may utter voices
through the organs of man when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst
themselves is no voice nor sound--eternal silence reigns in _their_
kingdoms. _They_ spoke not as they talked with Levana. _They_ whispered
not. _They_ sang not. Though oftentimes methought they _might_ have
sung; for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered
by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, whose servants
they are, they utter their pleasure, not by sounds that perish, or by
words that go astray, but by signs in heaven--by changes on earth--by
pulses in secret rivers--heraldries painted on darkness--and
hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. _They_ wheeled in
mazes; _I_ spelled the steps. _They_ telegraphed from afar; _I_ read the
signals. _They_ conspired together; and on the mirrors of darkness _my_
eye traced the plots. _Theirs_ were the symbols,--_mine_ are the words.
What is it the sisters are? What is it that they do? Let me describe
their form, and their presence; if form it were that still fluctuated in
its outline; or presence it were that for ever advanced to the front, or
for ever receded amongst shades.
The eldest of the three is named _Mater Lachrymarum_, Our Lady of Tears.
She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished
faces. She stood in Rama, when a voice was heard of lamentation--Rachel
weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted. She it was that
stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries
of Innocents, and the little feet were stiffened for ever, which, heard
at times as they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in
household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven.
Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy by turns; oftentimes
rising to the clouds; oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a
diadem round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go
abroad upon the winds, when she heard the sobbing of litanies or the
thundering of organs, and when she beheld the mustering of summer
clouds. This sister, the elder, it is that carries keys more than Papal
at her girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. She, to my
knowledge, sate all last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him
that so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight
years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of play
and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads with her
afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward. In the
spring-time of the year, and whilst yet her own spring was budding, he
recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns for ever over
_her_; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is
locked within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness that is _now_
within a second and a deeper darkness. This _Mater Lachrymarum_ also has
been sitting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the
Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less pious) that vanished
to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less
profound. By the power of her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides a
ghostly intruder into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women,
sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi.
And her, because she is the first-born of her house, and has the widest
empire, let us honour with the title of "Madonna."
The second sister is called _Mater Suspiriorum_, Our Lady of Sighs. She
never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no
diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor
subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with
perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises
not her eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops for
ever; for ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But
she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her sister, Madonna, is oftentimes
stormy and frantic; raging in the highest against heaven; and demanding
back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamours, never defies,
dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers
is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is
in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight.
Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate
as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to
his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the
bondsman to the oar in Mediterranean galleys, of the English criminal in
Norfolk island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet
far-off England, of the baffled penitent reverting his eye for ever upon
a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past
and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be availing,
whether towards pardon that he might implore, or towards reparation that
he might attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical
sun with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our
general mother, but for _him_ a stepmother, as he points with the other
hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against _him_ sealed and
sequestered;[13]--every woman sitting in darkness, without love to
shelter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the
heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections,
which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social
necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst
the ancients;--every nun defrauded of her unreturning May-time by wicked
kinsmen, whom God will judge;--every captive in every dungeon;--all that
are betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law,
and children of _hereditary_ disgrace--all these walk with "Our Lady of
Sighs." She also carries a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom
is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every
clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her
own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world,
carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have
received her mark upon their foreheads.
But the third sister, who is also the youngest----! Hush! whisper,
whilst we talk of _her_! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh
should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head,
turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight.
She droops not; and her eyes rising so high, _might_ be hidden by
distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden; through the
treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing
misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers--for noon of day or
noon of night--for ebbing or for flowing tide--may be read from the very
ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies,
and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but
narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in
whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom
the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest
from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain
steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs
creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with
incalculable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She carries no
key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at
which she is permitted to enter at all. And _her_ name is _Mater
Tenebrarum_--Our Lady of Darkness.
These were the _Semnai Theai_, or Sublime Goddesses[14]--these were the
_Eumenides_, or Gracious Ladies, (so called by antiquity in shuddering
propitiation)--of my Oxford dreams. MADONNA spoke. She spoke by her
mysterious hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs;
and _what_ she spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in
dreams) no man reads, was this:--
"Lo! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars.
This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I
beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine.
Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by
languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to
the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its
darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I
have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou
take him now to _thy_ heart, and season him for our dreadful
sister. And thou"--turning to the _Mater Tenebrarum_, she
said--"wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take
him from _her_. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head.
Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his
darkness. Banish the frailties of hope--wither the relentings
of love--scorch the fountains of tears: curse him as only thou
canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace--so
shall he see the things that ought _not_ to be seen--sights
that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall
he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths.
So shall he rise again _before_ he dies. And so shall our
commission be accomplished which from God we had--to plague his
heart until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit."[15]