Part 6

Maria Renata took the veil at nineteen years of age, against her inclination, having previously been initiated in the mysteries of witchcraft, which she continued to practise for fifty years under the cloak of punctual attendance to discipline and pretended piety. She was long in the station of sub-prioress, and would, for her capacity, have been promoted to the rank of prioress, had she not betrayed a certain discontent with the ecclesiastic life, a certain contrariety to her superiors, something half expressed only of inward dissatisfaction. Renata had not ventured to let any one about the convent into her confidence, and she remained free from suspicion, notwithstanding that, from time to time, some of the nuns, either from the herbs she mixed with their food, or through sympathy, had strange seizures, of which some died. Renata became at length extravagant and unguarded in her witch propensities, partly from long security, partly from desire of stronger excitement; made noises in the dormitory, and uttered shrieks in the garden; went at nights into the cells of the nuns to pinch and torment them, to assist her in which she kept a considerable supply of cats. The removal of the keys of the cells counteracted this annoyance; but a still more efficient means was a determined blow on the part of a nun, struck at the aggressor with the penitential scourge one night, on the morning following which Renata was observed to have a black eye and cut face. This event awakened suspicion against Renata. Then, one of the nuns, who was much esteemed, declared, believing herself upon her death-bed, that, "as she shortly expected to stand before her Maker, Renata was uncanny, that she had often at nights been visibly tormented by her, and that she warned her to desist from this course." General alarm arose, and apprehension of Renata's arts; and one of the nuns, who previously had had fits, now became possessed, and in the paroxysms told the wildest tales against Renata. It is only wonderful how the sub-prioress contrived to keep her ground many years against these suspicions and incriminations. She adroitly put aside the insinuations of the nun as imaginary or of calumnious intention, and treated witchcraft and possession of the Devil as things which enlightened people no longer believed in. As, however, five more of the nuns, either taking the infection from the first, or influenced by the arts of Renata, became possessed of devils, and unanimously attacked Renata, the superiors could no longer avoid making a serious investigation of the charges. Renata was confined in a cell alone, whereupon the six devils screeched in chorus at being deprived of their friend. She had begged to be allowed to take her papers with her; but this being refused, and thinking herself detected, she at once avowed to her confessor and the superiors, that she was a witch, had learned witchcraft out of the convent, and had bewitched the six nuns. They determined to keep the matter secret, and to attempt the conversion of Renata. And as the nuns still continued possessed, they despatched her to a remote convent. Here, under a show of outward piety, she still went on with her attempts to realise witchcraft, and the nuns remained possessed. It was decided at length to give Renata over to the civil power. She was accordingly condemned to be burned alive; but in mitigation of punishment her head was first struck off. Four of the possessed nuns gradually recovered with clerical assistance; the other two remained deranged. Renata was executed on the 21st January 1749.

Renata stated, in her voluntary confession, that she had often at night been carried bodily to witch-Sabbaths; in one of which she was first presented to the Prince of Darkness, when she abjured God and the Virgin at the same time. Her name, with the alteration of Maria into Emma, was written in a black book, and she herself was stamped on the back as the Devil's property, in return for which she received the promise of seventy years of life, and all she might wish for. She stated that she had often, at night, gone into the cellar of the _chateau_ and drank the best wine; in the shape of a swine had walked on the convent walls; on the bridge had milked the cows as they passed over; and several times had mingled with the actors in the theatre in London.

A question unavoidably presents itself--How came witchcraft to be in so great a degree the province of women? There existed sorcerers, no doubt, but they were comparatively few. Persons of either sex and of all ages indiscriminately interested themselves in the black art; but the professors and regular practitioners were almost exclusively women, and principally old women. The following seem to have been some of the causes. Women were confined to household toils; their minds had not adequate occupation: many young unmarried women, without duties, would lack objects of sufficient interest for their yearnings; many of the old ones, despised, ill treated probably, soured with the world, rendered spiteful and vindictive, took even more readily to a resource which roused and gave employment to their imaginations, and promised to gratify their wishes. It is evident, too, that the supposed sex of the Devil helped him here. The old women had an idea of making much of him, and of coaxing, and getting round the black gentleman. But beside all this, there lies in the physical temperament of the other sex a peculiar susceptibility of derangement of the nervous system, a predisposition to all the varieties of trance, with its prolific sources of mental illusion--all tending, it is to be observed, to advance the belief and enlarge the pretensions of witchcraft.

The form of trance which specially dominated in witchcraft was trance-sleep with visions. The graduates and candidates in the faculty sought to fall into trances, in the dreams of which they realised their waking aspirations. They entertained no doubt, however, that their visits to the Devil and their nocturnal exploits were genuine; and they seem to have wilfully shut their eyes to the possibility of their having never left their beds. For, with a skill that should have betrayed to them the truth, they were used to prepare a witch-broth to promote in some way their nightly expeditions. And this they composed not only of materials calculated to prick on the imagination, but of substantial narcotics, too--the medical effects of which they no doubt were acquainted with. They contemplated evidently producing a sort of stupor.

The professors of witchcraft had thus made the singular step of artificially producing a sort of trance, with the object of availing themselves of one of its attendant phenomena. The Thamans in Siberia do the like to this day to obtain the gift of prophecy. And it is more than probable that the Egyptian and Delphic priest habitually availed themselves of some analogous procedure. Modern mesmerism is in part an effort in the same direction.

Without at all comprehending the real character of the power called into play, mankind seems to have found out by a "mera palpatio," by instinctive experiment and lucky groping in the dark, that in the stupor of trance the mind occasionally stumbles upon odds and ends of strange knowledge and prescience. The phenomenon was never for an instant suspected of lying in the order of nature. It was construed, to suit the occasion and the times, either into divine inspiration or diabolic whisperings. But it was always supernatural. So the ignorant old lemon-seller in Zschokke's Selbstschau thought his "hidden wisdom" a mystical wonder; while the enlightened and accomplished narrator of their united stories, stands alone, in striking advance ever of his own day, when he unassumingly and diffidently puts forward his seer-gift as _a simple contribution to psychical knowledge_. And thus, my proposed task accomplished, my dear Archy, finally yours, &c.

MAC DAVUS.

THE HYMN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT.

ALTERED FROM THE ICELANDIC.

Swend, king of all, In Olaf's hall Now sits in state on high; Whilst up in heaven Amidst the shriven Sits Olaf's majesty. For not in cell Does our hero dwell, But in realms of light for ever: As a ransom'd saint To heal our plaint, Be glory to thee, gold-giver!

Of raptures there He has won his share, All cleansed from taint of sin; For on earth prepared, No toil he spared That holy place to win. That he hath won Near God's dear Son Fast by the holy river-- Oh, such as thine May the end be mine; Be glory to thee, gold-giver!

His sacred form Unscathed by worm, And clear as the hour he died, Lies at this day Where good men pray At morn and at eventide. His nails and his hair Are fresh and fair, With his yellow locks still growing; His cheek as red, And his flesh not dead, Though the blood hath ceased from flowing.

If you watch by night, In the dim twilight You may hear a requiem singing; And the people hear Above his bier A small bell clearly ringing. And if ye wait Until midnight late, You may hear the great bell toll: But none can tell Who tolls that bell If it sounds for Olaf's soul. With tapers clear, Which Christ holds dear, O'er the corpse so still reclining, By day and night Is the altar light And the cross of the Saviour shining. For our King did so, And all men know That washed from sin and shriven, All free from taint, A ransom'd saint, He dwells with the saints in heaven.

And thousands come, The deaf and the dumb, To the tomb of our monarch here-- The sick and the blind Of every kind They throng to the holy bier. With heads all bare They breathe their prayer As they kneel on the flinty ground: God hears their sighs, And the sick men rise All whole, and healed, and sound.

Then to Olaf pray, To spare thy day From wrath, and wrong, and harm; To save thy land From the spoiler's hand, And the fell invader's arm. God's man is he, To deal to thee What is ask'd in a lowly spirit-- Let thy prayer not cease, And wealth, and peace, And a blessing thou shalt inherit.

For prayers are good, If before the rood Thy beads thou tellest praying; If thou tellest on, Forgetting none Of the saints who with God are staying.

W. E. A.

FOUR SONNETS BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

TWO SKETCHES.

I.

The shadow of her face upon the wall May take your memory to the perfect Greek; But when you front her, you would call the cheek Too full, sir, for your models, if withal That bloom it wears could leave you critical, And that smile reaching toward the rosy streak:-- For one who smiles so, has no need to speak, To lead your thoughts along, as steed to stall! A smile that turns the sunny side o' the heart On all the world, as if herself did win By what she lavished on an open mart:-- Let no man call the liberal sweetness, sin,-- While friends may whisper, as they stand apart, "Methinks there's still some warmer place within."

II.

Her azure eyes, dark lashes hold in fee: Her fair superfluous ringlets, without check, Drop after one another down her neck; As many to each cheek as you might see Green leaves to a wild rose! This sign, outwardly, And a like woman-covering seems to deck Her inner nature! For she will not fleck World's sunshine with a finger. Sympathy Must call her in Love's name! and then, I know, She rises up, and brightens, as she should, And lights her smile for comfort, and is slow In nothing of high-hearted fortitude. To smell this flower, come near it; such can grow In that sole garden where Christ's brow dropped blood.

MOUNTAINEER AND POET.

The simple goatherd who treads places high, Beholding there his shadow (it is wist) Dilated to a giant's on the mist, Esteems not his own stature larger by The apparent image; but more patiently Strikes his staff down beneath his clenching fist-- While the snow-mountains lift their amethyst And sapphire crowns of splendour, far and nigh, Into the air around him. Learn from hence Meek morals, all ye poets that pursue Your way still onward up to eminence! Ye are not great, because creation drew Large revelations round your earliest sense, Nor bright, because God's glory shines for you.

THE POET.

The poet hath the child's sight in his breast, And sees all _new_. What oftenest he has viewed, He views with the first glory. Fair and good Pall never on him, at the fairest, best, But stand before him, holy, and undressed In week-day false conventions; such as would Drag other men down from the altitude Of primal types, too early dispossessed. Why, God would tire of all his heavens as soon As thou, O childlike, godlike poet! did'st Of daily and nightly sights of sun and moon! And therefore hath He set thee in the midst Where men may hear thy wonder's ceaseless tune, And praise His world for ever as thou bidst.

CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE DECLINING OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.

(BEING A FEW PAGES FROM MY EASTERN DIARY).

----At half-past seven in the evening, we left Smyrna by the Scamandre, a French government steamer, and were soon gliding over a sea smooth as glass. The soft tints of the twilight spread gradually around us, and to a beautiful day there succeeded one of those marvellous nights, during which one cannot bring one's-self to the determination of retiring to rest.

The dawn of day surprised me on deck. In the morning we neared the land, which presented to our view a desert plain, covered with dwarf oak. This was the site of ancient Troy; we were coasting near those famous fields, _ubi Troja fuit_; that stream which was throwing itself before our eyes into the sea, was formerly called the "Simois;" those two hillocks which we saw upon the coast, were the tombs of Hector and Patroclus; that huge blue mountain which in the distance raised towards the sky its three peaks covered with snow, was Ida; and behind us, from the midst of the sparkling waves, rose the island of Tenedos. All conversation between the passengers from many nations had long since ceased, and I contemplated in silence that grim desert, which, at Eton, I had dreamed of as full of movement and sound, and that calm sea which I had so often figured to myself as covered with the ships of Agamemnon, of Ulysses, and of Achilles the

"Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer."

At mid-day we entered the Dardanelles, and several hours afterwards, we cast anchor between Sestos and Abydos, before a small white town, containing no remarkable objects. Sestos and Abydos, which it must be owned would not be by any means celebrated, were it not for the enterprises which cost Leander his life and Lord Byron an ague, are two hamlets, which, like the greater portion of Turkish villages, offer in no shape whatever what it is the fashion to term the Oriental type. They are composed of an assemblage of rose-coloured houses, whose large red roofs, seen through the verdure and flowers, call to one's mind the description of a Chinese village.

Upon its arrival, the Scamandre was immediately surrounded by a multitude of caicks filled with bearded Turks, veiled women, and various coloured bales. Upon deck rose a deafening Babel of voices,--the sailors swore, the women screamed, and the porters fought, until at length quiet was restored, and one hundred and eighty-six new Mussulman passengers came on board the steamer. Amid the caicks ranged along the sides of the vessel, was one much more richly freighted than the rest; the traveller to whom it belonged was a young Arab, who, standing on a pile of bales, domineered over his boatmen by several feet. His white garments set off to advantage his dark complexion; and a cloak of black wool, profusely embroidered with gold lace, drew upon him the eyes of all. I had seldom, if ever, beheld a head more beautiful or more expressive than that of the young man. His large black eyes were full of intelligence, and in his bearing was a natural nobility and pride. As long as the confusion, described above, continued, he directed his boatmen to keep at a distance, but when all were embarked, and the Scamandre was ready to start, he hailed the vessel, and having mounted the side-ladders, gave his hand to six veiled women in succession, whose long white dominos prevented the spectators from even guessing at their age or beauty. The young man, once on board, conducted his odalisques to a fore-cabin, placed a hideous negro at the door as sentinel, and returned immediately to the deck, where another negro presented him with a narguileh (Turkish water-pipe).

Nothing can less resemble our regular fortifications than the fort of Gallipoli, (before which we soon after passed,) and the other castles of the Dardanelles, which ought to render Constantinople the most impregnable place in the world (from the sea.) The forts are large buildings of a dazzling white colour, perforated with port-holes, similar to those belonging to a ship of war, and mounted with old guns, the greater portion of which are without carriages, and served, ordinarily, by a single artillery-man, assisted in time of war by three or four peasants. In the present century, however, these batteries have shown their prowess, and against our own countrymen too. During the month of February 1807, the British government, justly irritated at the increasing influence that the French ambassador, Count Sebastiani, was obtaining at the Ottoman court, despatched Admiral Sir John Duckworth, in command of a squadron, with orders to bombard, if necessary, the Seraglio itself. Unfortunately, Sir John Duckworth's plan of acting was exactly contrary to what would have been our gallant Nelson's in the same position. After having passed without difficulty before the then disarmed castles of the Dardanelles, after having burned the Ottoman fleet off Gallipoli, while the crews were peaceably celebrating on shore the feast of Courban-Beiram, Sir John presented himself off Constantinople, and threatened to bombard that city, should the Sultan refuse to accept the conditions he offered, at the same time he allowed his Imperial Highness two days to consider the terms; Nelson would have allowed as many hours only. The folly of Admiral Duckworth's conduct fully shown in the sequel, for, at the conclusion of the forty-eight hours, the approaches to Stamboul and Galata were bristling--thanks to the delay accorded, and to the exertions of the French ambassador--with twelve hundred pieces of cannon; while, at the same time, orders having been sent to the castles of the Dardanelles to mount their batteries, the British squadron was hemmed in on all sides, as if by enchantment. The besieged now became the aggressors, and there soon remained to Admiral Duckworth no other resource than to weigh anchor and get away as fast as possible, which he accordingly did. The batteries of the Dardanelles were now, however, prepared for him. A most destructive fire was opened upon the ill-fated fleet: two corvettes were sunk off Gallipoli; the Admiral's flag-ship, the Royal George, lost her mainmast; a huge marble ball, weighing eight hundred pounds, swept away a quantity of hands from the lower deck of the Standard, while many officers and seamen wore severely wounded. It must be here observed, that the batteries of the Dardanelles owed much of the murderous effect of their cannonading to the skill of eight French engineer officers, whom Count Sebastiani, profiting by the delay accorded by Admiral Duckworth to the Sultan, had despatched to the castles.

These historical reminiscences did not prevent my thoughts occasionally reverting to the six odalisques, who formed the suite of the young Arab on board. Ever since their arrival, I had been reflecting that in all probability never would so excellent an opportunity offer itself of penetrating the secrets of a Mussulman harem, and of assuring myself of the vaunted beauty of the mysterious women of Asia. As soon as we were again in motion, I began to watch the black Argus to whose guard the fair houris were intrusted. For more than an hour I lurked without success about the fore-hatchway, for, faithful to his trust, the slave was lying at the threshold of the door that closed upon his young mistresses; and I was on the point of losing all patience, when I beheld him suddenly rise and mount rapidly on deck. He had no sooner disappeared than I glided into his place, and, having applied my eye to a large chink in the door, cast a most indiscreet glance into the cabin. In front of me two women were seated upon their heels, one of them had thrown aside her veil; and I was gazing in admiration upon a pale but beautiful face, set off by two immense black and brilliant eyes, when suddenly I heard behind me the sound of hurried steps. It was the negro returning to his post, who, on perceiving me, began to cry out most lustily. Having no desire to commence a contest with him, I proceeded to mount the hatchway and gain the deck.

The exasperated slave, however, followed me, and hurrying to his master, proceeded to inform him of my escapade, pointing at the same time to me. Two old Turks leaped immediately to their feet with fury depicted on their features; and one of them placed his hand upon the hilt of his cangiar, and pronounced in a voice half-choked with passion the word "Ghiaour," (infidel): in answer to which, I politely told him, (as I was a good Turkish scholar,) to mind his own business, and that I was rather inclined to consider him the greater infidel of the two. He looked both surprised and vexed at this, but did not attempt to retort. As to the young Arab, he proved himself to be a man of sense; for, contenting himself with smiling at his infuriated attendant, he descended to the cabin of his odalisques, from whence he did not emerge during the remainder of our voyage. I did not again see him, and never knew who was the Mussulman, so handsome and at the same time so little fanatical.

The strait through which we had navigated all day, gradually widened as we advanced; the shores as they receded were covered with opal tints; the vessel began to roll, and we entered the sea of Marmora. At sunset the Mussulmans with whom the deck was crowded collected in groups, and devoutly said their evening prayer. Their countenances were wrapped in deep devotion, and they appeared to take no notice of the satirical smiles, which the strangeness of their attitudes called forth from several unreflecting travellers, who, by wanting in respect for the usages of the countries through which they were passing, lowered themselves immensely in the estimation of the inhabitants. The irritation excited by the ill-timed railleries of such foolish persons, is no doubt one of the chief causes of the hatred in which Christians are held in Turkey. Surely nothing could be less calculated to excite mockery, than the sight of the Mussulman travellers at their evening devotions; besides, be it had in mind, that upon this Christian vessel, scarcely a Christian perhaps was thinking of his God, while not a single Mahometan was to be seen unengaged in prayer, as the sun sunk below the horizon.