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Leader (1850-1860), 10th December 1859, Edition 1 of 2, Page 1350

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      " Of course , such experiences are very rare ; and as they generally occur at the mpst unexpected moments , it is next to impossible to go back > and ascertain how the impression first makes itself felt . Once , only , have I been conscious of the operation j of the faculty . This took place in Racine , Wisconsin , on the morning of the 1 st of March , 1855 . My bedroom at the hotel Avas an inner chamber , lighted only by a door opening into a private parlor . Consequently , when I awoke in the morning , it was difficult to tell , from the imperfect light received through the outer room , whether the hour was early or late . A lecturer , especially after his hundredth performance , is not inclined to get up at daylight ; and yet , if you sleep too long , m many of of

      the western towns , you run the risk losmg your breakfast . I was lying upon my back , with closed eyes , lazily trying to solve the question , when , all at once , my vision seemed to be reversed—or rather , a clearer spiritual vision awoke , independent of the physical sense . My head , the pillow on . which it rested , and the hunting-case of my watch , became transparent as air ; and I saw , distinctly , the hands on the dial pointing to eleven minutes before six . I can only compare the sensation to a flash of lightning on a dark night , which , for the thousandth part of a second , shows you a landscape as bright as dav . I sprang up instantly , jerked forth nay watch , opened ifc ; and there were the hands , pointing to eleven minutes before six—lacking only the few seconds which had elapsed between the vision and

      its proof . "Is this , after a ll , any more singular than the fact that a man can awaken at any hour that he chooses ? What is the spiritual alarm-clock which calls us at four , though we usually sleep until six ? How is it that the web of dreams is broken , the helpless slumber of the senses overcome , at the desired moment , by the simple passage of a thought through the mind hours before ? I was once , of necessity , obliged to cultivate this power , and brought it , finally , to such perfection , that the profoundest sleep ceased as suddenly , at the appointed minute , as if I had been struck on the head with a mallet . Let any one tell me , clearly and satisfactorily , how this is done ; before asking me to account for . the other marvel .

      " But in certain conditions , the mind also foresees . This may either * take place in dreams , or in those more vague and uncertain impressions which are termed presentiments . I will only relate a single instance , since it is useless to adduce anything which is not beyond the range of accident or coincidence . I spent the winter of 1844-5 at Frankfort-on-the-Main , living with Mr . Richard Storrs Willis , in the family of a German merchant there . At that time there was only a mail once a month between Europe and America , and if we failed to receive letters by one steamer , we were obliged to wait four weeks for the next chance . One day the letters came as

      usual for Mr . Willis , but none for me . I gave up all hope for that month , and went to bed in a state of great disappointment and dejection ; but in the night I dreamed that it was morning , and I was dressing myself , when Mr . Willis burst into the room saying : ' The postman is below—perhaps he has letters for you . Come up into the dining-room , and you can see him from the window . ' We thereupon went up to the dining-room on the third story , looked down into the street , and there stood the postman—who , as soon as he saw us , held up a letter at arm ' s length , holding it by the lower righthand corner . Though he was in the street , and I in the third story , I read my name upon it .

      " I arose in the morning with my head full of the dream . When I was about half dressed , Mr . Willis came into rny room , repeating the very words I had heard in my sleep . We went into the dining-roorn together , looked down , and there stood the postman , homj&g up a letter by the lower right-hand corner Of course I could not read tho address at that distance ; but my name was upon it . In this case , the circumstances were altogether beyond my control ; and the literal manner in which the dream was fulfilled , in every minute particular , is its most astonishing feature . Nothing was added or omitted : the reality was a daguerreotype of the vision . Never before had my friend entered my room at so early an hour—never before had the postman hold up a letter in that manner . If a coincidence only , the occurrence is therefore all tho more marvellous . "

      It is not of ten that wo have such clear testimony to events of this kind , We must believe Mr . Tay lor , who thus witnesses to his own case . The facts cannot be doubted ; but tho philosophy calculated to explain them has not yet received such development as to satisfy sceptical minds .

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      JLIPD EN SPAIN . By Walter TUoxnbury . Two volo . —Smith , Elder , and Co . TAaB ^ Qader is probably acquainted with , many of theoo series of essays , thetbuUsof them havingy the

      author confesses ,, already appeared in Household Words . He hints , also , that we are to accredit him with care in drawing and correctness in detail . He has , if we understand him rightly , photographed " Spanish Life , " with an intention to be as literally accurate as possible . We believe that to' a great extent he has succeeded ; but Mr . Tliornbury is too much of an artist in his work , to exclude the ideal altogether from liis painting . Sometimes Mr . Thornbury condescends to matters of mere daily life . There is a lively article of this kind on sherry . In it we are told , that English sherry is a chemical compound made , like a French side-dish , of many ingredients , and of various ages and qualities of wine . The facts are these : — -

      "In Xeres there were five hundred thousand arrobas of wine—thirty of which went to a bota ( butt)—made annually . This made thirty-four thousand butts , nine thousand of which were of first quality . Sherry is too strong and too dear for Spaniards , and too feverish for the climate . The best is , in Xeres , a dollar a bottle . The best m the bodega is worth from fifty to eighty guineas a butt ; and , after insurance , freight , and sale charges , it stands the importer in from one hundred to one

      hundred and thirty guineas , before it reaches his cellar ( say ) in Belgrave-square . " * How many gallons to the butt , Don Sanchez ?' "' About one hundred and twelve . This will bottle into about fifty-two dozen , and the duty is five shillings and sixpence the gallon . So you may form your own opinion about cheap London sherries , which are , generally , very ' curious ' indeed—mere doctors' draughts , in fact , made up according to certain swindling prescriptions . '

      " Here-was a blow for my old friend Binns , who op ens a bottle of forty-eight shilling sherry with the aif of an antiquarian unswathing a mummy Pharaoh . Thought I , the next time the deluded man points to the oily stickiness of his glass , I will leap up , seize him by the white cravat , and say in a hollow

      : "' Binns ! you are the victim of a life-long delusion ; that stuff you drink , you think is the juice of Spanish grapes , plucked by men playing guitars , and smoking cigars : you call it , in poetical moments , bottled sunlight , sunfire , and so on—bah ! ( after the manner of Napoleon ) it is-only a chemical compound made of drugs and infusions , like Daffy ' s elixir or James ' s powder . It is cooked up with boiled , treacly wine , and brandy . It is a compound mixed from a dozen barrels , and made to order for a particular market . If the vines of Xeres grew till they got black in the face , Binns , they could not yield wine like your forty-eight shilling sherry . '

      " The Don laughed , and said that certainly the sherry wine district was very small ; not more than twelve miles square . Therefore , it could not yi eld honest wine enough even for half London . The sherry grape grew only on certain low chalky hills , where , the earth being light-coloured , is not so much burnt—did not chap and split 60 much by the sun , as darker and heavier soils do . A mile beyond these hills , the grapes deteriorate . The older the plants the better , but the fewer the grapes . "

      Perhaps , most of our readers knew these facts already . . Probably , they have been told something like thia ; but not with the . requisite particularity . It can at any rate do no harm to have the matter set down exactly as it is . The usp to be made of the truth is quite another thing . People none the less , we dare say , will drink 48 s . sherry , if they can get nothing butter . The literature of Spain is not neglected any

      more than the wines . In proof , we need only refer to a chapter on Spanish ballads , in which , in the verse of Don Fullano—a Spanish balladist , for our knowledge of whom wo are indebted to Mr . Thornbury—the Cid flourishes not only alive but dead . There is another similar essay , discriminating between the Spain of Cervantes and the Spain of Gil Bias , which is also good . In this there is a refleotive naournfulness , in which tho pensive reader will readily join .

      " It might , " says Mr Thornbury , " mako the thoughtful man weep to take now tho map of Spain , and look at its chokod-up harbours and forBaken oca ; its ruined cities ? its sluggish people , eager only for vice and folly , slow to work , and swift to stab . To see its plains of Paradise mouldering away Into deserts , its pastures cunkoring into barrenness , its mines unheeded , its ports unuaqd ) the very limbs of this great country fostering from tho trunk j the land that could produce all tho treasures of east and west , tho wheat of Europe , the rice of Asia , the sugar-cane pf South America , tho palm-tree of Africa , now lying ( he dusthoap of the nations ; tho beggared , despised , negleoted , sightless country , ready , iiko a siok sheep , to be torn in pieces by the

      first eagle that pounces on it from the peak of th * Pyrenees . " lue T \ vo volumes of more entertaining and instnic tive matter are not discoverable in the literature of the day . They unite the charms of travel and romance .

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      AUSTRALIAN FACTS AND PROSPECTS : to which is prefixed the Author ' s Australian Biography By it IT Horna—Smith , Elder , aud Co . ¦ r . a . In 1852 , Mr . Home , the author of " Orion " in . a fit of mental despondency , left England and literature for the gold diggings . Besides a change of occupation had become Almost necessary to him ; he had been , to use his own words sickened of hope , as a dramatist and a poet '

      and accordingly it was natural that he should be overtaken by " the London fever of that day " and form " a determination to sail for Australia !" Since that time a few stx * ay notices of him , as a gold escort commander , in . the colonial journals have reached us ;—but nothing particular had arrived in England until the present publication , and this , it must be acknowledged , contains matter of considerable interest and importance .

      It may seem precipitating results , but . we prefer to begin tile subject of our review with its moral ; premising , also , tli . at Mr . Home himself commences his report with it . It is contained in these few words ¦ :- — " If you are . doing at all well at home , vest assured it would be risking everything in a foreign lottery to come out here at iha present period . To the great majority it must be certain disappointment , and to st > nii > utter ruin . " ' Mr . IIornc s autobiographical sketch is a piece of graphic writing , which . may-challenge-comparison with our best descriptive authorship , nndmust excite regret in the reader that so mu-jh talent should have missed its reward in England . Poetry , and the drama , in its higher forms no luu ^ or command their , fitting recompense in this country . The

      more the merit , the less the su / ccsd;— the more ambitious the aim , the less possible its realisation . It is time the public should know this ;—and Mr . Horne ' s example may speak out " trumpettongued " the disgraceful truth . Have the reading , the theatrical , public of the time no taste ? Is the popular mind entirely vitiated Y And will the " deaf adder " not listen to the sweet singer , " charm he never so wisely ? " Lot our leaders look to this ; -r-for it is a state of things that ' * is not , and it cannot come to good . " " \ Yhen genius can no longer find its place in a country , " it is not long after" that virtue will also bo found an emigrant , and , like justice from the enrlh , retires to some refuge more congenial to its principles and aspirations , from whence it is not likely to return .

      Mr . Home's Australian Facts are _ of the roughest . Literature has no standing in Melbourne—no chair in its University . Politics alone are the lever by which an educated man can make his thousand a-year—politics , and u robust constitution , with pedestrian energy—not art ,, uor refined speculations on mind , nor elegant productions , whether critical or poetic . Tlu » barrister , with a strong political head nnd body , has n chance . " Special energies , applied to the talents

      which are desiderated , " will avail , soonor or later , in any case . But of classes of men , " small capitalists and small farmers , together with the hewers of wood and drawers of water ( meaning experienced ? iavvies )) stonemasons , bricklayers , find some other mechanics , " have the best prospects . The statements in Mr . Frank Fowler ? lt Southern Lights and Shadows" are not ut nil to ho depended on . . Mr . Horno , certainly , docs not look on tue rosy side of things . Here is dn illustration : —

      " Tlio sums of money publicly announced to have been gained by , or givon to theatrical stars in Sydney and Melbourne , must bo regarded as more managerial and professional putt ' s . We know , in reality , nothing about tho matter , except in casoa oi failure j and then , it socma , on tho contrary , tnoy have made nothing , and paid everything away . ¦* set down , therefore , tho £ 10 , 000 said to havo oeon promised to Mr , Q . V . Brooke , and the other - « lO , ow offered to the conjuror Andoraon , as Bunw of monoy tho real amount of which , privately agreed upon . has been , or will bo , duly paid j but what sucii amounts may actually be , we havo no maims oi knowing . The sum of £ 10 , 000 , just now , seems * ° be a favourite munificence -, »« d as wo hoar it " »» been offerod to Mr . Spurgeon to delivor ft fioriea oi sermons in America , wo should not bo surprised « u

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      13 S 0 THE LEADER , [ No . 507 . Pec . 10 , 1859 ¦•

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 10, 1859, page 1350, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2324/page/18/