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selves—victims , apparently , to the universal blight of life . The charlatans of the day drove for awhile a golden traffic with quintessences and distillations , filthy and fantastic medicines , fumigation of shirts and kerchiefs , charms and invo cations , only at last to perish ia their turn . Even the monks had lost their love for gold , since every gift was deadly . In vain did trembling men carry theii hoards to the monastery or the church . Every gate was barred , and the wealthj might be seen tossing their bags of bezants over the convent walls . In the outskirts of towns and citi « 3 , huge pits were opened , whose mouths were daily filled with hideous heaps of dead . The Pope found it necessary to consecrate the river Rhone , and hundreds of corpses were cast out at Avignon , from the quays and pleasant gardens by the water-side , to be swept by the rapid sbreaCn under the silent bridges , past the forgotten ships and forsaken fields and mourning towns , livid and wasting , out into the sea .
all the changes of doctrine and the long conflict of creeds , it is interesting to trace the unconscious unity of mystical temperaments in every communion . It can scarcely be without some profit that we essay to gather together and arrange tMs company of ardent natures ; to account for their harmony and their differences , to ascertain the extent of their influence for good and evil , to point out their errors , and to estimate even dreams impossible to cold or meaner spirits . These Mystics have been men of like passions sind in like perplexities with many of ourselves . Within them and without them , were temptations , mysterious aspirations like our own . A change of names , or an interval of time , does not free us from liability to mistakes in their direction , or to worse , it niay be , iu a direction opposite . To distinguish" between the genuine and the spurious in their the road have ourselves
opinion or their life , is to erect a guide-post on very we to 'tread . It is no idle or pedantic cui'iosifcy whicli would try these spirits by their fruits , and see what mischief and what blessing grew out of their misconceptions and their truth . We learn a lesson for ourselves , as we . mark how some of these Mysties found God within them after vainly seeking Him withouthearkened happily to that witness for Him which speaks in our conscience , affec tions , and desires ; and , recognising love by love , finally rejoiced in a faith which was rather the life of their heart than the conclusion of their logic . We learn a lesson for ourselves , as we see one class among them forsaking common duties for the feverish exaltation of a romantic saintship , and another persisting in their conceited rejection of the light without , till they have turned into darkness their light within .
In tbe course of his volumes lie treats of early Oriental Mysticism , the Neoplatouic Mystics , Mysticism in the Greek and Latin Churches , German Mysticism in the fourteenth century , Persian Mysticism in the Middle Ages , Theosopliy at the Reformation , tlie Spanish Mystics , Quietism , Mysticism in England , and Swedenborg . Now , unless an author adopted the facile method of secondhand compilation , it is obvious , from a mere glance at these topics , that his erudition must be at once special and extensive . And this erudition Mr . Vaughan seems to possess . We say seems , because , as we chave no direct knowledge of the subject , we cannot
pretend to decide on the quality of his , except in as far as long practice has enabled us to form a tolerably certain guess when a writer speaks from first or second hand ; and according to internal evidence we should pronounce the varied erudition of the notes to these volumes to be genuine He has , moreover , adopted the modest , and as we think judicious , plan of not thrusting these notes under the eye of readers who would feel no interest in them : the text may be read off without a single interruption . An appendix to each volume contains the mass of notes and pieces juslificatives which the curious reader only will consult .
The book is in conversations ^—which' we think a mistaken method of giving a popular form to the materials—and instead of elaborate essays on each topic , or an historic narrative setting forth the lives and doctrines of the Mystics , there are elaborate conversations about each topic , with historical information casually thrown in , or in some cases taking the form of a " ps-per " read aloud by one of the company . It is our conviction that a graver form would have made the hook more popular . Mr . Vaughan need not have feared lest he should have become dull by becoming orderly and circumstantial . His conversations have the detect of being fragmentary , and unsatisfactory in exciting a curiosity about the Mystics , rather than in making us feel we ' kriow as much about them as we desire . It is true as he says : —
Mysticism has no genealogy . It is no tradition conveyed across frontiers or down the course of generations as a ready-made commodity . It is a state of thinking and feeling , to which minds of a certain temperament are liable at any time or place , in Occident and orient , whether Romanist ox- Protestant , Jew , Turk , or Infidel . It is more or less determined l > y the positive religion with which it is connected . But though conditioned by circumstance or education , its appearance is ever the spontaneous product of a certain crisis in individual or social history . And a developmental , view of his subject was not possible ; yet he has himself given specimens of what we mean —the account of Madame Guyon for example—when we say that he might have told us as much about each Mystic as wo care to know .
His final verdict on Mystieism is expressed in this passage : — Observe how this mysticism pretends to raise man above self into the universal , and issues in giving us only what is personal . It presents us , after all , only with the creations of the fancy , the phenomena of the sensibility peculiar to the individual , —that finite , personal idiosyncracy whicli is bo despised . Its philosophy of the uuivei'so subsides into a morbid psychology . Having made our readers acquainted with Mr . Vaughan ' s method , materials , and point of view , we have now only to indicate , as well as an example or two will do so , the style in which his book is written . Take for instance his rapid narrative of the
BLACK DEATH AND TH 13 ITLAaKkLANTS . In the year 1348 that terrible contagion , known an the Black Death , whicli journeyed from the East to dovaatato the whole of Europe , appeared at Strasburg . Everywhere famine , floods , tho inversion of the seasons , strange nppeai'ancoa in tlxe Bky , hud boon its procursorH . In tho Mediterranean Sea , as nftorwards in tho Baltic , ships were dosoriod drifting mftstorloes , filled only by plague-stricken corpses . Every man dreaded , not merely the touoli and the breath of his neighbour , but his very eye , bo subtile and so Hwift scorned the infection . In mnuy parts of Franco it was computed that only two out of every twenty inhabitants
were loffc alive . Iu Straaburg Hixtecn thousand perished ; in Avignon sixty thousand . In Purls , at ono time , four or five hundred wero dying in a day . In that city , in tho midst of a demoralisation and a Holiiah horror liko that Thuoydidcs has pnintod , tho Sisters of Mercy was soon tending tho hu { Furors "who orowdod tho HOtel Dion ; and oh cloath thinned their mnrtyr-raiiUs , numbora more wore ready to fill tho sumo office of perilous compassion . Pauimnias HiiyH that iu Athens alono out of all Greece thoro wns raised an altar to nioroy . But it wan an altar almost without n ministry . Heathendom , at its best , might glory in the shrine ; Ohriubianity , at its worst , could furnish tho priesthood .
In Strmburg Taulor lubourod foavloHHly , with Thomns and Liulolph , among tho panio ¦ stricken people—doubly ournod by tlio Intordiot and by the plague . Oroat fires of viuo-woinl , wormwood , and lixurol wore kept burning in tho nijuaros and market placoa to purify tho air , lighting up tho carved work uf tko deserted townhall , and flickering aslant the ovorhanging gables of tho narrow orooked streets and the empty tradesmen ' s ) stn . Ua . The village was ravaged ns fatally aa tho town . Tho horde grow wild in tho fields of tho deud peasants , or died Bbrangoly
tuom-In a frenzy of terror and revenge the people fell upou the miserable Jewsfc They were accused of poisoning the wells , and every heart wag steeled againa them . Fear seemed to render all classes more ferocious , and the man who might sicken and die to-morrow found a wre-fcehed compensation ia inflicting death today on the imagined authors of his danger . Toledo wa 3 supposed to be the centre of an atrocious scheme by which the Jews were to depopulate Christendom . At Chillon several Jews , some after torture and some in terror of it , confessed that they had received poison for that purpose . It was a black and red powder , made partly from a basilisk , and sent in the mummy of an egg . The deposition of the Jews arrested at Neustadt was sent by the castellan of ° Chillon to Strasburg . Bishops , nobles , and chief citizens held a diet at BinneQeldT in Alsace , to concert measures of persecution . The deputies of Strasburg , to their honour be it spoken , declared that nothing had been proved against the Jews . Their bishop was the most pitiless advocate of mas 3 aere . The result was a league of priests , lords , and people , to slay or banish every Jew . In some places the senators and burgomasters were disposed to mercy or to justice . The Pope
and the Emperor raised their voices , alike in vain , in behalf of the victims . Some Christians , who had sought from pity or from avarice to save them , perished in the same flames . The noble of whom they bought protection was stigmatised as a Jew-master , execrated by the populace , at the mercy of his enemies . No poAver could stem the torrent . The people had tasted blood ; the piiest had no iriercy for the murderers of the Lord ; the baron had debts easily discharged by the death of his creditor . At Strasburg a monster scaffold was erected in the Jewish burial ground , and two thousand were burnt alive . At Basle all the Jews were burnt together in a wooden edifice erected for the purpose . At Spires they set their quarter in flames , and perished by their own hands . A guard kept out the populace while men commissioned by the senate hunted for treasure among the smoking ruins . The corrupting bodies-of' those slain in the streets were put up in- empty wine casks , and trundlod into the Rhine . When the rage for slatighter had subsided , hands , red with Hebrew blood , were piously employed in building belfries and repairing churches with Jewish tombstones and the . materials of Jewish houses 11 ¦
. JL Ap ^ # ^ O . XJA , V ^ 5 W J . OU I > IXqvC 9 ' ' The gloomy spirit of the time found , fit expression in the fanaticism of the Flagellants . Similar troops of devotees had hi the preceding century carried throughout Italy the mania of the scourge ; but never before had the frenzy of penance been so violent or so contagious . It was in the summer of 1349 that they appeared in Strasburg . All the bells rang out as two hundred of them , following two and two many costly banners and tapers , entered the citv , singing strange hymns . J . ne citizens \ icu wiuu . ouu uutu « u u |> cuuig tu i / imui meir aoora and seating them at their tables . More than a thousand joined their ranks . Whoever entered their number was bound to continue among them thirty-four days , must have fourpence of his own for each day , might enter no house unasked ,
might speak with no woman . The lash of the master awaited every infraction of their rule . The movement partook of the popular , anti-hierarchical spirit of the day . The priest or friar could hold no rank , as such , among the Flagellants . The mastership was inaccessible to him , and he was precluded from the secret council . The scourging took place tvrice a day . Every morning and evening they repaired in procession to the place of flagellation outside the city . There they stripped themselves , retaining only a pair of linen drawers . They lay down in a large circle , indicating by their . posture the particular sin of which each penitent was principally guilty . The perjured lay on his side , and held up three fingers ; the adulterer on his face . Tile master then passed round , applying bis lash to each in succession , chanting the
rhyme—Stand up in virtue of holy pain , And guard the -well from guilt again . One after the other , they rose and followed him , singing and scourging themselves with whips in which were great knots and nails . Tho ceremony closed with the reading of a letter , said to have been brought by an angel from heaven , enjoining their practioe , after which they returned home iu order as they came . The people crowded from far and near to witness the piteous expiation , and to watch with prayers and tears the flowing blood which was to mingle with that of Christ . Tho pretended letter was reverenced aa another gospel , and the
Flagellant was already believed before the piiest . The clergy grew anxious as they saw tho enthusiasm spreading on every side . But the unnatural furor oould not lost ; its own extravagance prepared its downfall- An attempt made by some Flagellants iu Strasburg to bring a dead child to life was fatal to thoir credit . Tho Emperor , tho Popo , and the prelates took measures against them simultaneously , iu Germany , in France , iu Sicily , and in tho East . Tho pilgrimage of tho scourge was to have lasted four-and-thirty years . Six months sufficed to disgust men with tho folly , to see their angelic letter laughed to scorn , thoir processions denounced , their order scattered .
The extract is long , but we could not bring ourselves to abridge it . Of his illustrations take this : —
A FlltH TTET 1 'IiIAN'JP CnARAOTBR . Men of liirt spooioa rosomblo fountains , whoso wotor-colums a euddon gnBt of wind may drive aslant , or scatter in spray across tho lawn , but—tho violenoo once pa 8 t—they play upward as truly and as strong as over . Again : — mis s'ruuaaiiia oi ? DKiruiwr bystioms . Athkhton . Tho struggles of heathendom to oscajpa its doom oaly tho more din " play it » woalcnoan and the juHtioo of tlio eontonco . Gowisit . Liko tho man iu tho Gastn Itomcvnortvm , who camo to > the gato whor e every humpbacked , ono-oyod , aoald-hoadod passenger had to pay a . penny t ' oroaoh , infirmity : thoy woro going only to clomand toll for his hunch , but ho rosiatod , and in the Htruggle was discovered to bo amenable for every dofornaity and diHooso upon the table . So , no doubt , it imiat always bo with systems , statoa , mou , and dogo , thut ; won ' t know when thoy havo had thoir day . The bouhIc makes Bad work with the patched clothes , falao teeth , wig , and coomotiea .
Untitled Article
April 53 1856 . ] THE LEADER . ^
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Leader (1850-1860), April 5, 1856, page 329, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2135/page/17/
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