CHAPTER IV.
"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep."
—Paradise Lost.
Was I dreaming, or was the vision real, that my eyes beheld? This was the first calm thought that coursed through my brain, after the terror and amazement had subsided. Awe-struck I certainly was, when the beautiful phantom first rose upon my sight, at Castillo; awe-struck once more, when she again appeared, amid the gray old rains of Casa Grande. I have listened very often to the surmises of others, as they detailed what they would do, were a supernatural being to rise up suddenly before them. Some have said, they would gaze deliberately into the face of the phantom, scan its every feature, and coolly note down, for the benefit of others, how long it "walked," and in what manner it faded from the sight. The nerves of these very men trembled while they spoke, and had an apparition burst at that instant into full view, these heroes in imagination would have crouched and hid their faces, their teeth chattering with terror, and their hearts beating their swelling sides, as audibly as the convict hears his own when the hangman draws the black cap over his unrepentant head.
I blame no man for yielding to the dictates of Nature. He is but a fool who feels no fear, and hears not a warning in the wind, observes not a sign in the heavens, and perceives no admonition in the air, when hurricanes are brooding, clouds are gathering, or earthquakes muttering in his ears. The sane mind listens, and thwarts danger by its apprehensions.
The true hero is not the man who knows no fear—for that were idiotic—but he who sees it, and escapes it, or meets it bravely. Was it courage in the elder Pliny to venture so closely to the crater of Vesuvius, whilst in eruption, that he lost his life? How can man make war with the elements, or battle with his God?
There is, in the secret chambers of every human heart, one dark weird cell, over whose portal is inscribed—Mystery. There Superstition sits upon her throne; there Idolatry shapes her monsters, and there Religion reveals her glories. Within that cell, the soul communes with itself most intimately, confesses its midnight cowardice, and in low whispers mutters its dread of the supernatural.
All races, all nations, and all times have felt its influences, oozing like imperceptible dews from the mouth of that dark cavern.
Vishnu heard its deep mutterings in the morning of our race, and they still sound hollow but indistinct, like clods upon a coffin-lid, along the wave of each generation, as it rises and rolls into the past. Plato and Numa and Cicero and Brutus listened to its prophetic cadences, as they fell upon their ears. Mohammed heard them in his cave, Samuel Johnson in his bed. Poets have caught them in the
"Shivering whisper of startled leaves,"
martyrs in the crackling faggots, heroes amid the din of battle.