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    April 5, 1856.] THE LEADER. 339

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    Hours With The Mystics. Hours With The M...

    all tie 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 this 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 and 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 may be , iu a direction opposite . To distinguishbetween 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 curiosity which 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 Mystics found God within tlem 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 tie 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 the course of his volumes he treats of early Oriental Mysticism ., the Neoplatonic Mystics , Mysticism in tlie Greek and Latin Churches , German Mysticism in the fourteenth century , Persian Mysticism in the Middle Ages , Theosophy at the Reformation , the Spanish Mystics , Quietism , Mysticism in England , and Swedenborg . N " , 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 ? have 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 tlie 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 justificatives which the curious reader only will consult . The book is in conversations ^—wh ich 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 " paper " read aloud by one of the company . It is our conviction that a graver form would have made the book more popular . Mr . Vauglian need not have feared lest he should have become dull by becoming orderly and circumstantial . His conversations have the defect of being fragmentary , and unsatisfactory in exciting a curiosity about the Mystics , rather than , in making us feel we know 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 , wliether Romanist or Protestant , Jew , Tux-k , or Infidel . It is more or less determined by 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 ia individual or social history . And a developmental view of his subject was not possible ; yet lie 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 we care to know . His final verdict on Mysticism 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 idiosyncrasy -which , is so despised . Its philosophy of the universe subsides into a morbid psychology . Haying 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 AN"D THE ELAOELLANT .-J . In the year 1848 that terrible contagion , known as the Black Death , which journeyed from the East to devastate the wholo of Europe , appeared at Strasburg . Everywhere famine , floods , the inversion of tho seasons , strange appearances in the sky , had been itts proouraors . In tho Mediterranean Sea , as afterwards in the Baltic , ships were descried drifting naasterless , filled only by plague-stricken corpses . ISvery man dreaded , not merely the touch and tho breath of his neighbour , but his vory eye , so subtile and bo swift scorned tho infection . In many parts of Franco it waa computed that only two out of every twenty inhabitants were left alive . In Strasburg sixteen thousand perishod ; in Avignon sixty thousand . In Paris , at one time , foux * or five hunclred wero dying in a day . In that city , in tho midst of n demoralisation and a selfish horror like that Thuoydidoa has painted , tho Sisters of Meroy was Boon tending tho auffor > ors who crowded tho Hotel Dion ; and as death thinned their martyr-ranks , numbers more woro ready to fill tho sumo oflicQ of perilous compassion . PuusnniaB anya that in Athons alone out of all Groace there was raisod an altar to naeroy . But it waH an altar almost without a ministry . Heathendom , afc its best , might glory iu tho shrine ; Christianity , at its worst , could furnish tho priesthood , Iu Stm-iburg Tauter laboured foarloesly , with Thomas and Ludolph , among tho pamo-Btriokon people—doubly cursed "by tho Interdict and by tho plague , dreat tiros of vmo-wood , wormwood , nnd laurel woro kept burning in the equaroa » nd market nlnoes to purify tho air , lighting up tho carved work of tho dosortod towntaall , and flickering aalaut the overhanging gabloa of tho narrow orookod streets and the empty tradesmen ' s stalls . Tlio village was ravaged us fatally as the town . A ho herds grow wild in tho fields of tlie dead peasants , or cliod straugoly

    themselves—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 invocations , only at last to perish in their turn . Even the monks had lost their love for gold , siuce every gift was deadl y- In vain did trembling men carry their hoards to the monastery or the church . Every gats was barred , and the wealthy might be seen tossing their bags of bezants over the convent walls . In the outskirts of towns and cities , huge pita vreve 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 ware cast out afc Avignon , from , the quays and pleasant gardens by the water-side , to be swept by the rapid stream under the silent bridges , past the forgotten ships and forsaken fields and mourning towns , livid and wasting , out into the sea .

    In a frenzy of terror and revenge the people fell upon the miserable Jewsfc They were accused of poisoning the wells , and every hearfe wa 3 steeled agains them . Fear seemed to render all classes more ferocious , and the man who might sicken and die to-morrow found a wretched compensation , in inflicting death today on the imagined authors of his danger . Toledo was 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 rtuimtny of an egg . The deposition of the Jews arrested at Neustadt was sent by the castellan of ChOlon to Strasburg . Bishops , noblea , and chief citizens held a diet at Binnefield in Alsace , to concert measures of persecution . The deputies of Strasburg , to their honour belt spoken , declared that nothing had been proved against the Jews . Their bishop was the most pitiless advocate of massacre . 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 power could stem , the torrent . The people had tasted blood ; the priest had no mercy for the murderers of the Lord ; th . e baron had debts easily discharged by the death of his creditor . At Strasburg , a monster scaffold was erected hi 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 enipty wine casks , and trundled into the Rhine . When the rage for slaughter had subsided , hands , red with Hebrew blood , were pkmsly employed in building belfries and repairing churches with Jewish tombstones and the materials of Jewish houses . ¦

    The gloomy spirit of the time found fit expression in the fanaticism of the Flagellants . Similar troops of devotees had in 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 1849 that they appeai-ed in Strasburg . All the bells rang out as two hundred of them , following two and two many costly banners and tapers , entered the city , singing strange hymns . The citizens vied -with each other in opening to them their doora and seating them at their tables . More than a thousand j oined their ranis . 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 unasied . ht with

    migspeak 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 tvos precluded from * " the secret council . The scourging took place twice 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 fiugers ; the adulterer on his lace . The master then passed round , applying his 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 . The ceremony closed with the reading of a letter , said to have been brought by an angel from heaven , enjoining their practice , after which they returned homo in 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 . The pretended letter was reverenced as another gospeland the

    Flagel-, lant was already believed before the priest . The clergy grow anxious as they saw the enthusiasm spreading on every side . But the unnatural furor could not last ; its own extravagance prepared its downfall . Au attempt made by some Flagellants iu Strasburg to bring * a dead child to life was fatal to their credit . Tho Emperor , the Pope , and the prelates took measures against them simultaneously , iu Germany , in Franco , in Sicily , and in tho East . The pilgrimage of the scourge was to have lasted four-and-thirty years . Six : mouths sufficed to diagust men with the folly , to see their angelic letter laughed to scorn , their processions denounced , their oxdor scattered . . *

    TUc extract is long , but we could not bring ourselves to abridge it . Of his illustrations take this : —

    A 1 PIHM YET I'WANT CIIA . KAOTER . Meu of his spooios roBoinblo fountains , whoso water-oolums a sudden gust of wind may drive aslant , or scatter in Bpray across the lawn , but—tho violence one © past—they play upward as truly and as strong as over . Again : — THE STRUCK ) LIE OF DEIfUNO'P SYSTEMS . Atiikuton . The struggles of hoathendom to escapo ita doom only the more din " play its weakness and tho justice of tho sentence . Gtowisn . Like tho man in tho Oesta JRomanoi-um , who came to tho gate whor ^ ovory humpbacked , ono-oyocl , scald-headed passenger had to pay a penny for each infirmity : thoy woro going only to demand toll for hia huuoh , but ho resisted , and iu tho struggle waa discovered to bo amenable for ovory deformity and diaoatto upon tho tablo . So , no doubt , it must always bo with Bystema , stAtcu , men , and dogn , thnt won ' t know when thoy have hooT thoir day . Tho souffle mnkeu ead work with tho patched clothes , false tooth , wig , and cosmetics .

    April 5, 1856.] The Leader. 339

    April 5 , 1856 . ] THE LEADER . 339

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 5, 1856, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05041856/page/17/