The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
which their authors did me the honor to send me, with their respects,
and all of which I examined with all the care and diligence they
deserved.
I returned to my lodgings, not so much enlightened or edified by what I
had heard as I might have desired, though not much disappointed or
discouraged. No plan had been suggested that was not unsatisfactory,
and, taken in itself alone, that was not obviously either mischievous or
absurd. But under them all I saw one and the same spirit, the spirit of
the age, and all were striking indications of a great and powerful
movement in the direction of something different from what is now the
established order. No one of them would be realized, but it was well to
encourage this movement, to join with this free and powerful spirit.
Something, as Mr. Micawber was wont to say, “might turn up,” and out of
the seeming darkness light might at length shine, and out of the
apparent chaos order might finally spring forth. I would lend myself to
the spirit working, and trust to future developments. With that I
undressed, went to bed, and dreamed of Leila, no, Priscilla; no, yes,—it
was Priscilla. I was the victorious champion of reform. She was binding
my brow with the crown of laurel, when I awoke, and was sad that it was
only a dream.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CONSPIRACY.
I slept late the next morning, and it was the middle of the forenoon
before I awoke. I arose, made my toilette, drank a cup of coffee, and
went to arrange my future plans with Priscilla. I found her sad and
apprehensive. She was a true woman, and had no misgivings as to the
excellence of the cause she had espoused, but she feared that the
conversations of the previous evening might have disheartened me, and
made me change my resolution. I set her mind at rest on this point, and
assured her that, though I might often change my methods of effecting a
resolution once taken, yet nothing could prevent my persistence in it
but an absolute conviction of its wickedness, or its absolute
impossibility. I had wedded myself to the spirit of the age for better
or for worse, and would, if need be, devote myself body and soul to the
cause of World-Reform.
On hearing me say this, her face brightened up, and shone with a
radiance I had never seen it wear before. She seemed perfectly happy,
and turned to me with a look of perfect satisfaction. I will not say
that at that moment I had not forgotten the lady’s husband, and I will
not pretend to say what words of misplaced tenderness might have been
uttered or responded to, if we had been left to ourselves. She was
young, beautiful, fascinating, and I was a man in the prime of life.
Happily, as the interview was becoming dangerous, Mr. Merton was
announced. This young man, who seemed to have thought beyond his years,
had deeply interested me the previous evening. I knew not who he was,
whence he came, or why he associated with persons with whom he seemed to
have very little sympathy. He was evidently a gentleman, and well
educated. His dress was rich but plain, his manners were simple and
unpretending. He was tall and well proportioned, with a classical head,
a high, broad forehead, large, black eyes, and very thick, dark hair.
His features were open and manly, and his voice low, rich, and musical.
It was a pleasure to hear him speak. His name was English, but he seemed
to be of foreign descent, although I afterwards learned that he was an
American, and even a New Englander, but bred and educated abroad. He
apologized for calling, but he could not refrain from paying his
respects to his fair and amiable hostess of the evening. He hoped that
she had enjoyed herself with her guests, and that she had suffered no
inconvenience from the heat of the rooms occasioned by so great a crowd.
He was most happy also to meet me. He had heard of me, knew and highly
esteemed some of my friends, and regretted that he had not previously
had the honor of making my acquaintance.
He was requested to be seated, and assured that his call was most
agreeable, and that we both hoped to meet him often and cultivate a
further acquaintance. The conversation ran on for some time in an easy
natural way, on a variety of general topics, till Priscilla, whose soul
was absorbed in her philanthropic projects, asked Mr. Merton how it
happened that she had the pleasure of meeting him so often among
reformers. “You evidently,” said she, “are not of us. The quiet remarks,
sometimes serious, sometimes sarcastic, which you every now-and-then
make, prove that you have no sympathy with us.”
“I am not surprised, my dear Madam, at your question,” replied Mr.
Merton, “yet I too am a reformer, in my way, perhaps not precisely in
your way, nor on so large a scale as that on which you and your friends
propose to carry on reform. I have not the talent, nor the disposition
to engage in any thing so magnificent. I think reform, like charity,
should begin at home.”
“But not end there,” said I.
“Certainly not,” he replied; “certainly not with those who have leisure
and means to carry it further. But I find that it is more than I can do,
by my unassisted efforts, to reform myself, and if I can succeed in
saving my own soul, I shall be quite contented. It is, I fear, more than
I shall be able to do.”
“I see, sir, you are no philanthropist,” said Priscilla.
“Perhaps not, I am comparatively a young man, but am quite old-fashioned
in many of my notions.”
“One of those, I dare say, who have eyes only in the back side of their
heads, and live only among tombs,” said I, in a tone between jesting and
earnest.
“I have not yet sufficiently mastered the wisdom of antiquity to be
authorized to cry out against it,” he replied. “I make no doubt,
however, but you, dear lady, and you my learned friend, are quite
competent to reject the old wisdom for the new.”
“On the contrary, I am inclined to think that my present tendency is to
reject the new for the old, the modern for the ancient. Or, rather, it
seems to me that the progress of modern science is rapidly and surely
leading us back to the ancient wisdom.”
“There were in the old world, as there are in the modern, two wisdoms,
the wisdom from above, and the wisdom from below. May I be permitted to
ask to which of these you regard modern science as conducting?”
“There has been in regard to these ancient wisdoms,” said Priscilla,
“much misconception. The world in its nonage was imposed upon, and
induced to call evil good and good evil. The wisdom I assume, and am
laboring to diffuse, is that which the priests have branded as Satanic.
Satan is my hero. He was a bold and daring rebel, and the first to set
the example of resistance to despotism, and to assert unbounded freedom.
For this all the priests, all rulers, despots, all who would hold their
brethren in bondage, have cursed him. I take his part, and hope to live
to see his memory vindicated, and amends made for the wrong which has
been done him.”
“That is a candid avowal, my fair lady, and one which we seldom,
especially among your sex, hear made. I suspect, that Madame Priscilla
has listened or will listen to the modern spiritualism, which seems to
me to be a revival of demonic worship. May I entreat you, dear lady, to
pause and reconsider the conclusion to which you have come? The ancient
Gentiles deserted the true God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all
things visible and invisible, and followed strange gods, erected their
temples and consecrated their altars to devils, to fallen spirits, and I
need not tell you how their minds became darkened, and their hearts
corrupted. Do not, I entreat you, seek to revive the gross, cruel, and
obscene superstitions of the ancient Gentiles, and on which Christianity
has made an unrelenting war from the first.”
“I was sure, Mr. Merton, you were a parson. Will you deny it now?” said
Priscilla.
“I am not aware that I have said any thing but what any honest Christian
or fair-minded man, who really wishes well to his fellow beings, and who
has read history, might not very well say. It is not necessary to be a
parson, I should hope, in order to have good sense and good feeling.”
“I do not see, Mr. Merton,” said I, “any tendency to superstition in
modern spiritualism. Superstition is in charging to supernatural
intervention what is explicable on natural principles.”
“That is one form of superstition,” replied Mr. Merton, “but there is
another, which consists in ascribing effects to inadequate causes, as
where one augurs good luck from seeing the new moon over his right
shoulder, or bad luck if on the day he sets out on his travels a red
squirrel crosses his path. But I interrupt you.”
“I believe the spirits which are evoked in our days are real, but that
they are the primal forces of nature, and that it is on strictly natural
principles that they are called to our aid,” I resumed. “There is no
superstition in this.”
“It is not improbable that the ancient Gentiles thought as much. I am by
no means disposed to ascribe all the phenomena of mesmerism,
table-turning, and spiritual rapping to superhuman or preternatural
agency. Satan can affect us only through the natural, but through that
he may carry us beyond or drag us below nature. I believe mesmerism,
strictly speaking, is natural, but I believe also that its practice is
always dangerous, and that it throws its subjects under the power of
Satan. In the so-called mesmeric phenomena there are those which are
natural, and those which are Satanic, although in the present state of
our science it may not be easy in all cases to distinguish between
them.”
Here the conversation, which was beginning to interest me, (for I had a
lurking suspicion that Mr. Merton was right,) was interrupted by the
entrance of Signor Urbini, who gave unequivocal signs that the presence
of Mr. Merton was very disagreeable to him. Mr. Merton, probably not
wishing to encounter young Italy, or to enter into a contest with him at
that time, after a few commonplace remarks, took his leave. Young Italy
was full of fire and enthusiasm, but at the same time, well informed,
subtile, and clear-headed. He had been implicated in a conspiracy for
overthrowing the Austrian government in Milan, and had escaped to
England, where he had concerted with the friends of Italy a plan for
revolutionizing the whole peninsula. He had come to the United States to
enlist as large a portion of our own people as possible on his side, and
to obtain pecuniary aid in carrying out his revolutionary projects. For
himself be had no religion, and feared neither God nor the devil. At
heart, as does every Italian liberal, he despised Protestantism, as a
religion; but his chief reliance was on Protestant nations, and he made
a skilful and adroit appeal to the Protestant hatred of Popery. Italy
was the stronghold of Popery, and if Italy could be wrested from the
Pope, the whole fabric of superstition and priestcraft would fall to the
ground. But this could not be done by any direct attacks on the national
religion, or any direct advocacy of the doctrines of the Reformation.
Out of Italy the appeal might be made to the Protestant feeling, but in
Italy, and by all the leaders of the Italian party it must be made
solely to the national sentiment as against Austria, and to the love of
liberty, the democratic sentiment, as against the Pope and the native
princes. War must be made on the Pope indeed, but ostensibly on him only
as temporal prince. Overthrown as temporal prince, and his States
declared a Republic, and maintained as such, the church, as the upholder
of tyranny on the Continent, would be annihilated, and universal
democracy, and a purely democratic religion could be established