Hearts and Altars

Preface

. The Title of this work requires a little explanation. It has, perhaps, rather a con troversial air at first sight ; but the Reader may be assured that he will find no more controversy in these volumes than is going on every day, in the world, between the affections and the conscience ; touched occasionally with just enough of fanaticism to make that which is a com mon-place struggle in reality look very like an exaggeration upon paper. preface. The Title of "Hearts and Altars" has been adopted for no better reason than simply because it is elastic and compre hensive, and applies with sufficient appro priateness to the different trains of narra tive that constitute the substance of the following pages. PHANTOMS AND REALITIES. The following Narrative, now carefully revised and enlarged, was originally pub lished in " Fraser's Magazine ; " and I should have committed it in its present shape to a more deliberate ordeal, without one word of introduction, had not its incidents been interrogated in some quarters, with a certain kind of sceptical curiosity, which it is necessary to set at rest.

I feel bound, consequently, to state that, strange as the circumstances related in this confession, or auto-biography, may appear, they are derived from authentic and well-attested sources. Whether this statement is likely to enhance or diminish their interest with the reader, I cannot tell ; but it will, at least, enable him to exercise his own judgment more satis factorily than if he were left to speculate upon the probability or improbability of a narrative which avowedly contains revelations of a very unusual nature. vm It is proper, also, to observe, that the story was not written with the intention of illustrating or asserting any spiritual theories whatever ; being, so far as such questions are involved, nothing more than a record of singular facts, from which every person is at liberty to draw his own con clusions.

Leaving that which is open to dis cussion in the early part to be dealt with according to the measure of individual sympathies and opinions, the sequel, it is hoped, will be found to convey a moral of some practical value. Tracing the course of a life from its dark beginning in seclusion, and superstition, and the neglect of a healthy education of the faculties, to a manhood destitute of fixed principles, and enslaved by credulity, fear, and waywardness, the design aims at a higher purpose than that of merely awakening a passing excitement over a story of passionate enors. PHANTOMS AND REALITIES. PART THE FIRST Peeing. I. The sapling, green and tender, yields rea dily to wind and sun, and the hand of the trainer ; the grown tree resists the storm, and 'tis well with it if it be not torn up by the roots ; the aged trunk, dried to the core, spreads out its branches and perishes.

This is human life. At first, all wonder and curiosity, we are easily influenced by surrounding circumstances, which often affect our after lives, as colours laid at the root of bulbous plants are said to transmit their tints to the blossom : VOL I. B next comes the age of knowledge, when reason struggles with passion, and is not always the victor ; lastly, the decay, when passion is extinct, and we live from day to day on our memories, and then drop into dust. When I formed the resolution to set down the events that have agitated my life, and marked it out with a strange difference from the lives of other men, I did not antici pate the difficulties that beset my confession on the very threshold. They grew upon me by degrees. The more I reflected, the more reluctance I felt at the thought of writing about things which no man would beheve.

Looking back upon them from the verge of the grave, which cannot now be long untenanted, they seem, even to me, more like fantastic dreams, or wild alle gories, than real occurrences. How, then, can I expect others to accept as true a narrative which contradicts their experience and convictions, and which I cannot explain myself ? I can explain nothing ; I can only relate what has happened to me, careful not to deviate a hair's breadth into exaggeration. It would be little to the purpose to say that fact is stranger than fiction, — an axiom which everybody admits as a loose generality, but which nobody will consent to apply in the instances by which it is illustrated. I can attest, out of my own knowledge, that fact often presents inexplicable phenomena, and is sometimes appa rently irreconcilable with the laws of nature.

But who will credit me, I said, when I narrate such things ? Again and again I approached the subject, and as often recoiled from the execution of my design. It was only by repeated efforts that I summoned up sufficient moral courage to overcome the fear and shame that over whelmed me, from the apprehension that I should be regarded as one who had been himself deceived, or who was practising a deception on others. A patient examination of the motives on which my resolution was founded determined me, however, to brave all such risks, in the belief that they who, exercising their calm judgment, as they have a right to do, might see reason for doubting my veracity, could not fail, upon the whole, to draw a practical moral from my revelations. For the rest, I must appease my own scruples by declaring that I have herein written nothing that is not strictly true, and related exactly as it occurred.

My earliest recollections of my father do not extend to his form or lineaments. I remember nothing of him except his voice, the tone of which fingers as distinctly in my ear to this hour as if I had heard it yester day. It was low and tremulous, and seemed to have a thrill in it of suffering or anger, I know not which. My childhood was passed under the guardianship of my mother, with whom I lived in a solitude which I cannot contemplate even at this distance of time without shuddering. Our house was situated on a lonely moor in the north of England, close upon the bleak border, — a dismal neighbourhood, b savage, cold, and desolate. The mansion was built so far back as the reign of Richard II. , and, with its flanking walls, crumbling on all sides into ruin, and its paved court-yards, covered a considerable area.

Most of the apartments were large and gloomy, and hung with arras, of so great an age, that the colours had grown dim, and the thread in many places appeared to be dropping into powder. Long corridors and low vaulted rooms ran round the quadrangle ; and as the uses for which this huge pile was de signed by its founders had long since passed away, with the bands of retainers and extravagant pomp that distinguished the days of feudal hospitality and royal progresses, only a small part of it was kept up in an inhabit able condition by my mother. Unfortunately for my after life, the part so preserved lay in the very centre of the mansion, approach able only by dark passages, utterly obscure at night, and barely lighted in the daytime by narrow latticed windows, such as we see indented in the thick walls of old fortresses.

To reach the inhabited rooms it was necessary to make many windings, to twine up a short spiral stair that led from the outer court, and to traverse the conidors on two sides of the quadrangle. This was always a fearful thing to me, which use by no means deprived of its terrors. There were many legends whis pered from one to another in the winter nights, of revolting crimes which had taken place there in former times, and which rose re-embodied before me as I cowered past the spots where they were said to have been enacted. The aspect of the dreary building, within and without, by day and night, made it all real. If the moon shone brightly into the passages, strange shadows were dis cernible, flitting across the floor, or creeping up the walls ; and, as I involuntarily glanced through shattered doors and inner case ments, remnants of armour hanging about, and fragments of tapestry fluttering against the windows, and other relics of a " sheeted ancestry," would seem to glide out of the darkness, and fill the open spaces with forms swaying and undulating before my eyes.

I remember how my limbs used to totter under me as I tried not to see these sights, and crept on, stifling the fear that was dis tilling drops of agony over my body by the greater fear of uttering a cry, lest the slightest noise might bring worse horrors round me. I am speaking of my childhood, and children will understand me. Let no man scoff at these terrors. The wisest and bravest have quailed under them. Scepticism may laugh, but it would be more profitably employed in endeavouring to solve the problems which concern the con nexion between the material and the spiritual universe. Why is it that adults, as well as children, are impressed with a certain un easiness in the dark ? Not a fear of ghosts, or robbers, or accidents, or of anything upon which the mind can reason, or of which the senses are cognizant, but a vague consciousness of invisible influences.

In the daylight we have no such sensations ; they belong exclusively to silence and darkness. As a child, I grew up in the awe of these influences, fostered by loneliness and the moody companionship of a wayward woman, who held little intercourse with the outer world, and shut herself up in dreams and superstitions. An incident which occurred at this period helped to give a supernatural turn to many circumstances that were, no doubt, capable of a simple solution. Towards the extremity of a court, to the south of the old pile, there was a chasm in the ground, partly filled up with loose stones and brambles. The whole place was over run with grass and weeds, and the walls and outbuildings that suirounded it were in ruins. I had heard that this spot, wirich gaped so grimly through the tall lank bushes and accumulated rubbish, was formerly the entrance to a series of subterranean gal leries, which had been excavated below the foundations, for the purpose of concealing troops, or stowing away prisoners, in times of trouble ; and that they had been used in that way during the Civil War, when the mansipn stood out a long siege against some of Fairfax's generals.

An irresistible curi osity to explore these galleries seized upon me. I was fascinated by the very fear with which the stories related about them had inspired me. I never could pass that yawning chasm, which, now nearly choked up, was hardly wide enough to admit of the descent of a grown person, without longing to plunge into its depths. I often lingered there in the twilight, when the shadows were falling about, enhancing the terror and the temptation ; and one evening in the autumn I took courage, and, clearing away the brambles with trembling hands, I forced myself down, bringing after me a torrent of stones and earth. Finding my feet at the bottom, and rubbing my eyes, I tried to grope my way onwards. At first there was a dim light at a great distance above me, in a slanting direction, but in an instant afterwards I was in total darkness.

My first impulse was to laugh at the exploit I had achieved ; but as I pattered along, splash ing sometimes in pools of water, and some times knocking my head against the rough stones that jutted out on each side, my mirth deserted me. When I became ac customed to the darkness, I fancied I could discern shapeless figures rising up and vanishing in the gloom — the walls seemed to move out of their places, and to heave to and fro like wrecks in a storm — then they would open, and collapse, and disappear : all was in motion, black and tumultuous, and a surging sound, as of winds and waters lashing and wailing in a confined space, moaned dismally in my ears. Even when I closed my eyes, and pressed my fingers upon them to shut out these sights, they were still -before me. This was, of course, the work of mere fright ; but what followed cannot be so easily accounted for.

While I stood hesitating how I should proceed, — for I had lost my track, and knew not whether I ought to go back wards or forwards, — I heard a distinct rushing sound, quite close to me. It swept past, and all was silent again. It was like a rush of silk or satin, or some fabric which, suddenly crushed, gives out a rustling noise. All the blood in my body gathered into my head ; my eyes emitted fire, as if they had been struck by a cord. A stifling sensation bubbled up to my throat, and I involuntarily uttered a cry, which was echoed from a hundred recesses, and continued at inter vals, reverberating like a succession of shots in the distance. I panted with horror as I grasped the wall and listened. My fear was too great to suffer me to cry out for help. The apprehension of again invoking those dreadful echoes ap palled me ; I hardly breathed, and stood still to listen, I know not how long.

A deathlike silence pervaded the darkness. The soughing of the winds had ceased, or I fancied so, the stillness was so heavy. It may be that my faculties were intent upon that palpable sound I had heard, and could distinguish nothing else. At last I began to move, treading softly, and stopping at intervals to watch and listen. I had scarcely proceeded in this way a dozen paces, when I felt, as plainly as if I saw the object in the broad glare of the sun, a quick motion at my side in a nook or crevice of the wall. It was like the effort of a person to shrink down and escape from me. In an excess of fright and desperation I clutched in the dark with my hands, and caught something — a substance resembling a thick silk palpably filled the palms of both my hands. I held it with the grasp of one who was struggling for life, and tried to speak, but my tongue was dry, and I could not articulate a word : and while I held it, I was conscious the object was moving away — it moved away, and still I thought I held it.

I had not the power to loosen my fingers, which I had a strong impulse to do — and then the silk glided out of them, although they were coiled in it — and the next moment a grasp of muscles, cold and sharp, was on my neck, and pressed into my flesh. I was distraught with terror, and my senses forsook me. When I recovered, I found myself lying on a couch in the great room, my mother sitting at a distance, and an ancient female servant watching over me. This woman was the oldest domestic in the house. She had lived all her life in the family, and had seen two generations into the grave. It was from her lips I had learned most of the traditions that filled my head with such alarm and curiosity ; it was from her I had acquired a know ledge of the subterranean passages in which I had encountered this singular adventure ; and as soon as my mother left the room, I related the whole story to her.

She heard it to the end with a dark expression of anger on her face, which I interpreted into a reproof of my wilfulness and folly in venturing into such places ; and then she questioned me severely as to what I had heard and seen, and what I thought it could have been. Finding that I could give her no satisfactory answers to these questions, she enjoined me to hold my tongue about it, and above all things not to speak of it to my mother. She rated me soundly for saying that I firmly believed I had caught something like a woman's dress in my hands ; and she made me feel her old stuff gown, that I might assure myself it was no such texture as that. " How could I be so silly as to suppose that a woman, or even a man, would hide in vaults and passages that had not been opened for hundreds of years ?

What could I imagine they were doing there ? It was more likely that rats, and toads, and bats were to be found there than human beings :" and a great deal more to the like effect, as if she wanted to im press upon me that it was altogether the fancy of a distempered brain, and no reality. Yet, in spite of everything she said, niy conviction remained unaltered. I could not be deceived in a fact so clearly attested by my own sensations. But the mystery was never cleared up ; and I brooded over it in secret so perversely, that it exercised a blighting influence for a long time upon my imagination. Many years afterwards a suspicion crossed my mind, that this woman knew more about the matter than she cared to acknowledge. It was she who carried me into the house, having discovered me, as she stated, lying insensible in the court yard ; but I had no recollection of having found my way out into the air — a circumstance which at the time did not present itself to me in the light in which I am disposed to regard it now.

Nor should I, perhaps, have been led to suspect her of duplicity, had she not acted with ingrati tude at a time when sorrow and misfortune had fallen upon the house that had nur tured her from infancy. My mother had no companion. Even the servants lived apart, and performed their allotted offices at hours when she was not present ; so that our table was laid and our wants supplied, for the most part, by unseen hands. Such was my mother's way of life. Solitude and early griefs had fallen heavily upon her spirits, and fretted her temper. She rarely ex changed words with the servants, and never except upon unavoidable occasions. A spoken language was almost interdicted amongst us, and in its place the language of books was substituted. We dwelt in a world of our own, in which the unreal was invested with a living interest.

Conversa tion wearied her; she had no sympathy with the actual life around her, and had long closed her heart against it. But the charm of books was ever fresh and inex haustible. She possessed, in a higher degree than any person I ever knew, the power of realizing their contents. Por traits stepped out of them, and became as familiar to her as if they moved about her bodily in the flesh. This daily inter course with the creations of the brain fed her morbid desire for seclusion, and was cultivated with an earnestness that proved fatal at last. Her taste lay entirely in one direction ; the marvellous and extravagant alone in terested her. She prohibited all works that treated of real life, and sought for the excitement she loved in the region of wonder and romance. Her library (a room of which I will speak more parti cularly presently) was filled with histories of sorcery and enchantment — of miraculous escapes and perils — providential inter positions — dreams, omens, and spectral appearances — astrology and witchcraft — — churchyard legends, and the superstitions which ascribe a mysterious power to spells, charms, and incantations — traditions of giants and monsters — feats of the genii and evil spirits, and narratives that em braced the whole round of that curious lore which relates to the alchemists and diviners.

These books were the delight and occu pation of her life ; and when her eyes latterly began to grow dim with age, it was my task to read them aloud to her. At first, I revolted from this labour ; it hung drearily upon me, and sickened me. Youth is naturally mutinous under confine ment, and yearns for activity and freedom. But it was surprising how soon I fell into her tastes, and found myself kindling, as she used to do, over the horrors these terrible books unfolded. And they had no sooner thus taken possession of me, than I began to believe in them as she did; and with belief, or the awe which is so closely allied to it, my eagerness to penetrate further and further grew into an irresistible pas sion. Many a time in the bleak autumn nights, when the sharp winds snapped the leaves from the trees, and drifted their crisp spoils against the windows, have I sat gasping over some hideous tale, to which, by an involuntary association of ideas, the desolation of the season im parted additional terrors.

I was wrought upon by that sort of fascination which resides in the eyes of the snake, when it fixes its gaze upon the face of a child. Children who have been brought up in a healthy collision with the world know nothing of the state of fear and mental slavery I am describing. A little judi cious counsel would have dispelled these delusions; a little timely explanation would have shown me their absurdity. But where was I to seek it ? In my iso lation I had not a single adviser. I took all I read for granted. The book could not dissipate the chaos of doubts and importunities of struggling reason it generated ; it was dumb, and could not answer my questions. If I appealed to my mother, she was chafed at the interrup tion and the heresy, and commanded me to read on. At last I doubted no longer.

Wonder after wonder swept away my feeble judgment. I believed in a spiritual kingdom — in the return of the dead to the earth — in the power of prophecy and the agency of demons — in second sight and the elixir vitæ — in amulets and miraculous invocations ; the crystal mirror of Cornelius Agrippa, the witches of the Brocken, the Flying Dutchman, the Wan dering Jew, were all realities to me. The ignorant alone believe in such things ; but in this ignorance consisted all the know ledge that was thrown open to me. The library was at some distance from the inhabited part of the house. It was an oblong room, with deep recesses, in vol. i. c which stood the old oak bookcases. If we had had the power of selecting a theatre for the performance of the legends which were read aloud here every night, we could not have found one better adapted to the purpose.

The apartment was large and gloomy ; and the tapestried walls, the ponderous draperies, the po lished floor, the painted ceiling, the high backed chairs, and the vast fireplace, with its carved mantelshelf, supplied the very style of scene and furniture best adapted to give a striking effect to tales of crime and enchantment. Except close to the fire, and round the table on which we placed our lights, the library, from its height and extent, was buried in deep shadow ; so that there was nothing wanted to help the imagination to a fitting locality for all kinds of mysteries. I shall never forget my mother's emotions on one occasion when I read to her, in this room, an account of some man who kept watch through a whole night in a haunted chamber, and was never heard of afterwards. She fancied that the tapestry moved, and called upon me to observe it.

I did so, and fancied I saw it too. Twice she grasped my arm, and bade me cease ; and, looking shudderingly round, she twice desired me to listen, and tell her if I did not hear a foot-fall passing along the extremity of the apartment in the dark with solemn regularity. I heard something — it was like the slow tread of a sentinel. It was in that room, which cast its gloom over every page, blotting out its lines of sunshine wherever any happened to fall, that I read the Decameron. The groups in the garden — radiant, joyous, and in wrapt attitudes of expectation and attention — were distinctly present to me, but darkened by immediate associations. Sorrow and anguish seemed to sit in their faces ; there was no flush of emotion, no lightning in the eyes, no intensity in the cleft lips, no streaming hair, or burning c -> cheeks, or startled gestures.

All was cold, as if it were cut in marble. That pallid circle of listeners, disposed in such picturesque forms, seemed to me to be lying in a trance, so completely did the miserable influence of that room kill the gaiety of all objects, and leave nothing but the skeleton behind. We were never at a loss for excitement of this kind, which appeared, indeed, the only thing for which we lived. Our pursuits were intemipted for a time by the serious illness of my mother ; but her ir ritable temperament rendered her impatient of sickness, and before the signs of the malady had passed out from her stricken frame she insisted upon returning to her nightly vigils. Night after night she continued at her dangerous indulgence, while her eyes were visibly contracting a dull film, her cheeks wasting and falling in, and her pulse grow ing fainter and fainter.

It was not a sight for a son to look upon, and tend with idle fancies and the levities of fable. I felt this and remonstrated, and the agonising reality before me awakened me for a moment to the vanities of books. But she persisted in her demand, and still preserved her listening posture, although the sense of hearing and the faculty of attention were sinking rapidly. Some weeks had been consumed in this way, when one winter night she desired me to read a certain history from a favourite volume of old legends. The his tory she selected was that of a supernatural appearance that was alleged to have followed a gentleman of Verona with the fidelity of a shadow. The history set forth the arts and devices by which he endeavoured to perplex and evade it — how he went into dark and lonely places, and how still his spectral companion stood at his side — how he rushed into crowded scenes, forcing his way violently through the mass, in the hope that he might thus escape ; but no matter how dense the multitude, HEARTS AND ALTARS. or by what stratagems and confederacy the gentleman sought to bury himself out of sight, the apparition in its human shape was ever standing or moving close beside him.

The strangest thing was that it bore an unnatural likeness to him, not only in its face and form, but in its actions, which were always so faithfully and so instan taneously copied after him that they resembled a reflection in a mirror. He tried the most painful and sudden con tortions, only to see them re-produced with a rapidity that mocked his despair. The history went on to say how he in vented various schemes and underwent many fearful trials of sorcery, in the hope of banishing or subduing his horrid fa miliar, but all in vain, for the fiend baf fled all his efforts, and was still found at his side, day and night, whether he rode or walked, or threw himself on his couch for repose — how he summoned courage to speak to it at last, and was answered by the echoes of his own voice — how he swam floods with the ghastly thing floating along with him on the surge — how he climbed the highest hills and fled into savage caverns, the familiar still toiling or grovelling beside him — how, in a fit of madness, he tried to grapple it on the edge of a precipice with the desperate intent of dragging it down with him into the abyss below, and how the shape wrought in the straggle, impalpable to the touch but visible to the sight, like painted air — how, after enduring horrible tortures, the man wasted away, and be came a mere shadow, the spirit waning and fading in like manner — and how the priests of a holy order in the solitudes of the Apennines, hearing of these strange events, bethought them of shriving the man, and expelling the incarnate devil that had worked such inexplicable misery upon him.

The history next went on to relate how the monks found the man so weak and emaciated that he could scarcely take food HEARTS AND ALTARS. or answer their questions ; and how they had him conveyed to their chapel at midnight amid the glare of torches and the chants of the holy brotherhood, the im perishable fiend lying stretched by his side in the litter, in open spite of the holy water with which they had sprinkled it, and of the care with which they had caused it to be made so small that it was thought impossible for him to find room upon it ; and how when the wretched man was brought to the altar, they placed him up right before it, and began to pray, the fiend all the while being in his usual place next to his mortal fellow ; and how as the prayers proceeded and the voices of the assembled priests, of whom numbers had collected from distant places to witness the scene, ascended to the roof, filling the sanctuary with solemn and blessed music, the man turned a look of deathly fear and gazed into the eyes of the spirit, the spirit giving back the look with the same thrilling and awful expression ; and how sufferer, when the venerable abbot came to the benediction, and offered to place his hands upon his head, sank gra dually down, the fiend sinking with him ; and how, as the last word was uttered, they vanished together into the earth, and on the instant the torches were extin guished as by a sudden gust of wind.