On this page
-
Text (1)
-
302 I/ADY HESTEB STANHOPE.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Part Ii. Fiiattery Is Sometimes A Low Re...
is constant jarring and bickering" between the ruling powers , and where no truth can be evolved from the discordant elements .
The result of this misgovernment of the faculties was apparent in the rambling confusion of Lady Hester ' stalk . Undisciplined and untaught
from her earliest childhood , it was in vain for her to be fascinated by Oriental superstitions , or to seek to invent a new gospel of
selfculture and philanthropic practice . Unguided by higher principles than those of his own instincts , man is a being in disorder—a
iritual intellistillbut a ruin of the divinithe once , possessed sp . Such gence a creature , has Shakespeare shadowed forth y to us
in the tragic mystery of the character of Hamlet , and such , in more common prose or comedywas old Lady Hesterfaded and
dressed in the Turkish costume , beating , her servants , and haranguing , her physician in the monstrous parade of her court at Syria .
For particulars of this singular habitation we must refer the reader to the works of M . Lamartine , Mr . Ivinglake , and other
travellers . We have numerous accounts of the horses La'ilu and Lulu . La'ilu had a deformity in the backbeing bornas Lad
Hester said , with a saddle , which to her had , a mystical , meaning y . Lulu was a grey mare with nothing remarkable to distinguish her .
Each of these mares had a groom to herself , and the green plot of ground where they took their daily exercise was considered sacred .
For the sake of these two creatures , Lady Hester would have endured any pecuniary difficulty rather than have renounced the
grandeurs of which , according * to her distorted imagination , they were symbolical . Apisin his most glorious dayscould not have
been tended by a more , devoted priesthood than the , mare which had the good fortune to be born with a double backbone .
Half Mussulman , half Jew , and half Pagan , this visionary woman became the prey of everything that was chimerical in . necromancy
magic , or demonology . That which is mysterious is properly , an important sphere of human thought . It is the sphere of
reflection , of contemplation , of awe and of reverence . Some of our highest and noblest feelings derive their nourishment , and even
their very existence , from the unintelligible . Where would imagination existif everything in nature were understood by man ? or
what room would , there be for the growth of ideality , if the cause of everything were seen as readily as its effect ? But the change is
easy from the sublime to the ridiculous ; the transition is great from Where heavenl " those y , pensive deep solitudes Contemp and lation awful dwells cells , "
to that dream-land and lubber-land where inspiration ceases , where fiction becomes falsehoodand where sensibility merges into maudlin
absurdity . To attempt , to illustrate the ridiculous confusion of Lady Hester ' s thoughts on religion as well as on other subjects
would be to waste as many words as might fill a volume . Her ,
ideas were a compound of vulgar prejudices , relics of olden idolatry ,
302 I/Ady Hesteb Stanhope.
302 I / ADY HESTEB STANHOPE .
-
-
Citation
-
English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1862, page 302, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071862/page/14/
-