and if a man curse and spur his horse for stumbling, they do heartily
rejoice at it.'
While observing a spirited and imaginative picture by Macallum of
the Siege of Jerusalem, it much interested me to observe the greater
or less ease with which other visitors discovered the portents in
the air which, following the narrative of Josephus, the artist had
vaguely portrayed. The chariots and horsemen said to have been seen
before that event were here faintly blent with indefinite outlines
of clouds; and while some of the artist's friends saw them with a
distinctness greater, perhaps, than that with which they impressed
the eye of the artist himself, others could hardly be made to see
anything except shapeless vapour, though of course they all agreed
that they were there and remarkably fine.
It would seem that thus, in a London studio, there were present all
the mental pigments for frescoing the air and sky with those visions
of aërial armies or huntsmen which have become so normal in history
as to be, in a subjective sense, natural. In the year 1763, an author,
styling himself Theophilus Insulanus, published at Edinburgh a book on
Second-Sight, in which he related more than a hundred instances of the
power he believed to exist of seeing events before they had occurred,
and whilst, of course, they did not exist. It is not difficult in
reading them to see that they are all substantially one and the
same story, and that the sight in operation was indeed second; for
man or woman, at once imaginative and illiterate, have a second and
supernumerary pair of eyes inherited from the traditional superstitions
and ghost stories which fill all the air they breathe from the cradle
to the grave. While the mind is in this condition, that same nature
whose apparitions and illusions originally evoked and fostered the
glamoury, still moves on with her minglings of light and shade, cloud
and mirage, giving no word of explanation. There are never wanting the
shadowy forms without that cast their shuttles to the dark idols of the
mental cave, together weaving subtle spells round the half-waking mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account