"Softened all and tempered into beauty;
And blended with lone thoughts and wanderings,
The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind
To love the universe."
Such beings do not come before the world, but hide their lights, knowing well that their magic would defeat itself, and perish if it were made common. Any person of the average worldly cast who could work any miracles, however small, would in the end bitterly regret it if he allowed it to be known. Thus I have read ingenious stories, as for instance one by HOOD, showing what terrible troubles a man fell into by being able to make himself invisible. Also another setting forth the miseries of a successful alchemist. The Algonkin Indians have a legend of a man who came to grief and death through his power of making all girls love him. But the magic of which I speak is of a far more subtle and deeply refined nature, and those who possess it are alone in life, save when by some rare chance they meet their kind. Those who are deeply and mysteriously interested in any pursuit for which the great multitude of all-alike people have no sympathy, who have peculiar studies and subjects of thought, partake a little of the nature of the magus. Magic, as popularly understood, has no existence, it is a literal myth—for it means nothing but what amazes or amuses for a short time. No miracle would be one if it became common. Nature is infinite, therefore its laws cannot be violated— ergo, there is no magic if we mean by that an inexplicable contravention of law.
But that there are minds who have simply advanced in knowledge beyond the multitude in certain things which cannot at once be made common property is true, for there is a great deal of marvelous truth not as yet dreamed of even by HERBERT SPENCERS or EDISONS, by RONTGENS or other scientists. And yet herein is hidden the greatest secret of future human happenings.
"What I was is passed by,
What I am away doth fly;
What I shall be none do see,
Yet in that my glories be."
Now to illustrate this more clearly. Some of these persons who are more or less secretly addicted to magic (I say secretly, because they cannot make it known if they would), take the direction of feeling or living with inexpressible enjoyment in the beauties of nature. That, they attain to something almost or quite equal to life in Fairyland, is conclusively proved by the fact that only very rarely, here and there in their best passages, do the greatest poets more than imperfectly and briefly convey some broken idea or reflection of the feelings which are excited by thousands of subjects in nature in many. The Mariana of TENNYSON surpasses anything known to me in any language as conveying the reality of feeling alone in a silent old house, where everything is a dim, uncanny manner, recalled the past—yet suggested a kind of mysterious presence—as in the passage:
"All day within the dreary house
The doors upon their hinges creaked,
The blue fly sang in the pane, the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked,
Or from the crevice peered about;
Old faces glimmered thro' the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without."
Yet even this unsurpassed poem does no more than partially revive and recall the reality to me of similar memories of long, long ago, when an invalid child I was often left in a house entirely alone, from which even the servants had absented themselves. Then I can remember how after reading the Arabian Nights or some such unearthly romance, as was the mode in the Thirties, the very sunshine stealing craftily and silently like a living thing, in a bar through the shutter, twinkling with dust, as with infinitely small stars, living and dying like sparks, the buzzing of the flies who were little blue imps, with now and then a larger Beelzebub—a strange imagined voice ever about, which seemed to say something without words—and the very furniture, wherein the chairs were as goblins, and the broom a tall young woman, and the looking-glass a kind of other self-life—all of this as I recall it appears to me as a picture of the absence of human beings as described by TENNYSON, plus a strange personality in every object—which the poet does not attempt to convey. This is, however, a very small or inferior illustration; there are far more remarkable and deeply spiritual or æsthetically-suggestive subjects than this, and that in abundance, which Art has indeed so reproduced as to amaze the many who have only had snatches of such observation themselves.
But the magicians, SHELLEY, or KEATS, or WORDSWORTH, only convey partial echoes of certain subjects, or of their specialties. It is indeed beautiful to feel what Art can do, but the original is worth far more. And if the reader would be such a magician, let him give his heart and will to taking an interest in all that is beautiful, good and true—or honest. For that it really can be done in all fullness is true beyond a dream of doubt. By the ordinary methods of learning one may indeed acquire an exact, mechanically drawn picture, which we modify with what beauty chance bestows. But he who will learn by the process which I have endeavored to describe, or by studying with the will, cannot fail to experience a strange enchantment in so doing, as I have read in an Italian tale of a youth who was sadly weary of his lessons, but who, being taken daily by certain kind fairies into their school on a hill, found all difficulties disappear and the pursuit of knowledge as joyful as that of pleasure.
I have heard hypnotism, with regard to fascination, spoken of with great apprehension. "It is dreadful," said one to me, "to think of anybody's being able to exercise such an influence on anyone." And yet, widely known as it is, instances of its abuse are very rare. Thus, when Cremation was first discussed, it was warmly opposed, because somebody might be poisoned, and then, the body being burned, there could be no autopsy! Nature has decreed some drawback to the best things; nothing is perfect. But to balance the immense benefits latent in suggestion against the problematic abuses is like condemning the ship because a bucket of tar has been spilt on the deck.
Sincere kindness and respect, which are allied unto identity, are the best or surest key to love, and they in turn are allied to fascination. Here I might observe that the action of the eye, which is a silent speech of emotion, has always been regarded as powerful in fascination, but those who are not by nature gifted with it cannot use it to much good purpose. That emotional, susceptible subjects ready to receive suggestion can be put to sleep or made to imagine anything terrible regarding anybody's glance is very true, just as an ignorant Italian will believe of any man that he has the malocchio if he be told so, whence came the idea that Pope Gregory XVI had the evil eye. But where there is sincere kindly feeling it makes itself felt in a sympathetic nature by what is popularly called magic, only because it is not understood. The enchantment lies in this, that unconscious cerebration, or the power (or powers), who are always acting in us, effect many curious and very subtle mental phenomena, all of which they do not confide to the common-sense waking judgment or Reason, simply because the latter is almost entirely occupied with common worldly subjects. It is as if someone whose whole attention and interest had been at all times given to some plain hard drudgery, should be called on to review or write a book of exquisitely subtle poetry. It is, indeed, almost sadly touching to reflect how this innocent and beautiful faculty of recognizing what is good, is really acting perhaps in evil and merely worldly minds all in vain, and all unknown to them. The more the conscious waking-judgment has been trained to recognize goodness, the more will the hidden water-fairies rise above the surface, as it were, to the sunshine. So it comes that true kindly feeling is recognized by sympathy, and those who would be loved, cannot do better than make themselves truly and perfectly kind by forethought and will, and with this the process of self-hypnotism will be a great aid. For it is not more by winning others to us, than in willing ourselves to them that true Love consists.