A feeling of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is wont to take
possession of me alike in spring and in autumn. But in spring it is
the melancholy of hope: in autumn it is the melancholy of resignation.
As I was journeying on foot through the Apennines, I fell in with a
pilgrim in whom the spring and the autumn and the melancholy of both
seemed to have combined. In his discourse there were the freshness and
the colours of April:
"Qual ramicel a ramo,
Tal da pensier pensiero
In lui germogliava."
But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I bethought me of the not
unlovely decays, both of age and of the late season, in the stately
elm, after the clusters have been plucked from its entwining vines,
and the vines are as bands of dried withies around its trunk and
branches. Even so there was a memory on his smooth and ample forehead,
which blended with the dedication of his steady eyes, that still
looked--I know not, whether upward, or far onward, or rather to the
line of meeting where the sky rests upon the distance. But how may I
express--the breathed tarnish, shall I name it?--on the lustre of the
pilgrim's eyes? Yet had it not a sort of strange accordance with their
slow and reluctant movement, whenever he turned them to any object on
the right hand or on the left? It seemed, methought, as if there lay
upon the brightness a shadowy presence of disappointments now unfelt,
but never forgotten. It was at once the melancholy of hope and of
resignation.
We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a sudden tempest of wind
and rain forced us to seek protection in the vaulted doorway of a lone
chapelry: and we sat face to face, each on the stone bench alongside
the low, weather-stained wall, and as close as possible to the massy
door.
After a pause of silence: "Even thus," said he, "like two strangers
that have fled to the same shelter from the same storm, not seldom do
despair and hope meet for the first time in the porch of death!" "All
extremes meet," I answered; "but yours was a strange and visionary
thought." "The better then doth it beseem both the place and me," he
replied. "From a visionary wilt thou hear a vision? Mark that vivid
flash through this torrent of rain! Fire and water. Even here thy
adage holds true, and its truth is the moral of my vision." I
entreated him to proceed. Sloping his face toward the arch and yet
averting his eye from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his words:
till listening to the wind that echoed within the hollow edifice, and
to the rain without,
"Which stole on his thoughts with its two-fold sound,
The clash hard by and the murmur all round,"
he gradually sank away, alike from me and from his own purpose, and
amid the gloom of the storm and in the duskiness of that place he sat
like an emblem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like an aged mourner on
the sodded grave of an only one, who is watching the waned moon and
sorroweth not. Starting at length from his brief trance of
abstraction, with courtesy and an atoning smile he renewed his
discourse, and commenced his parable:
"During one of those short furloughs from the service of the body,
which the soul may sometimes obtain even in this, its militant state,
I found myself in a vast plain, which I immediately knew to be the
Valley of Life. It possessed an astonishing diversity of soils: and
here was a sunny spot, and there a dark one, forming just such a
mixture of sunshine and shade as we may have observed on the
mountain's side in an April day, when the thin broken clouds are
scattered over heaven. Almost in the very entrance of the valley stood
a large and gloomy pile, into which I seemed constrained to enter.
Every part of the building was crowded with tawdry ornaments and
fantastic deformity. On every window was portrayed, in glaring and
inelegant colours, some horrible tale or preternatural incident, so
that not a ray of light could enter, untinged by the medium through
which it passed. The body of the building was full of people, some of
them dancing in and out, in unintelligible figures, with strange
ceremonies and antic merriment, while others seemed convulsed with
horror, or pining in mad melancholy. Intermingled with these, I
observed a number of men, clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared
now to marshal the various groups and to direct their movements; and
now, with menacing countenances, to drag some reluctant victim to a
vast idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed, which formed at the same
time an immense cage, and the form of a human Colossus.
"I stood for a while lost in wonder what these things might mean; when
lo! one of the directors came up to me, and with a stern and
reproachful look bade me uncover my head; for that the place, into
which I had entered, was the temple of the only true religion, in the
holier recesses of which the great goddess personally resided. Himself
too he bade me reverence, as the consecrated minister of her rites.
Awe-struck by the name of religion, I bowed before the priest, and
humbly and earnestly intreated him to conduct me into her presence. He
assented. Offerings he took from me, with mystic sprinklings of water
and with salt he purified, and with strange sufflations he exorcised
me; and then led me through many a dark and winding alley, the
dew-damps of which chilled my flesh, and the hollow echoes under my
feet, mingled, methought, with moanings, affrighted me. At length we
entered a large hall where not even a single lamp glimmered. It was
made half visible by the wan phosphoric rays which proceeded from
inscriptions on the walls, in letters of the same pale and sepulchral
light. I could read them, methought; but though each one of the words
taken separately I seemed to understand, yet when I took them in
sentences, they were riddles and incomprehensible. As I stood
meditating on these hard sayings, my guide thus addressed me: 'The
fallible becomes infallible, and the infallible remains fallible. Read
and believe: these are mysteries!' In the middle of the vast hall the
goddess was placed. Her features, blended with darkness, rose out to
my view, terrible, yet vacant. No definite thought, no distinct image
was afforded me: all was uneasy and obscure feeling. I prostrated
myself before her, and then retired with my guide, soul-withered, and
wondering, and dissatisfied.
"As I re-entered the body of the temple, I heard a deep buzz as of
discontent. A few whose eyes were bright, and either piercing or
steady, and whose ample foreheads, with the weighty bar, ridge-like,
above the eyebrows, bespoke observation followed by meditative
thought, and a much larger number who were enraged by the severity and
insolence of the priests in exacting their offerings, had collected in
one tumultuous group, and with a confused outcry of 'This is the
Temple of Superstition!' after much contumely, and turmoil, and cruel
mal-treatment on all sides, rushed out of the pile: and I, methought,
joined them.
"We speeded from the temple with hasty steps, and had now nearly gone
round half the valley, when we were addressed by a woman, tall beyond
the stature of mortals, and with a something more than human in her
countenance and mien, which yet could by mortals be only felt, not
conveyed by words or intelligibly distinguished. Deep reflection,
animated by ardent feelings, was displayed in them; and hope, without
its uncertainty, and a something more than all these, which I
understood not; but which yet seemed to blend all these into a divine
unity of expression. Her garments were white and matronly, and of the
simplest texture. We inquired her name. My name, she replied, is
Religion.
"The more numerous part of our company, affrighted by the very sound,
and sore from recent impostures or sorceries, hurried onwards and
examined no farther. A few of us, struck by the manifest opposition of
her form and manner to those of the living Idol, whom we had so
recently abjured, agreed to follow her, though with cautious
circumspection. She led us to an eminence in the midst of the valley,
from the top of which we could command the whole plain, and observe
the relation of the different parts, of each to the other, and of each
to the whole, and of all to each. She then gave us an optic glass
which assisted without contradicting our natural vision, and enabled
us to see far beyond the limits of the Valley of Life; though our eye
even thus assisted permitted us only to behold a light and a glory,
but what we could not descry, save only that it _was_, and that it was
most glorious.
"And now, with the rapid transition of a dream, I had overtaken and
rejoined the more numerous party, who had abruptly left us, indignant
at the very name of religion. They journeyed on, goading each other
with remembrances of past oppressions, and never looking back, till in
the eagerness to recede from the Temple of Superstition they had
rounded the whole circle of the valley. And lo! there faced us the
mouth of a vast cavern, at the base of a lofty and almost
perpendicular rock, the interior side of which, unknown to them, and
unsuspected, formed the extreme and backward wall of the temple. An
impatient crowd, we entered the vast and dusky cave, which was the
only perforation of the precipice. At the mouth of the cave sat two
figures; the first, by her dress and gestures, I knew to be
Sensuality; the second form, from the fierceness of his demeanour, and
the brutal scornfulness of his looks, declared himself to be the
monster Blasphemy. He uttered big words, and yet ever and anon I
observed that he turned pale at his own courage. We entered. Some
remained in the opening of the cave, with the one or the other of its
guardians. The rest, and I among them, pressed on, till we reached an
ample chamber, that seemed the centre of the rock. The climate of the
place was unnaturally cold.
"In the furthest distance of the chamber sat an old dim-eyed man,
poring with a microscope over the torso of a statue, which had neither
base, nor feet, nor head; but on its breast was carved, Nature! To
this he continually applied his glass, and seemed enraptured with the
various inequalities which it rendered visible on the seemingly
polished surface of the marble. Yet evermore was this delight and
triumph followed by expressions of hatred, and vehement railing
against a Being who yet, he assured us, had no existence. This mystery
suddenly recalled to me what I had read in the holiest recess of the
Temple of _Superstition_. The old man spoke in divers tongues, and
continued to utter other and most strange mysteries. Among the rest he
talked much and vehemently concerning an infinite series of causes and
effects, which he explained to be--a string of blind men, the last of
whom caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he of the next,
and so on till they were all out of sight; and that they all walked
infallibly straight, without making one false step, though all were
alike blind. Methought I borrowed courage from surprise, and asked
him--Who then is at the head to guide them? He looked at me with
ineffable contempt, not unmixed with an angry suspicion, and then
replied, 'No one;--the string of blind men went on for ever without
any beginning: for although one blind man could not move without
stumbling, yet infinite blindness supplied the want of sight.' I burst
into laughter, which instantly turned to terror--for as he started
forward in rage, I caught a glance of him from behind; and lo! I
beheld a monster biform and Janus-headed, in the hinder face and shape
of which I instantly recognised the dread countenance of
Superstition--and in the terror I awoke."
_Coleridge._