Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a Philosopher

by Sir Humphry Davy

Amb.—There can be no doubt that the early inhabitants of this city were Grecians and a maritime and commercial people; they have been supposed to belong to the Sybarite race, and the roses producing flowers twice a year in the spring and autumn in ancient times here, might sanction the idea that this balmy spot was chosen by a colony who carried luxury and refinement to the highest pitch.

Onu.—To attempt to form any opinion with respect to the people that anciently inhabited these now deserted plains is useless and a vain labour. In the geological conversation which took place before dinner, some series of interesting facts were presented to us; and the monuments of Nature, though they do not speak a distinct language, yet speak an intelligible one; but with respect to Pæstum, there is neither history nor tradition to guide us; and we shall do wisely to resume

our philosophical inquiries, if we have not already exhausted the patience of our new guest by doubts or objections to his views.

The Stranger.—One of you referred in our conversation this morning to a vision, which had some relation to the subject of our discussion, and I was promised some information on this matter.

I immediately gave a sketch of my vision, and of the opinions which had been expressed by Ambrosio on the early history of man, and the termination of our discussions on religion.

The Stranger.—I agree with Ambrosio in opinion on the subjects you have just mentioned. In my youth, I was a sceptic; and this I believe is usually the case with young persons given to general and discursive reading, and accustomed to adopt something like a mathematical form in their reasonings; and it was in considering the nature of the intellectual faculties of brutes, as compared with those of man, and in examining the nature of instinctive powers, that I became a believer. After I had formed the idea that Revelation was to man in the place of an instinct, my faith constantly became stronger; and it was exalted by many circumstances I had occasion to witness in a journey that I made through Egypt and a part of Asia Minor, and by no one more than by a very remarkable dream which occurred to me in Palestine, and which, as we are now almost at the hour of the siesta, I will relate to you, though perhaps you will be asleep before I have finished it. I was walking along that deserted shore which contains the ruins of Ptolemais, one of the most ancient ports of Judæa. It was evening; the sun was sinking in the sea; I seated myself on a rock,

lost in melancholy contemplations on the destinies of a spot once so famous in the history of man. The calm Mediterranean, bright in the glowing light of the west, was the only object before me. “These waves,” I said to myself, “once bore the ships of the monarch of Jerusalem which were freighted with the riches of the East to adorn and honour the sanctuary of Jehovah; here are now no remains of greatness or of commerce; a few red stones and broken bricks only mark what might have been once a flourishing port, and the citadel above, raised by the Saracens, is filled with Turkish soldiers.” The janissary, who was my guide, and my servant, were preparing some food for me in a tent which had been raised for the purpose, and whilst waiting for their summons to my repast, I continued my reveries, which must gradually have ended in slumber. I saw a man approaching towards me, whom, at first, I took for my janissary, but as he came nearer I found a very different figure. He was a very old man with a beard as white as snow; his countenance was dark but paler than that of an Arab, and his features stern, wild, and with a peculiar savage expression; his form was gigantic, but his arms were withered and there was a large scar on the left side of his face which seemed to have deprived him of an eye. He wore a black turban and black flowing robes, and there was a large chain round his waist which clanked as he moved. It occurred to me that he was one of the santons or sacred madmen so common in the East, and I retired as he approached towards me. He called out: “Fly not, stranger; fear me not, I will not harm you. You shall hear my story, it may be useful to you.” He spoke in Arabic but in a peculiar dialect and to me

new, yet I understood every word. “You see before you,” he said, “a man who was educated a Christian, but who renounced the worship of the one supreme God for the superstitions of the pagans. I became an apostate in the reign of the Emperor Julian, and I was employed by that Sovereign to superintend the re-erection of the temple of Jerusalem, by which it was intended to belie the prophecies and give the deathblow to the holy religion. History has informed you of the result: my assistants were most of them destroyed in a tremendous storm, I was blasted by lightning from heaven (he raised his withered hand to his face and eye), but suffered to live and expiate my crime in the flesh. My life has been spent in constant and severe penance, and in that suffering of the spirit produced by guilt, and is to be continued as long as any part of the temple of Jupiter, in which I renounced my faith, remains in this place. I have lived through fifteen tedious centuries, but I trust in the mercies of Omnipotence, and I hope my atonement is completed. I now stand in the dust of the pagan temple. You have just thrown the last fragment of it over the rock. My time is arrived, I come!” As he spake the last words, he rushed towards the sea, threw himself from the rock and disappeared. I heard no struggling, and saw nothing but a gleam of light from the wave that closed above him. I was now roused by the cries of my servant and of the janissary, who were shaking my arm, and who informed me that my sleep was so sound that they were alarmed for me. When I looked on the sea, there was the same light, and I seemed to see the very spot in the wave where the old man had sunk. I was so struck by the vision, that I asked if they had

not seen something dash into the wave, and if they had not heard somebody speaking to me as they arrived. Of course their answers were negative. In passing through Jerusalem and in coasting the Dead Sea I had been exceedingly struck by the present state of Judæa and the conformity of the fate of the Jewish nation to the predictions of our Saviour; I had likewise been reading Gibbon’s eulogy of Julian, and his account of the attempts made by that Emperor to rebuild the temple: so that the dream at such a time and in such a place was not an unnatural occurrence. Yet it was so vivid, and the image of the subject of it so peculiar, that it long affected my imagination, and whenever I recurred to it, strengthened my faith.

Onu.—I believe all the narratives of apparitions and ghost stories are founded upon dreams of the same kind as that which occurred to you: an ideal representation of events in the local situation, in which the person is at the moment, and when the imaginary picture of the place in sleep exactly coincides with its reality in waking.