resting-place in the bosom of the Church as they get old?
In “Westward, Ho!” the great conversion is of Ayacanorah. But as this is
a conversion not merely religious but also moral, social and
intellectual, a conversion from barbarism to civilisation, it does not
come fairly into the class I am describing. Two incidents in the
romance, however, must not be passed over. The first occurs in the
Lotus-eating chapter. Will Para-combe tired, as well he may be, of
wandering about savage America in search of El Dorado, blindly refuses
to see that it is his chief end as man to continue wandering until El
Dorado is found and the captain has glutted his heart with vengeance on
the Spaniards; and Will gives such excellent reasons for staying in the
beautiful spot where he is, with the beautiful and affectionate native
woman whom he is willing and anxious to marry in the most legal mode
attainable, that Captain Amyas Leigh, who has been urging him onward
with true Kingsleyan diffidence and mildness, finds himself dumbfounded.
But valuable logical assistance is at hand. A jaguar like a bar of iron
plunges on poor Will, and he and his arguments are settled on the spot.
Amyas thanks God for this special interposition of providence in his
favor. And the man who wrote the adventure of Amyas can sneer at the
faith of a Catholic like Dr. Newman! The other incident is the
conversion of Amyas from his diabolical hatred of the Spaniards in
general, and of the Don with whom Rose had eloped in particular. A
lightning-flash strikes him blind, and he thereupon repents him of his
hatred and desire of revenge, and, moreover, has a vision of the Don
drowned with his sunken galleon, who assures him that his hatred was
without just cause. These are the true Kingsleyan dialectics; these, and
not those burlesques of what Plato wrote and Socrates spoke, and Mr.
Kingsley is no more able to conduct than I am to lead on the violin like
Herr Joachim, a great concerted composition of Beethoven. Let a jaguar
loose into your opponent’s syllogistic premises, blind him with a
lightning-flash that he may see the truth and have clear vision of the
right way. Yet Mr. Kingsley has undoubtedly read about a tower in Siloam
that fell, and what Joshua Bar-Joseph said of the people killed by this
accident.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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