Part 1


The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton


Chapter I.


I am a native of _____, in the United States of America. My
ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles II.;
and my grandfather was not undistinguished in the War of
Independence. My family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat high
social position in right of birth; and being also opulent, they
were considered disqualified for the public service. My father
once ran for Congress, but was signally defeated by his tailor.
After that event he interfered little in politics, and lived
much in his library. I was the eldest of three sons, and sent
at the age of sixteen to the old country, partly to complete my
literary education, partly to commence my commercial training
in a mercantile firm at Liverpool. My father died shortly
after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a
taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all
pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer
over the face of the earth.

In the year 18__, happening to be in _____, I was invited by a
professional engineer, with whom I had made acquaintance, to
visit the recesses of the ________ mine, upon which he was
employed.

The reader will understand, ere he close this narrative, my
reason for concealing all clue to the district of which I
write, and will perhaps thank me for refraining from any
description that may tend to its discovery.

6Let me say, then, as briefly as possible, that I accompanied
the engineer into the interior of the mine, and became so
strangely fascinated by its gloomy wonders, and so interested
in my friend's explorations, that I prolonged my stay in the
neighbourhood, and descended daily, for some weeks, into the
vaults and galleries hollowed by nature and art beneath the
surface of the earth. The engineer was persuaded that far
richer deposits of mineral wealth than had yet been detected,
would be found in a new shaft that had been commenced under his
operations. In piercing this shaft we came one day upon a
chasm jagged and seemingly charred at the sides, as if burst
asunder at some distant period by volcanic fires. Down this
chasm my friend caused himself to be lowered in a 'cage,'
having first tested the atmosphere by the safety-lamp. He
remained nearly an hour in the abyss. When he returned he was
very pale, and with an anxious, thoughtful expression of face,
very different from its ordinary character, which was open,
cheerful, and fearless.

He said briefly that the descent appeared to him unsafe, and
leading to no result; and, suspending further operations in the
shaft, we returned to the more familiar parts of the mine.

All the rest of that day the engineer seemed preoccupied by
some absorbing thought. He was unusually taciturn, and there
was a scared, bewildered look in his eyes, as that of a man who
has seen a ghost. At night, as we two were sitting alone in
the lodging we shared together near the mouth of the mine, I
said to my friend,-

"Tell me frankly what you saw in that chasm: I am sure it was
something strange and terrible. Whatever it be, it has left
your mind in a state of doubt. In such a case two heads are
better than one. Confide in me."


The engineer long endeavoured to evade my inquiries; but as,
while he spoke, he helped himself unconsciously out of the
brandy-flask to a degree to which he was wholly unaccustomed,
7for he was a very temperate man, his reserve gradually melted
away. He who would keep himself to himself should imitate the
dumb animals, and drink water. At last he said, "I will tell
you all. When the cage stopped, I found myself on a ridge of
rock; and below me, the chasm, taking a slanting direction,
shot down to a considerable depth, the darkness of which my
lamp could not have penetrated. But through it, to my infinite
surprise, streamed upward a steady brilliant light. Could it
be any volcanic fire? In that case, surely I should have felt
the heat. Still, if on this there was doubt, it was of the
utmost importance to our common safety to clear it up. I
examined the sides of the descent, and found that I could
venture to trust myself to the irregular projection of ledges,
at least for some way. I left the cage and clambered down. As
I drew nearer and nearer to the light, the chasm became wider,
and at last I saw, to my unspeakable amaze, a broad level road
at the bottom of the abyss, illumined as far as the eye could
reach by what seemed artificial gas-lamps placed at regular
intervals, as in the thoroughfare of a great city; and I heard
confusedly at a distance a hum as of human voices. I know, of
course, that no rival miners are at work in this district.
Whose could be those voices? What human hands could have
levelled that road and marshalled those lamps?

"The superstitious belief, common to miners, that gnomes or
fiends dwell within the bowels of the earth, began to seize me.
I shuddered at the thought of descending further and braving
the inhabitants of this nether valley. Nor indeed could I have
done so without ropes, as from the spot I had reached to the
bottom of the chasm the sides of the rock sank down abrupt,
smooth, and sheer. I retraced my steps with some difficulty.
Now I have told you all."

"You will descend again?"

"I ought, yet I feel as if I durst not."

"A trusty companion halves the journey and doubles the courage.
8I will go with you. We will provide ourselves with ropes of
suitable length and strength- and- pardon me- you must not
drink more to-night. our hands and feet must be steady and
firm tomorrow."


Chapter II.

With the morning my friend's nerves were rebraced, and he was
not less excited by curiosity than myself. Perhaps more; for
he evidently believed in his own story, and I felt considerable
doubt of it; not that he would have wilfully told an untruth,
but that I thought he must have been under one of those
hallucinations which seize on our fancy or our nerves in
solitary, unaccustomed places, and in which we give shape to
the formless and sound to the dumb.

We selected six veteran miners to watch our descent; and as the
cage held only one at a time, the engineer descended first; and
when he had gained the ledge at which he had before halted, the
cage rearose for me. I soon gained his side. We had provided
ourselves with a strong coil of rope.

The light struck on my sight as it had done the day before on
my friend's. The hollow through which it came sloped
diagonally: it seemed to me a diffused atmospheric light, not
like that from fire, but soft and silvery, as from a northern
star. Quitting the cage, we descended, one after the other,
easily enough, owing to the juts in the side, till we reached
the place at which my friend had previously halted, and which
was a projection just spacious enough to allow us to stand
abreast. From this spot the chasm widened rapidly like the
lower end of a vast funnel, and I saw distinctly the valley,
the road, the lamps which my companion had described. He had
exaggerated nothing. I heard the sounds he had heard- a
mingled indescribable hum as of voices and a dull tramp as of
9feet. Straining my eye farther down, I clearly beheld at a
distance the outline of some large building. It could not be
mere natural rock, it was too symmetrical, with huge heavy
Egyptian-like columns, and the whole lighted as from within. I
had about me a small pocket-telescope, and by the aid of this,
I could distinguish, near the building I mention, two forms
which seemed human, though I could not be sure. At least they
were living, for they moved, and both vanished within the
building. We now proceeded to attach the end of the rope we
had brought with us to the ledge on which we stood, by the aid
of clamps and grappling hooks, with which, as well as with
necessary tools, we were provided.

We were almost silent in our work. We toiled like men afraid
to speak to each other. One end of the rope being thus
apparently made firm to the ledge, the other, to which we
fastened a fragment of the rock, rested on the ground below, a
distance of some fifty feet. I was a younger man and a more
active man than my companion, and having served on board ship
in my boyhood, this mode of transit was more familiar to me
than to him. In a whisper I claimed the precedence, so that
when I gained the ground I might serve to hold the rope more
steady for his descent. I got safely to the ground beneath,
and the engineer now began to lower himself. But he had
scarcely accomplished ten feet of the descent, when the
fastenings, which we had fancied so secure, gave way, or rather
the rock itself proved treacherous and crumbled beneath the
strain; and the unhappy man was precipitated to the bottom,
falling just at my feet, and bringing down with his fall
splinters of the rock, one of which, fortunately but a small
one, struck and for the time stunned me. When I recovered my
senses I saw my companion an inanimate mass beside me, life
utterly extinct. While I was bending over his corpse in grief
and horror, I heard close at hand a strange sound between a
snort and a hiss; and turning instinctively to the quarter from
10which it came, I saw emerging from a dark fissure in the rock a
vast and terrible head, with open jaws and dull, ghastly,
hungry eyes- the head of a monstrous reptile resembling that of
the crocodile or alligator, but infinitely larger than the
largest creature of that kind I had ever beheld in my travels.
I started to my feet and fled down the valley at my utmost
speed. I stopped at last, ashamed of my panic and my flight,
and returned to the spot on which I had left the body of my
friend. It was gone; doubtless the monster had already drawn
it into its den and devoured it. the rope and the grappling-
hooks still lay where they had fallen, but they afforded me no
chance of return; it was impossible to re-attach them to the
rock above, and the sides of the rock were too sheer and smooth
for human steps to clamber. I was alone in this strange world,
amidst the bowels of the earth.


Chapter III.


Slowly and cautiously I went my solitary way down the lamplit
road and towards the large building I have described. The road
itself seemed like a great Alpine pass, skirting rocky
mountains of which the one through whose chasm I had descended
formed a link. Deep below to the left lay a vast valley, which
presented to my astonished eye the unmistakeable evidences of
art and culture. There were fields covered with a strange
vegetation, similar to none I have seen above the earth; the
colour of it not green, but rather of a dull and leaden hue or
of a golden red.

There were lakes and rivulets which seemed to have been curved
into artificial banks; some of pure water, others that shone
like pools of naphtha. At my right hand, ravines and defiles
opened amidst the rocks, with passes between, evidently
constructed by art, and bordered by trees resembling, for the
11most part, gigantic ferns, with exquisite varieties of feathery
foliage, and stems like those of the palm-tree. Others were
more like the cane-plant, but taller, bearing large clusters of
flowers. Others, again, had the form of enormous fungi, with
short thick stems supporting a wide dome-like roof, from which
either rose or drooped long slender branches. The whole scene
behind, before, and beside me far as the eye could reach, was
brilliant with innumerable lamps. The world without a sun was
bright and warm as an Italian landscape at noon, but the air
less oppressive, the heat softer. Nor was the scene before me
void of signs of habitation. I could distinguish at a
distance, whether on the banks of the lake or rivulet, or
half-way upon eminences, embedded amidst the vegetation,
buildings that must surely be the homes of men. I could even
discover, though far off, forms that appeared to me human
moving amidst the landscape. As I paused to gaze, I saw to the
right, gliding quickly through the air, what appeared a small
boat, impelled by sails shaped like wings. It soon passed out
of sight, descending amidst the shades of a forest. Right
above me there was no sky, but only a cavernous roof. This
roof grew higher and higher at the distance of the landscapes
beyond, till it became imperceptible, as an atmosphere of haze
formed itself beneath.

Continuing my walk, I started,- from a bush that resembled a
great tangle of sea-weeds, interspersed with fern-like shrubs
and plants of large leafage shaped like that of the aloe or
prickly-pear,- a curious animal about the size and shape of a
deer. But as, after bounding away a few paces, it turned round
and gazed at me inquisitively, I perceived that it was not like
any species of deer now extant above the earth, but it brought
instantly to my recollection a plaster cast I had seen in some
museum of a variety of the elk stag, said to have existed
before the Deluge. The creature seemed tame enough, and, after
inspecting me a moment or two, began to graze on the singular
herbiage around undismayed and careless.


12
Chapter IV.


I now came in full sight of the building. Yes, it had been
made by hands, and hollowed partly out of a great rock. I
should have supposed it at the first glance to have been of the
earliest form of Egyptian architecture. It was fronted by huge
columns, tapering upward from massive plinths, and with
capitals that, as I came nearer, I perceived to be more
ornamental and more fantastically graceful that Egyptian
architecture allows. As the Corinthian capital mimics the leaf
of the acanthus, so the capitals of these columns imitated the
foliage of the vegetation neighbouring them, some aloe-like,
some fern-like. And now there came out of this building a
form- human;- was it human? It stood on the broad way and
looked around, beheld me and approached. It came within a few
yards of me, and at the sight and presence of it an
indescribable awe and tremor seized me, rooting my feet to the
ground. It reminded me of symbolical images of Genius or Demon
that are seen on Etruscan vases or limned on the walls of
Eastern sepulchres- images that borrow the outlines of man, and
are yet of another race. It was tall, not gigantic, but tall
as the tallest man below the height of giants.

Its chief covering seemed to me to be composed of large wings
folded over its breast and reaching to its knees; the rest of
its attire was composed of an under tunic and leggings of some
thin fibrous material. It wore on its head a kind of tiara
that shone with jewels, and carried in its right hand a slender
staff of bright metal like polished steel. But the face! it
was that which inspired my awe and my terror. It was the face
of man, but yet of a type of man distinct from our known extant
races. The nearest approach to it in outline and expression is
the face of the sculptured sphinx- so regular in its calm,
intellectual, mysterious beauty. Its colour was peculiar, more
13like that of the red man than any other variety of our species,
and yet different from it- a richer and a softer hue, with
large black eyes, deep and brilliant, and brows arched as a
semicircle. The face was beardless; but a nameless something
in the aspect, tranquil though the expression, and beauteous
though the features, roused that instinct of danger which the
sight of a tiger or serpent arouses. I felt that this manlike
image was endowed with forces inimical to man. As it drew
near, a cold shudder came over me. I fell on my knees and
covered my face with my hands.


Chapter V.


A voice accosted me- a very quiet and very musical key of
voice- in a language of which I could not understand a word,
but it served to dispel my fear. I uncovered my face and
looked up. The stranger (I could scarcely bring myself to call
him man) surveyed me with an eye that seemed to read to the
very depths of my heart. He then placed his left hand on my
forehead, and with the staff in his right, gently touched my
shoulder. The effect of this double contact was magical. In
place of my former terror there passed into me a sense of
contentment, of joy, of confidence in myself and in the being
before me. I rose and spoke in my own language. He listened
to me with apparent attention, but with a slight surprise in
his looks; and shook his head, as if to signify that I was not
understood. He then took me by the hand and led me in silence
to the building. The entrance was open- indeed there was no
door to it. We entered an immense hall, lighted by the same
kind of lustre as in the scene without, but diffusing a
fragrant odour. The floor was in large tesselated blocks of
precious metals, and partly covered with a sort of matlike
14carpeting. A strain of low music, above and around, undulated
as if from invisible instruments, seeming to belong naturally
to the place, just as the sound of murmuring waters belongs to
a rocky landscape, or the warble of birds to vernal groves.

A figure in a simpler garb than that of my guide, but of
similar fashion, was standing motionless near the threshold.
My guide touched it twice with his staff, and it put itself
into a rapid and gliding movement, skimming noiselessly over
the floor. Gazing on it, I then saw that it was no living
form, but a mechanical automaton. It might be two minutes
after it vanished through a doorless opening, half screened by
curtains at the other end of the hall, when through the same
opening advanced a boy of about twelve years old, with features
closely resembling those of my guide, so that they seemed to me
evidently son and father. On seeing me the child uttered a
cry, and lifted a staff like that borne by my guide, as if in
menace. At a word from the elder he dropped it. The two then
conversed for some moments, examining me while they spoke. The
child touched my garments, and stroked my face with evident
curiosity, uttering a sound like a laugh, but with an hilarity
more subdued that the mirth of our laughter. Presently the
roof of the hall opened, and a platform descended, seemingly
constructed on the same principle as the 'lifts' used in hotels
and warehouses for mounting from one story to another.

The stranger placed himself and the child on the platform, and
motioned to me to do the same, which I did. We ascended
quickly and safely, and alighted in the midst of a corridor
with doorways on either side.

Through one of these doorways I was conducted into a chamber
fitted up with an oriental splendour; the walls were tesselated
with spars, and metals, and uncut jewels; cushions and divans
abounded; apertures as for windows but unglazed, were made in
the chamber opening to the floor; and as I passed along I
15observed that these openings led into spacious balconies, and
commanded views of the illumined landscape without. In cages
suspended from the ceiling there were birds of strange form and
bright plumage, which at our entrance set up a chorus of song,
modulated into tune as is that of our piping bullfinches. A
delicious fragrance, from censers of gold elaborately sculptured,
filled the air. Several automata, like the one I had seen,
stood dumb and motionless by the walls. The stranger placed me
beside him on a divan and again spoke to me, and again I spoke,
but without the least advance towards understanding each other.

But now I began to feel the effects of the blow I had received
from the splinters of the falling rock more acutely that I had
done at first.

There came over me a sense of sickly faintness, accompanied
with acute, lancinating pains in the head and neck. I sank
back on the seat and strove in vain to stifle a groan. On this
the child, who had hitherto seemed to eye me with distrust or
dislike, knelt by my side to support me; taking one of my hands
in both his own, he approached his lips to my forehead,
breathing on it softly. In a few moments my pain ceased; a
drowsy, heavy calm crept over me; I fell asleep.

How long I remained in this state I know not, but when I woke I
felt perfectly restored. My eyes opened upon a group of silent
forms, seated around me in the gravity and quietude of
Orientals- all more or less like the first stranger; the same
mantling wings, the same fashion of garment, the same
sphinx-like faces, with the deep dark eyes and red man's
colour; above all, the same type of race- race akin to man's,
but infinitely stronger of form and grandeur of aspect- and
inspiring the same unutterable feeling of dread. Yet each
countenance was mild and tranquil, and even kindly in
expression. And, strangely enough, it seemed to me that in
this very calm and benignity consisted the secret of the dread
which the countenances inspired. They seemed as void of the
lines and shadows which care and sorrow, and passion and sin,
16leave upon the faces of men, as are the faces of sculptured
gods, or as, in the eyes of Christian mourners, seem the
peaceful brows of the dead.

I felt a warm hand on my shoulder; it was the child's. In his
eyes there was a sort of lofty pity and tenderness, such as
that with which we may gaze on some suffering bird or
butterfly. I shrank from that touch- I shrank from that eye.
I was vaguely impressed with a belief that, had he so pleased,
that child could have killed me as easily as a man can kill a
bird or a butterfly. The child seemed pained at my repugnance,
quitted me, and placed himself beside one of the windows. The
others continued to converse with each other in a low tone, and
by their glances towards me I could perceive that I was the
object of their conversation. One in especial seemed to be
urging some proposal affecting me on the being whom I had first
met, and this last by his gesture seemed about to assent to it,
when the child suddenly quitted his post by the window, placed
himself between me and the other forms, as if in protection,
and spoke quickly and eagerly. By some intuition or instinct I
felt that the child I had before so dreaded was pleading in my
behalf. Ere he had ceased another stranger entered the room.
He appeared older than the rest, though not old; his
countenance less smoothly serene than theirs, though equally
regular in its features, seemed to me to have more the touch of
a humanity akin to my own. He listened quietly to the words
addressed to him, first by my guide, next by two others of the
group, and lastly by the child; then turned towards myself, and
addressed me, not by words, but by signs and gestures. These I
fancied that I perfectly understood, and I was not mistaken. I
comprehended that he inquired whence I came. I extended my
arm, and pointed towards the road which had led me from the
chasm in the rock; then an idea seized me. I drew forth my
pocket-book, and sketched on one of its blank leaves a rough
design of the ledge of the rock, the rope, myself clinging to
it; then of the cavernous rock below, the head of the reptile,
17the lifeless form of my friend. I gave this primitive kind of
hieroglyph to my interrogator, who, after inspecting it
gravely, handed it to his next neighbour, and it thus passed
round the group. The being I had at first encountered then
said a few words, and the child, who approached and looked at
my drawing, nodded as if he comprehended its purport, and,
returning to the window, expanded the wings attached to his
form, shook them once or twice, and then launched himself into
space without. I started up in amaze and hastened to the
window. The child was already in the air, buoyed on his wings,
which he did not flap to and fro as a bird does, but which were
elevated over his head, and seemed to bear him steadily aloft
without effort of his own. His flight seemed as swift as an
eagle's; and I observed that it was towards the rock whence I
had descended, of which the outline loomed visible in the
brilliant atmosphere. In a very few minutes he returned,
skimming through the opening from which he had gone, and
dropping on the floor the rope and grappling-hooks I had left
at the descent from the chasm. Some words in a low tone passed
between the being present; one of the group touched an
automaton, which started forward and glided from the room; then
the last comer, who had addressed me by gestures, rose, took me
by the hand, and led me into the corridor. There the platform
by which I had mounted awaited us; we placed ourselves on it
and were lowered into the hall below. My new companion, still
holding me by the hand, conducted me from the building into a
street (so to speak) that stretched beyond it, with buildings
on either side, separated from each other by gardens bright
with rich-coloured vegetation and strange flowers.
Interspersed amidst these gardens, which were divided from each
other by low walls, or walking slowly along the road, were many
forms similar to those I had already seen. Some of the
passers-by, on observing me, approached my guide, evidently by
their tones, looks, and gestures addressing to him inquiries
18about myself. In a few moments a crowd collected around us,
examining me with great interest, as if I were some rare wild
animal. Yet even in gratifying their curiosity they preserved
a grave and courteous demeanour; and after a few words from my
guide, who seemed to me to deprecate obstruction in our road,
they fell back with a stately inclination of head, and resumed
their own way with tranquil indifference. Midway in this
thoroughfare we stopped at a building that differed from those
we had hitherto passed, inasmuch as it formed three sides of a
vast court, at the angles of which were lofty pyramidal towers;
in the open space between the sides was a circular fountain of
colossal dimensions, and throwing up a dazzling spray of what
seemed to me fire. We entered the building through an open
doorway and came into an enormous hall, in which were several
groups of children, all apparently employed in work as at some
great factory. There was a huge engine in the wall which was
in full play, with wheels and cylinders resembling our own
steam-engines, except that it was richly ornamented with
precious stones and metals, and appeared to emanate a pale
phosphorescent atmosphere of shifting light. Many of the
children were at some mysterious work on this machinery, others
were seated before tables. I was not allowed to linger long
enough to examine into the nature of their employment. Not one
young voice was heard- not one young face turned to gaze on us.
They were all still and indifferent as may be ghosts, through
the midst of which pass unnoticed the forms of the living.

Quitting this hall, my guide led me through a gallery richly
painted in compartments, with a barbaric mixture of gold in the
colours, like pictures by Louis Cranach. The subjects
described on these walls appeared to my glance as intended to
illustrate events in the history of the race amidst which I was
admitted. In all there were figures, most of them like the
manlike creatures I had seen, but not all in the same fashion
of garb, nor all with wings. There were also the effigies of
19various animals and birds, wholly strange to me, with
backgrounds depicting landscapes or buildings. So far as my
imperfect knowledge of the pictorial art would allow me to form
an opinion, these paintings seemed very accurate in design and
very rich in colouring, showing a perfect knowledge of
perspective, but their details not arranged according to the
rules of composition acknowledged by our artists- wanting, as
it were, a centre; so that the effect was vague, scattered,
confused, bewildering- they were like heterogeneous fragments
of a dream of art.

We now came into a room of moderate size, in which was
assembled what I afterwards knew to be the family of my guide,
seated at a table spread as for repast. The forms thus grouped
were those of my guide's wife, his daughter, and two sons. I
recognised at once the difference between the two sexes, though
the two females were of taller stature and ampler proportions
than the males; and their countenances, if still more
symmetrical in outline and contour, were devoid of the softness
and timidity of expression which give charm to the face of
woman as seen on the earth above. The wife wore no wings, the
daughter wore wings longer than those of the males.

My guide uttered a few words, on which all the persons seated
rose, and with that peculiar mildness of look and manner which
I have before noticed, and which is, in truth, the common
attribute of this formidable race, they saluted me according to
their fashion, which consists in laying the right hand very
gently on the head and uttering a soft sibilant monosyllable-
S.Si, equivalent to "Welcome."

The mistress of the house then seated me beside her, and heaped
a golden platter before me from one of the dishes.

While I ate (and though the viands were new to me, I marvelled
more at the delicacy than the strangeness of their flavour), my
companions conversed quietly, and, so far as I could detect,
with polite avoidance of any direct reference to myself, or any
20obtrusive scrutiny of my appearance. Yet I was the first
creature of that variety of the human race to which I belong
that they had ever beheld, and was consequently regarded by
them as a most curious and abnormal phenomenon. But all
rudeness is unknown to this people, and the youngest child is
taught to despise any vehement emotional demonstration. when
the meal was ended, my guide again took me by the hand, and,
re-entering the gallery, touched a metallic plate inscribed
with strange figures, and which I rightly conjectured to be of
the nature of our telegraphs. A platform descended, but this
time we mounted to a much greater height than in the former
building, and found ourselves in a room of moderate dimensions,
and which in its general character had much that might be
familiar to the associations of a visitor from the upper world.
There were shelves on the wall containing what appeared to be
books, and indeed were so; mostly very small, like our diamond
duodecimos, shaped in the fashion of our volumes, and bound in
sheets of fine metal. There were several curious-looking
pieces of mechanism scattered about, apparently models, such as
might be seen in the study of any professional mechanician.
Four automata (mechanical contrivances which, with these
people, answer the ordinary purposes of domestic service) stood
phantom-like at each angle in the wall. In a recess was a low
couch, or bed with pillows. A window, with curtains of some
fibrous material drawn aside, opened upon a large balcony. My
host stepped out into the balcony; I followed him. We were on
the uppermost story of one of the angular pyramids; the view
beyond was of a wild and solemn beauty impossible to describe:-
the vast ranges of precipitous rock which formed the distant
background, the intermediate valleys of mystic many-coloured
herbiage, the flash of waters, many of them like streams of
roseate flame, the serene lustre diffused over all by myriads
of lamps, combined to form a whole of which no words of mine
21can convey adequate description; so splendid was it, yet so
sombre; so lovely, yet so awful.

But my attention was soon diverted from these nether landscapes.
Suddenly there arose, as from the streets below, a burst of
joyous music; then a winged form soared into the space; another
as if in chase of the first, another and another; others after
others, till the crowd grew thick and the number countless.
But how describe the fantastic grace of these forms in their
undulating movements! They appeared engaged in some sport or
amusement; now forming into opposite squadrons; now scattering;
now each group threading the other, soaring, descending,
interweaving, severing; all in measured time to the music
below, as if in the dance of the fabled Peri.

I turned my gaze on my host in a feverish wonder. I ventured
to place my hand on the large wings that lay folded on his
breast, and in doing so a slight shock as of electricity passed
through me. I recoiled in fear; my host smiled, and as if
courteously to gratify my curiosity, slowly expanded his
pinions. I observed that his garment beneath them became
dilated as a bladder that fills with air. The arms seemed to
slide into the wings, and in another moment he had launched
himself into the luminous atmosphere, and hovered there, still,
and with outspread wings, as an eagle that basks in the sun.
Then, rapidly as an eagle swoops, he rushed downwards into the
midst of one of the groups, skimming through the midst, and as
suddenly again soaring aloft. Thereon, three forms, in one of
which I thought to recognise my host's daughter, detached
themselves from the rest, and followed him as a bird sportively
follows a bird. My eyes, dazzled with the lights and
bewildered by the throngs, ceased to distinguish the gyrations
and evolutions of these winged playmates, till presently my
host re-emerged from the crowd and alighted at my side.

The strangeness of all I had seen began now to operate fast on
my senses; my mind itself began to wander. Though not inclined
22to be superstitious, nor hitherto believing that man could be
brought into bodily communication with demons, I felt the
terror and the wild excitement with which, in the Gothic ages,
a traveller might have persuaded himself that he witnessed a
'sabbat' of fiends and witches. I have a vague recollection of
having attempted with vehement gesticulation, and forms of
exorcism, and loud incoherent words, to repel my courteous and
indulgent host; of his mild endeavors to calm and soothe me; of
his intelligent conjecture that my fright and bewilderment were
occasioned by the difference of form and movement between us
which the wings that had excited my marvelling curiosity had,
in exercise, made still more strongly perceptible; of the
gentle smile with which he had sought to dispel my alarm by
dropping the wings to the ground and endeavouring to show me
that they were but a mechanical contrivance. That sudden
transformation did but increase my horror, and as extreme
fright often shows itself by extreme daring, I sprang at his
throat like a wild beast. On an instant I was felled to the
ground as by an electric shock, and the last confused images
floating before my sight ere I became wholly insensible, were
the form of my host kneeling beside me with one hand on my
forehead, and the beautiful calm face of his daughter, with
large, deep, inscrutable eyes intently fixed upon my own.


Chapter VI.


I remained in this unconscious state, as I afterwards learned,
for many days, even for some weeks according to our computation
of time. When I recovered I was in a strange room, my host and
all his family were gathered round me, and to my utter amaze my
host's daughter accosted me in my own language with a slightly
foreign accent.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

23It was some moments before I could overcome my surprise enough
to falter out, "You know my language? How? Who and what are
you?"

My host smiled and motioned to one of his sons, who then took
from a table a number of thin metallic sheets on which were
traced drawings of various figures- a house, a tree, a bird, a
man, &c.

In these designs I recognised my own style of drawing. Under
each figure was written the name of it in my language, and in
my writing; and in another handwriting a word strange to me
beneath it.

Said the host, "Thus we began; and my daughter Zee, who belongs
to the College of Sages, has been your instructress and ours
too."

Zee then placed before me other metallic sheets, on which, in
my writing, words first, and then sentences, were inscribed.
Under each word and each sentence strange characters in another
hand. Rallying my senses, I comprehended that thus a rude
dictionary had been effected. Had it been done while I was
dreaming? "That is enough now," said Zee, in a tone of command.
"Repose and take food."


Chapter VII.


A room to myself was assigned to me in this vast edifice. It
was prettily and fantastically arranged, but without any of the
splendour of metal-work or gems which was displayed in the more
public apartments. The walls were hung with a variegated
matting made from the stalks and fibers of plants, and the
floor carpeted with the same.

The bed was without curtains, its supports of iron resting on
balls of crystal; the coverings, of a thin white substance
resembling cotton. There were sundry shelves containing books.
24A curtained recess communicated with an aviary filled with
singing- birds, of which I did not recognise one resembling
those I have seen on earth, except a beautiful species of dove,
though this was distinguished from our doves by a tall crest of
bluish plumes. All these birds had been trained to sing in
artful tunes, and greatly exceeded the skill of our piping
bullfinches, which can rarely achieve more than two tunes, and
cannot, I believe, sing those in concert. One might have
supposed one's self at an opera in listening to the voices in
my aviary. There were duets and trios, and quartetts and
choruses, all arranged as in one piece of music. Did I want
silence from the birds? I had but to draw a curtain over the
aviary, and their song hushed as they found themselves left in
the dark. Another opening formed a window, not glazed, but on
touching a spring, a shutter ascended from the floor, formed of
some substance less transparent than glass, but still
sufficiently pellucid to allow a softened view of the scene
without. To this window was attached a balcony, or rather
hanging garden, wherein grew many graceful plants and brilliant
flowers. The apartment and its appurtenances had thus a
character, if strange in detail, still familiar, as a whole, to
modern notions of luxury, and would have excited admiration if
found attached to the apartments of an English duchess or a
fashionable French author. Before I arrived this was Zee's
chamber; she had hospitably assigned it to me.

Some hours after the waking up which is described in my last
chapter, I was lying alone on my couch trying to fix my
thoughts on conjecture as to the nature and genus of the people
amongst whom I was thrown, when my host and his daughter Zee
entered the room. My host, still speaking my native language,
inquired with much politeness, whether it would be agreeable to
me to converse, or if I preferred solitude. I replied, that I
should feel much honoured and obliged by the opportunity
offered me to express my gratitude for the hospitality and
civilities I had received in a country to which I was a stranger,
25and to learn enough of its customs and manners not to offend
through ignorance.

As I spoke, I had of course risen from my couch: but Zee, much
to my confusion, curtly ordered me to lie down again, and there
was something in her voice and eye, gentle as both were, that
compelled my obedience. She then seated herself unconcernedly
at the foot of my bed, while her father took his place on a
divan a few feet distant.

"But what part of the world do you come from?" asked my host,
"that we should appear so strange to you and you to us? I have
seen individual specimens of nearly all the races differing
from our own, except the primeval savages who dwell in the most
desolate and remote recesses of uncultivated nature, unacquainted
with other light than that they obtain from volcanic fires, and
contented to grope their way in the dark, as do many creeping,
crawling and flying things. But certainly you cannot be a
member of those barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do
you seem to belong to any civilised people."

I was somewhat nettled at this last observation, and replied
that I had the honour to belong to one of the most civilised
nations of the earth; and that, so far as light was concerned,
while I admired the ingenuity and disregard of expense with
which my host and his fellow-citizens had contrived to illumine
the regions unpenetrated by the rays of the sun, yet I could
not conceive how any who had once beheld the orbs of heaven
could compare to their lustre the artificial lights invented by
the necessities of man. But my host said he had seen specimens
of most of the races differing from his own, save the wretched
barbarians he had mentioned. Now, was it possible that he had
never been on the surface of the earth, or could he only be
referring to communities buried within its entrails?

My host was for some moments silent; his countenance showed a
degree of surprise which the people of that race very rarely
26manifest under any circumstances, howsoever extraordinary. But
Zee was more intelligent, and exclaimed, "So you see, my
father, that there is truth in the old tradition; there always
is truth in every tradition commonly believed in all times and
by all tribes."

"Zee," said my host mildly, "you belong to the College of
Sages, and ought to be wiser than I am; but, as chief of the
Light-preserving Council, it is my duty to take nothing for
granted till it is proved to the evidence of my own senses."
Then, turning to me, he asked me several questions about the
surface of the earth and the heavenly bodies; upon which,
though I answered him to the best of my knowledge, my answers
seemed not to satisfy nor convince him. He shook his head
quietly, and, changing the subject rather abruptly, asked how I
had come down from what he was pleased to call one world to the
other. I answered, that under the surface of the earth there
were mines containing minerals, or metals, essential to our
wants and our progress in all arts and industries; and I then
briefly explained the manner in which, while exploring one of
those mines, I and my ill-fated friend had obtained a glimpse
of the regions into which we had descended, and how the descent
had cost him his life; appealing to the rope and grappling-
hooks that the child had brought to the house in which I had
been at first received, as a witness of the truthfulness of my
story.

My host then proceeded to question me as to the habits and
modes of life among the races on the upper earth, more
especially among those considered to be the most advanced in
that civilisation which he was pleased to define "the art of
diffusing throughout a community the tranquil happiness which
belongs to a virtuous and well-ordered household." Naturally
desiring to represent in the most favourable colours the world
from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently,
on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order
27to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective
pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which
Europe enviously seeks its model and tremblingly foresees its
doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the
United States that city in which progress advances at the
fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the
moral habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my
listeners, that I did not make the favourable impression I had
anticipated, I elevated my theme; dwelling on the excellence of
democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil happiness
by the government of party, and the mode in which they diffused
such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the
exercise of power and the acquisition of honours, the lowliest
citizens in point of property, education, and character.
Fortunately recollecting the peroration of a speech, on the
purifying influences of American democracy and their destined
spread over the world, made by a certain eloquent senator (for
whose vote in the Senate a Railway Company, to which my two
brothers belonged, had just paid 20,000 dollars), I wound up by
repeating its glowing predictions of the magnificent future
that smiled upon mankind- when the flag of freedom should float
over an entire continent, and two hundred millions of
intelligent citizens, accustomed from infancy to the daily use
of revolvers, should apply to a cowering universe the doctrine
of the Patriot Monroe.

When I had concluded, my host gently shook his head, and fell
into a musing study, making a sign to me and his daughter to
remain silent while he reflected. And after a time he said, in
a very earnest and solemn tone, "If you think as you say, that
you, though a stranger, have received kindness at the hands of
me and mine, I adjure you to reveal nothing to any other of our
people respecting the world from which you came, unless, on
consideration, I give you permission to do so. Do you consent
to this request?"

28"Of course I pledge my word, to it," said I, somewhat amazed;
and I extended my right hand to grasp his. But he placed my
hand gently on his forehead and his own right hand on my
breast, which is the custom amongst this race in all matters of
promise or verbal obligations. Then turning to his daughter,
he said, "And you, Zee, will not repeat to any one what the
stranger has said, or may say, to me or to you, of a world
other than our own." Zee rose and kissed her father on the
temples, saying, with a smile, "A Gy's tongue is wanton, but
love can fetter it fast. And if, my father, you fear lest a
chance word from me or yourself could expose our community to
danger, by a desire to explore a world beyond us, will not a
wave of the 'vril,' properly impelled, wash even the memory of
what we have heard the stranger say out of the tablets of the
brain?"

"What is the vril?" I asked.

Therewith Zee began to enter into an explanation of which I
understood very little, for there is no word in any language I
know which is an exact synonym for vril. I should call it
electricity, except that it comprehends in its manifold
branches other forces of nature, to which, in our scientific
nomenclature, differing names are assigned, such as magnetism,
galvanism, &c. These people consider that in vril they have
arrived at the unity in natural energetic agencies, which has
been conjectured by many philosophers above ground, and which
Faraday thus intimates under the more cautious term of
correlation:-

"I have long held an opinion," says that illustrious
experimentalist, "almost amounting to a conviction, in common,
I believe, with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that
the various forms under which the forces of matter are made
manifest, have one common origin; or, in other words, are so
directly related and mutually dependent that they are
convertible, as it were into one another, and possess
equivalents of power in their action."

29These subterranean philosophers assert that by one operation of
vril, which Faraday would perhaps call 'atmospheric magnetism,'
they can influence the variations of temperature- in plain
words, the weather; that by operations, akin to those ascribed
to mesmerism, electro-biology, odic force, &c., but applied
scientifically, through vril conductors, they can exercise
influence over minds, and bodies animal and vegetable, to an
extent not surpassed in the romances of our mystics. To all
such agencies they give the common name of vril. Zee asked me
if, in my world, it was not known that all the faculties of the
mind could be quickened to a degree unknown in the waking
state, by trance or vision, in which the thoughts of one brain
could be transmitted to another, and knowledge be thus rapidly
interchanged. I replied, that there were amongst us stories
told of such trance or vision, and that I had heard much and
seen something in mesmeric clairvoyance; but that these
practices had fallen much into disuse or contempt, partly
because of the gross impostures to which they had been made
subservient, and partly because, even where the effects upon
certain abnormal constitutions were genuinely produced, the
effects when fairly examined and analysed, were very
unsatisfactory- not to be relied upon for any systematic
truthfulness or any practical purpose, and rendered very
mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitions they
tended to produce. Zee received my answers with much benignant
attention, and said that similar instances of abuse and
credulity had been familiar to their own scientific experience
in the infancy of their knowledge, and while the properties of
vril were misapprehended, but that she reserved further
discussion on this subject till I was more fitted to enter into
it. She contented herself with adding, that it was through the
agency of vril, while I had been placed in the state of trance,
that I had been made acquainted with the rudiments of their
language; and that she and her father, who alone of the family,
30took the pains to watch the experiment, had acquired a greater
proportionate knowledge of my language than I of their own;
partly because my language was much simpler than theirs,
comprising far less of complex ideas; and partly because their
organisation was, by hereditary culture, much more ductile and
more readily capable of acquiring knowledge than mine. At this
I secretly demurred; and having had in the course of a
practical life, to sharpen my wits, whether at home or in
travel, I could not allow that my cerebral organisation could
possibly be duller than that of people who had lived all their
lives by lamplight. However, while I was thus thinking, Zee
quietly pointed her forefinger at my forehead, and sent me to
sleep.


Chapter VIII.


When I once more awoke I saw by my bed-side the child who had
brought the rope and grappling-hooks to the house in which I
had been first received, and which, as I afterwards learned,
was the residence of the chief magistrate of the tribe. The
child, whose name was Taee (pronounced Tar-ee), was the
magistrate's eldest son. I found that during my last sleep or
trance I had made still greater advance in the language of the
country, and could converse with comparative ease and fluency.

This child was singularly handsome, even for the beautiful race
to which he belonged, with a countenance very manly in aspect
for his years, and with a more vivacious and energetic
expression than I had hitherto seen in the serene and
passionless faces of the men. He brought me the tablet on
which I had drawn the mode of my descent, and had also sketched
the head of the horrible reptile that had scared me from my
friend's corpse. Pointing to that part of the drawing, Taee put
31to me a few questions respecting the size and form of the
monster, and the cave or chasm from which it had emerged. His
interest in my answers seemed so grave as to divert him for a
while from any curiosity as to myself or my antecedents. But
to my great embarrassment, seeing how I was pledged to my host,
he was just beginning to ask me where I came from, when Zee,
fortunately entered, and, overhearing him, said, "Taee, give to
our guest any information he may desire, but ask none from him
in return. To question him who he is, whence he comes, or
wherefore he is here, would be a breach of the law which my
father has laid down in this house."

"So be it," said Taee, pressing his hand to his breast; and from
that moment, till the one in which I saw him last, this child,
with whom I became very intimate, never once put to me any of
the questions thus interdicted.


Chapter IX.


It was not for some time, and until, by repeated trances, if
they are to be so called, my mind became better prepared to
interchange ideas with my entertainers, and more fully to
comprehend differences of manners and customs, at first too
strange to my experience to be seized by my reason, that I was
enabled to gather the following details respecting the origin
and history of the subterranean population, as portion of one
great family race called the Ana.

According to the earliest traditions, the remote progenitors of
the race had once tenanted a world above the surface of that in
which their descendants dwelt. Myths of that world were still
preserved in their archives, and in those myths were legends of
a vaulted dome in which the lamps were lighted by no human
hand. But such legends were considered by most commentators as
allegorical fables. According to these traditions the earth
32itself, at the date to which the traditions ascend, was not
indeed in its infancy, but in the throes and travail of
transition from one form of development to another, and subject
to many violent revolutions of nature. By one of such
revolutions, that portion of the upper world inhabited by the
ancestors of this race had been subjected to inundations, not
rapid, but gradual and uncontrollable, in which all, save a
scanty remnant, were submerged and perished. Whether this be a
record of our historical and sacred Deluge, or of some earlier
one contended for by geologists, I do not pretend to
conjecture; though, according to the chronology of this people
as compared with that of Newton, it must have been many
thousands of years before the time of Noah. On the other hand,
the account of these writers does not harmonise with the
opinions most in vogue among geological authorities, inasmuch
as it places the existence of a human race upon earth at dates
long anterior to that assigned to the terrestrial formation
adapted to the introduction of mammalia. A band of the
ill-fated race, thus invaded by the Flood, had, during the
march of the waters, taken refuge in caverns amidst the loftier
rocks, and, wandering through these hollows, they lost sight of
the upper world forever. Indeed, the whole face of the earth
had been changed by this great revulsion; land had been turned
into sea- sea into land. In the bowels of the inner earth,
even now, I was informed as a positive fact, might be
discovered the remains of human habitation- habitation not in
huts and caverns, but in vast cities whose ruins attest the
civilisation of races which flourished before the age of Noah,
and are not to be classified with those genera to which
philosophy ascribes the use of flint and the ignorance of iron.

The fugitives had carried with them the knowledge of the arts
they had practised above ground- arts of culture and
civilisation. Their earliest want must have been that of
supplying below the earth the light they had lost above it; and
at no time, even in the traditional period, do the races, of
which the one I now sojourned with formed a tribe, seem to have
33been unacquainted with the art of extracting light from gases,
or manganese, or petroleum. They had been accustomed in their
former state to contend with the rude forces of nature; and
indeed the lengthened battle they had fought with their
conqueror Ocean, which had taken centuries in its spread, had
quickened their skill in curbing waters into dikes and channels.
To this skill they owed their preservation in their new abode.
"For many generations," said my host, with a sort of contempt
and horror, "these primitive forefathers are said to have
degraded their rank and shortened their lives by eating the
flesh of animals, many varieties of which had, like themselves,
escaped the Deluge, and sought shelter in the hollows of the
earth; other animals, supposed to be unknown to the upper world,
those hollows themselves produced."

When what we should term the historical age emerged from the
twilight of tradition, the Ana were already established in
different communities, and had attained to a degree of
civilisation very analogous to that which the more advanced
nations above the earth now enjoy. They were familiar with
most of our mechanical inventions, including the application of
steam as well as gas. The communities were in fierce
competition with each other. They had their rich and their
poor; they had orators and conquerors; they made war either for
a domain or an idea. Though the various states acknowledged
various forms of government, free institutions were beginning
to preponderate; popular assemblies increased in power;
republics soon became general; the democracy to which the most
enlightened European politicians look forward as the extreme
goal of political advancement, and which still prevailed among
other subterranean races, whom they despised as barbarians, the
loftier family of Ana, to which belonged the tribe I was
visiting, looked back to as one of the crude and ignorant
experiments which belong to the infancy of political science.
It was the age of envy and hate, of fierce passions, of
34constant social changes more or less violent, of strife between
classes, of war between state and state. This phase of society
lasted, however, for some ages, and was finally brought to a
close, at least among the nobler and more intellectual
populations, by the gradual discovery of the latent powers
stored in the all-permeating fluid which they denominate Vril.

According to the account I received from Zee, who, as an
erudite professor of the College of Sages, had studied such
matters more diligently than any other member of my host's
family, this fluid is capable of being raised and disciplined
into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate or
inanimate. It can destroy like the flash of lightning; yet,
differently applied, it can replenish or invigorate life, heal,
and preserve, and on it they chiefly rely for the cure of
disease, or rather for enabling the physical organisation to
re-establish the due equilibrium of its natural powers, and
thereby to cure itself. By this agency they rend way through
the most solid substances, and open valleys for culture through
the rocks of their subterranean wilderness. From it they
extract the light which supplies their lamps, finding it
steadier, softer, and healthier than the other inflammable
materials they had formerly used.

But the effects of the alleged discovery of the means to direct
the more terrible force of vril were chiefly remarkable in
their influence upon social polity. As these effects became
familiarly known and skillfully administered, war between the
vril-discoverers ceased, for they brought the art of
destruction to such perfection as to annul all superiority in
numbers, discipline, or military skill. The fire lodged in the
hollow of a rod directed by the hand of a child could shatter
the strongest fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van
to the rear of an embattled host. If army met army, and both
had command of this agency, it could be but to the annihilation
of each. The age of war was therefore gone, but with the
35cessation of war other effects bearing upon the social state
soon became apparent. Man was so completely at the mercy of
man, each whom he encountered being able, if so willing, to
slay him on the instant, that all notions of government by
force gradually vanished from political systems and forms of
law. It is only by force that vast communities, dispersed
through great distances of space, can be kept together; but now
there was no longer either the necessity of self-preservation
or the pride of aggrandisement to make one state desire to
preponderate in population over another.

The Vril-discoverers thus, in the course of a few generations,
peacefully split into communities of moderate size. The tribe
amongst which I had fallen was limited to 12,000 families.
Each tribe occupied a territory sufficient for all its wants,
and at stated periods the surplus population departed to seek a
realm of its own. There appeared no necessity for any
arbitrary selection of these emigrants; there was always a
sufficient number who volunteered to depart.

These subdivided states, petty if we regard either territory or
population,- all appertained to one vast general family. They
spoke the same language, though the dialects might slightly
differ. They intermarried; They maintained the same general
laws and customs; and so important a bond between these several
communities was the knowledge of vril and the practice of its
agencies, that the word A-Vril was synonymous with
civilisation; and Vril-ya, signifying "The Civilised Nations,"
was the common name by which the communities employing the uses
of vril distinguished themselves from such of the Ana as were
yet in a state of barbarism.

The government of the tribe of Vril-ya I am treating of was
apparently very complicated, really very simple. It was based
upon a principle recognised in theory, though little carried
out in practice, above ground- viz., that the object of all
systems of philosophical thought tends to the attainment of
unity, or the ascent through all intervening labyrinths to the
simplicity of a single first cause or principle. Thus in
36politics, even republican writers have agreed that a benevolent
autocracy would insure the best administration, if there were
any guarantees for its continuance, or against its gradual
abuse of the powers accorded to it. This singular community
elected therefore a single supreme magistrate styled Tur; he
held his office nominally for life, but he could seldom be
induced to retain it after the first approach of old age.
There was indeed in this society nothing to induce any of its
members to covet the cares of office. No honours, no insignia
of higher rank, were assigned to it. The supreme magistrate
was not distinguished from the rest by superior habitation or
revenue. On the other hand, the duties awarded to him were
marvellously light and easy, requiring no preponderant degree
of energy or intelligence. There being no apprehensions of
war, there were no armies to maintain; there being no
government of force, there was no police to appoint and direct.
What we call crime was utterly unknown to the Vril-ya; and
there were no courts of criminal justice. The rare instances
of civil disputes were referred for arbitration to friends
chosen by either party, or decided by the Council of Sages,
which will be described later. There were no professional
lawyers; and indeed their laws were but amicable conventions,
for there was no power to enforce laws against an offender who
carried in his staff the power to destroy his judges. There
were customs and regulations to compliance with which, for
several ages, the people had tacitly habituated themselves; or
if in any instance an individual felt such compliance hard, he
quitted the community and went elsewhere. There was, in fact,
quietly established amid this state, much the same compact that
is found in our private families, in which we virtually say to
any independent grown-up member of the family whom we receive
to entertain, "Stay or go, according as our habits and
regulations suit or displease you." But though there were no
laws such as we call laws, no race above ground is so
37law-observing. Obedience to the rule adopted by the community
has become as much an instinct as if it were implanted by
nature. Even in every household the head of it makes a
regulation for its guidance, which is never resisted nor even
cavilled at by those who belong to the family. They have a
proverb, the pithiness of which is much lost in this
paraphrase, "No happiness without order, no order without
authority, no authority without unity." The mildness of all
government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalised by
their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or
forbidden- viz., "It is requested not to do so and so." Poverty
among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held
in common, or that all are equals in the extent of their
possessions or the size and luxury of their habitations: but
there being no difference of rank or position between the
grades of wealth or the choice of occupations, each pursues his
own inclinations without creating envy or vying; some like a
modest, some a more splendid kind of life; each makes himself
happy in his own way. Owing to this absence of competition,
and the limit placed on the population, it is difficult for a
family to fall into distress; there are no hazardous
speculations, no emulators striving for superior wealth and
rank. No doubt, in each settlement all originally had the same
proportions of land dealt out to them; but some, more
adventurous than others, had extended their possessions farther
into the bordering wilds, or had improved into richer fertility
the produce of their fields, or entered into commerce or trade.
Thus, necessarily, some had grown richer than others, but none
had become absolutely poor, or wanting anything which their
tastes desired. If they did so, it was always in their power
to migrate, or at the worst to apply, without shame and with
certainty of aid, to the rich, for all the members of the
community considered themselves as brothers of one affectionate
and united family. More upon this head will be treated of
incidentally as my narrative proceeds.
38
The chief care of the supreme magistrate was to communicate
with certain active departments charged with the administration
of special details. The most important and essential of such
details was that connected with the due provision of light. Of
this department my host, Aph-Lin, was the chief. Another
department, which might be called the foreign, communicated
with the neighbouring kindred states, principally for the
purpose of ascertaining all new inventions; and to a third
department all such inventions and improvements in machinery
were committed for trial. Connected with this department was
the College of Sages- a college especially favoured by such of
the Ana as were widowed and childless, and by the young
unmarried females, amongst whom Zee was the most active, and,
if what we call renown or distinction was a thing acknowledged
by this people (which I shall later show it is not), among the
more renowned or distinguished. It is by the female Professors
of this College that those studies which are deemed of least
use in practical life- as purely speculative philosophy, the
history of remote periods, and such sciences as entomology,
conchology, &c.- are the more diligently cultivated. Zee,
whose mind, active as Aristotle's, equally embraced the largest
domains and the minutest details of thought, had written two
volumes on the parasite insect that dwells amid the hairs of a
tiger's* paw, which work was considered the best authority on
that interesting subject.

* The animal here referred to has many points of difference from
the tiger of the upper world. It is larger, and with a broader
paw, and still more receding frontal. It haunts the side of lakes
and pools, and feeds principally on fishes, though it does not
object to any terrestrial animal of inferior strength that comes in
its way. It is becoming very scarce even in the wild districts,
where it is devoured by gigantic reptiles. I apprehended that it
clearly belongs to the tiger species, since the parasite animalcule
found in its paw, like that in the Asiatic tiger, is a miniature
image of itself.

But the researches of the sages are not confined to such subtle
or elegant studies. They comprise various others more
39important, and especially the properties of vril, to the
perception of which their finer nervous organisation renders
the female Professors eminently keen. It is out of this
college that the Tur, or chief magistrate, selects Councillors,
limited to three, in the rare instances in which novelty of
event or circumstance perplexes his own judgment.

There are a few other departments of minor consequence, but all
are carried on so noiselessly, and quietly that the evidence of
a government seems to vanish altogether, and social order to be
as regular and unobtrusive as if it were a law of nature.
Machinery is employed to an inconceivable extent in all the
operations of labour within and without doors, and it is the
unceasing object of the department charged with its
administration to extend its efficiency. There is no class of
labourers or servants, but all who are required to assist or
control the machinery are found in the children, from the time
they leave the care of their mothers to the marriageable age,
which they place at sixteen for the Gy-ei (the females), twenty
for the Ana (the males). These children are formed into bands
and sections under their own chiefs, each following the
pursuits in which he is most pleased, or for which he feels
himself most fitted. Some take to handicrafts, some to
agriculture, some to household work, and some to the only
services of danger to which the population is exposed; for the
sole perils that threaten this tribe are, first, from those
occasional convulsions within the earth, to foresee and guard
against which tasks their utmost ingenuity- irruptions of fire
and water, the storms of subterranean winds and escaping gases.
At the borders of the domain, and at all places where such
peril might be apprehended, vigilant inspectors are stationed
with telegraphic communications to the hall in which chosen
sages take it by turns to hold perpetual sittings. These
inspectors are always selected from the elder boys approaching
the age of puberty, and on the principle that at that age
observation is more acute and the physical forces more alert
than at any other. The second service of danger, less grave,
40is in the destruction of all creatures hostile to the life, or
the culture, or even the comfort, of the Ana. Of these the
most formidable are the vast reptiles, of some of which
antediluvian relics are preserved in our museums, and certain
gigantic winged creatures, half bird, half reptile. These,
together with lesser wild animals, corresponding to our tigers
or venomous serpents, it is left to the younger children to
hunt and destroy; because, according to the Ana, here
ruthlessness is wanted, and the younger the child the more
ruthlessly he will destroy. There is another class of animals
in the destruction of which discrimination is to be used, and
against which children of intermediate age are appointed-
animals that do not threaten the life of man, but ravage the
produce of his labour, varieties of the elk and deer species,
and a smaller creature much akin to our rabbit, though
infinitely more destructive to crops, and much more cunning in
its mode of depredation. It is the first object of these
appointed infants, to tame the more intelligent of such animals
into respect for enclosures signalised by conspicuous
landmarks, as dogs are taught to respect a larder, or even to
guard the master's property. It is only where such creatures
are found untamable to this extent that they are destroyed.
Life is never taken away for food or for sport, and never
spared where untamably inimical to the Ana. Concomitantly with
these bodily services and tasks, the mental education of the
children goes on till boyhood ceases. It is the general custom,
then, to pass though a course of instruction at the College of
Sages, in which, besides more general studies, the pupil receives
special lessons in such vocation or direction of intellect as he
himself selects. Some, however, prefer to pass this period of
probation in travel, or to emigrate, or to settle down at once
into rural or commercial pursuits. No force is put upon
individual inclination.

41
Chapter X.


The word Ana (pronounced broadly 'Arna') corresponds with our
plural 'men;' An (pronounced 'Arn'), the singular, with 'man.'
The word for woman is Gy (pronounced hard, as in Guy); it forms
itself into Gy-ei for the plural, but the G becomes soft in the
plural like Jy-ei. They have a proverb to the effect that this
difference in pronunciation is symbolical, for that the female
sex is soft in the concrete, but hard to deal with in the
individual. The Gy-ei are in the fullest enjoyment of all the
rights of equality with males, for which certain philosophers
above ground contend.

In childhood they perform the offices of work and labour
impartially with the boys, and, indeed, in the earlier age
appropriated to the destruction of animals irreclaimably
hostile, the girls are frequently preferred, as being by
constitution more ruthless under the influence of fear or hate.
In the interval between infancy and the marriageable age
familiar intercourse between the sexes is suspended. At the
marriageable age it is renewed, never with worse consequences
than those which attend upon marriage. All arts and vocations
allotted to the one sex are open to the other, and the Gy-ei
arrogate to themselves a superiority in all those abstruse and
mystical branches of reasoning, for which they say the Ana are
unfitted by a duller sobriety of understanding, or the routine
of their matter-of-fact occupations, just as young ladies in our
own world constitute themselves authorities in the subtlest
points of theological doctrine, for which few men, actively
engaged in worldly business have sufficient learning or
refinement of intellect. Whether owing to early training in
gymnastic exercises, or to their constitutional organisation,
the Gy-ei are usually superior to the Ana in physical strength
(an important element in the consideration and maintenance of
female rights). They attain to loftier stature, and amid their
42rounder proportions are imbedded sinews and muscles as hardy as
those of the other sex. Indeed they assert that, according to
the original laws of nature, females were intended to be larger
than males, and maintain this dogma by reference to the earliest
formations of life in insects, and in the most ancient family of
the vertebrata- viz., fishes- in both of which the females are
generally large enough to make a meal of their consorts if they
so desire. Above all, the Gy-ei have a readier and more
concentred power over that mysterious fluid or agency which
contains the element of destruction, with a larger portion of
that sagacity which comprehends dissimulation. Thus they cannot
only defend themselves against all aggressions from the males,
but could, at any moment when he least expected his danger,
terminate the existence of an offending spouse. To the credit
of the Gy-ei no instance of their abuse of this awful
superiority in the art of destruction is on record for several
ages. The last that occurred in the community I speak of
appears (according to their chronology) to have been about two
thousand years ago. A Gy, then, in a fit of jealousy, slew her
husband; and this abominable act inspired such terror among the
males that they emigrated in a body and left all the Gy-ei to
themselves. The history runs that the widowed Gy-ei, thus
reduced to despair, fell upon the murderess when in her sleep
(and therefore unarmed), and killed her, and then entered into a
solemn obligation amongst themselves to abrogate forever the
exercise of their extreme conjugal powers, and to inculcate the
same obligation for ever and ever on their female children. By
this conciliatory process, a deputation despatched to the
fugitive consorts succeeded in persuading many to return, but
those who did return were mostly the elder ones. The younger,
either from too craven a doubt of their consorts, or too high an
estimate of their own merits, rejected all overtures, and,
remaining in other communities, were caught up there by other
mates, with whom perhaps they were no better off. But the loss
43of so large a portion of the male youth operated as a salutary
warning on the Gy-ei, and confirmed them in the pious resolution
to which they pledged themselves. Indeed it is now popularly
considered that, by long hereditary disuse, the Gy-ei have lost
both the aggressive and defensive superiority over the Ana which
they once possessed, just as in the inferior animals above the
earth many peculiarities in their original formation, intended
by nature for their protection, gradually fade or become
inoperative when not needed under altered circumstances. I
should be sorry, however, for any An who induced a Gy to make
the experiment whether he or she were the stronger.

>From the incident I have narrated, the Ana date certain
alterations in the marriage customs, tending, perhaps, somewhat
to the advantage of the male. They now bind themselves in
wedlock only for three years; at the end of each third year
either male or female can divorce the other and is free to
marry again. At the end of ten years the An has the privilege

of taking a second wife, allowing the first to retire if she so
please. These regulations are for the most part a dead letter;
divorces and polygamy are extremely rare, and the marriage
state now seems singularly happy and serene among this
astonishing people;- the Gy-ei, notwithstanding their boastful
superiority in physical strength and intellectual abilities,
being much curbed into gentle manners by the dread of
separation or of a second wife, and the Ana being very much the
creatures of custom, and not, except under great aggravation,
likely to exchange for hazardous novelties faces and manners to
which they are reconciled by habit. But there is one privilege
the Gy-ei carefully retain, and the desire for which perhaps
forms the secret motive of most lady asserters of woman rights
above ground. They claim the privilege, here usurped by men,
of proclaiming their love and urging their suit; in other
words, of being the wooing party rather than the wooed. Such a
44phenomenon as an old maid does not exist among the Gy-ei.
Indeed it is very seldom that a Gy does not secure any An upon
whom she sets her heart, if his affections be not strongly
engaged elsewhere. However coy, reluctant, and prudish, the
male she courts may prove at first, yet her perseverance, her
ardour, her persuasive powers, her command over the mystic
agencies of vril, are pretty sure to run down his neck into
what we call "the fatal noose." Their argument for the reversal
of that relationship of the sexes which the blind tyranny of
man has established on the surface of the earth, appears
cogent, and is advanced with a frankness which might well be
commended to impartial consideration. They say, that of the
two the female is by nature of a more loving disposition than
the male- that love occupies a larger space in her thoughts,
and is more essential to her happiness, and that therefore she
ought to be the wooing party; that otherwise the male is a shy
and dubitant creature- that he has often a selfish predilection
for the single state- that he often pretends to misunderstand
tender glances and delicate hints- that, in short, he must be
resolutely pursued and captured. They add, moreover, that
unless the Gy can secure the An of her choice, and one whom she
would not select out of the whole world becomes her mate, she
is not only less happy than she otherwise would be, but she is
not so good a being, that her qualities of heart are not
sufficiently developed; whereas the An is a creature that less
lastingly concentrates his affections on one object; that if he
cannot get the Gy whom he prefers he easily reconciles himself
to another Gy; and, finally, that at the worst, if he is loved
and taken care of, it is less necessary to the welfare of his
existence that he should love as well as be loved; he grows
contented with his creature comforts, and the many occupations
of thought which he creates for himself.

Whatever may be said as to this reasoning, the system works
well for the male; for being thus sure that he is truly and
ardently loved, and that the more coy and reluctant he shows
45himself, the more determination to secure him increases, he
generally contrives to make his consent dependent on such
conditions as he thinks the best calculated to insure, if not a
blissful, at least a peaceful life. Each individual An has his
own hobbies, his own ways, his own predilections, and, whatever
they may be, he demands a promise of full and unrestrained
concession to them. This, in the pursuit of her object, the Gy
readily promises; and as the characteristic of this
extraordinary people is an implicit veneration for truth, and
her word once given is never broken even by the giddiest Gy,
the conditions stipulated for are religiously observed. In
fact, notwithstanding all their abstract rights and powers, the
Gy-ei are the most amiable, conciliatory, and submissive wives
I have ever seen even in the happiest households above ground.
It is an aphorism among them, that "where a Gy loves it is her
pleasure to obey." It will be observed that in the relationship
of the sexes I have spoken only of marriage, for such is the
moral perfection to which this community has attained, that any
illicit connection is as little possible amongst them as it
would be to a couple of linnets during the time they agree to
live in pairs.


Chapter XI.


Nothing had more perplexed me in seeking to reconcile my sense
to the existence of regions extending below the surface of the
earth, and habitable by beings, if dissimilar from, still, in
all material points of organism, akin to those in the upper
world, than the contradiction thus presented to the doctrine in
which, I believe, most geologists and philosophers concur-
viz., that though with us the sun is the great source of heat,
yet the deeper we go beneath the crust of the earth, the
greater is the increasing heat, being, it is said, found in the
46ratio of a degree for every foot, commencing from fifty feet
below the surface. But though the domains of the tribe I speak
of were, on the higher ground, so comparatively near to the
surface, that I could account for a temperature, therein,
suitable to organic life, yet even the ravines and valleys of
that realm were much less hot than philosophers would deem
possible at such a depth- certainly not warmer than the south of
France, or at least of Italy. And according to all the accounts
I received, vast tracts immeasurably deeper beneath the surface,
and in which one might have thought only salamanders could
exist, were inhabited by innumerable races organised like
ourselves, I cannot pretend in any way to account for a fact
which is so at variance with the recognised laws of science, nor
could Zee much help me towards a solution of it. She did but
conjecture that sufficient allowance had not been made by our
philosophers for the extreme porousness of the interior earth-
the vastness of its cavities and irregularities, which served to
create free currents of air and frequent winds- and for the
various modes in which heat is evaporated and thrown off. She
allowed, however, that there was a depth at which the heat was
deemed to be intolerable to such organised life as was known to
the experience of the Vril-ya, though their philosophers
believed that even in such places life of some kind, life
sentient, life intellectual, would be found abundant and
thriving, could the philosophers penetrate to it. "Wherever the
All-Good builds," said she, "there, be sure, He places
inhabitants. He loves not empty dwellings." She added,
however, that many changes in temperature and climate had been
effected by the skill of the Vril-ya, and that the agency of
vril had been successfully employed in such changes. She
described a subtle and life-giving medium called Lai, which I
suspect to be identical with the ethereal oxygen of Dr. Lewins,
wherein work all the correlative forces united under the name of
vril; and contended that wherever this medium could be expanded,
as it were, sufficiently for the various agencies of vril to
47have ample play, a temperature congenial to the highest forms of
life could be secured. She said also, that it was the belief of
their naturalists that flowers and vegetation had been produced
originally (whether developed from seeds borne from the surface
of the earth in the earlier convulsions of nature, or imported
by the tribes that first sought refuge in cavernous hollows)
through the operations of the light constantly brought to bear
on them, and the gradual improvement in culture. She said also,
that since the vril light had superseded all other light-giving
bodies, the colours of flower and foliage had become more
brilliant, and vegetation had acquired larger growth.

Leaving these matters to the consideration of those better
competent to deal with them, I must now devote a few pages to
the very interesting questions connected with the language of
the Vril-ya.


Chapter XII.


The language of the Vril-ya is peculiarly interesting, because
it seems to me to exhibit with great clearness the traces of
the three main transitions through which language passes in
attaining to perfection of form.

One of the most illustrious of recent philologists, Max Muller,
in arguing for the analogy between the strata of language and
the strata of the earth, lays down this absolute dogma: "No
language can, by any possibility, be inflectional without
having passed through the agglutinative and isolating stratum.
No language can be agglutinative without clinging with its
roots to the underlying stratum of isolation."- 'On the
Stratification of Language,' p. 20.

Taking then the Chinese language as the best existing type of
the original isolating stratum, "as the faithful photograph of
man in his leading-strings trying the muscles of his mind,
groping his way, and so delighted with his first successful
48grasps that he repeats them again and again," (Max Muller, p.
13)- we have, in the language of the Vril-ya, still "clinging
with its roots to the underlying stratum," the evidences of the
original isolation. It abounds in monosyllables, which are the
foundations of the language. The transition into the
agglutinative form marks an epoch that must have gradually
extended through ages, the written literature of which has only
survived in a few fragments of symbolical mythology and certain
pithy sentences which have passed into popular proverbs. With
the extant literature of the Vril-ya the inflectional stratum
commences. No doubt at that time there must have operated
concurrent causes, in the fusion of races by some dominant
people, and the rise of some great literary phenomena by which
the form of language became arrested and fixed. As the
inflectional stage prevailed over the agglutinative, it is
surprising to see how much more boldly the original roots of the
language project from the surface that conceals them. In the
old fragments and proverbs of the preceding stage the
monosyllables which compose those roots vanish amidst words of
enormous length, comprehending whole sentences from which no one
part can be disentangled from the other and employed separately.
But when the inflectional form of language became so far
advanced as to have its scholars and grammarians, they seem to
have united in extirpating all such polysynthetical or
polysyllabic monsters, as devouring invaders of the aboriginal
forms. Words beyond three syllables became proscribed as
barbarous and in proportion as the language grew thus simplified
it increased in strength, in dignity, and in sweetness. Though
now very compressed in sound, it gains in clearness by that
compression. By a single letter, according to its position,
they contrive to express all that with civilised nations in our
49upper world it takes the waste, sometimes of syllables,
sometimes of sentences, to express. Let me here cite one or two
instances: An (which I will translate man), Ana (men); the
letter 's' is with them a letter implying multitude, according
to where it is placed; Sana means mankind; Ansa, a multitude of
men. The prefix of certain letters in their alphabet invariably
denotes compound significations. For instance, Gl (which with
them is a single letter, as 'th' is a single letter with the
Greeks) at the commencement of a word infers an assemblage or
union of things, sometimes kindred, sometimes dissimilar- as
Oon, a house; Gloon, a town (i. e., an assemblage of houses).
Ata is sorrow; Glata, a public calamity. Aur-an is the health
or wellbeing of a man; Glauran, the wellbeing of the state, the
good of the community; and a word constantly in ther mouths is
A-glauran, which denotes their political creed- viz., that "the
first principle of a community is the good of all." Aub is
invention; Sila, a tone in music. Glaubsila, as uniting the
ideas of invention and of musical intonation, is the classical
word for poetry- abbreviated, in ordinary conversation, to
Glaubs. Na, which with them is, like Gl, but a single letter,
always, when an initial, implies something antagonistic to life
or joy or comfort, resembling in this the Aryan root Nak,
expressive of perishing or destruction. Nax is darkness; Narl,
death; Naria, sin or evil. Nas- an uttermost condition of sin
and evil- corruption. In writing, they deem it irreverent to
express the Supreme Being by any special name. He is symbolized
by what may be termed the heiroglyphic of a pyramid, /. In
prayer they address Him by a name which they deem too sacred to
confide to a stranger, and I know it not. In conversation they
generally use a periphrastic epithet, such as the All-Good. The
letter V, symbolical of the inverted pyramid, where it is an
initial, nearly always denotes excellence of power; as Vril, of
which I have said so much; Veed, an immortal spirit; Veed-ya,
immortality; Koom, pronounced like the Welsh Cwm, denotes
50something of hollowness. Koom itself is a cave; Koom-in, a hole;
Zi-koom, a valley; Koom-zi, vacancy or void; Bodh-koom,
ignorance (literally, knowledge-void). Koom-posh is their name
for the government of the many, or the ascendancy of the most
ignorant or hollow. Posh is an almost untranslatable idiom,
implying, as the reader will see later, contempt. The closest
rendering I can give to it is our slang term, "bosh;" and this
Koom-Posh may be loosely rendered "Hollow-Bosh." But when
Democracy or Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into
that popular passion or ferocity which precedes its decease, as
(to cite illustrations from the upper world) during the French
Reign of Terror, or for the fifty years of the Roman Republic
preceding the ascendancy of Augustus, their name for that state
of things is Glek-Nas. Ek is strife- Glek, the universal strife.
Nas, as I before said, is corruption or rot; thus, Glek-Nas may
be construed, "the universal strife-rot." Their compounds are
very expressive; thus, Bodh being knowledge, and Too a
participle that implies the action of cautiously approaching,-
Too-bodh is their word for Philosophy; Pah is a contemptuous
exclamation analogous to our idiom, "stuff and nonsense;"
Pah-bodh (literally stuff and nonsense-knowledge) is their term
for futile and false philosophy, and applied to a species of
metaphysical or speculative ratiocination formerly in vogue,
which consisted in making inquiries that could not be answered,
and were not worth making; such, for instance, as "Why does an
An have five toes to his feet instead of four or six? Did the
first An, created by the All-Good, have the same number of toes
as his descendants? In the form by which an An will be
recognised by his friends in the future state of being, will he
retain any toes at all, and, if so, will they be material toes
or spiritual toes?" I take these illustrations of Pahbodh, not
in irony or jest, but because the very inquiries I name formed
the subject of controversy by the latest cultivators of that
'science,'- 4000 years ago.
51
In the declension of nouns I was informed that anciently there
were eight cases (one more than in the Sanskrit Grammar); but
the effect of time has been to reduce these cases, and
multiply, instead of these varying terminations, explanatory
propositions. At present, in the Grammar submitted to my
study, there were four cases to nouns, three having varying
terminations, and the fourth a differing prefix.

SINGULAR. PLURAL.
Nom. An, Man, | Nom. Ana, Men.
Dat. Ano, to Man, | Dat. Anoi, to Men.
Ac. Anan, Man, | Ac. Ananda, Men.
Voc. Hil-an, O Man, | Voc. Hil-Ananda, O Men.

In the elder inflectional literature the dual form existed- it
has long been obsolete.

The genitive case with them is also obsolete; the dative
supplies its place: they say the House 'to' a Man, instead of
the House 'of' a Man. When used (sometimes in poetry), the
genitive in the termination is the same as the nominative; so
is the ablative, the preposition that marks it being a prefix
or suffix at option, and generally decided by ear, according to
the sound of the noun. It will be observed that the prefix Hil
marks the vocative case. It is always retained in addressing
another, except in the most intimate domestic relations; its
omission would be considered rude: just as in our of forms of
speech in addressing a king it would have been deemed
disrespectful to say "King," and reverential to say "O King."
In fact, as they have no titles of honour, the vocative
adjuration supplies the place of a title, and is given
impartially to all. The prefix Hil enters into the composition
of words that imply distant communications, as Hil-ya, to
travel.

In the conjugation of their verbs, which is much too lengthy a
subject to enter on here, the auxiliary verb Ya, "to go," which
plays so considerable part in the Sanskrit, appears and
performs a kindred office, as if it were a radical in some
language from which both had descended. But another auxiliary
52or opposite signification also accompanies it and shares its
labours- viz., Zi, to stay or repose. Thus Ya enters into the
future tense, and Zi in the preterite of all verbs requiring
auxiliaries. Yam, I shall go- Yiam, I may go- Yani-ya, I shall
go (literally, I go to go), Zam-poo-yan, I have gone
(literally, I rest from gone). Ya, as a termination, implies
by analogy, progress, movement, efflorescence. Zi, as a
terminal, denotes fixity, sometimes in a good sense, sometimes
in a bad, according to the word with which it is coupled.
Iva-zi, eternal goodness; Nan-zi, eternal evil. Poo (from)
enters as a prefix to words that denote repugnance, or things
from which we ought to be averse. Poo-pra, disgust; Poo-naria,
falsehood, the vilest kind of evil. Poosh or Posh I have
already confessed to be untranslatable literally. It is an
expression of contempt not unmixed with pity. This radical
seems to have originated from inherent sympathy between the
labial effort and the sentiment that impelled it, Poo being an
utterance in which the breath is exploded from the lips with
more or less vehemence. On the other hand, Z, when an initial,
is with them a sound in which the breath is sucked inward, and
thus Zu, pronounced Zoo (which in their language is one
letter), is the ordinary prefix to words that signify something
that attracts, pleases, touches the heart- as Zummer, lover;
Zutze, love; Zuzulia, delight. This indrawn sound of Z seems
indeed naturally appropriate to fondness. Thus, even in our
language, mothers say to their babies, in defiance of grammar,
"Zoo darling;" and I have heard a learned professor at Boston
call his wife (he had been only married a month) "Zoo little
pet."

I cannot quit this subject, however, without observing by what
slight changes in the dialects favoured by different tribes of
the same race, the original signification and beauty of sounds
may become confused and deformed. Zee told me with much
indignation that Zummer (lover) which in the way she uttered
it, seemed slowly taken down to the very depths of her heart,
was, in some not very distant communities of the Vril-ya,
53vitiated into the half-hissing, half-nasal, wholly
disagreeable, sound of Subber. I thought to myself it only
wanted the introduction of 'n' before 'u' to render it into an
English word significant of the last quality an amorous Gy
would desire in her Zummer.

I will but mention another peculiarity in this language which
gives equal force and brevity to its forms of expressions.

A is with them, as with us, the first letter of the alphabet,
and is often used as a prefix word by itself to convey a
complex idea of sovereignty or chiefdom, or presiding
principle. For instance, Iva is goodness; Diva, goodness and
happiness united; A-Diva is unerring and absolute truth. I
have already noticed the value of A in A-glauran, so, in vril
(to whose properties they trace their present state of
civilisation), A-vril, denotes, as I have said, civilisation
itself.

The philologist will have seen from the above how much the
language of the Vril-ya is akin to the Aryan or Indo-Germanic;
but, like all languages, it contains words and forms in which
transfers from very opposite sources of speech have been taken.
The very title of Tur, which they give to their supreme
magistrate, indicates theft from a tongue akin to the Turanian.
They say themselves that this is a foreign word borrowed from a
title which their historical records show to have been borne by
the chief of a nation with whom the ancestors of the Vril-ya
were, in very remote periods, on friendly terms, but which has
long become extinct, and they say that when, after the
discovery of vril, they remodelled their political
institutions, they expressly adopted a title taken from an
extinct race and a dead language for that of their chief
magistrate, in order to avoid all titles for that office with
which they had previous associations.

Should life be spared to me, I may collect into systematic form
such knowledge as I acquired of this language during my sojourn
amongst the Vril-ya. But what I have already said will perhaps
suffice to show to genuine philological students that a
54language which, preserving so many of the roots in the
aboriginal form, and clearing from the immediate, but
transitory, polysynthetical stage so many rude incumbrances,
s from popular ignorance into
that popular passion or ferocity which precedes its decease, as
(to cite illustrations from the upper world) during the French
Reign of Terror, or for the fifty years of the Roman Republic
preceding the ascendancy of Augustus, their name for that state
of things is Glek-Nas. Ek is strife- Glek, the universal strife.
Nas, as I before said, is corruption or rot; thus, Glek-Nas may
be construed, "the universal strife-rot." Their compounds are
very expressive; thuat which the Ana have attained
forbids the progressive cultivation of literature, especially
in the two main divisions of fiction and history,- I shall have
occasion to show later.


Chapter XIII.


This people have a religion, and, whatever may be said against
it, at least it has these strange peculiarities: firstly, that
all believe in the creed they profess; secondly, that they all
practice the precepts which the creed inculcates. They unite
in the worship of one divine Creator and Sustainer of the
universe. They believe that it is one of the properties of the
all-permeating agency of vril, to transmit to the well-spring
of life and intelligence every thought that a living creature
can conceive; and though they do not contend that the idea of a
Diety is innate, yet they say that the An (man) is the only
creature, so far as their observation of nature extends, to
whom 'the capacity of conceiving that idea,' with all the
trains of thought which open out from it, is vouchsafed. They
hold that this capacity is a privilege that cannot have been
given in vain, and hence that prayer and thanksgiving are
55acceptable to the divine Creator, and necessary to the complete
development of the human creature. They offer their devotions
both in private and public. Not being considered one of their
species, I was not admitted into the building or temple in
which the public worship is rendered; but I am informed that
the service is exceedingly short, and unattended with any pomp
of ceremony. It is a doctrine with the Vril-ya, that earnest
devotion or complete abstraction from the actual world cannot,
with benefit to itself, be maintained long at a stretch by the
human mind, especially in public, and that all attempts to do
so either lead to fanaticism or to hypocrisy. When they pray
in private, it is when they are alone or with their young
children.

They say that in ancient times there was a great number of
books written upon speculations as to the nature of the Diety,
and upon the forms of belief or worship supposed to be most
agreeable to Him. But these were found to lead to such heated
and angry disputations as not only to shake the peace of the
community and divide families before the most united, but in
the course of discussing the attributes of the Diety, the
existence of the Diety Himself became argued away, or, what was
worse, became invested with the passions and infirmities of the
human disputants. "For," said my host, "since a finite being
like an An cannot possibly define the Infinite, so, when he
endeavours to realise an idea of the Divinity, he only reduces
the Divinity into an An like himself." During the later ages,
therefore, all theological speculations, though not forbidden,
have been so discouraged as to have fallen utterly into disuse.
The Vril-ya unite in a conviction of a future state, more
felicitous and more perfect than the present. If they have
very vague notions of the doctrine of rewards and punishments,
it is perhaps because they have no systems of rewards and
punishments among themselves, for there are no crimes to
punish, and their moral standard is so even that no An among
56them is, upon the whole, considered more virtuous than another.
If one excels, perhaps in one virtue, another equally excels in
some other virtue; If one has his prevalent fault or infirmity,
so also another has his. In fact, in their extraordinary mode
of life. there are so few temptations to wrong, that they are
good (according to their notions of goodness) merely because
they live. They have some fanciful notions upon the
continuance of life, when once bestowed, even in the vegetable
world, as the reader will see in the next chapter.


Chapter XIV.


Though, as I have said, the Vril-ya discourage all speculations
on the nature of the Supreme Being, they appear to concur in a
belief by which they think to solve that great problem of the
existence of evil which has so perplexed the philosophy of the
upper world. They hold that wherever He has once given life,
with the perceptions of that life, however faint it be, as in a
plant, the life is never destroyed; it passes into new and
improved forms, though not in this planet (differing therein
from the ordinary doctrine of metempsychosis), and that the
living thing retains the sense of identity, so that it connects
its past life with its future, and is 'conscious' of its
progressive improvement in the scale of joy. For they say
that, without this assumption, they cannot, according to the
lights of human reason vouchsafed to them, discover the perfect
justice which must be a constituent quality of the All-Wise and
the All-Good. Injustice, they say, can only emanate from three
causes: want of wisdom to perceive what is just, want of
benevolence to desire, want of power to fulfill it; and that
each of these three wants is incompatible in the All-Wise, the
57All-Good, the All-Powerful. But that, while even in this life,
the wisdom, the benevolence, and the power of the Supreme Being
are sufficiently apparent to compel our recognition, the
justice necessarily resulting from those attributes, absolutely
requires another life, not for man only, but for every living
thing of the inferior orders. That, alike in the animal and
the vegetable world, we see one individual rendered, by
circumstances beyond its control, exceedingly wretched compared
to its neighbours- one only exists as the prey of another- even
a plant suffers from disease till it perishes prematurely,
while the plant next to it rejoices in its vitality and lives
out its happy life free from a pang. That it is an erroneous
analogy from human infirmities to reply by saying that the
Supreme Being only acts by general laws, thereby making his own
secondary causes so potent as to mar the essential kindness of
the First Cause; and a still meaner and more ignorant
conception of the All-Good, to dismiss with a brief contempt
all consideration of justice for the myriad forms into which He
has infused life, and assume that justice is only due to the
single product of the An. There is no small and no great in
the eyes of the divine Life-Giver. But once grant that
nothing, however humble, which feels that it lives and suffers,
can perish through the series of ages, that all its suffering
here, if continuous from the moment of its birth to that of its
transfer to another form of being, would be more brief compared
with eternity than the cry of the new-born is compared to the
whole life of a man; and once suppose that this living thing
retains its sense of identity when so transformed (for without
that sense it could be aware of no future being), and though,
indeed, the fulfilment of divine justice is removed from the
scope of our ken, yet we have a right to assume it to be
uniform and universal, and not varying and partial, as it would
be if acting only upon general and secondary laws; because such
perfect justice flows of necessity from perfectness of
knowledge to conceive, perfectness of love to will, and
perfectness of power to complete it.
58
However fantastic this belief of the Vril-ya may be, it tends
perhaps to confirm politically the systems of government which,
admitting different degrees of wealth, yet establishes perfect
equality in rank, exquisite mildness in all relations and
intercourse, and tenderness to all created things which the good
of the community does not require them to destroy. And though
their notion of compensation to a tortured insect or a cankered
flower may seem to some of us a very wild crotchet, yet, at
least, is not a mischievous one; and it may furnish matter for
no unpleasing reflection to think that within the abysses of
earth, never lit by a ray from the material heavens, there
should have penetrated so luminous a conviction of the ineffable
goodness of the Creator- so fixed an idea that the general laws
by which He acts cannot admit of any partial injustice or evil,
and therefore cannot be comprehended without reference to their
action over all space and throughout all time. And since, as I
shall have occasion to observe later, the intellectual
conditions and social systems of this subterranean race comprise
and harmonise great, and apparently antagonistic, varieties in
philosophical doctrine and speculation which have from time to
time been started, discussed, dismissed, and have re-appeared
amongst thinkers or dreamers in the upper world,- so I may
perhaps appropriately conclude this reference to the belief of
the Vril-ya, that self-conscious or sentient life once given is
indestructible among inferior creatures as well as in man, by an
eloquent passage from the work of that eminent zoologist, Louis
Agassiz, which I have only just met with, many years after I had
committed to paper these recollections of the life of the
Vril-ya which I now reduce into something like arrangement and
form: "The relations which individual animals bear to one
another are of such a character that they ought long ago to have
been considered as sufficient proof that no organised being
could ever have been called into existence by other agency than
59by the direct intervention of a reflective mind. This argues
strongly in favour of the existence in every animal of an
immaterial principle similar to that which by its excellence and
superior endowments places man so much above the animals; yet
the principle unquestionably exists, and whether it be called
sense, reason, or instinct, it presents in the whole range of
organised beings a series of phenomena closely linked together,
and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the
mind, but the very permanence of the specific differences which
characterise every organism. Most of the arguments in favour of
the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this
principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future
life in which man would be deprived of that great source of
enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement which results
from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world
would involve a lamentable loss? And may we not look to a
spiritual concert of the combined worlds and ALL their
inhabitants in the presence of their Creator as the highest
conception of paradise?"- 'Essay on Classification,' sect.
xvii. p. 97-99.


Chapter XV.


Kind to me as I found all in this household, the young daughter
of my host was the most considerate and thoughtful in her
kindness. At her suggestion I laid aside the habiliments in
which I had descended from the upper earth, and adopted the
dress of the Vril-ya, with the exception of the artful wings
which served them, when on foot, as a graceful mantle. But as
many of the Vril-ya, when occupied in urban pursuits, did not
wear these wings, this exception created no marked difference
between myself and the race among whom I sojourned, and I was
thus enabled to visit the town without exciting unpleasant
60curiosity. Out of the household no one suspected that I had
come from the upper world, and I was but regarded as one of
some inferior and barbarous tribe whom Aph-Lin entertained as a
guest.

The city was large in proportion to the territory round it,
which was of no greater extent than many an English or
Hungarian nobleman's estate; but the whole if it, to the verge of the rocks which constituted its boundary, was cultivated to
the nicest degree, except where certain allotments of mountain
and pasture were humanely left free to the sustenance of the
harmless animals they had tamed, though not for domestic use.
So great is their kindness towards these humbler creatures,
that a sum is devoted from the public treasury for the purpose
of deporting them to other Vril-ya communities willing to
receive them (chiefly new colonies), whenever they become too
numerous for the pastures allotted to them in their native
place. They do not, however, multiply to an extent comparable
to the ratio at which, with us, animals bred for slaughter,
increase. It seems a law of nature that animals not useful to
man gradually recede from the domains he occupies, or even
become extinct. It is an old custom of the various sovereign
states amidst which the race of the Vril-ya are distributed, to
leave between each state a neutral and uncultivated
border-land. In the instance of the community I speak of, this
tract, being a ridge of savage rocks, was impassable by foot,
but was easily surmounted, whether by the wings of the
inhabitants or the air-boats, of which I shall speak hereafter.
Roads through it were also cut for the transit of vehicles
impelled by vril. These intercommunicating tracts were always
kept lighted, and the expense thereof defrayed by a special
tax, to which all the communities comprehended in the
denomination of Vril-ya contribute in settled proportions. By
these means a considerable commercial traffic with other
states, both near and distant, was carried on. The surplus
wealth on this special community was chiefly agricultural. The
61community was also eminent for skill in constructing implements
connected with the arts of husbandry. In exchange for such
merchandise it obtained articles more of luxury than necessity.
There were few things imported on which they set a higher price
than birds taught to pipe artful tunes in concert. These were
brought from a great distance, and were marvellous for beauty
of song and plumage. I understand that extraordinary care was
taken by their breeders and teachers in selection, and that the
species had wonderfully improved during the last few years. I
saw no other pet animals among this community except some very
amusing and sportive creatures of the Batrachian species,
resembling frogs, but with very intelligent countenances, which
the children were fond of, and kept in their private gardens.
They appear to have no animals akin to our dogs or horses,
though that learned naturalist, Zee, informed me that such
creatures had once existed in those parts, and might now be
found in regions inhabited by other races than the Vril-ya.
She said that they had gradually disappeared from the more
civilised world since the discovery of vril, and the results
attending that discovery had dispensed with their uses.
Machinery and the invention of wings had superseded the horse
as a beast of burden; and the dog was no longer wanted either
for protection or the chase, as it had been when the ancestors
of the Vril-ya feared the aggressions of their own kind, or
hunted the lesser animals for food. Indeed, however, so far as
the horse was concerned, this region was so rocky that a horse
could have been, there, of little use either for pastime or
burden. The only creature they use for the latter purpose is a
kind of large goat which is much employed on farms. The nature
of the surrounding soil in these districts may be said to have
first suggested the invention of wings and air-boats. The
largeness of space in proportion to the space occupied by the
city, was occasioned by the custom of surrounding every house
with a separate garden. The broad main street, in which
Aph-Lin dwelt, expanded into a vast square, in which were
62placed the College of Sages and all the public offices; a
magnificent fountain of the luminous fluid which I call naptha
(I am ignorant of its real nature) in the centre. All these
public edifices have a uniform character of massiveness and
solidity. They reminded me of the architectural pictures of
Martin. Along the upper stories of each ran a balcony, or
rather a terraced garden, supported by columns, filled with
flowering plants, and tenanted by many kinds of tame birds.
>From the square branched several streets, all broad and
brilliantly lighted, and ascending up the eminence on either
side. In my excursions in the town I was never allowed to go
alone; Aph-Lin or his daughter was my habitual companion. In
this community the adult Gy is seen walking with any young An
as familiarly as if there were no difference of sex.

The retail shops are not very numerous; the persons who attend
on a customer are all children of various ages, and exceedingly
intelligent and courteous, but without the least touch of
importunity or cringing. The shopkeeper himself might or might
not be visible; when visible, he seemed rarely employed on any
matter connected with his professional business; and yet he had
taken to that business from special liking for it, and quite
independently of his general sources of fortune.

The Ana of the community are, on the whole, an indolent set of
beings after the active age of childhood. Whether by
temperament or philosophy, they rank repose among the chief
blessings of life. Indeed, when you take away from a human
63being the incentives to action which are found in cupidity or
ambition, it seems to me no wonder that he rests quiet.

In their ordinary movements they prefer the use of their feet
to that of their wings. But for their sports or (to indulge in
a bold misuse of terms) their public 'promenades,' they employ
the latter, also for the aerial dances I have described, as
well as for visiting their country places, which are mostly
placed on lofty heights; and, when still young, they prefer
their wings for travel into the other regions of the Ana, to
vehicular conveyances.

Those who accustom themselves to flight can fly, if less
rapidly than some birds, yet from twenty-five to thirty miles
an hour, and keep up that rate for five or six hours at a
stretch. But the Ana generally, on reaching middle age, are
not fond of rapid movements requiring violent exercise.
Perhaps for this reason, as they hold a doctrine which our own
physicians will doubtless approve- viz., that regular
transpiration through the pores of the skin is essential to
health, they habitually use the sweating-baths to which we give
the name Turkish or Roman, succeeded by douches of perfumed
waters. They have great faith in the salubrious virtue of
certain perfumes.

It is their custom also, at stated but rare periods, perhaps
four times a-year when in health, to use a bath charged with
vril.*

* I once tried the effect of the vril bath. It was very
similar in its invigorating powers to that of the baths at
Gastein, the virtues of which are ascribed by many physicians
to electricity; but though similar, the effect of the vril bath
was more lasting.

They consider that this fluid, sparingly used, is a great
sustainer of life; but used in excess, when in the normal state
of health, rather tends to reaction and exhausted vitality.
For nearly all their diseases, however, they resort to it as
the chief assistant to nature in throwing off their complaint.

In their own way they are the most luxurious of people, but all
their luxuries are innocent. They may be said to dwell in an
atmosphere of music and fragrance. Every room has its
64mechanical contrivances for melodious sounds, usually tuned
down to soft-murmured notes, which seem like sweet whispers
from invisible spirits. They are too accustomed to these
gentle sounds to find them a hindrance to conversation, nor,
when alone, to reflection. But they have a notion that to
breathe an air filled with continuous melody and perfume has
necessarily an effect at once soothing and elevating upon the
formation of character and the habits of thought. Though so
temperate, and with total abstinence from other animal food
than milk, and from all intoxicating drinks, they are delicate
and dainty to an extreme in food and beverage; and in all their
sports even the old exhibit a childlike gaiety. Happiness is
the end at which they aim, not as the excitement of a moment,
but as the prevailing condition of the entire existence; and
regard for the happiness of each other is evinced by the
exquisite amenity of their manners.

Their conformation of skull has marked differences from that of
any known races in the upper world, though I cannot help
thinking it a development, in the course of countless ages of
the Brachycephalic type of the Age of Stone in Lyell's
'Elements of Geology,' C. X., p. 113, as compared with the
Dolichocephalic type of the beginning of the Age of Iron,
correspondent with that now so prevalent amongst us, and called
the Celtic type. It has the same comparative massiveness of
forehead, not receding like the Celtic- the same even roundness
in the frontal organs; but it is far loftier in the apex, and
far less pronounced in the hinder cranial hemisphere where
phrenologists place the animal organs. To speak as a
phrenologist, the cranium common to the Vril-ya has the organs
of weight, number, tune, form, order, causality, very largely
developed; that of construction much more pronounced than that
of ideality. Those which are called the moral organs, such as
conscientiousness and benevolence, are amazingly full;
amativeness and combativeness are both small; adhesiveness
large; the organ of destructiveness (i.e., of determined
65clearance of intervening obstacles) immense, but less than that
of benevolence; and their philoprogenitiveness takes rather the
character of compassion and tenderness to things that need aid
or protection than of the animal love of offspring. I never
met with one person deformed or misshapen. The beauty of their
countenances is not only in symmetry of feature, but in a
smoothness of surface, which continues without line or wrinkle
to the extreme of old age, and a serene sweetness of
expression, combined with that majesty which seems to come from
consciousness of power and the freedom of all terror, physical
or moral. It is that very sweetness, combined with that
majesty, which inspired in a beholder like myself, accustomed
to strive with the passions of mankind, a sentiment of
humiliation, of awe, of dread. It is such an expression as a
painter might give to a demi-god, a genius, an angel. The
males of the Vril-ya are entirely beardless; the Gy-ei
sometimes, in old age, develop a small moustache.

I was surprised to find that the colour of their skin was not
uniformly that which I had remarked in those individuals whom I
had first encountered,- some being much fairer, and even with
blue eyes, and hair of a deep golden auburn, though still of
complexions warmer or richer in tone than persons in the north
of Europe.

I was told that this admixture of colouring arose from
intermarriage with other and more distant tribes of the
Vril-ya, who, whether by the accident of climate or early
distinction of race, were of fairer hues than the tribes of
which this community formed one. It was considered that the
dark-red skin showed the most ancient family of Ana; but they
attached no sentiment of pride to that antiquity, and, on the
contrary, believed their present excellence of breed came from
frequent crossing with other families differing, yet akin; and
they encourage such intermarriages, always provided that it be
with the Vril-ya nations. Nations which, not conforming their
66manners and institutions to those of the Vril-ya, nor indeed
held capable of acquiring the powers over the vril agencies
which it had taken them generations to attain and transmit,
were regarded with more disdain than the citizens of New York
regard the negroes.

I learned from Zee, who had more lore in all matters than any
male with whom I was brought into familiar converse, that the
superiority of the Vril-ya was supposed to have originated in
the intensity of their earlier struggles against obstacles in
nature amidst the localities in which they had first settled.
"Wherever," said Zee, moralising, "wherever goes on that early
process in the history of civilisation, by which life is made a
struggle, in which the individual has to put forth all his
powers to compete with his fellow, we invariably find this
result- viz., since in the competition a vast number must
perish, nature selects for preservation only the strongest
specimens. With our race, therefore, even before the discovery
of vril, only the highest organisations were preserved; and
there is among our ancient books a legend, once popularly
believed, that we were driven from a region that seems to
denote the world you come from, in order to perfect our
condition and attain to the purest elimination of our species
by the severity of the struggles our forefathers underwent; and
that, when our education shall become finally completed, we are
destined to return to the upper world, and supplant all the
inferior races now existing therein."

Aph-Lin and Zee often conversed with me in private upon the
political and social conditions of that upper world, in which
Zee so philosophically assumed that the inhabitants were to be
exterminated one day or other by the advent of the Vril-ya.
They found in my accounts,- in which I continued to do all I
could (without launching into falsehoods so positive that they
would have been easily detected by the shrewdness of my
listeners) to present our powers and ourselves in the most
flattering point of view,- perpetual subjects of comparison
67between our most civilised populations and the meaner
subterranean races which they considered hopelessly plunged in
barbarism, and doomed to gradual if certain extinction. But
they both agreed in desiring to conceal from their community
all premature opening into the regions lighted by the sun; both
were humane, and shrunk from the thought of annihilating so
many millions of creatures; and the pictures I drew of our
life, highly coloured as they were, saddened them. In vain I
boasted of our great men- poets, philosophers, orators,
generals- and defied the Vril-ya to produce their equals.
"Alas," said Zee, "this predominance of the few over the many
is the surest and most fatal sign of a race incorrigibly
savage. See you not that the primary condition of mortal
happiness consists in the extinction of that strife and
competition between individuals, which, no matter what forms of
government they adopt, render the many subordinate to the few,
destroy real liberty to the individual, whatever may be the
nominal liberty of the state, and annul that calm of existence,
without which, felicity, mental or bodily, cannot be attained?
Our notion is, that the more we can assimilate life to the
existence which our noblest ideas can conceive to be that of
spirits on the other side of the grave, why, the more we
approximate to a divine happiness here, and the more easily we
glide into the conditions of being hereafter. For, surely, all
we can imagine of the life of gods, or of blessed immortals,
supposes the absence of self-made cares and contentious
passions, such as avarice and ambition. It seems to us that it
must be a life of serene tranquility, not indeed without active
occupations to the intellectual or spiritual powers, but
occupations, of whatsoever nature they be, congenial to the
idiosyncrasies of each, not forced and repugnant- a life
gladdened by the untrammelled interchange of gentle affections,
in which the moral atmosphere utterly kills hate and vengeance,
and strife and rivalry. Such is the political state to which
68all the tribes and families of the Vril-ya seek to attain, and
towards that goal all our theories of government are shaped.
You see how utterly opposed is such a progress to that of the
uncivilised nations from which you come, and which aim at a
systematic perpetuity of troubles, and cares, and warring
passions aggravated more and more as their progress storms its
way onward. The most powerful of all the races in our world,
beyond the pale of the Vril-ya, esteems itself the best
governed of all political societies, and to have reached in
that respect the extreme end at which political wisdom can
arrive, so that the other nations should tend more or less to
copy it. It has established, on its broadest base, the
Koom-Posh- viz., the government of the ignorant upon the
principle of being the most numerous. It has placed the
supreme bliss in the vying with each other in all things, so
that the evil passions are never in repose- vying for power,
for wealth, for eminence of some kind; and in this rivalry it
is horrible to hear the vituperation, the slanders, and
calumnies which even the best and mildest among them heap on
each other without remorse or shame."

"Some years ago," said Aph-Lin, "I visited this people, and
their misery and degradation were the more appalling because
they were always boasting of their felicity and grandeur as
compared with the rest of their species. And there is no hope
that this people, which evidently resembles your own, can
improve, because all their notions tend to further
deterioration. They desire to enlarge their dominion more and
more, in direct antagonism to the truth that, beyond a very
limited range, it is impossible to secure to a community the
happiness which belongs to a well-ordered family; and the more
they mature a system by which a few individuals are heated and
swollen to a size above the standard slenderness of the millions,
the more they chuckle and exact, and cry out, 'See by what great
exceptions to the common littleness of our race we prove the
magnificent results of our system!'"
69
"In fact," resumed Zee, "if the wisdom of human life be to
approximate to the serene equality of immortals, there can be no
more direct flying off into the opposite direction than a system
which aims at carrying to the utmost the inequalities and
turbulences of mortals. Nor do I see how, by any forms of
religious belief, mortals, so acting, could fit themselves even to
appreciate the joys of immortals to which they still expect to be
transferred by the mere act of dying. On the contrary, minds
accustomed to place happiness in things so much the reverse of
godlike, would find the happiness of gods exceedingly dull, and
would long to get back to a world in which they could quarrel with
each other."


Chapter XVI.


I have spoken so much of the Vril Staff that my reader may
expect me to describe it. This I cannot do accurately, for I
was never allowed to handle it for fear of some terrible
accident occasioned by my ignorance of its use; and I have no
doubt that it requires much skill and practice in the exercise
of its various powers. It is hollow, and has in the handle
several stops, keys, or springs by which its force can be
altered, modified, or directed- so that by one process it
destroys, by another it heals- by one it can rend the rock, by
another disperse the vapour- by one it affects bodies, by
another it can exercise a certain influence over minds. It is
usually carried in the convenient size of a walking-staff, but
it has slides by which it can be lengthened or shortened at
will. When used for special purposes, the upper part rests in
the hollow of the palm with the fore and middle fingers
protruded. I was assured, however, that its power was not
equal in all, but proportioned to the amount of certain vril
70properties in the wearer in affinity, or 'rapport' with the
purposes to be effected. Some were more potent to destroy,
others to heal, &c.; much also depended on the calm and
steadiness of volition in the manipulator. They assert that
the full exercise of vril power can only be acquired by the
constitutional temperament- i.e., by hereditarily transmitted
organisation- and that a female infant of four years old
belonging to the Vril-ya races can accomplish feats which a
life spent in its practice would not enable the strongest and
most skilled mechanician, born out of the pale of the Vril-ya
to achieve. All these wands are not equally complicated; those
intrusted to children are much simpler than those borne by
sages of either sex, and constructed with a view to the special
object on which the children are employed; which as I have
before said, is among the youngest children the most
destructive. In the wands of wives and mothers the correlative
destroying force is usually abstracted, the healing power fully
charged. I wish I could say more in detail of this singular
conductor of the vril fluid, but its machinery is as exquisite
as its effects are marvellous.

I should say, however, that this people have invented certain
tubes by which the vril fluid can be conducted towards the
object it is meant to destroy, throughout a distance almost
indefinite; at least I put it modestly when I say from 500 to
600 miles. And their mathematical science as applied to such
purpose is so nicely accurate, that on the report of some
observer in an air-boat, any member of the vril department can
estimate unerringly the nature of intervening obstacles, the
height to which the projectile instrument should be raised, and
the extent to which it should be charged, so as to reduce to
ashes within a space of time too short for me to venture to
specify it, a capital twice as vast as London.

Certainly these Ana are wonderful mathematicians- wonderful for
the adaptation of the inventive faculty to practical uses.
71
I went with my host and his daughter Zee over the great public
museum, which occupies a wing in the College of Sages, and in
which are hoarded, as curious specimens of the ignorant and
blundering experiments of ancient times, many contrivances on
which we pride ourselves as recent achievements. In one
department, carelessly thrown aside as obsolete lumber, are
tubes for destroying life by metallic balls and an inflammable
powder, on the principle of our cannons and catapults, and even
still more murderous than our latest improvements.

My host spoke of these with a smile of contempt, such as an
artillery officer might bestow on the bows and arrows of the
Chinese. In another department there were models of vehicles
and vessels worked by steam, and of an air-balloon which might
have been constructed by Montgolfier. "Such," said Zee, with
an air of meditative wisdom- "such were the feeble triflings
with nature of our savage forefathers, ere they had even a
glimmering perception of the properties of vril!"

This young Gy was a magnificent specimen of the muscular force
to which the females of her country attain. Her features were
beautiful, like those of all her race: never in the upper world
have I seen a face so grand and so faultless, but her devotion
to the severer studies had given to her countenance an
expression of abstract thought which rendered it somewhat stern
when in repose; and such a sternness became formidable when
observed in connection with her ample shoulders and lofty
stature. She was tall even for a Gy, and I saw her lift up a
cannon as easily as I could lift a pocket-pistol. Zee inspired
me with a profound terror- a terror which increased when we
came into a department of the museum appropriated to models of
contrivances worked by the agency of vril; for here, merely by
a certain play of her vril staff, she herself standing at a
distance, she put into movement large and weighty substances.
She seemed to endow them with intelligence, and to make them
72comprehend and obey her command. She set complicated pieces of
machinery into movement, arrested the movement or continued it,
until, within an incredibly short time, various kinds of raw
material were reproduced as symmetrical works of art, complete
and perfect. Whatever effect mesmerism or electro-biology
produces over the nerves and muscles of animated objects, this
young Gy produced by the motions of her slender rod over the
springs and wheels of lifeless mechanism.

When I mentioned to my companions my astonishment at this
influence over inanimate matter- while owning that, in our
world, I had witnessed phenomena which showed that over certain
living organisations certain other living organisations could
establish an influence genuine in itself, but often exaggerated
by credulity or craft- Zee, who was more interested in such
subjects than her father, bade me stretch forth my hand, and
then, placing it beside her own, she called my attention to
certain distinctions of type and character. In the first
place, the thumb of the Gy (and, as I afterwards noticed, of
all that race, male or female) was much larger, at once longer
and more massive, than is found with our species above ground.
There is almost, in this, as great a difference as there is
between the thumb of a man and that of a gorilla. Secondly,
the palm is proportionally thicker than ours- the texture of
the skin infinitely finer and softer- its average warmth is
greater. More remarkable than all this, is a visible nerve,
perceptible under the skin, which starts from the wrist
skirting the ball of the thumb, and branching, fork-like, at
the roots of the fore and middle fingers. "With your slight
formation of thumb," said the philosophical young Gy, "and with
the absence of the nerve which you find more or less developed
in the hands of our race, you can never achieve other than
imperfect and feeble power over the agency of vril; but so far
as the nerve is concerned, that is not found in the hands of
our earliest progenitors, nor in those of the ruder tribes
without the pale of the Vril-ya. It has been slowly developed
73in the course of generations, commencing in the early
achievements, and increasing with the continuous exercise, of
the vril power; therefore, in the course of one or two thousand
years, such a nerve may possibly be engendered in those higher
beings of your race, who devote themselves to that paramount
science through which is attained command over all the subtler
forces of nature permeated by vril. But when you talk of
matter as something in itself inert and motionless, your
parents or tutors surely cannot have left you so ignorant as
not to know that no form of matter is motionless and inert:
every particle is constantly in motion and constantly acted
upon by agencies, of which heat is the most apparent and rapid,
but vril the most subtle, and, when skilfully wielded, the most
powerful. So that, in fact, the current launched by my hand
and guided by my will does but render quicker and more potent
the action which is eternally at work upon every particle of
matter, however inert and stubborn it may seem. If a heap of
metal be not capable of originating a thought of its own, yet,
through its internal susceptibility to movement, it obtains the
power to receive the thought of the intellectual agent at work
on it; by which, when conveyed with a sufficient force of the
vril power, it is as much compelled to obey as if it were
displaced by a visible bodily force. It is animated for the
time being by the soul thus infused into it, so that one may
almost say that it lives and reasons. Without this we could
not make our automata supply the place of servants.

I was too much in awe of the thews and the learning of the
young Gy to hazard the risk of arguing with her. I had read
somewhere in my schoolboy days that a wise man, disputing with
a Roman Emperor, suddenly drew in his horns; and when the
emperor asked him whether he had nothing further to say on his
side of the question, replied, "Nay, Caesar, there is no
arguing against a reasoner who commands ten legions."
74
Though I had a secret persuasion that, whatever the real
effects of vril upon matter, Mr. Faraday could have proved her
a very shallow philosopher as to its extent or its causes, I
had no doubt that Zee could have brained all the Fellows of the
Royal Society, one after the other, with a blow of her fist.
Every sensible man knows that it is useless to argue with any
ordinary female upon matters he comprehends; but to argue with
a Gy seven feet high upon the mysteries of vril,- as well argue
in a desert, and with a simoon!

Amid the various departments to which the vast building of the
College of Sages was appropriated, that which interested me
most was devoted to the archaeology of the Vril-ya, and
comprised a very ancient collection of portraits. In these the
pigments and groundwork employed were of so durable a nature
that even pictures said to be executed at dates as remote as
those in the earliest annals of the Chinese, retained much
freshness of colour. In examining this collection, two things
especially struck me:- first, that the pictures said to be
between 6000 and 7000 years old were of a much higher degree of
art than any produced within the last 3000 or 4000 years; and,
second, that the portraits within the former period much more
resembled our own upper world and European types of
countenance. Some of them, indeed reminded me of the Italian
heads which look out from the canvases of Titian- speaking of
ambition or craft, of care or of grief, with furrows in which
the passions have passed with iron ploughshare. These were the
countenances of men who had lived in struggle and conflict
before the discovery of the latent forces of vril had changed
the character of society- men who had fought with each other
for power or fame as we in the upper world fight.

The type of face began to evince a marked change about a
thousand years after the vril revolution, becoming then, with
each generation, more serene, and in that serenity more
75terribly distinct from the faces of labouring and sinful men;
while in proportion as the beauty and the grandeur of the
countenance itself became more fully developed, the art of the
painter became more tame and monotonous.

But the greatest curiosity in the collection was that of three
portraits belonging to the pre-historical age, and, according
to mythical tradition, taken by the orders of a philosopher,
whose origin and attributes were as much mixed up with
symbolical fable as those of an Indian Budh or a Greek
Prometheus.

>From this mysterious personage, at once a sage and a hero, all
the principal sections of the Vril-ya race pretend to trace a
common origin.

The portraits are of the philosopher himself, of his
grandfather, and great-grandfather. They are all at full
length. The philosopher is attired in a long tunic which seems
to form a loose suit of scaly armour, borrowed, perhaps, from
some fish or reptile, but the feet and hands are exposed: the
digits in both are wonderfully long, and webbed. He has little
or no perceptible throat, and a low receding forehead, not at
all the ideal of a sage's. He has bright brown prominent eyes,
a very wide mouth and high cheekbones, and a muddy complexion.
According to tradition, this philosopher had lived to a
patriarchal age, extending over many centuries, and he
remembered distinctly in middle life his grandfather as
surviving, and in childhood his great-grandfather; the portrait
of the first he had taken, or caused to be taken, while yet
alive- that of the latter was taken from his effigies in mummy.
The portrait of his grandfather had the features and aspect of
the philosopher, only much more exaggerated: he was not
dressed, and the colour of his body was singular; the breast
and stomach yellow, the shoulders and legs of a dull bronze
hue: the great-grandfather was a magnificent specimen of the
Batrachian genus, a Giant Frog, 'pur et simple.'

Among the pithy sayings which, according to tradition, the
philosopher bequeathed to posterity in rhythmical form and
76sententious brevity, this is notably recorded: "Humble
yourselves, my descendants; the father of your race was a
'twat' (tadpole): exalt yourselves, my descendants, for it was
the same Divine Thought which created your father that develops
itself in exalting you."

Aph-Lin told me this fable while I gazed on the three
Batrachian portraits. I said in reply: "You make a jest of my
supposed ignorance and credulity as an uneducated Tish, but
though these horrible daubs may be of great antiquity, and were
intended, perhaps, for some rude caracature, I presume that
none of your race even in the less enlightened ages, ever
believed that the great-grandson of a Frog became a sententious
philosopher; or that any section, I will not say of the lofty
Vril-ya, but of the meanest varieties of the human race, had
its origin in a Tadpole."

"Pardon me," answered Aph-Lin: "in what we call the Wrangling
or Philosophical Period of History, which was at its height
about seven thousand years ago, there was a very distinguished
naturalist, who proved to the satisfaction of numerous
disciples such analogical and anatomical agreements in
structure between an An and a Frog, as to show that out of the
one must have developed the other. They had some diseases in
common; they were both subject to the same parasitical worms in
the intestines; and, strange to say, the An has, in his
structure, a swimming-bladder, no longer of any use to him, but
which is a rudiment that clearly proves his descent from a
Frog. Nor is there any argument against this theory to be
found in the relative difference of size, for there are still
existent in our world Frogs of a size and stature not inferior
to our own, and many thousand years ago they appear to have
been still larger."

"I understand that," said I, "because Frogs this enormous are,
according to our eminent geologists, who perhaps saw them in
dreams, said to have been distinguished inhabitants of the
upper world before the Deluge; and such Frogs are exactly the
creatures likely to have flourished in the lakes and morasses
of your subterranean regions. But pray, proceed."
77
"In the Wrangling Period of History, whatever one sage asserted
another sage was sure to contradict. In fact, it was a maxim
in that age, that the human reason could only be sustained
aloft by being tossed to and fro in the perpetual motion of
contradiction; and therefore another sect of philosophers
maintained the doctrine that the An was not the descendant of
the Frog, but that the Frog was clearly the improved
development of the An. The shape of the Frog, taken generally,
was much more symmetrical than that of the An; beside the
beautiful conformation of its lower limbs, its flanks and
shoulders the majority of the Ana in that day were almost
deformed, and certainly ill-shaped. Again, the Frog had the
power to live alike on land and in water- a mighty privilege,
partaking of a spiritual essence denied to the An, since the
disuse of his swimming-bladder clearly proves his degeneration
from a higher development of species. Again, the earlier races
of the Ana seem to have been covered with hair, and, even to a
comparatively recent date, hirsute bushes deformed the very
faces of our ancestors, spreading wild over their cheeks and
chins, as similar bushes, my poor Tish, spread wild over yours.
But the object of the higher races of the Ana through countless
generations has been to erase all vestige of connection with
hairy vertebrata, and they have gradually eliminated that
debasing capillary excrement by the law of sexual selection;
the Gy-ei naturally preferring youth or the beauty of smooth
faces. But the degree of the Frog in the scale of the
vertebrata is shown in this, that he has no hair at all, not
even on his head. He was born to that hairless perfection
which the most beautiful of the Ana, despite the culture of
incalculable ages, have not yet attained. The wonderful
complication and delicacy of a Frog's nervous system and
arterial circulation were shown by this school to be more
susceptible of enjoyment than our inferior, or at least
simpler, physical frame allows us to be. The examination of a
Frog's hand, if I may use that expression, accounted for its
78keener susceptibility to love, and to social life in general.
In fact, gregarious and amatory as are the Ana, Frogs are still
more so. In short, these two schools raged against each other;
one asserting the An to be the perfected type of the Frog; the
other that the Frog was the highest development of the An. The
moralists were divided in opinion with the naturalists, but the
bulk of them sided with the Frog-preference school. They said,
with much plausibility, that in moral conduct (viz., in the
adherence to rules best adapted to the health and welfare of
the individual and the community) there could be no doubt of
the vast superiority of the Frog. All history showed the
wholesale immorality of the human race, the complete disregard,
even by the most renowned amongst them, of the laws which they
acknowledged to be essential to their own and the general
happiness and wellbeing. But the severest critic of the Frog
race could not detect in their manners a single aberration from
the moral law tacitly recognised by themselves. And what, after
all, can be the profit of civilisation if superiority in moral
conduct be not the aim for which it strives, and the test by which
its progress should be judged?

"In fine, the adherents of this theory presumed that in some
remote period the Frog race had been the improved development
of the Human; but that, from some causes which defied rational
conjecture, they had not maintained their original position in
the scale of nature; while the Ana, though of inferior
organisation, had, by dint less of their virtues than their
vices, such as ferocity and cunning, gradually acquired
ascendancy, much as among the human race itself tribes utterly
barbarous have, by superiority in similar vices, utterly
destroyed or reduced into insignificance tribes originally
excelling them in mental gifts and culture. Unhappily these
disputes became involved with the religious notions of that
age; and as society was then administered under the government
of the Koom-Posh, who, being the most ignorant, were of course
79the most inflammable class- the multitude took the whole
question out of the hands of the philosophers; political chiefs
saw that the Frog dispute, so taken up by the populace, could
become a most valuable instrument of their ambition; and for
not less than one thousand years war and massacre prevailed,
during which period the philosophers on both sides were
butchered, and the government of Koom-Posh itself was happily
brought to an end by the ascendancy of a family that clearly
established its descent from the aboriginal tadpole, and
furnished despotic rulers to the various nations of the Ana.
These despots finally disappeared, at least from our
communities, as the discovery of vril led to the tranquil
institutions under which flourish all the races of the
Vril-ya."

"And do no wranglers or philosophers now exist to revive the
dispute; or do they all recognise the origin of your race in
the tadpole?"

"Nay, such disputes," said Zee, with a lofty smile, "belong to
the Pah-bodh of the dark ages, and now only serve for the
amusement of infants. When we know the elements out of which
our bodies are composed, elements in common to the humblest
vegetable plants, can it signify whether the All-Wise combined
those elements out of one form more than another, in order to
create that in which He has placed the capacity to receive the
idea of Himself, and all the varied grandeurs of intellect to
which that idea gives birth? The An in reality commenced to
exist as An with the donation of that capacity, and, with that
capacity, the sense to acknowledge that, however through the
countless ages his race may improve in wisdom, it can never
combine the elements at its command into the form of a
tadpole."

"You speak well, Zee," said Aph-Lin; "and it is
enough for us shortlived mortals to feel a reasonable
assurance that whether the origin of the An was a tadpole
or not, he is no more likely to become a tadpole
again than the institutions of the Vril-ya are likely to
relapse into the heaving quagmire and certain strife-rot
of a Koom-Posh."

80
Chapter XVII.


The Vril-ya, being excluded from all sight of the heavenly
bodies, and having no other difference between night and day
than that which they deem it convenient to make for
themselves,- do not, of course, arrive at their divisions of
time by the same process that we do; but I found it easy by the
aid of my watch, which I luckily had about me, to compute their
time with great nicety. I reserve for a future work on the
science and literature of the Vril-ya, should I live to
complete it, all details as to the manner in which they
arrive at their rotation of time; and content myself here
with saying, that in point of duration, their year differs
very slightly from ours, but that the divisions of their year
are by no means the same. Their day, (including what we call
night) consists of twenty hours of our time, instead of
twenty-four, and of course their year comprises the
correspondent increase in the number of days by which it is
summed up. They subdivide the twenty hours of their day
thus- eight hours,* called the "Silent Hours," for repose;
eight hours, called the "Earnest Time," for the pursuits and
occupations of life; and four hours called the "Easy Time"
(with which what I may term their day closes), allotted to
festivities, sport, recreation, or family converse, according
to their several tastes and inclinations.

* For the sake of convenience, I adopt the word hours, days,
years, &c., in any general reference to subdivisions of time
among the Vril-ya; those terms but loosely corresponding,
however, with such subdivisions.

But, in truth, out of doors there is no night. They maintain,
both in the streets and in the surrounding country, to the
limits of their territory, the same degree of light at all
hours. Only, within doors, they lower it to a soft twilight
during the Silent Hours. They have a great horror of perfect
81darkness, and their lights are never wholly extinguished. On
occasions of festivity they continue the duration of full
light, but equally keep note of the distinction between night
and day, by mechanical contrivances which answer the purpose of
our clocks and watches. They are very fond of music; and it is
by music that these chronometers strike the principal division
of time. At every one of their hours, during their day, the
sounds coming from all the time-pieces in their public
buildings, and caught up, as it were, by those of houses or
hamlets scattered amidst the landscapes without the city, have
an effect singularly sweet, and yet singularly solemn. But
during the Silent Hours these sounds are so subdued as to be
only faintly heard by a waking ear. They have no change of
seasons, and, at least on the territory of this tribe, the
atmosphere seemed to me very equable, warm as that of an
Italian summer, and humid rather than dry; in the forenoon
usually very still, but at times invaded by strong blasts from
the rocks that made the borders of their domain. But time is
the same to them for sowing or reaping as in the Golden Isles
of the ancient poets. At the same moment you see the younger
plants in blade or bud, the older in ear or fruit. All
fruit-bearing plants, however, after fruitage, either shed or
change the colour of their leaves. But that which interested
me most in reckoning up their divisions of time was the
ascertainment of the average duration of life amongst them. I
found on minute inquiry that this very considerably exceeded
the term allotted to us on the upper earth. What seventy years
are to us, one hundred years are to them. Nor is this the only
advantage they have over us in longevity, for as few among us
attain to the age of seventy, so, on the contrary, few among
them die before the age of one hundred; and they enjoy a
general degree of health and vigour which makes life itself a
blessing even to the last. Various causes contribute to this
result: the absence of all alcoholic stimulants; temperance in
82food; more especially, perhaps, a serenity of mind undisturbed
by anxious occupations and eager passions. They are not
tormented by our avarice or our ambition; they appear perfectly
indifferent even to the desire of fame; they are capable of
great affection, but their love shows itself in a tender and
cheerful complaisance, and, while forming their happiness,
seems rarely, if ever, to constitute their woe. As the Gy is
sure only to marry where she herself fixes her choice, and as
here, not less than above ground, it is the female on whom the
happiness of home depends; so the Gy, having chosen the mate
she prefers to all others, is lenient to his faults, consults
his humours, and does her best to secure his attachment. The
death of a beloved one is of course with them, as with us, a
cause for sorrow; but not only is death with them so much more
rare before that age in which it becomes a release, but when it
does occur the survivor takes much more consolation than, I am
afraid, the generality of us do, in the certainty of reunion in
another and yet happier life.

All these causes, then, concur to their healthful and enjoyable
longevity, though, no doubt, much also must be owing to
hereditary organisation. According to their records, however,
in those earlier stages of their society when they lived in
communities resembling ours, agitated by fierce competition,
their lives were considerably shorter, and their maladies more
numerous and grave. They themselves say that the duration of
life, too, has increased, and is still on the increase, since
their discovery of the invigorating and medicinal properties of
vril, applied for remedial purposes. They have few
professional and regular practitioners of medicine, and these
are chiefly Gy-ei, who, especially if widowed and childless,
find great delight in the healing art, and even undertake
surgical operations in those cases required by accident, or,
more rarely, by disease.

They have their diversions and entertainments, and, during the
Easy Time of their day, they are wont to assemble in great
numbers for those winged sports in the air which I have already
83described. They have also public halls for music, and even
theatres, at which are performed pieces that appeared to me
somewhat to resemble the plays of the Chinese- dramas that are
thrown back into distant times for their events and personages,
in which all classic unities are outrageously violated, and the
hero, in once scene a child, in the next is an old man, and so
forth. These plays are of very ancient composition, and their
stories cast in remote times. They appeared to me very dull,
on the whole, but were relieved by startling mechanical
contrivances, and a kind of farcical broad humour, and detached
passages of great vigour and power expressed in language highly
poetical, but somewhat overcharged with metaphor and trope. In
fine, they seemed to me very much what the plays of Shakespeare
seemed to a Parisian in the time of Louis XV., or perhaps to an
Englishman in the reign of Charles II.

The audience, of which the Gy-ei constituted the chief portion,
appeared to enjoy greatly the representation of these dramas,
which, for so sedate and majestic a race of females, surprised
me, till I observed that all the performers were under the age
of adolescence, and conjectured truly that the mothers and
sisters came to please their children and brothers.

I have said that these dramas are of great antiquity. No new
plays, indeed no imaginative works sufficiently important to
survive their immediate day, appear to have been composed for
several generations. In fact, though there is no lack of new
publications, and they have even what may be called newspapers,
these are chiefly devoted to mechanical science, reports of new
inventions, announcements respecting various details of
business- in short, to practical matters. Sometimes a child
writes a little tale of adventure, or a young Gy vents her
amorous hopes or fears in a poem; but these effusions are of
very little merit, and are seldom read except by children and
maiden Gy-ei. The most interesting works of a purely literary
character are those of explorations and travels into other
regions of this nether world, which are generally written by
84young emigrants, and are read with great avidity by the
relations and friends they have left behind.

I could not help expressing to Aph-Lin my surprise that a
community in which mechanical science had made so marvellous a
progress, and in which intellectual civilisation had exhibited
itself in realising those objects for the happiness of the
people, which the political philosophers above ground had, after
ages of struggle, pretty generally agreed to consider
unattainable visions, should, nevertheless, be so wholly
without a contemporaneous literature, despite the excellence to
which culture had brought a language at once so rich and
simple, vigourous and musical.

My host replied- "Do you not percieve that a literature such as
you mean would be wholly incompatible with that perfection of
social or political felicity at which you do us the honour to
think we have arrived? We have at last, after centuries of
struggle, settled into a form of government with which we are
content, and in which, as we allow no differences of rank, and
no honours are paid to administrators distinguishing them from
others, there is no stimulus given to individual ambition. No
one would read works advocating theories that involved any
political or social change, and therefore no one writes them.
If now and then an An feels himself dissatisfied with our
tranquil mode of life, he does not attack it; he goes away.
Thus all that part of literature (and to judge by the ancient
books in our public libraries, it was once a very large part),
which relates to speculative theories on society is become
utterly extinct. Again, formerly there was a vast deal written
respecting the attributes and essence of the All-Good, and the
arguments for and against a future state; but now we all
recognise two facts, that there IS a Divine Being, and there IS
a future state, and we all equally agree that if we wrote our
fingers to the bone, we could not throw any light upon the
nature and conditions of that future state, or quicken our
apprehensions of the attributes and essence of that Divine
85Being. Thus another part of literature has become also
extinct, happily for our race; for in the time when so much was
written on subjects which no one could determine, people seemed
to live in a perpetual state of quarrel and contention. So,
too, a vast part of our ancient literature consists of
historical records of wars an revolutions during the times when
the Ana lived in large and turbulent societies, each seeking
aggrandisement at the expense of the other. You see our serene
mode of life now; such it has been for ages. We have no events
to chronicle. What more of us can be said than that, 'they
were born, they were happy, they died?' Coming next to that
part of literature which is more under the control of the
imagination, such as what we call Glaubsila, or colloquially
'Glaubs,' and you call poetry, the reasons for its decline
amongst us are abundantly obvious.

"We find, by referring to the great masterpieces in that
department of literature which we all still read with pleasure,
but of which none would tolerate imitations, that they consist
in the portraiture of passions which we no longer experience-
ambition, vengeance, unhallowed love, the thirst for warlike
renown, and suchlike. The old poets lived in an atmosphere
impregnated with these passions, and felt vividly what they
expressed glowingly. No one can express such passions now, for
no one can feel them, or meet with any sympathy in his readers
if he did. Again, the old poetry has a main element in its
dissection of those complex mysteries of human character which
conduce to abnormal vices and crimes, or lead to signal and
extraordinary virtues. But our society, having got rid of
temptations to any prominent vices and crimes, has necessarily
rendered the moral average so equal, that there are no very
salient virtues. Without its ancient food of strong passions,
vast crimes, heroic excellences, poetry therefore is, if not
actually starved to death, reduced to a very meagre diet.
There is still the poetry of description- description of rocks,
and trees, and waters, and common household life; and our young
Gy-ei weave much of this insipid kind of composition into their
love verses."
86
"Such poetry," said I, "might surely be made very charming; and
we have critics amongst us who consider it a higher kind than
that which depicts the crimes, or analyses the passions, of
man. At all events, poetry of the inspired kind you mention is
a poetry that nowadays commands more readers than any other
among the people I have left above ground."

"Possibly; but then I suppose the writers take great pains with
the language they employ, and devote themselves to the culture
and polish of words and rhythms of an art?"

"Certainly they do: all great poets do that. Though the gift
of poetry may be inborn, the gift requires as much care to make
it available as a block of metal does to be made into one of
your engines."

"And doubtless your poets have some incentive to bestow all
those pains upon such verbal prettinesses?"

"Well, I presume their instinct of song would make them sing as
the bird does; but to cultivate the song into verbal or
artificial prettiness, probably does need an inducement from
without, and our poets find it in the love of fame- perhaps,
now and then, in the want of money."

"Precisely so. But in our society we attach fame to nothing
which man, in that moment of his duration which is called
'life,' can perform. We should soon lose that equality which
constitutes the felicitous essence of our commonwealth if we
selected any individual for pre-eminent praise: pre-eminent
praise would confer pre-eminent power, and the moment it were
given, evil passions, now dormant, would awake: other men would
immediately covet praise, then would arise envy, and with envy
hate, and with hate calumny and persecution. Our history tells
us that most of the poets and most of the writers who, in the
old time, were favoured with the greatest praise, were also
assailed by the greatest vituperation, and even, on the whole,
87rendered very unhappy, partly by the attacks of jealous rivals,
partly by the diseased mental constitution which an acquired
sensitiveness to praise and to blame tends to engender. As for
the stimulus of want; in the first place, no man in our
community knows the goad of poverty; and, secondly, if he did,
almost every occupation would be more lucrative than writing.

"Our public libraries contain all the books of the past which
time has preserved; those books, for the reasons above stated,
are infinitely better than any can write nowadays, and they are
open to all to read without cost. We are not such fools as to
pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books
for nothing."

"With us, novelty has an attraction; and a new book, if bad, is
read when an old book, though good, is neglected."

"Novelty, to barbarous states of society struggling in despair
for something better, has no doubt an attraction, denied to us,
who see nothing to gain in novelties; but after all, it is
observed by one of our great authors four thousand years ago,
that 'he who studies old books will always find in them
something new, and he who reads new books will always find in
them something old.' But to return to the question you have
raised, there being then amongst us no stimulus to painstaking
labour, whether in desire of fame or in pressure of want, such
as have the poetic temperament, no doubt vent it in song, as
you say the bird sings; but for lack of elaborate culture it
fails of an audience, and, failing of an audience, dies out, of
itself, amidst the ordinary avocations of life."

"But how is it that these discouragements to the cultivation of
literature do not operate against that of science?"

"Your question amazes me. The motive to science is the love of
truth apart from all consideration of fame, and science with us
too is devoted almost solely to practical uses, essential to
our social conversation and the comforts of our daily life. No
88fame is asked by the inventor, and none is given to him; he
enjoys an occupation congenial to his tastes, and needing no
wear and tear of the passions. Man must have exercise for his
mind as well as body; and continuous exercise, rather than
violent, is best for both. Our most ingenious cultivators of
science are, as a general rule, the longest lived and the most
free from disease. Painting is an amusement to many, but the
art is not what it was in former times, when the great painters
in our various communities vied with each other for the prize
of a golden crown, which gave them a social rank equal to that
of the kings under whom they lived. You will thus doubtless
have observed in our archaeological department how superior in
point of art the pictures were several thousand years ago.
Perhaps it is because music is, in reality, more allied to
science than it is to poetry, that, of all the pleasurable
arts, music is that which flourishes the most amongst us.
Still, even in music the absence of stimulus in praise or fame
has served to prevent any great superiority of one individual
over another; and we rather excel in choral music, with the aid
of our vast mechanical instruments, in which we make great use
of the agency of water,* than in single performers."

* This may remind the student of Nero's invention of a musical
machine, by which water was made to perform the part of an
orchestra, and on which he was employed when the conspiracy
against him broke out.

"We have had scarcely any original composer for some ages. Our
favorite airs are very ancient in substance, but have admitted
many complicated variations by inferior, though ingenious,
musicians."

"Are there no political societies among the Ana which are
animated by those passions, subjected to those crimes, and
admitting those disparities in condition, in intellect, and in
morality, which the state of your tribe, or indeed of the
Vril-ya generally, has left behind in its progress to
perfection? If so, among such societies perhaps Poetry and her
sister arts still continue to be honoured and to improve?"
89
"There are such societies in remote regions, but we do not
admit them within the pale of civilised communities; we
scarcely even give them the name of Ana, and certainly not that
of Vril-ya. They are savages, living chiefly in that low stage
of being, Koom-Posh, tending necessarily to its own hideous
dissolution in Glek-Nas. Their wretched existence is passed in
perpetual contest and perpetual change. When they do not fight
with their neighbours, they fight among themselves. They are
divided into sections, which abuse, plunder, and sometimes
murder each other, and on the most frivolous points of
difference that would be unintelligible to us if we had not
read history, and seen that we too have passed through the same
early state of ignorance and barbarism. Any trifle is
sufficient to set them together by the ears. They pretend to
be all equals, and the more they have struggled to be so, by
removing old distinctions, and starting afresh, the more
glaring and intolerable the disparity becomes, because nothing
in hereditary affections and associations is left to soften the
one naked distinction between the many who have nothing and the
few who have much. Of course the many hate the few, but
without the few they could not live. The many are always
assailing the few; sometimes they exterminate the few; but as
soon as they have done so, a new few starts out of the many,
and is harder to deal with than the old few. For where
societies are large, and competition to have something is the
predominant fever, there must be always many losers and few
gainers. In short, they are savages groping their way in the
dark towards some gleam of light, and would demand our
commiseration for their infirmities, if, like all savages, they
did not provoke their own destruction by their arrogance and
cruelty. Can you imagine that creatures of this kind, armed
only with such miserable weapons as you may see in our museum
of antiquities, clumsy iron tubes charged with saltpetre, have
more than once threatened with destruction a tribe of the
90Vril-ya, which dwells nearest to them, because they say they
have thirty millions of population- and that tribe may have
fifty thousand- if the latter do not accept their notions of
Soc-Sec (money getting) on some trading principles which they
have the impudence to call 'a law of civilisation'?"

"But thirty millions of population are formidable odds against
fifty thousand!"

My host stared at me astonished. "Stranger," said he, "you
could not have heard me say that this threatened tribe belongs
to the Vril-ya; and it only waits for these savages to declare
war, in order to commission some half-a-dozen small children to
sweep away their whole population."

At these words I felt a thrill of horror, recognising much more
affinity with "the savages" than I did with the Vril-ya, and
remembering all I had said in praise of the glorious American
institutions, which Aph-Lin stigmatised as Koom-Posh.
Recovering my self-possession, I asked if there were modes of
transit by which I could safely visit this temerarious and
remote people.

"You can travel with safety, by vril agency, either along the
ground or amid the air, throughout all the range of the
communities with which we are allied and akin; but I cannot
vouch for your safety in barbarous nations governed by
different laws from ours; nations, indeed, so benighted, that
there are among them large numbers who actually live by
stealing from each other, and one could not with safety in the
Silent Hours even leave the doors of one's own house open."

Here our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Taee,
who came to inform us that he, having been deputed to discover
and destroy the enormous reptile which I had seen on my first
arrival, had been on the watch for it ever since his visit to
me, and had began to suspect that my eyes had deceived me, or
that the creature had made its way through the cavities within
91the rocks to the wild regions in which dwelt its kindred race,-
when it gave evidences of its whereabouts by a great
devastation of the herbage bordering one of the lakes. "And,"
said Taee, "I feel sure that within that lake it is now hiding.
So," (turning to me) "I thought it might amuse you to accompany
me to see the way we destroy such unpleasant visitors." As I
looked at the face of the young child, and called to mind the
enormous size of the creature he proposed to exterminate, I
felt myself shudder with fear for him, and perhaps fear for
myself, if I accompanied him in such a chase. But my curiosity
to witness the destructive effects of the boasted vril, and my
unwillingness to lower myself in the eyes of an infant by
betraying apprehensions of personal safety, prevailed over my
first impulse. Accordingly, I thanked Taee for his courteous
consideration for my amusement, and professed my willingness to
set out with him on so diverting an enterprise.


Chapter XVIII.


As Taee and myself, on quitting the town, and leaving to the
left the main road which led to it, struck into the fields, the
strange and solemn beauty of the landscape, lighted up, by
numberless lamps, to the verge of the horizon, fascinated my
eyes, and rendered me for some time an inattentive listener to
the talk of my companion.

Along our way various operations of agriculture were being
carried on by machinery, the forms of which were new to me, and
for the most part very graceful; for among these people art
being so cultivated for the sake of mere utility, exhibits
itself in adorning or refining the shapes of useful objects.
Precious metals and gems are so profuse among them, that they
are lavished on things devoted to purposes the most
92commonplace; and their love of utility leads them to beautify
its tools, and quickens their imagination in a way unknown to
themselves.

In all service, whether in or out of doors, they make great use
of automaton figures, which are so ingenious, and so pliant to
the operations of vril, that they actually seem gifted with
reason. It was scarcely possible to distinguish the figures I
beheld, apparently guiding or superintending the rapid
movements of vast engines, from human forms endowed with
thought.

By degrees, as we continued to walk on, my attention became
roused by the lively and acute remarks of my companion. The
intelligence of the children among this race is marvellously
precocious, perhaps from the habit of having intrusted to them,
at so early an age, the toils and responsibilities of middle
age. Indeed, in conversing with Taee, I felt as if talking
with some superior and observant man of my own years. I asked
him if he could form any estimate of the number of communities
into which the race of the Vril-ya is subdivided.

"Not exactly," he said, "because they multiply, of course,
every year as the surplus of each community is drafted off.
But I heard my father say that, according to the last
report,there were a million and a half of communities speaking
our language, and adopting our institutions and forms of life
and government; but, I believe, with some differences, about
which you had better ask Zee. She knows more than most of the
Ana do. An An cares less for things that do not concern him
than a Gy does; the Gy-ei are inquisitive creatures."

"Does each community restrict itself to the same number of
families or amount of population that you do?"

"No; some have much smaller populations, some have larger-
varying according to the extent of the country they
appropriate, or to the degree of excellence to which they have
brought their machinery. Each community sets its own limit
according to circumstances, taking care always that there shall
93never arise any class of poor by the pressure of population
upon the productive powers of the domain; and that no state
shall be too large for a government resembling that of a single
well-ordered family. I imagine that no vril community exceeds
thirty-thousand households. But, as a general rule, the
smaller the community, provided there be hands enough to do
justice to the capacities of the territory it occupies, the
richer each individual is, and the larger the sum contributed
to the general treasury,- above all, the happier and the more
tranquil is the whole political body, and the more perfect the
products of its industry. The state which all tribes of the
Vril-ya acknowledge to be the highest in civilisation, and
which has brought the vril force to its fullest development, is
perhaps the smallest. It limits itself to four thousand
families; but every inch of its territory is cultivated to the
utmost perfection of garden ground; its machinery excels that
of every other tribe, and there is no product of its industry
in any department which is not sought for, at extraordinary
prices, by each community of our race. All our tribes make
this state their model, considering that we should reach the
highest state of civilisation allowed to mortals if we could
unite the greatest degree of happiness with the highest degree
of intellectual achievement; and it is clear that the smaller
the society the less difficult that will be. Ours is too large
for it."

This reply set me thinking. I reminded myself of that little
state of Athens, with only twenty thousand free citizens, and
which to this day our mightiest nations regard as the supreme
guide and model in all departments of intellect. But then
Athens permitted fierce rivalry and perpetual change, and was
certainly not happy. Rousing myself from the reverie into
which these reflections had plunged me, I brought back our talk
to the subjects connected with emigration.

"But," said I, "when, I suppose yearly, a certain number among
94you agree to quit home and found a new community elsewhere,
they must necessarily be very few, and scarcely sufficient,
even with the help of the machines they take with them, to
clear the ground, and build towns, and form a civilised state
with the comforts and luxuries in which they had been reared."

"You mistake. All the tribes of the Vril-ya are in constant
communication with each other, and settle amongst themselves
each year what proportion of one community will unite with the
emigrants of another, so as to form a state of sufficient size;
and the place for emigration is agreed upon at least a year
before, and pioneers sent from each state to level rocks, and
embank waters, and construct houses; so that when the emigrants
at last go, they find a city already made, and a country around
it at least partially cleared. Our hardy life as children make
us take cheerfully to travel and adventure. I mean to emigrate
myself when of age."

"Do the emigrants always select places hitherto uninhabited and
barren?"

"As yet generally, because it is our rule never to destroy
except when necessary to our well-being. Of course, we cannot
settle in lands already occupied by the Vril-ya; and if we take
the cultivated lands of the other races of Ana, we must utterly
destroy the previous inhabitants. Sometimes, as it is, we take
waste spots, and find that a troublesome, quarrelsome race of
Ana, especially if under the administration of Koom-Posh or
Glek-Nas, resents our vicinity, and picks a quarrel with us;
then, of course, as menacing our welfare, we destroy it: there
is no coming to terms of peace with a race so idiotic that it
is always changing the form of government which represents it.
Koom-Posh," said the child, emphatically, "is bad enough, still
it has brains, though at the back of its head, and is not
without a heart; but in Glek-Nas the brain and heart of the
creatures disappear, and they become all jaws, claws, and
belly."

95"You express yourself strongly. Allow me to inform you that I
myself, and I am proud to say it, am the citizen of a Koom-Posh."

"I no longer," answered Taee, "wonder to see you here so far
from your home. What was the condition of your native
community before it became a Koom-Posh?"

"A settlement of emigrants- like those settlements which your
tribe sends forth- but so far unlike your settlements, that it
was dependent on the state from which it came. It shook off
that yoke, and, crowned with eternal glory, became a Koom-Posh."

"Eternal glory! How long has the Koom-Posh lasted?"

"About 100 years."

"The length of an An's life- a very young community. In much
less than another 100 years your Koom-Posh will be a Glek-Nas."

"Nay, the oldest states in the world I come from, have such
faith in its duration, that they are all gradually shaping
their institutions so as to melt into ours, and their most
thoughtful politicians say that, whether they like it or not,
the inevitable tendency of these old states is towards
Koom-Posh-erie."

"The old states?"

"Yes, the old states."

"With populations very small in proportion to the area of
productive land?"

"On the contrary, with populations very large in proportion to
that area."

"I see! old states indeed!- so old as to become drivelling if
they don't pack off that surplus population as we do ours- very
old states!- very, very old! Pray, Tish, do you think it wise
for very old men to try to turn head-over-heels as very young
children do? And if you ask them why they attempted such
antics, should you not laugh if they answered that by imitating
very young children they could become very young children
themselves? Ancient history abounds with instances of this sort
a great many thousand years ago- and in every instance a very
96old state that played at Koom-Posh soon tumbled into Glek-Nas.
Then, in horror of its own self, it cried out for a master, as
an old man in his dotage cries out for a nurse; and after a
succession of masters or nurses, more or less long, that very
old state died out of history. A very old state attempting
Koom-Posh-erie is like a very old man who pulls down the house
to which he has been accustomed, but he has so exhausted his
vigour in pulling down, that all he can do in the way of
rebuilding is to run up a crazy hut, in which himself and his
successors whine out, 'How the wind blows! How the walls
shake!'"

"My dear Taee, I make all excuse for your unenlightened
prejudices, which every schoolboy educated in a Koom-Posh could
easily controvert, though he might not be so precociously
learned in ancient history as you appear to be."

"I learned! not a bit of it. But would a schoolboy, educated
in your Koom-Posh, ask his great-great-grandfather or
great-great-grandmother to stand on his or her head with the
feet uppermost? And if the poor old folks hesitated- say, 'What
do you fear?- see how I do it!'"

"Taee, I disdain to argue with a child of your age. I repeat,
I make allowances for your want of that culture which a
Koom-Posh alone can bestow."

"I, in my turn," answered Taee, with an air of the suave but
lofty good breeding which characterises his race, "not only
make allowances for you as not educated among the Vril-ya, but
I entreat you to vouchsafe me your pardon for the insufficient
respect to the habits and opinions of so amiable a Tish!"

I ought before to have observed that I was commonly called Tish
by my host and his family, as being a polite and indeed a pet
name, literally signifying a small barbarian; the children
apply it endearingly to the tame species of Frog which they
keep in their gardens.

We had now reached the banks of a lake, and Taee here paused to
97point out to me the ravages made in fields skirting it. "The
enemy certainly lies within these waters," said Taee. "Observe
what shoals of fish are crowded together at the margin. Even
the great fishes with the small ones, who are their habitual
prey and who generally shun them, all forget their instincts in
the presence of a common destroyer. This reptile certainly
must belong to the class of Krek-a, which are more devouring
than any other, and are said to be among the few surviving
species of the world's dreadest inhabitants before the Ana were
created. The appetite of a Krek is insatiable- it feeds alike
upon vegetable and animal life; but for the swift-footed
creatures of the elk species it is too slow in its movements.
Its favourite dainty is an An when it can catch him unawares;
and hence the Ana destroy it relentlessly whenever it enters
their dominion. I have heard that when our forefathers first
cleared this country, these monsters, and others like them,
abounded, and, vril being then undiscovered, many of our race
were devoured. It was impossible to exterminate them wholly
till that discovery which constitutes the power and sustains
the civilisation of our race. But after the uses of vril
became familiar to us, all creatures inimical to us were soon
annihilated. Still, once a-year or so, one of these enormous
creatures wanders from the unreclaimed and savage districts
beyond, and within my memory one has seized upon a young Gy who
was bathing in this very lake. Had she been on land and armed
with her staff, it would not have dared even to show itself;
for, like all savage creatures, the reptile has a marvellous
instinct, which warns it against the bearer of the vril wand.
How they teach their young to avoid him, though seen for the
first time, is one of those mysteries which you may ask Zee to
explain, for I cannot.*

* The reptile in this instinct does but resemble our wild birds
and animals, which will not come in reach of a man armed with
a gun. When the electric wires were first put up, partridges
struck against them in their flight, and fell down wounded. No
younger generations of partridges meet with a similar accident.

98So long as I stand here, the monster will not stir from its
lurking-place; but we must now decoy it forth."

"Will that not be difficult?"

"Not at all. Seat yourself yonder on that crag (about one
hundred yards from the bank), while I retire to a distance. In
a short time the reptile will catch sight or scent of you, and
perceiving that you are no vril-bearer, will come forth to
devour you. As soon as it is fairly out of the water, it
becomes my prey."

"Do you mean to tell me that I am to be the decoy to that
horrible monster which could engulf me within its jaws in a
second! I beg to decline."

The child laughed. "Fear nothing," said he; "only sit still."

Instead of obeying the command, I made a bound, and was about
to take fairly to my heels, when Taee touched me slightly on
the shoulder, and, fixing his eyes steadily on mine, I was
rooted to the spot. All power of volition left me. Submissive
to the infant's gesture, I followed him to the crag he had
indicated, and seated myself there in silence. Most readers
have seen something of the effects of electro-biology, whether
genuine or spurious. No professor of that doubtful craft had
ever been able to influence a thought or a movement of mine, but
I was a mere machine at the will of this terrible child.
Meanwhile he expanded his wings, soared aloft, and alighted
amidst a copse at the brow of a hill at some distance.

I was alone; and turning my eyes with an indescribable
sensation of horror towards the lake, I kept them fixed on its
water, spell-bound. It might be ten or fifteen minutes, to me
it seemed ages, before the still surface, gleaming under the
lamplight, began to be agitated towards the centre. At the
same time the shoals of fish near the margin evinced their
sense of the enemy's approach by splash and leap and bubbling
circle. I could detect their hurried flight hither and
thither, some even casting themselves ashore. A long, dark,
99undulous furrow came moving along the waters, nearer and
nearer, till the vast head of the reptile emerged- its jaws
bristling with fangs, and its dull eyes fixing themselves
hungrily on the spot where I sat motionless. And now its fore
feet were on the strand- now its enormous breast, scaled on
either side as in armour, in the centre showing its corrugated
skin of a dull venomous yellow; and now its whole length was on
the land, a hundred feet or more from the jaw to the tail.
Another stride of those ghastly feet would have brought it to
the spot where I sat. There was but a moment between me and
this grim form of death, when what seemed a flash of lightning
shot through the air, smote, and, for a space of time briefer
than that in which a man can draw his breath, enveloped the
monster; and then, as the flash vanished, there lay before me a
blackened, charred, smouldering mass, a something gigantic, but
of which even the outlines of form were burned away, and
rapidly crumbling into dust and ashes. I remained still
seated, still speechless, ice-cold with a new sensation of
dread; what had been horror was now awe.

I felt the child's hand on my head- fear left me- the spell was
broken- I rose up. "You see with what ease the Vril-ya destroy
their enemies," said Taee; and then, moving towards the bank,
he contemplated the smouldering relics of the monster, and said
quietly, "I have destroyed larger creatures, but none with so
much pleasure. Yes, it IS a Krek; what suffering it must have
inflicted while it lived!" Then he took up the poor fishes that
had flung themselves ashore, and restored them mercifully to
their native element.


Chapter XIX.


As we walked back to the town, Taee took a new and circuitous
way, in order to show me what, to use a familiar term, I will
100call the 'Station,' from which emigrants or travellers to other
communities commence their journeys. I had, on a former
occasion, expressed a wish to see their vehicles. These I
found to be of two kinds, one for land journeys, one for aerial
voyages: the former were of all sizes and forms, some not
larger than an ordinary carriage, some movable houses of one
story and containing several rooms, furnished according to the
ideas of comfort or luxury which are entertained by the
Vril-ya. The aerial vehicles were of light substances, not the
least resembling our balloons, but rather our boats and
pleasure-vessels, with helm and rudder, with large wings or
paddles, and a central machine worked by vril. All the
vehicles both for land or air were indeed worked by that potent
and mysterious agency.

I saw a convoy set out on its journey, but it had few
passengers, containing chiefly articles of merchandise, and was
bound to a neighbouring community; for among all the tribes of
the Vril-ya there is considerable commercial interchange. I
may here observe, that their money currency does not consist of
the precious metals, which are too common among them for that
purpose. The smaller coins in ordinary use are manufactured
from a peculiar fossil shell, the comparatively scarce remnant
of some very early deluge, or other convulsion of nature, by
which a species has become extinct. It is minute, and flat as
an oyster, and takes a jewel-like polish. This coinage
circulates among all the tribes of the Vril-ya. Their larger
transactions are carried on much like ours, by bills of
exchange, and thin metallic plates which answer the purpose of
our bank-notes.

Let me take this occasion of adding that the taxation among the
tribe I became acquainted with was very considerable, compared
with the amount of population. But I never heard that any one
grumbled at it, for it was devoted to purposes of universal
utility, and indeed necessary to the civilisation of the tribe.
The cost of lighting so large a range of country, of providing
101for emigration, of maintaining the public buildings at which
the various operations of national intellect were carried on,
from the first education of an infant to the departments in
which the College of Sages were perpetually trying new
experiments in mechanical science; all these involved the
necessity for considerable state funds. To these I must add an
item that struck me as very singular. I have said that all the
human labour required by the state is carried on by children up
to the marriageable age. For this labour the state pays, and
at a rate immeasurably higher than our own remuneration to
labour even in the United States. According to their theory,
every child, male or female, on attaining the marriageable age,
and there terminating the period of labour, should have
acquired enough for an independent competence during life. As,
no matter what the disparity of fortune in the parents, all the
children must equally serve, so all are equally paid according
to their several ages or the nature of their work. Where the
parents or friends choose to retain a child in their own
service, they must pay into the public fund in the same ratio
as the state pays to the children it employs; and this sum is
handed over to the child when the period of service expires.
This practice serves, no doubt, to render the notion of social
equality familiar and agreeable; and if it may be said that all
the children form a democracy, no less truly it may be said
that all the adults form an aristocracy. The exquisite
politeness and refinement of manners among the Vril-ya, the
generosity of their sentiments, the absolute leisure they enjoy
for following out their own private pursuits, the amenities of
their domestic intercourse, in which they seem as members of
one noble order that can have no distrust of each other's word
or deed, all combine to make the Vril-ya the most perfect
nobility which a political disciple of Plato or Sidney could
conceive for the ideal of an aristocratic republic.
102

Chapter XX.


>From the date of the expedition with Taee which I have just
narrated, the child paid me frequent visits. He had taken a
liking to me, which I cordially returned. Indeed, as he was
not yet twelve years old, and had not commenced the course of
scientific studies with which childhood closes in that country,
my intellect was less inferior to his than to that of the elder
members of his race, especially of the Gy-ei, and most
especially of the accomplished Zee. The children of the
Vril-ya, having upon their minds the weight of so many active
duties and grave responsibilities, are not generally mirthful;
but Taee, with all his wisdom, had much of the playful
good-humour one often finds the characteristic of elderly men
of genius. He felt that sort of pleasure in my society which a
boy of a similar age in the upper world has in the company of a
pet dog or monkey. It amused him to try and teach me the ways
of his people, as it amuses a nephew of mine to make his poodle
walk on his hind legs or jump through a hoop. I willingly lent
myself to such experiments, but I never achieved the success of
the poodle. I was very much interested at first in the attempt
to ply the wings which the youngest of the Vril-ya use as
nimbly and easily as ours do their legs and arms; but my
efforts were attended with contusions serious enough to make me
abandon them in despair.

These wings, as I before said, are very large, reaching to the
knee, and in repose thrown back so as to form a very graceful
mantle. They are composed from the feathers of a gigantic bird
that abounds in the rocky heights of the country- the colour
mostly white, but sometimes with reddish streaks. They are
fastened round the shoulders with light but strong springs of
steel; and, when expanded, the arms slide through loops for
that purpose, forming, as it were, a stout central membrane.
As the arms are raised, a tubular lining beneath the vest or
103tunic becomes, by mechanical contrivance inflated with air,
increased or diminished at will by the movement of the arms,
and serving to buoy the whole form as on bladders. The wings
and the balloon-like apparatus are highly charged with vril;
and when the body is thus wafted upward, it seems to become
singularly lightened of its weight. I found it easy enough to
soar from the ground; indeed, when the wings were spread it was
scarcely possible not to soar, but then came the difficulty and
the danger. I utterly failed in the power to use and direct
the pinions, though I am considered among my own race unusually
alert and ready in bodily exercises, and am a very practiced
swimmer. I could only make the most confused and blundering
efforts at flight. I was the servant of the wings; the wings
were not my servants- they were beyond my control; and when by
a violent strain of muscle, and, I must fairly own, in that
abnormal strength which is given by excessive fright, I curbed
their gyrations and brought them near to the body, it seemed as
if I lost the sustaining power stored in them and the
connecting bladders, as when the air is let out of a balloon,
and found myself precipitated again to the earth; saved,
indeed, by some spasmodic flutterings, from being dashed to
pieces, but not saved from the bruises and the stun of a heavy
fall. I would, however, have persevered in my attempts, but
for the advice or the commands of the scientific Zee, who had
benevolently accompanied my flutterings, and, indeed, on the
last occasion, flying just under me, received my form as it
fell on her own expanded wings, and preserved me from breaking
my head on the roof of the pyramid from which we had ascended.

"I see," she said, "that your trials are in vain, not from the
fault of the wings and their appurtenances, nor from any
imperfectness and malformation of your own corpuscular system,
but from irremediable, because organic, defect in your power of
volition. Learn that the connection between the will and the
agencies of that fluid which has been subjected to the control
104of the Vril-ya was never established by the first discoverers,
never achieved by a single generation; it has gone on
increasing, like other properties of race, in proportion as it
has been uniformly transmitted from parent to child, so that,
at last, it has become an instinct; and an infant An of our
race wills to fly as intuitively and unconsciously as he wills
to walk. He thus plies his invented or artificial wings with
as much safety as a bird plies those with which it is born. I
did not think sufficiently of this when I allowed you to try an
experiment which allured me, for I have longed to have in you a
companion. I shall abandon the experiment now. Your life is
becoming dear to me." Herewith the Gy's voice and face
softened, and I felt more seriously alarmed than I had been in
my previous flights.

Now that I am on the subject of wings, I ought not to omit
mention of a custom among the Gy-ei which seems to me very
pretty and tender in the sentiment it implies. A Gy wears
wings habitually when yet a virgin- she joins the Ana in their
aerial sports- she adventures alone and afar into the wilder
regions of the sunless world: in the boldness and height of her
soarings, not less than in the grace of her movements, she
excels the opposite sex. But, from the day of her marriage she
wears wings no more, she suspends them with her own willing
hand over the nuptial couch, never to be resumed unless the
marriage tie be severed by divorce or death.

Now when Zee's voice and eyes thus softened- and at that
softening I prophetically recoiled and shuddered- Taee, who had
accompanied us in our flights, but who, child-like, had been
much more amused with my awkwardness, than sympathising in my
fears or aware of my danger, hovered over us, poised amidst
spread wings, and hearing the endearing words of the young Gy,
laughed aloud. Said he, "If the Tish cannot learn the use of
wings, you may still be his companion, Zee, for you can suspend
your own."

105
Chapter XXI.


I had for some time observed in my host's highly informed and
powerfully proportioned daughter that kindly and protective
sentiment which, whether above the earth or below it, an
all-wise Providence has bestowed upon the feminine division of
the human race. But until very lately I had ascribed it to
that affection for 'pets' which a human female at every age
shares with a human child. I now became painfully aware that
the feeling with which Zee deigned to regard me was different
from that which I had inspired in Taee. But this conviction
gave me none of that complacent gratification which the vanity
of man ordinarily conceives from a flattering appreciation of
his personal merits on the part of the fair sex; on the
contrary, it inspired me with fear. Yet of all the Gy-ei in
the community, if Zee were perhaps the wisest and the
strongest, she was, by common repute, the gentlest, and she was
certainly the most popularly beloved. The desire to aid, to
succour, to protect, to comfort, to bless, seemed to pervade
her whole being. Though the complicated miseries that
originate in penury and guilt are unknown to the social system
of the Vril-ya, still, no sage had yet discovered in vril an
agency which could banish sorrow from life; and wherever
amongst her people sorrow found its way, there Zee followed in
the mission of comforter. Did some sister Gy fail to secure
the love she sighed for? Zee sought her out, and brought all
the resources of her lore, and all the consolations of her
sympathy, to bear upon a grief that so needs the solace of a
confidant. In the rare cases, when grave illness seized upon
childhood or youth, and the cases, less rare, when, in the
hardy and adventurous probation of infants, some accident,
attended with pain and injury occurred, Zee forsook her studies
and her sports, and became the healer and nurse. Her favourite
106flights were towards the extreme boundaries of the domain
where children were stationed on guard against outbreaks of
warring forces in nature, or the invasions of devouring animals,
so that she might warn them of any peril which her knowledge
detected or foresaw, or be at hand if any harm had befallen.
Nay, even in the exercise of her scientific acquirements there
was a concurrent benevolence of purpose and will. Did she learn
any novelty in invention that would be useful to the
practitioner of some special art or craft? she hastened to
communicate and explain it. Was some veteran sage of the
College perplexed and wearied with the toil of an abstruse
study? she would patiently devote herself to his aid, work out
details for him, sustain his spirits with her hopeful smile,
quicken his wit with her luminous suggestion, be to him, as it
were, his own good genius made visible as the strengthener and
inspirer. The same tenderness she exhibited to the inferior
creatures. I have often known her bring home some sick and
wounded animal, and tend and cherish it as a mother would tend
and cherish her stricken child. Many a time when I sat in the
balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have
watched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few
moments groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would
soar upward with joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and
sporting around her, so that she seemed a very centre of
innocent delight. When I have walked with her amidst the rocks
and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would scent or see
her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress of her
hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical
whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the
fashion among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their foreheads a
circlet, or coronet, with gems resembling opals, arranged in
four points or rays like stars. These are lustreless in
ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand they take a clear
lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. This serves as
an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in
107their wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have
to traverse the dark. There are times, when I have seen Zee's
thoughtful majesty of face lighted up by this crowning halo,
that I could scarcely believe her to be a creature of mortal
birth, and bent my head before her as the vision of a being among
the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feel for this
lofty type of the noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love.
Is it that, among the race I belong to, man's pride so far
influences his passions that woman loses to him her special charm
of woman if he feels her to be in all things eminently superior
to himself? But by what strange infatuation could this peerless
daughter of a race which, in the supremacy of its powers and the
felicity of its conditions, ranked all other races in the category
of barbarians, have deigned to honour me with her preference? In
personal qualifications, though I passed for good-looking amongst
the people I came from, the handsomest of my countrymen might have
seemed insignificant and homely beside the grand and serene type
of beauty which characterised the aspect of the Vril-ya.

That novelty, the very difference between myself and those to
whom Zee was accustomed, might serve to bias her fancy was
probable enough, and as the reader will see later, such a cause
might suffice to account for the predilection with which I was
distinguished by a young Gy scarcely out of her childhood, and
very inferior in all respects to Zee. But whoever will
consider those tender characteristics which I have just
ascribed to the daughter of Aph-Lin, may readily conceive that
the main cause of my attraction to her was in her instinctive
desire to cherish, to comfort, to protect, and, in protecting,
to sustain and to exalt. Thus, when I look back, I account for
the only weakness unworthy of her lofty nature, which bowed the
daughter of the Vril-ya to a woman's affection for one so
inferior to herself as was her father's guest. But be the
cause what it may, the consciousness that I had inspired such
108affection thrilled me with awe- a moral awe of her very
imperfections, of her mysterious powers, of the inseparable
distinctions between her race and my own; and with that awe, I
must confess to my shame, there combined the more material and
ignoble dread of the perils to which her preference would
expose me.

Under these anxious circumstances, fortunately, my conscience
and sense of honour were free from reproach. It became clearly
my duty, if Zee's preference continued manifest, to intimate it
to my host, with, of course, all the delicacy which is ever to
be preserved by a well-bred man in confiding to another any
degree of favour by which one of the fair sex may condescend to
distinguish him. Thus, at all events, I should be freed from
responsibility or suspicion of voluntary participation in the
sentiments of Zee; and the superior wisdom of my host might
probably suggest some sage extrication from my perilous
dilemma. In this resolve I obeyed the ordinary instinct of
civilised and moral man, who, erring though he be, still
generally prefers the right course in those cases where it is
obviously against his inclinations, his interests, and his
safety to elect the wrong one.


Chapter XXII.


As the reader has seen, Aph-Lin had not favoured my general and
unrestricted intercourse with his countrywomen. Though relying
on my promise to abstain from giving any information as to the
109world I had left, and still more on the promise of those to
whom had been put the same request, not to question me, which
Zee had exacted from Taee, yet he did not feel sure that, if I
were allowed to mix with the strangers whose curiosity the
sight of me had aroused, I could sufficiently guard myself
against their inquiries. When I went out, therefore, it was
never alone; I was always accompanied either by one of my
host's family, or my child-friend Taee. Bra, Aph-Lin's wife,
seldom stirred beyond the gardens which surrounded the house,
and was fond of reading the ancient literature, which contained
something of romance and adventure not to be found in the
writings of recent ages, and presented pictures of a life
unfamiliar to her experience and interesting to her
imagination; pictures, indeed, of a life more resembling that
which we lead every day above ground, coloured by our sorrows,
sins, passions, and much to her what the tales of the Genii or
the Arabian Nights are to us. But her love of reading did not
prevent Bra from the discharge of her duties as mistress of the
largest household in the city. She went daily the round of the
chambers, and saw that the automata and other mechanical
contrivances were in order, that the numerous children employed
by Aph-Lin, whether in his private or public capacity, were
carefully tended. Bra also inspected the accounts of the whole
estate, and it was her great delight to assist her husband in
the business connected with his office as chief administrator
of the Lighting Department, so that her avocations necessarily
kept her much within doors. The two sons were both completing
their education at the College of Sages; and the elder, who had
a strong passion for mechanics, and especially for works
connected with the machinery of timepieces and automata, had
decided on devoting himself to these pursuits, and was now
occupied in constructing a shop or warehouse, at which his
inventions could be exhibited and sold. The younger son
110preferred farming and rural occupations; and when not attending
the College, at which he chiefly studied the theories of
agriculture, was much absorbed by his practical application of
that science to his father's lands. It will be seen by this
how completely equality of ranks is established among this
people- a shopkeeper being of exactly the same grade in
estimation as the large landed proprietor. Aph-Lin was the
wealthiest member of the community, and his eldest son
preferred keeping a shop to any other avocation; nor was this
choice thought to show any want of elevated notions on his part.

This young man had been much interested in examining my watch,
the works of which were new to him, and was greatly pleased
when I made him a present of it. Shortly after, he returned
the gift with interest, by a watch of his own construction,
marking both the time as in my watch and the time as kept among
the Vril-ya. I have that watch still, and it has been much
admired by many among the most eminent watchmakers of London
and Paris. It is of gold, with diamond hands and figures, and
it plays a favorite tune among the Vril-ya in striking the
hours: it only requires to be wound up once in ten months, and
has never gone wrong since I had it. These young brothers
being thus occupied, my usual companions in that family, when I
went abroad, were my host or his daughter. Now, agreeably with
the honourable conclusions I had come to, I began to excuse
myself from Zee's invitations to go out alone with her, and
seized an occasion when that learned Gy was delivering a
lecture at the College of Sages to ask Aph-Lin to show me his
country-seat. As this was at some little distance, and as
Aph-Lin was not fond of walking, while I had discreetly
relinquished all attempts at flying, we proceeded to our
destination in one of the aerial boats belonging to my host. A
child of eight years old, in his employ, was our conductor. My
host and myself reclined on cushions, and I found the movement
very easy and luxurious.

111"Aph-Lin," said I, "you will not, I trust, be displeased with
me, if I ask your permission to travel for a short time, and
visit other tribes or communities of your illustrious race. I
have also a strong desire to see those nations which do not
adopt your institutions, and which you consider as savages. It
would interest me greatly to notice what are the distinctions
between them and the races whom we consider civilised in the
world I have left."

"It is utterly impossible that you should go hence alone," said
Aph-Lin. "Even among the Vril-ya you would be exposed to great
dangers. Certain peculiarities of formation and colour, and
the extraordinary phenomenon of hirsute bushes upon your cheeks
and chin, denoting in you a species of An distinct alike from
our own race and any known race of barbarians yet extant, would
attract, of course, the special attention of the College of
Sages in whatever community of Vril-ya you visited, and it
would depend upon the individual temper of some individual sage
whether you would be received, as you have been here,
hospitably, or whether you would not be at once dissected for
scientific purposes. Know that when the Tur first took you to
his house, and while you were there put to sleep by Taee in
order to recover from your previous pain or fatigue, the sages
summoned by the Tur were divided in opinion whether you were a
harmless or an obnoxious animal. During your unconscious state
your teeth were examined, and they clearly showed that you were
not only graminivorous but carnivorous. Carnivorous animals of
your size are always destroyed, as being of savage and
dangerous nature. Our teeth, as you have doubtless observed,*
are not those of the creatures who devour flesh."

* I never had observed it; and, if I had, am not physiologist
enough to have distinguished the difference.

"It is, indeed, maintained by Zee and other philosophers, that
as, in remote ages, the Ana did prey upon living beings of the
brute species, their teeth must have been fitted for that
purpose. But, even if so, they have been modified by
112hereditary transmission, and suited to the food on which we now
exist; nor are even the barbarians, who adopt the turbulent and
ferocious institutions of Glek-Nas, devourers of flesh like
beasts of prey.

"In the course of this dispute it was proposed to dissect you;
but Taee begged you off, and the Tur being, by office, averse
to all novel experiments at variance with our custom of sparing
life, except where it is clearly proved to be for the good of
the community to take it, sent to me, whose business it is, as
the richest man of the state, to afford hospitality to
strangers from a distance. It was at my option to decide
whether or not you were a stranger whom I could safely admit.
Had I declined to receive you, you would have been handed over
to the College of Sages, and what might there have befallen you
I do not like to conjecture. Apart from this danger, you might
chance to encounter some child of four years old, just put in
possession of his vril staff; and who, in alarm at your strange
appearance, and in the impulse of the moment, might reduce you
to a cinder. Taee himself was about to do so when he first saw
you, had his father not checked his hand. Therefore I say you
cannot travel alone, but with Zee you would be safe; and I have
no doubt that she would accompany you on a tour round the
neighbouring communities of Vril-ya (to the savage states,
No!): I will ask her."

Now, as my main object in proposing to travel was to escape
from Zee, I hastily exclaimed, "Nay, pray do not! I relinquish
my design. You have said enough as to its dangers to deter me
from it; and I can scarcely think it right that a young Gy of
the personal attractions of your lovely daughter should travel
into other regions without a better protector than a Tish of my
insignificant strength and stature."

Aph-Lin emitted the soft sibilant sound which is the nearest
approach to laughter that a full-grown An permits to himself,
ere he replied: "Pardon my discourteous but momentary
indulgence of mirth at any observation seriously made by my
113guest. I could not but be amused at the idea of Zee, who is so
fond of protecting others that children call her 'THE
GUARDIAN,' needing a protector herself against any dangers
arising from the audacious admiration of males. Know that our
Gy-ei, while unmarried, are accustomed to travel alone among
other tribes, to see if they find there some An who may please
them more than the Ana they find at home. Zee has already made
three such journeys, but hitherto her heart has been untouched."

Here the opportunity which I sought was afforded to me, and I
said, looking down, and with faltering voice, "Will you, my
kind host, promise to pardon me, if what I am about to say
gives offence?"

"Say only the truth, and I cannot be offended; or, could I be
so, it would not be for me, but for you to pardon."

"Well, then, assist me to quit you, and, much as I should have
like to witness more of the wonders, and enjoy more of the
felicity, which belong to your people, let me return to my
own."

"I fear there are reasons why I cannot do that; at all events,
not without permission of the Tur, and he, probably, would not
grant it. You are not destitute of intelligence; you may
(though I do not think so) have concealed the degree of
destructive powers possessed by your people; you might, in
short, bring upon us some danger; and if the Tur entertains
that idea, it would clearly be his duty, either to put an end
to you, or enclose you in a cage for the rest of your
existence. But why should you wish to leave a state of society
which you so politely allow to be more felicitous than your
own?"

"Oh, Aph-Lin! My answer is plain. Lest in naught, and
unwittingly, I should betray your hospitality; lest, in the
caprice of will which in our world is proverbial among the
other sex, and from which even a Gy is not free, your adorable
daughter should deign to regard me, though a Tish, as if I were
a civilised An, and- and- and---"
114
"Court you as her spouse," put in Aph-Lin, gravely, and without
any visible sign of surprise or displeasure.

"You have said it."

"That would be a misfortune," resumed my host, after a pause,
"and I feel you have acted as you ought in warning me. It is,
as you imply, not uncommon for an unwedded Gy to conceive
tastes as to the object she covets which appear whimsical to
others; but there is no power to compel a young Gy to any
course opposed to that which she chooses to pursue. All we can
to is to reason with her, and experience tells us that the
whole College of Sages would find it vain to reason with a Gy
in a matter that concerns her choice in love. I grieve for
you, because such a marriage would be against the A-glauran, or
good of the community, for the children of such a marriage
would adulterate the race: they might even come into the world
with the teeth of carnivorous animals; this could not be
allowed: Zee, as a Gy, cannot be controlled; but you, as a
Tish, can be destroyed. I advise you, then, to resist her
addresses; to tell her plainly that you can never return her
love. This happens constantly. Many an An, however, ardently wooed by one Gy, rejects her, and puts an end to her
persecution by wedding another. The same course is open to
you."

"No; for I cannot wed another Gy without equally injuring the
community, and exposing it to the chance of rearing carnivorous
children."

"That is true. All I can say, and I say it with the tenderness
due to a Tish, and the respect due to a guest, is frankly this-
if you yield, you will become a cinder. I must leave it to you
to take the best way you can to defend yourself. Perhaps you
had better tell Zee that she is ugly. That assurance on the
lips of him she woos generally suffices to chill the most
ardent Gy. Here we are at my country-house."
115

Chapter XXIII.


I confess that my conversation with Aph-Lin, and the extreme
coolness with which he stated his inability to control the
dangerous caprice of his daughter, and treated the idea of the
reduction into a cinder to which her amorous flame might expose
my too seductive person, took away the pleasure I should
otherwise have had in the contemplation of my host's
country-seat, and the astonishing perfection of the machinery
by which his farming operations were conducted. The house
differed in appearance from the massive and sombre building
which Aph-Lin inhabited in the city, and which seemed akin to
the rocks out of which the city itself had been hewn into
shape. The walls of the country-seat were composed by trees
placed a few feet apart from each other, the interstices being
filled in with the transparent metallic substance which serves
the purpose of glass among the Ana. These trees were all in
flower, and the effect was very pleasing, if not in the best
taste. We were received at the porch by life-like automata,
who conducted us into a chamber, the like to which I never saw
before, but have often on summer days dreamily imagined. It
was a bower- half room, half garden. The walls were one mass
of climbing flowers. The open spaces, which we call windows,
and in which, here, the metallic surfaces were slided back,
commanded various views; some, of the wide landscape with its
lakes and rocks; some, of small limited expanses answering to
our conservatories, filled with tiers of flowers. Along the
sides of the room were flower-beds, interspersed with cushions
for repose. In the centre of the floor was a cistern and a
fountain of that liquid light which I have presumed to be
naphtha. It was luminous and of a roseate hue; it sufficed
without lamps to light up the room with a subdued radiance.
All around the fountain was carpeted with a soft deep lichen,
not green (I have never seen that colour in the vegetation of
116this country), but a quiet brown, on which the eye reposes with
the same sense of relief as that with which in the upper world
it reposes on green. In the outlets upon flowers (which I have
compared to our conservatories) there were singing birds
innumerable, which, while we remained in the room, sang in
those harmonies of tune to which they are, in these parts, so
wonderfully trained. The roof was open. The whole scene had
charms for every sense- music form the birds, fragrance from
the flowers, and varied beauty to the eye at every aspect.
About all was a voluptuous repose. What a place, methought,
for a honeymoon, if a Gy bride were a little less formidably
armed not only with the rights of woman, but with the powers of
man! But when one thinks of a Gy, so learned, so tall, so
stately, so much above the standard of the creature we call
woman as was Zee, no! even if I had felt no fear of being
reduced to a cinder, it is not of her I should have dreamed in
that bower so constructed for dreams of poetic love.

The automata reappeared, serving one of those delicious liquids
which form the innocent wines of the Vril-ya.

"Truly," said I, "this is a charming residence, and I can
scarcely conceive why you do not settle yourself here instead
of amid the gloomier abodes of the city."

"As responsible to the community for the administration of
light, I am compelled to reside chiefly in the city, and can
only come hither for short intervals."

"But since I understand from you that no honours are attached to
your office, and it involves some trouble, why do you accept
it?"

"Each of us obeys without question the command of the Tur. He
said, 'Be it requested that Aph-Lin shall be the Commissioner
of Light,' so I had no choice; but having held the office now
for a long time, the cares, which were at first unwelcome, have
become, if not pleasing, at least endurable. We are all formed
by custom- even the difference of our race from the savage is
but the transmitted continuance of custom, which becomes,
117through hereditary descent, part and parcel of our nature. You
see there are Ana who even reconcile themselves to the
responsibilities of chief magistrate, but no one would do so if
his duties had not been rendered so light, or if there were any
questions as to compliance with his requests."

"Not even if you thought the requests unwise or unjust?"

"We do not allow ourselves to think so, and, indeed, everything
goes on as if each and all governed themselves according to
immemorial custom."

"When the chief magistrate dies or retires, how do you provide
for his successor?"

"The An who has discharged the duties of chief magistrate for
many years is the best person to choose one by whom those
duties may be understood, and he generally names his
successor."

"His son, perhaps?"

"Seldom that; for it is not an office any one desires or seeks,
and a father naturally hesitates to constrain his son. But if
the Tur himself decline to make a choice, for fear it might be
supposed that he owed some grudge to the person on whom his
choice would settle, then there are three of the College of
Sages who draw lots among themselves which shall have the power
to elect the chief. We consider that the judgment of one An of
ordinary capacity is better than the judgment of three or more,
however wise they may be; for among three there would probably
be disputes, and where there are disputes, passion clouds
judgment. The worst choice made by one who has no motive in
choosing wrong, is better than the best choice made by many who
have many motives for not choosing right."

"You reverse in your policy the maxims adopted in my country."

"Are you all, in your country, satisfied with your governors?"

"All! Certainly not; the governors that most please some are
sure to be those most displeasing to others."

"Then our system is better than yours."
118
"For you it may be; but according to our system a Tish could
not be reduced to a cinder if a female compelled him to marry
her; and as a Tish I sigh to return to my native world."

"Take courage, my dear little guest; Zee can't compel you to
marry her. She can only entice you to do so. Don't be
enticed. Come and look round my domain."

We went forth into a close, bordered with sheds; for though the
Ana keep no stock for food, there are some animals which they
rear for milking and others for shearing. The former have no
resemblance to our cows, nor the latter to our sheep, nor do I
believe such species exist amongst them. They use the milk of
three varieties of animal: one resembles the antelope, but is
much larger, being as tall as a camel; the other two are
smaller, and, though differing somewhat from each other,
resemble no creature I ever saw on earth. They are very sleek
and of rounded proportions; their colour that of the dappled
deer, with very mild countenances and beautiful dark eyes. The
milk of these three creatures differs in richness and taste.
It is usually diluted with water, and flavoured with the juice
of a peculiar and perfumed fruit, and in itself is very
nutritious and palatable. The animal whose fleece serves them
for clothing and many other purposes, is more like the Italian
she-goat than any other creature, but is considerably larger,
has no horns, and is free from the displeasing odour of our
goats. Its fleece is not thick, but very long and fine; it
varies in colour, but is never white, more generally of a
slate-like or lavender hue. For clothing it is usually worn
dyed to suit the taste of the wearer. These animals were
exceedingly tame, and were treated with extraordinary care and
affection by the children (chiefly female) who tended them.

We then went through vast storehouses filled with grains and
fruits. I may here observe that the main staple of food among
these people consists- firstly, of a kind of corn much larger
119in ear than our wheat, and which by culture is perpetually
being brought into new varieties of flavour; and, secondly, of
a fruit of about the size of a small orange, which, when
gathered, is hard and bitter. It is stowed away for many
months in their warehouses, and then becomes succulent and
tender. Its juice, which is of dark-red colour, enters into
most of their sauces. They have many kinds of fruit of the
nature of the olive, from which delicious oils are extracted.
They have a plant somewhat resembling the sugar-cane, but its
juices are less sweet and of a delicate perfume. They have no
bees nor honey-making insects, but they make much use of a
sweet gum that oozes from a coniferous plant, not unlike the
araucaria. Their soil teems also with esculent roots and
vegetables, which it is the aim of their culture to improve and
vary to the utmost. And I never remember any meal among this
people, however it might be confined to the family household,
in which some delicate novelty in such articles of food was not
introduced. In fine, as I before observed, their cookery is
exquisite, so diversified and nutritious that one does not miss
animal food; and their own physical forms suffice to show that
with them, at least, meat is not required for superior
production of muscular fibre. They have no grapes- the drinks
extracted from their fruits are innocent and refreshing. Their
staple beverage, however, is water, in the choice of which they
are very fastidious, distinguishing at once the slightest
impurity.

"My younger son takes great pleasure in augmenting our
produce," said Aph-Lin as we passed through the storehouses,
"and therefore will inherit these lands, which constitute the
chief part of my wealth. To my elder son such inheritance
would be a great trouble and affliction."

"Are there many sons among you who think the inheritance of
vast wealth would be a great trouble and affliction?"

"Certainly; there are indeed very few of the Vril-ya who do not
120consider that a fortune much above the average is a heavy
burden. We are rather a lazy people after the age of
childhood, and do not like undergoing more cares than we can
help, and great wealth does give its owner many cares. For
instance, it marks us out for public offices, which none of us
like and none of us can refuse. It necessitates our taking a
continued interest in the affairs of any of our poorer
countrymen, so that we may anticipate their wants and see that
none fall into poverty. There is an old proverb amongst us
which says, 'The poor man's need is the rich man's shame---'"

"Pardon me, if I interrupt you for a moment. You allow that
some, even of the Vril-ya, know want, and need relief."

"If by want you mean the destitution that prevails in a
Koom-Posh, THAT is impossible with us, unless an An has, by
some extraordinary process, got rid of all his means, cannot or
will not emigrate, and has either tired out the affectionate
aid of this relations or personal friends, or refuses to accept
it."

"Well, then, does he not supply the place of an infant or
automaton, and become a labourer- a servant?"

"No; then we regard him as an unfortunate person of unsound
reason, and place him, at the expense of the State, in a public
building, where every comfort and every luxury that can
mitigate his affliction are lavished upon him. But an An does
not like to be considered out of his mind, and therefore such
cases occur so seldom that the public building I speak of is
now a deserted ruin, and the last inmate of it was an An whom I
recollect to have seen in my childhood. He did not seem
conscious of loss of reason, and wrote glaubs (poetry). When I
spoke of wants, I meant such wants as an An with desires larger
than his means sometimes entertains- for expensive
singing-birds, or bigger houses, or country-gardens; and the
obvious way to satisfy such wants is to buy of him something
that he sells. Hence Ana like myself, who are very rich, are
121obliged to buy a great many things they do not require, and
live on a very large scale where they might prefer to live on a
small one. For instance, the great size of my house in the
town is a source of much trouble to my wife, and even to
myself; but I am compelled to have it thus incommodiously
large, because, as the richest An of the community, I am
appointed to entertain the strangers from the other communities
when they visit us, which they do in great crowds twice-a-year,
when certain periodical entertainments are held, and when
relations scattered throughout all the realms of the Vril-ya
joyfully reunite for a time. This hospitality, on a scale so
extensive, is not to my taste, and therefore I should have been
happier had I been less rich. But we must all bear the lot
assigned to us in this short passage through time that we call
life. After all, what are a hundred years, more or less, to
the ages through which we must pass hereafter? Luckily, I have
one son who likes great wealth. It is a rare exception to the
general rule, and I own I cannot myself understand it."

After this conversation I sought to return to the subject which
continued to weigh on my heart- viz., the chances of escape
from Zee. But my host politely declined to renew that topic,
and summoned our air-boat. On our way back we were met by Zee,
who, having found us gone, on her return from the College of
Sages, had unfurled her wings and flown in search of us.

Her grand, but to me unalluring, countenance brightened as she
beheld me, and, poising herself beside the boat on her large
outspread plumes, she said reproachfully to Aph-Lin- "Oh,
father, was it right in you to hazard the life of your guest in
a vehicle to which he is so unaccustomed? He might, by an
incautious movement, fall over the side; and alas; he is not
like us, he has no wings. It were death to him to fall. Dear
one!" (she added, accosting my shrinking self in a softer
voice), "have you no thought of me, that you should thus hazard
122a life which has become almost a part of mine? Never again be
thus rash, unless I am thy companion. What terror thou hast
stricken into me!"

I glanced furtively at Aph-Lin, expecting, at least, that he
would indignantly reprove his daughter for expressions of
anxiety and affection, which, under all the circumstances,
would, in the world above ground, be considered immodest in the
lips of a young female, addressed to a male not affianced to
her, even if of the same rank as herself.

But so confirmed are the rights of females in that region, and
so absolutely foremost among those rights do females claim the
privilege of courtship, that Aph-Lin would no more have thought
of reproving his virgin daughter than he would have thought of
disobeying the orders of the Tur. In that country, custom, as
he implied, is all in all.

He answered mildly, "Zee, the Tish is in no danger and it is my
belief the he can take very good care of himself."

"I would rather that he let me charge myself with his care.
Oh, heart of my heart, it was in the thought of thy danger that
I first felt how much I loved thee!"

Never did man feel in such a false position as I did. These
words were spoken loud in the hearing of Zee's father- in the
hearing of the child who steered. I blushed with shame for
them, and for her, and could not help replying angrily: "Zee,
either you mock me, which, as your father's guest, misbecomes
you, or the words you utter are improper for a maiden Gy to
address even to an An of her own race, if he has not wooed her
with the consent of her parents. How much more improper to
address them to a Tish, who has never presumed to solicit your
affections, and who can never regard you with other sentiments
than those of reverence and awe!"

Aph-Lin made me a covert sing of approbation, but said nothing.

123"Be not so cruel!" exclaimed Zee, still in sonorous accents.
"Can love command itself where it is truly felt? Do you suppose
that a maiden Gy will conceal a sentiment that it elevates her
to feel? What a country you must have come from!"

Here Aph-Lin gently interposed, saying, "Among the Tish-a the
rights of your sex do not appear to be established, and at all
events my guest may converse with you more freely if unchecked
by the presence of others."

To this remark Zee made no reply, but, darting on me a tender
reproachful glance, agitated her wings and fled homeward.

"I had counted, at least, on some aid from my host," I said
bitterly, "in the perils to which his own daughter exposes me."

"I gave you the best aid I could. To contradict a Gy in her
love affairs is to confirm her purpose. She allows no counsel
to come between her and her affections."


Chapter XXIV.


On alighting from the air-boat, a child accosted Aph-Lin in the
hall with a request that he would be present at the funeral
obsequies of a relation who had recently departed from that
nether world.

Now, I had never seen a burial-place or cemetery amongst this
people, and, glad to seize even so melancholy an occasion to
defer an encounter with Zee, I asked Aph-Lin if I might be
permitted to witness with him the interment of his relation;
unless, indeed, it were regarded as one of those sacred
ceremonies to which a stranger to their race might not be
admitted.

"The departure of an An to a happier world," answered my host,
"when, as in the case of my kinsman, he has lived so long in
124this as to have lost pleasure in it, is rather a cheerful
though quiet festival than a sacred ceremony, and you may
accompany me if you will."

Preceded by the child-messenger, we walked up the main street
to a house at some little distance, and, entering the hall,
were conducted to a room on the ground floor, where we found
several persons assembled round a couch on which was laid the
deceased. It was an old man, who had, as I was told, lived
beyond his 130th year. To judge by the calm smile on his
countenance, he had passed away without suffering. One of the
sons, who was now the head of the family, and who seemed in
vigorous middle life, though he was considerably more than
seventy, stepped forward with a cheerful face and told Aph-Lin
"that the day before he died his father had seen in a dream his
departed Gy, and was eager to be reunited to her, and restored
to youth beneath the nearer smile of the All-Good."

While these two were talking, my attention was drawn to a dark
metallic substance at the farther end of the room. It was
about twenty feet in length, narrow in proportion, and all
closed round, save, near the roof, there were small round holes
through which might be seen a red light. From the interior
emanated a rich and sweet perfume; and while I was conjecturing
what purpose this machine was to serve, all the time-pieces in
the town struck the hour with their solemn musical chime; and
as that sound ceased, music of a more joyous character, but
still of a joy subdued and tranquil, rang throughout the
chamber, and from the walls beyond, in a choral peal.
Symphonious with the melody, those in the room lifted their
voices in chant. The words of this hymn were simple. They
expressed no regret, no farewell, but rather a greeting to the
new world whither the deceased had preceded the living.
Indeed, in their language, the funeral hymn is called the
'Birth Song.' Then the corpse, covered by a long cerement, was
tenderly lifted up by six of the nearest kinfolk and borne
towards the dark thing I have described. I pressed forward to
125see what happened. A sliding door or panel at one end was
lifted up- the body deposited within, on a shelf- the door
reclosed- a spring a the side touched- a sudden 'whishing,'
sighing sound heard from within; and lo! at the other end of
the machine the lid fell down, and a small handful of
smouldering dust dropped into a 'patera' placed to receive it.
The son took up the 'patera' and said (in what I understood
afterwards was the usual form of words), "Behold how great is
the Maker! To this little dust He gave form and life and soul.
It needs not this little dust for Him to renew form and life
and soul to the beloved one we shall soon see again."

Each present bowed his head and pressed his hand to his heart.
Then a young female child opened a small door within the wall,
and I perceived, in the recess, shelves on which were placed
many 'paterae' like that which the son held, save that they all
had covers. With such a cover a Gy now approached the son, and
placed it over the cup, on which it closed with a spring. On
the lid were engraven the name of the deceased, and these
words:- "Lent to us" (here the date of birth). "Recalled from
us" (here the date of death).

The closed door shut with a musical sound, and all was over.


Chapter XXV.


"And this," said I, with my mind full of what I had witnessed-
"this, I presume, is your usual form of burial?"

"Our invariable form," answered Aph-Lin. "What is it amongst
your people?"

"We inter the body whole within the earth."

"What! To degrade the form you have loved and honoured, the
wife on whose breast you have slept, to the loathsomeness of
corruption?"
126
"But if the soul lives again, can it matter whether the body
waste within the earth or is reduced by that awful mechanism,
worked, no doubt by the agency of vril, into a pinch of dust?"

"You answer well," said my host, "and there is no arguing on a
matter of feeling; but to me your custom is horrible and
repulsive, and would serve to invest death with gloomy and
hideous associations. It is something, too, to my mind, to be
able to preserve the token of what has been our kinsman or
friend within the abode in which we live. We thus feel more
sensibly that he still lives, though not visibly so to us. But
our sentiments in this, as in all things, are created by
custom. Custom is not to be changed by a wise An, any more
than it is changed by a wise Community, without the greatest
deliberation, followed by the most earnest conviction. It is
only thus that change ceases to be changeability, and once made
is made for good.

When we regained the house, Aph-Lin summoned some of the
children in his service and sent them round to several of his
friends, requesting their attendance that day, during the Easy
Hours, to a festival in honour of his kinsman's recall to the
All-Good. This was the largest and gayest assembly I ever
witnessed during my stay among the Ana, and was prolonged far
into the Silent Hours.

The banquet was spread in a vast chamber reserved especially
for grand occasions. This differed from our entertainments,
and was not without a certain resemblance to those we read of
in the luxurious age of the Roman empire. There was not one
great table set out, but numerous small tables, each
appropriated to eight guests. It is considered that beyond
that number conversation languishes and friendship cools. The
Ana never laugh loud, as I have before observed, but the
cheerful ring of their voices at the various tables betokened
gaiety of intercourse. As they have no stimulant drinks, and
are temperate in food, though so choice and dainty, the banquet
itself did not last long. The tables sank through the floor,
127and then came musical entertainments for those who liked them.
Many, however, wandered away:- some of the younger ascended in
their wings, for the hall was roofless, forming aerial dances;
others strolled through the various apartments, examining the
curiosities with which they were stored, or formed themselves
into groups for various games, the favourite of which is a
complicated kind of chess played by eight persons. I mixed
with the crowd, but was prevented joining in the conversation
by the constant companionship of one or the other of my host's
sons, appointed to keep me from obtrusive questionings. The
guests, however, noticed me but slightly; they had grown
accustomed to my appearance, seeing me so often in the streets,
and I had ceased to excite much curiosity.

To my great delight Zee avoided me, and evidently sought to
excite my jealousy by marked attentions to a very handsome
young An, who (though, as is the modest custom of the males
when addressed by females, he answered with downcast eyes and
blushing cheeks, and was demure and shy as young ladies new to
the world are in most civilised countries, except England and
America) was evidently much charmed by the tall Gy, and ready
to falter a bashful "Yes" if she had actually proposed.
Fervently hoping that she would, and more and more averse to
the idea of reduction to a cinder after I had seen the rapidity
with which a human body can be hurried into a pinch of dust, I
amused myself by watching the manners of the other young
people. I had the satisfaction of observing that Zee was no
singular assertor of a female's most valued rights. Wherever I
turned my eyes, or lent my ears, it seemed to me that the Gy
was the wooing party, and the An the coy and reluctant one.
The pretty innocent airs which an An gave himself on being thus
courted, the dexterity with which he evaded direct answers to
professions of attachment, or turned into jest the flattering
compliments addressed to him, would have done honour to the
128most accomplished coquette. Both my male chaperons were
subjected greatly to these seductive influences, and both
acquitted themselves with wonderful honour to their tact and
self-control.

I said to the elder son, who preferred mechanical employments
to the management of a great property, and who was of an
eminently philosophical temperament,- "I find it difficult to
conceive how at your age, and with all the intoxicating effects
on the senses, of music and lights and perfumes, you can be so
cold to that impassioned young Gy who has just left you with
tears in her eyes at your cruelty."

The young An replied with a sigh, "Gentle Tish, the greatest
misfortune in life is to marry one Gy if you are in love with
another."

"Oh! You are in love with another?"

"Alas! Yes."

"And she does not return your love?"

"I don't know. Sometimes a look, a tone, makes me hope so; but
she has never plainly told me that she loves me."

"Have you not whispered in her own ear that you love her?"

"Fie! What are you thinking of? What world do you come from?
Could I so betray the dignity of my sex? Could I be so un-Anly-
so lost to shame, as to own love to a Gy who has not first
owned hers to me?"

"Pardon: I was not quite aware that you pushed the modesty of
your sex so far. But does no An ever say to a Gy, 'I love
you,' till she says it first to him?"

"I can't say that no An has ever done so, but if he ever does,
he is disgraced in the eyes of the Ana, and secretly despised
by the Gy-ei. No Gy, well brought up, would listen to him; she
would consider that he audaciously infringed on the rights of
her sex, while outraging the modesty which dignifies his own.
It is very provoking," continued the An, "for she whom I love
has certainly courted no one else, and I cannot but think she
likes me. Sometimes I suspect that she does not court me
because she fears I would ask some unreasonable settlement as
129to the surrender of her rights. But if so, she cannot really
love me, for where a Gy really loves she forgoes all rights."

"Is this young Gy present?"

"Oh yes. She sits yonder talking to my mother."

I looked in the direction to which my eyes were thus guided,
and saw a Gy dressed in robes of bright red, which among this
people is a sign that a Gy as yet prefers a single state. She
wears gray, a neutral tint, to indicate that she is looking
about for a spouse; dark purple if she wishes to intimate that
she has made a choice; purple and orange when she is betrothed
or married; light blue when she is divorced or a widow, and
would marry again. Light blue is of course seldom seen.

Among a people where all are of so high a type of beauty, it is
difficult to single out one as peculiarly handsome. My young
friend's choice seemed to me to possess the average of good
looks; but there was an expression in her face that pleased me
more than did the faces of the young Gy-ei generally, because
it looked less bold- less conscious of female rights. I
observed that, while she talked to Bra, she glanced, from time
to time, sidelong at my young friend.

"Courage," said I, "that young Gy loves you."

"Ay, but if she shall not say so, how am I the better for her love?"

"Your mother is aware of your attachment?"

"Perhaps so. I never owned it to her. It would be un-Anly to
confide such weakness to a mother. I have told my father; he
may have told it again to his wife."

"Will you permit me to quit you for a moment and glide behind
your mother and your beloved? I am sure they are talking about
you. Do not hesitate. I promise that I will not allow myself
to be questioned till I rejoin you."

The young An pressed his hand on his heart, touched me lightly
on the head, and allowed me to quit his side. I stole
unobserved behind his mother and his beloved. I overheard
their talk.
130
Bra was speaking; said she, "There can be no doubt of this:
either my son, who is of marriageable age, will be decoyed into
marriage with one of his many suitors, or he will join those
who emigrate to a distance and we shall see him no more. If
you really care for him, my dear Lo, you should propose."

"I do care for him, Bra; but I doubt if I could really ever win
his affections. He is fond of his inventions and timepieces;
and I am not like Zee, but so dull that I fear I could not
enter into his favourite pursuits, and then he would get tired
of me, and at the end of three years divorce me, and I could
never marry another- never."

"It is not necessary to know about timepieces to know how to be
so necessary to the happiness of an An, who cares for
timepieces, that he would rather give up the timepieces than
divorce his Gy. You see, my dear Lo," continued Bra, "that
precisely because we are the stronger sex, we rule the other
provided we never show our strength. If you were superior to
my son in making timepieces and automata, you should, as his
wife, always let him suppose you thought him superior in that
art to yourself. The An tacitly allows the pre-eminence of the
Gy in all except his own special pursuit. But if she either
excels him in that, or affects not to admire him for his
proficiency in it, he will not love her very long; perhaps he
may even divorce her. But where a Gy really loves, she soon
learns to love all that the An does."

The young Gy made no answer to this address. She looked down
musingly, then a smile crept over her lips, and she rose, still
silent, and went through the crowd till she paused by the young
An who loved her. I followed her steps, but discreetly stood
at a little distance while I watched them. Somewhat to my
surprise, till I recollected the coy tactics among the Ana, the
lover seemed to receive her advances with an air of
indifference. He even moved away, but she pursued his steps,
131and, a little time after, both spread their wings and vanished
amid the luminous space above.

Just then I was accosted by the chief magistrate, who mingled
with the crowd distinguished by no signs of deference or
homage. It so happened that I had not seen this great
dignitary since the day I had entered his dominions, and
recalling Aph-Lin's words as to his terrible doubt whether or
not I should be dissected, a shudder crept over me at the sight
of his tranquil countenance.

"I hear much of you, stranger, from my son Taee," said the Tur,
laying his hand politely on my bended head. "He is very fond
of your society, and I trust you are not displeased with the
customs of our people."

I muttered some unintelligible answer, which I intended to be
an assurance of my gratitude for the kindness I had received
from the Tur, and my admiration of his countrymen, but the
dissecting-knife gleamed before my mind's eye and choked my
utterance. A softer voice said, "My brother's friend must be
dear to me." And looking up I saw a young Gy, who might be
sixteen years old, standing beside the magistrate and gazing at
me with a very benignant countenance. She had not come to her
full growth, and was scarcely taller than myself (viz., about 5
feet 10 inches), and, thanks to that comparatively diminutive
stature, I thought her the loveliest Gy I had hitherto seen. I
suppose something in my eyes revealed that impression, for her
countenance grew yet more benignant.
"Taee tells me," she said, "that you have not yet learned to
accustom yourself to wings. That grieves me, for I should have
liked to fly with you."

"Alas!" I replied, "I can never hope to enjoy that happiness.
I am assured by Zee that the safe use of wings is a hereditary
gift, and it would take generations before one of my race could
poise himself in the air like a bird."

132"Let not that thought vex you too much," replied this amiable
Princess, "for, after all, there must come a day when Zee and
myself must resign our wings forever. Perhaps when that day
comes we might be glad if the An we chose was also without
wings."

The Tur had left us, and was lost amongst the crowd. I began
to feel at ease with Taee's charming sister, and rather
startled her by the boldness of my compliment in replying,
"that no An she could choose would ever use his wings to fly
away from her." It is so against custom for an An to say such
civil things to a Gy till she has declared her passion for him,
and been accepted as his betrothed, that the young maiden stood
quite dumbfounded for a few moments. Nevertheless she did not
seem displeased. At last recovering herself, she invited me to
accompany her into one of the less crowded rooms and listen to
the songs of the birds. I followed her steps as she glided
before me, and she led me into a chamber almost deserted. A
fountain of naphtha was playing in the centre of the room;
round it were ranged soft divans, and the walls of the room
were open on one side to an aviary in which the birds were
chanting their artful chorus. The Gy seated herself on one of
the divans, and I placed myself at her side. "Taee tells me,"
she said, "that Aph-Lin has made it the law* of his house that
you are not to be questioned as to the country you come from or
the reason why you visit us. Is it so?"

* Literally "has said, In this house be it requested." Words
synonymous with law, as implying forcible obligation, are
avoided by this singular people. Even had it been decreed by
the Tur that his College of Sages should dissect me, the decree
would have ran blandly thus,- "Be it requested that, for the
good of the community, the carnivorous Tish be requested to
submit himself to dissection."

"It is."

"May I, at least, without sinning against that law, ask at
least if the Gy-ei in your country are of the same pale colour
as yourself, and no taller?"

"I do not think, O beautiful Gy, that I infringe the law of
Aph-Lin, which is more binding on myself than any one, if I
133answer questions so innocent. The Gy-ei in my country are much
fairer of hue than I am, and their average height is at least a
head shorter than mine."

"They cannot then be so strong as the Ana amongst you? But I
suppose their superior vril force makes up for such extraordinary
disadvantage of size?"

"They do not profess the vril force as you know it. But still
they are very powerful in my country, and an An has small
chance of a happy life if he be not more or less governed by
his Gy."

"You speak feelingly," said Taee's sister, in a tone of voice
half sad, half petulant. "You are married, of course."

"No- certainly not."

"Nor betrothed?"

"Nor betrothed."

"Is it possible that no Gy has proposed to you?"

"In my country the Gy does not propose; the An speaks first."

"What a strange reversal of the laws of nature!" said the maiden,
"and what want of modesty in your sex! But have you never proposed,
never loved one Gy more than another?"

I felt embarrassed by these ingenious questionings, and said,
"Pardon me, but I think we are beginning to infringe upon
Aph-Lin's injunction. This much only will I answer, and then,
I implore you, ask no more. I did once feel the preference you
speak of; I did propose, and the Gy would willingly have
accepted me, but her parents refused their consent."

"Parents! Do you mean seriously to tell me that parents can
interfere with the choice of their daughters?"

"Indeed they can, and do very often."

"I should not like to live in that country, said the Gy simply;
"but I hope you will never go back to it."

I bowed my head in silence. The Gy gently raised my face with
her right hand, and looked into it tenderly. "Stay with us,"
she said; "stay with us, and be loved."
134
What I might have answered, what dangers of becoming a cinder I
might have encountered, I still trouble to think, when the
light of the naphtha fountain was obscured by the shadow of
wings; and Zee, flying though the open roof, alighted beside
us. She said not a word, but, taking my arm with her mighty
hand, she drew me away, as a mother draws a naughty child, and
led me through the apartments to one of the corridors, on
which, by the mechanism they generally prefer to stairs, we
ascended to my own room. This gained, Zee breathed on my
forehead, touched my breast with her staff, and I was instantly
plunged into a profound sleep.

When I awoke some hours later, and heard the songs of the birds
in the adjoining aviary, the remembrance of Taee's sister, her
gentle looks and caressing words, vividly returned to me; and
so impossible is it for one born and reared in our upper
world's state of society to divest himself of ideas dictated by
vanity and ambition, that I found myself instinctively building
proud castles in the air.

"Tish though I be," thus ran my meditations- "Tish though I be,
it is then clear that Zee is not the only Gy whom my appearance
can captivate. Evidently I am loved by A PRINCESS, the first
maiden of this land, the daughter of the absolute Monarch whose
autocracy they so idly seek to disguise by the republican title
of chief magistrate. But for the sudden swoop of that horrible
Zee, this Royal Lady would have formally proposed to me; and
though it may be very well for Aph-Lin, who is only a
subordinate minister, a mere Commissioner of Light, to threaten
me with destruction if I accept his daughter's hand, yet a
Sovereign, whose word is law, could compel the community to
abrogate any custom that forbids intermarriage with one of a
strange race, and which in itself is a contradiction to their
boasted equality of ranks.

"It is not to be supposed that his daughter, who spoke with
such incredulous scorn of the interference of parents, would
135not have sufficient influence with her Royal Father to save me
from the combustion to which Aph-Lin would condemn my form.
And if I were exalted by such an alliance, who knows but what
the Monarch might elect me as his successor? Why not? Few among
this indolent race of philosophers like the burden of such
greatness. All might be pleased to see the supreme power
lodged in the hands of an accomplished stranger who has
experience of other and livelier forms of existence; and once
chosen, what reforms I would institute! What additions to the
really pleasant but too monotonous life of this realm my
familiarity with the civilised nations above ground would
effect! I am fond of the sports of the field. Next to war, is
not the chase a king's pastime? In what varieties of strange
game does this nether world abound? How interesting to strike
down creatures that were known above ground before the Deluge!
But how? By that terrible vril, in which, from want of
hereditary transmission, I could never be a proficient? No, but
by a civilised handy breech-loader, which these ingenious
mechanicians could not only make, but no doubt improve; nay,
surely I saw one in the Museum. Indeed, as absolute king, I
should discountenance vril altogether, except in cases of war.
Apropos of war, it is perfectly absurd to stint a people so
intelligent, so rich, so well armed, to a petty limit of
territory sufficing for 10,000 or 12,000 families. Is not this
restriction a mere philosophical crotchet, at variance with the
aspiring element in human nature, such as has been partially,
and with complete failure, tried in the upper world by the late
Mr. Robert Owen? Of course one would not go to war with the
neighbouring nations as well armed as one's own subjects; but
then, what of those regions inhabited by races unacquainted
with vril, and apparently resembling, in their democratic
institutions, my American countrymen? One might invade them
without offence to the vril nations, our allies, appropriate
their territories, extending, perhaps, to the most distant
136regions of the nether earth, and thus rule over an empire in
which the sun never sets. (I forgot, in my enthusiasm, that
over those regions there was no sun to set). As for the
fantastical notion against conceding fame or renown to an
eminent individual, because, forsooth, bestowal of honours
insures contest in the pursuit of them, stimulates angry
passions, and mars the felicity of peace- it is opposed to the
very elements, not only of the human, but of the brute
creation, which are all, if tamable, participators in the
sentiment of praise and emulation. What renown would be given
to a king who thus extended his empire! I should be deemed a
demigod." Thinking of that, the other fanatical notion of
regulating this life by reference to one which, no doubt, we
Christians firmly believe in, but never take into
consideration, I resolved that enlightened philosophy compelled
me to abolish a heathen religion so superstitiously at variance
with modern thought and practical action. Musing over these
various projects, I felt how much I should have liked at that
moment to brighten my wits by a good glass of whiskey-and-water.
Not that I am habitually a spirit-drinker, but certainly there
are times when a little stimulant of alcoholic nature, taken
with a cigar, enlivens the imagination. Yes; certainly among
these herbs and fruits there would be a liquid from which one
could extract a pleasant vinous alcohol; and with a steak cut
off one of those elks (ah! what offence to science to reject
the animal food which our first medical men agree in
recommending to the gastric juices of mankind!) one would
certainly pass a more exhilirating hour of repast. Then, too,
instead of those antiquated dramas performed by childish
amateurs, certainly, when I am king, I will introduce our
modern opera and a 'corps de ballet,' for which one might find,
among the nations I shall conquer, young females of less
formidable height and thews than the Gy-ei- not armed with
vril, and not insisting upon one's marrying them.

I was so completely rapt in these and similar reforms,
137political, social, and moral, calculated to bestow on the
people of the nether world the blessings of a civilisation
known to the races of the upper, that I did not perceive that
Zee had entered the chamber till I heard a deep sigh, and,
raising my eyes, beheld her standing by my couch.

I need not say that, according to the manners of this people, a
Gy can, without indecorum, visit an An in his chamber, although
an An would be considered forward and immodest to the last
degree if he entered the chamber of a Gy without previously
obtaining her permission to do so. Fortunately I was in the
full habiliments I had worn when Zee had deposited me on the
couch. Nevertheless I felt much irritated, as well as shocked,
by her visit, and asked in a rude tone what she wanted.

"Speak gently, beloved one, I entreat you," said she, "for I am
very unhappy. I have not slept since we parted."

"A due sense of your shameful conduct to me as your father's
guest might well suffice to banish sleep from your eyelids.
Where was the affection you pretend to have for me, where was
even that politeness on which the Vril-ya pride themselves,
when, taking advantage alike of that physical strength in which
your sex, in this extraordinary region, excels our own, and of
those detestable and unhallowed powers which the agencies of
vril invest in your eyes and finger-ends, you exposed me to
humiliation before your assembled visitors, before Her Royal
Highness- I mean, the daughter of your own chief magistrate,-
carrying me off to bed like a naughty infant, and plunging me
into sleep, without asking my consent?"

"Ungrateful! Do you reproach me for the evidences of my love?
Can you think that, even if unstung by the jealousy which attends
upon love till it fades away in blissful trust when we know that
the heart we have wooed is won, I could be indifferent to the
perils to which the audacious overtures of that silly little
child might expose you?"

138"Hold! Since you introduce the subject of perils, it perhaps
does not misbecome me to say that my most imminent perils come
from yourself, or at least would come if I believed in your
love and accepted your addresses. Your father has told me
plainly that in that case I should be consumed into a cinder
with as little compunction as if I were the reptile whom Taee
blasted into ashes with the flash of his wand."

"Do not let that fear chill your heart to me," exclaimed Zee,
dropping on her knees and absorbing my right hand in the space
of her ample palm. "It is true, indeed, that we two cannot wed
as those of the same race wed; true that the love between us
must be pure as that which, in our belief, exists between
lovers who reunite in the new life beyond that boundary at
which the old life ends. But is it not happiness enough to be
together, wedded in mind and in heart? Listen: I have just left
my father. He consents to our union on those terms. I have
sufficient influence with the College of Sages to insure their
request to the Tur not to interfere with the free choice of a
Gy; provided that her wedding with one of another race be but
the wedding of souls. Oh, think you that true love needs
ignoble union? It is not that I yearn only to be by your side
in this life, to be part and parcel of your joys and sorrows
here: I ask here for a tie which will bind us for ever and for
ever in the world of immortals. Do you reject me?"

As she spoke, she knelt, and the whole character of her face
was changed; nothing of sternness left to its grandeur; a
divine light, as that of an immortal, shining out from its
human beauty. But she rather awed me as an angel than moved me
as a woman, and after an embarrassed pause, I faltered forth
evasive expressions of gratitude, and sought, as delicately as
I could, to point out how humiliating would be my position
amongst her race in the light of a husband who might never be
permitted the name of father.

"But," said Zee, "this community does not constitute the whole
world. No; nor do all the populations comprised in the league
139of the Vril-ya. For thy sake I will renounce my country and my
people. We will fly together to some region where thou shalt
be safe. I am strong enough to bear thee on my wings across
the deserts that intervene. I am skilled enough to cleave
open, amidst the rocks, valleys in which to build our home.
Solitude and a hut with thee would be to me society and the
universe. Or wouldst thou return to thine own world, above the
surface of this, exposed to the uncertain seasons, and lit but
by the changeful orbs which constitute by thy description the
fickle character of those savage regions? I so, speak the word,
and I will force the way for thy return, so that I am thy
companion there, though, there as here, but partner of thy
soul, and fellow traveller with thee to the world in which
there is no parting and no death."

I could not but be deeply affected by the tenderness, at once
so pure and so impassioned, with which these words were
uttered, and in a voice that would have rendered musical the
roughest sounds in the rudest tongue. And for a moment it did
occur to me that I might avail myself of Zee's agency to effect
a safe and speedy return to the upper world. But a very brief
space for reflection sufficed to show me how dishonourable and
base a return for such devotion it would be to allure thus
away, from her own people and a home in which I had been so
hospitably treated, a creature to whom our world would be so
abhorrent, and for whose barren, if spiritual love, I could not
reconcile myself to renounce the more human affection of mates
less exalted above my erring self. With this sentiment of duty
towards the Gy combined another of duty towards the whole race
I belonged to. Could I venture to introduce into the upper
world a being so formidably gifted- a being that with a
movement of her staff could in less than an hour reduce New
York and its glorious Koom-Posh into a pinch of snuff? Rob her
of her staff, with her science she could easily construct
another; and with the deadly lightnings that armed the slender
engine her whole frame was charged. If thus dangerous to the
140cities and populations of the whole upper earth, could she be a
safe companion to myself in case her affection should be
subjected to change or embittered by jealousy? These thoughts,
which it takes so many words to express, passed rapidly through
my brain and decided my answer.

"Zee," I said, in the softest tones I could command and
pressing respectful lips on the hand into whose clasp mine
vanished- "Zee, I can find no words to say how deeply I am
touched, and how highly I am honoured, by a love so
disinterested and self-immolating. My best return to it is
perfect frankness. Each nation has its customs. The customs
of yours do not allow you to wed me; the customs of mine are
equally opposed to such a union between those of races so
widely differing. On the other hand, though not deficient in
courage among my own people, or amid dangers with which I am
familiar, I cannot, without a shudder of horror, think of
constructing a bridal home in the heart of some dismal chaos,
with all the elements of nature, fire and water, and mephitic
gases, at war with each other, and with the probability that at
some moment, while you were busied in cleaving rocks or
conveying vril into lamps, I should be devoured by a krek which
your operations disturbed from its hiding-place. I, a mere
Tish, do not deserve the love of a Gy, so brilliant, so learned,
so potent as yourself. Yes, I do not deserve that love, for I
cannot return it."

Zee released my hand, rose to her feet, and turned her face
away to hide her emotions; then she glided noiselessly along
the room, and paused at the threshold. Suddenly, impelled as
by a new thought, she returned to my side and said, in a
whispered tone,-

"You told me you would speak with perfect frankness. With
perfect frankness, then, answer me this question. If you
cannot love me, do you love another?"

"Certainly, I do not."

"You do not love Taee's sister?"

"I never saw her before last night."

141"That is no answer. Love is swifter than vril. You hesitate
to tell me. Do not think it is only jealousy that prompts me
to caution you. If the Tur's daughter should declare love to
you- if in her ignorance she confides to her father any
preference that may justify his belief that she will woo you,
he will have no option but to request your immediate
destruction, as he is specially charged with the duty of
consulting the good of the community, which could not allow the
daughter of the Vril-ya to wed a son of the Tish-a, in that
sense of marriage which does not confine itself to union of the
souls. Alas! there would then be for you no escape. She has
no strength of wing to uphold you through the air; she has no
science wherewith to make a home in the wilderness. Believe
that here my friendship speaks, and that my jealousy is
silent."

With these words Zee left me. And recalling those words, I
thought no more of succeeding to the throne of the Vril-ya, or
of the political, social, and moral reforms I should institute
in the capacity of Absolute Sovereign.


Chapter XXVI.


After the conversation with Zee just recorded, I fell into a
profound melancholy. The curious interest with which I had
hitherto examined the life and habits of this marvellous
community was at an end. I could not banish from my mind the
consciousness that I was among a people who, however kind and
courteous, could destroy me at any moment without scruple or
compunction. The virtuous and peaceful life of the people
which, while new to me, had seemed so holy a contrast to the
contentions, the passions, the vices of the upper world, now
began to oppress me with a sense of dulness and monotony. Even
the serene tranquility of the lustrous air preyed on my
142spirits. I longed for a change, even to winter, or storm, or
darkness. I began to feel that, whatever our dreams of
perfectibility, our restless aspirations towards a better, and
higher, and calmer, sphere of being, we, the mortals of the
upper world, are not trained or fitted to enjoy for long the
very happiness of which we dream or to which we aspire.

Now, in this social state of the Vril-ya, it was singular to
mark how it contrived to unite and to harmonise into one system
nearly all the objects which the various philosophers of the
upper world have placed before human hopes as the ideals of a
Utopian future. It was a state in which war, with all its
calamities, was deemed impossible,- a state in which the
freedom of all and each was secured to the uttermost degree,
without one of those animosities which make freedom in the
upper world depend on the perpetual strife of hostile parties.
Here the corruption which debases democracies was as unknown as
the discontents which undermine the thrones of monarchies.
Equality here was not a name; it was a reality. Riches were
not persecuted, because they were not envied. Here those
problems connected with the labours of a working class,
hitherto insoluble above ground, and above ground conducing to
such bitterness between classes, were solved by a process the
simplest,- a distinct and separate working class was dispensed
with altogether. Mechanical inventions, constructed on the
principles that baffled my research to ascertain, worked by an
agency infinitely more powerful and infinitely more easy of
management than aught we have yet extracted from electricity or
steam, with the aid of children whose strength was never
overtasked, but who loved their employment as sport and
pastime, sufficed to create a Public-wealth so devoted to the
general use that not a grumbler was ever heard of. The vices
that rot our cities here had no footing. Amusements abounded,
but they were all innocent. No merry-makings conduced to
intoxication, to riot, to disease. Love existed, and was
143ardent in pursuit, but its object, once secured, was faithful.
The adulterer, the profligate, the harlot, were phenomena so
unknown in this commonwealth, that even to find the words by
which they were designated one would have had to search
throughout an obsolete literature composed thousands of years
before. They who have been students of theoretical
philosophies above ground, know that all these strange
departures from civilised life do but realise ideas which have
been broached, canvassed, ridiculed, contested for; sometimes
partially tried, and still put forth in fantastic books, but
have never come to practical result. Nor were these all the
steps towards theoretical perfectibility which this community
had made. It had been the sober belief of Descartes that the
life of man could be prolonged, not, indeed, on this earth, to
eternal duration, but to what he called the age of the
patriarchs, and modestly defined to be from 100 to 150 years
average length. Well, even this dream of sages was here
fulfilled- nay, more than fulfilled; for the vigour of middle
life was preserved even after the term of a century was passed.
With this longevity was combined a greater blessing than
itself- that of continuous health. Such diseases as befell the
race were removed with ease by scientific applications of that
agency- life-giving as life-destroying- which is inherent in
vril. Even this idea is not unknown above ground, though it
has generally been confined to enthusiasts or charlatans, and
emanates from confused notions about mesmerism, odic force, &c.
Passing by such trivial contrivances as wings, which every
schoolboy knows has been tried and found wanting, from the
mythical or pre-historical period, I proceed to that very
delicate question, urged of late as essential to the perfect
happiness of our human species by the two most disturbing and
potential influences on upper-ground society,- Womankind and
Philosophy. I mean, the Rights of Women.

Now, it is allowed by jurisprudists that it is idle to talk of
rights where there are not corresponding powers to enforce
144them; and above ground, for some reason or other, man, in his
physical force, in the use of weapons offensive and defensive,
when it come to positive personal contest, can, as a rule of
general application, master women. But among this people there
can be no doubt about the rights of women, because, as I have
before said, the Gy, physically speaking, is bigger and
stronger than the An; and her will being also more resolute
than his, and will being essential to the direction of the vril
force, she can bring to bear upon him, more potently than he on
herself, the mystical agency which art can extract from the
occult properties of nature. Therefore all that our female
philosophers above ground contend for as to rights of women, is
conceded as a matter of course in this happy commonwealth.
Besides such physical powers, the Gy-ei have (at least in
youth) a keen desire for accomplishments and learning which
exceeds that of the male; and thus they are the scholars, the
professors- the learned portion, in short, of the community.

Of course, in this state of society the female establishes, as
I have shown, her most valued privilege, that of choosing and
courting her wedding partner. Without that privilege she would
despise all the others. Now, above ground, we should not
unreasonably apprehend that a female, thus potent and thus
privileged, when she had fairly hunted us down and married us,
would be very imperious and tyrannical. Not so with the Gy-ei:
once married, the wings once suspended, and more amiable,
complacent, docile mates, more sympathetic, more sinking their
loftier capacities into the study of their husbands'
comparatively frivolous tastes and whims, no poet could
conceive in his visions of conjugal bliss. Lastly, among the
more important characteristics of the Vril-ya, as distinguished
from our mankind- lastly, and most important on the bearings of
their life and the peace of their commonwealths, is their
universal agreement in the existence of a merciful beneficent
Diety, and of a future world to the duration of which a century
145or two are moments too brief to waste upon thoughts of fame and
power and avarice; while with that agreement is combined
another- viz., since they can know nothing as to the nature of
that Diety beyond the fact of His supreme goodness, nor of that
future world beyond the fact of its felicitous existence, so
their reason forbids all angry disputes on insoluble questions.
Thus they secure for that state in the bowels of the earth what
no community ever secured under the light of the stars- all the
blessings and consolations of a religion without any of the
evils and calamities which are engendered by strife between one
religion and another.

It would be, then, utterly impossible to deny that the state of
existence among the Vril-ya is thus, as a whole, immeasurably
more felicitous than that of super-terrestrial races, and,
realising the dreams of our most sanguine philanthropists,
almost approaches to a poet's conception of some angelical
order. And yet, if you would take a thousand of the best and
most philosophical of human beings you could find in London,
Paris, Berlin, New York, or even Boston, and place them as
citizens in the beatified community, my belief is, that in less
than a year they would either die of ennui, or attempt some
revolution by which they would militate against the good of the
community, and be burnt into cinders at the request of the Tur.

Certainly I have no desire to insinuate, through the medium of
this narrative, any ignorant disparagement of the race to which
I belong. I have, on the contrary, endeavoured to make it
clear that the principles which regulate the social system of
the Vril-ya forbid them to produce those individual examples of
human greatness which adorn the annals of the upper world.
Where there are no wars there can be no Hannibal, no
Washington, no Jackson, no Sheridan;- where states are so happy
that they fear no danger and desire no change, they cannot give
birth to a Demosthenes, a Webster, a Sumner, a Wendell Holmes,
or a Butler; and where a society attains to a moral standard,
146in which there are no crimes and no sorrows from which tragedy
can extract its aliment of pity and sorrow, no salient vices or
follies on which comedy can lavish its mirthful satire, it has
lost the chance of producing a Shakespeare, or a Moliere, or a
Mrs. Beecher-Stowe. But if I have no desire to disparage my
fellow-men above ground in showing how much the motives that
impel the energies and ambition of individuals in a society of
contest and struggle- become dormant or annulled in a society
which aims at securing for the aggregate the calm and innocent
felicity which we presume to be the lot of beatified immortals;
neither, on the other hand, have I the wish to represent the
commonwealths of the Vril-ya as an ideal form of political
society, to the attainment of which our own efforts of reform
should be directed. On the contrary, it is because we have so
combined, throughout the series of ages, the elements which
compose human character, that it would be utterly impossible
for us to adopt the modes of life, or to reconcile our passions
to the modes of thought among the Vril-ya,- that I arrived at
the conviction that this people- though originally not only of
our human race, but, as seems to me clear by the roots of their
language, descended from the same ancestors as the Great Aryan
family, from which in varied streams has flowed the dominant
civilisation of the world; and having, according to their myths
and their history, passed through phases of society familiar to
ourselves,- had yet now developed into a distinct species with
which it was impossible that any community in the upper world
could amalgamate: and that if they ever emerged from these
nether recesses into the light of day, they would, according to
their own traditional persuasions of their ultimate destiny,
destroy and replace our existent varieties of man.

It may, indeed, be said, since more than one Gy could be found
to conceive a partiality for so ordinary a type of our
super-terrestrial race as myself, that even if the Vril-ya did
147appear above ground, we might be saved from extermination by
intermixture of race. But this is too sanguine a belief.
Instances of such 'mesalliance' would be as rare as those of
intermarriage between the Anglo-Saxon emigrants and the Red
Indians. Nor would time be allowed for the operation of
familiar intercourse. The Vril-ya, on emerging, induced by the
charm of a sunlit heaven to form their settlements above
ground, would commence at once the work of destruction, seize
upon the territories already cultivated, and clear off, without
scruple, all the inhabitants who resisted that invasion. And
considering their contempt for the institutions of Koom-Posh or
Popular Government, and the pugnacious valour of my beloved
countrymen, I believe that if the Vril-ya first appeared in
free America- as, being the choicest portion of the habitable
earth, they would doubtless be induced to do- and said, "This
quarter of the globe we take; Citizens of a Koom-Posh, make way
for the development of species in the Vril-ya," my brave
compatriots would show fight, and not a soul of them would be
left in this life, to rally round the Stars and Stripes, at the
end of a week.

I now saw but little of Zee, save at meals, when the family
assembled, and she was then reserved and silent. My
apprehensions of danger from an affection I had so little
encouraged or deserved, therefore, now faded away, but my
dejection continued to increase. I pined for escape to the
upper world, but I racked my brains in vain for any means to
effect it. I was never permitted to wander forth alone, so
that I could not even visit the spot on which I had alighted,
and see if it were possible to reascend to the mine. Nor even
in the Silent Hours, when the household was locked in sleep,
could I have let myself down from the lofty floor in which my
apartment was placed. I knew not how to command the automata
who stood mockingly at my beck beside the wall, nor could I
ascertain the springs by which were set in movement the
platforms that supplied the place of stairs. The knowledge how
148to avail myself of these contrivances had been purposely
withheld from me. Oh, that I could but have learned the use of
wings, so freely here at the service of every infant, then I
might have escaped from the casement, regained the rocks, and
buoyed myself aloft through the chasm of which the
perpendicular sides forbade place for human footing!


Chapter XXVII.


One day, as I sat alone and brooding in my chamber, Taee flew
in at the open window and alighted on the couch beside me. I
was always pleased with the visits of a child, in whose
society, if humbled, I was less eclipsed than in that of Ana
who had completed their education and matured their
understanding. And as I was permitted to wander forth with him
for my companion, and as I longed to revisit the spot in which
I had descended into the nether world, I hastened to ask him if
he were at leisure for a stroll beyond the streets of the city.
His countenance seemed to me graver than usual as he replied,
"I came hither on purpose to invite you forth."

We soon found ourselves in the street, and had not got far from
the house when we encountered five or six young Gy-ei, who were
returning from the fields with baskets full of flowers, and
chanting a song in chorus as they walked. A young Gy sings
more often than she talks. They stopped on seeing us,
accosting Taee with familiar kindness, and me with the
courteous gallantry which distinguishes the Gy-ei in their
manner towards our weaker sex.

And here I may observe that, though a virgin Gy is so frank in
her courtship to the individual she favours, there is nothing
that approaches to that general breadth and loudness of manner
which those young ladies of the Anglo-Saxon race, to whom the
149distinguished epithet of 'fast' is accorded, exhibit towards
young gentlemen whom they do not profess to love. No; the
bearing of the Gy-ei towards males in ordinary is very much
that of high-bred men in the gallant societies of the upper
world towards ladies whom they respect but do not woo;
deferential, complimentary, exquisitely polished- what we
should call 'chivalrous.'

Certainly I was a little put out by the number of civil things
addressed to my 'amour propre,' which were said to me by those
courteous young Gy-ei. In the world I came from, a man would
have thought himself aggrieved, treated with irony, 'chaffed'
(if so vulgar a slang word may be allowed on the authority of
the popular novelists who use it so freely), when one fair Gy
complimented me on the freshness of my complexion, another on
the choice of colours in my dress, a third, with a sly smile,
on the conquests I had made at Aph-Lin's entertainment. But I
knew already that all such language was what the French call
'banal,' and did but express in the female mouth, below earth,
that sort of desire to pass for amiable with the opposite sex
which, above earth, arbitrary custom and hereditary
transmission demonstrate by the mouth of the male. And just as
a high-bred young lady, above earth, habituated to such
compliments, feels that she cannot, without impropriety, return
them, nor evince any great satisfaction at receiving them; so I
who had learned polite manners at the house of so wealthy and
dignified a Minister of that nation, could but smile and try to
look pretty in bashfully disclaiming the compliments showered
upon me. While we were thus talking, Taee's sister, it seems,
had seen us from the upper rooms of the Royal Palace at the
entrance of the town, and, precipitating herself on her wings,
alighted in the midst of the group.

Singling me out, she said, though still with the inimitable
deference of manner which I have called 'chivalrous,' yet not
without a certain abruptness of tone which, as addressed to the
weaker sex, Sir Philip Sydney might have termed 'rustic,' "Why
do you never come to see us?"
150
While I was deliberating on the right answer to give to this
unlooked-for question, Taee said quickly and sternly, "Sister,
you forget- the stranger is of my sex. It is not for persons
of my sex, having due regard for reputation and modesty, to
lower themselves by running after the society of yours."

This speech was received with evident approval by the young
Gy-ei in general; but Taee's sister looked greatly abashed.
Poor thing!- and a PRINCESS too!

Just at this moment a shadow fell on the space between me and
the group; and, turning round, I beheld the chief magistrate
coming close upon us, with the silent and stately pace peculiar
to the Vril-ya. At the sight of his countenance, the same
terror which had seized me when I first beheld it returned. On
that brow, in those eyes, there was that same indefinable
something which marked the being of a race fatal to our own-
that strange expression of serene exemption from our common
cares and passions, of conscious superior power, compassionate
and inflexible as that of a judge who pronounces doom. I
shivered, and, inclining low, pressed the arm of my
child-friend, and drew him onward silently. The Tur placed
himself before our path, regarded me for a moment without
speaking, then turned his eye quietly on his daughter's face,
and, with a grave salutation to her and the other Gy-ei, went
through the midst of the group,- still without a word.


Chapter XXVIII.


When Taee and I found ourselves alone on the broad road that
lay between the city and the chasm through which I had
descended into this region beneath the light of the stars and
sun, I said under my breath, "Child and friend, there is a look
151in your father's face which appals me. I feel as if, in its
awful tranquillity, I gazed upon death."

Taee did not immediately reply. He seemed agitated, and as if
debating with himself by what words to soften some unwelcome
intelligence. At last he said, "None of the Vril-ya fear
death: do you?"

"The dread of death is implanted in the breasts of the race to
which I belong. We can conquer it at the call of duty, of
honour, of love. We can die for a truth, for a native land,
for those who are dearer to us than ourselves. But if death do
really threaten me now and here, where are such counteractions
to the natural instinct which invests with awe and terror the
contemplation of severance between soul and body?"

Taee looked surprised, but there was great tenderness in his
voice as he replied, "I will tell my father what you say. I
will entreat him to spare your life."

"He has, then, already decreed to destroy it?"

"'Tis my sister's fault or folly," said Taee, with some
petulance. "But she spoke this morning to my father; and,
after she had spoken, he summoned me, as a chief among the
children who are commissioned to destroy such lives as threaten
the community, and he said to me, 'Take thy vril staff, and
seek the stranger who has made himself dear to thee. Be his
end painless and prompt.'"

"And," I faltered, recoiling from the child- "and it is, then,
for my murder that thus treacherously thou hast invited me
forth? No, I cannot believe it. I cannot think thee guilty
of such a crime."

"It is no crime to slay those who threaten the good of the
community; it would be a crime to slay the smallest insect that
cannot harm us."

"If you mean that I threaten the good of the community because
your sister honours me with the sort of preference which a
child may feel for a strange plaything, it is not necessary to
kill me. Let me return to the people I have left, and by the
chasm through which I descended. With a slight help from you I
152might do so now. You, by the aid of your wings, could fasten
to the rocky ledge within the chasm the cord that you found,
and have no doubt preserved. Do but that; assist me but to the
spot from which I alighted, and I vanish from your world for
ever, and as surely as if I were among the dead."

"The chasm through which you descended! Look round; we stand
now on the very place where it yawned. What see you? Only
solid rock. The chasm was closed, by the orders of Aph-Lin, as
soon as communication between him and yourself was established
in your trance, and he learned from your own lips the nature of
the world from which you came. Do you not remember when Zee
bade me not question you as to yourself or your race? On
quitting you that day, Aph-Lin accosted me, and said, 'No path
between the stranger's home and ours should be left unclosed,
or the sorrow and evil of his home may descend to ours. Take
with thee the children of thy band, smite the sides of the
cavern with your vril staves till the fall of their fragments
fills up every chink through which a gleam of our lamps could
force its way.'"

As the child spoke, I stared aghast at the blind rocks before
me. Huge and irregular, the granite masses, showing by charred
discolouration where they had been shattered, rose from footing
to roof-top; not a cranny!

"All hope, then, is gone," I murmured, sinking down on the
craggy wayside, "and I shall nevermore see the sun." I covered
my face with my hands, and prayed to Him whose presence I had
so often forgotten when the heavens had declared His handiwork.
I felt His presence in the depths of the nether earth, and
amidst the world of the grave. I looked up, taking comfort and
courage from my prayers, and, gazing with a quiet smile into
the face of the child, said, "Now, if thou must slay me,
strike."

Taee shook his head gently. "Nay," he said, "my father's
request is not so formally made as to leave me no choice. I
will speak with him, and may prevail to save thee. Strange
153that thou shouldst have that fear of death which we thought was
only the instinct of the inferior creatures, to whom the
convictions of another life has not been vouchsafed. With us,
not an infant knows such a fear. Tell me, my dear Tish," he
continued after a little pause, "would it reconcile thee more
to departure from this form of life to that form which lies on
the other side of the moment called 'death,' did I share thy
journey? If so, I will ask my father whether it be allowable
for me to go with thee. I am one of our generation destined to
emigrate, when of age for it, to some regions unknown within
this world. I would just as soon emigrate now to regions
unknown, in another world. The All-Good is no less there than
here. Where is he not?"

"Child," said I, seeing by Taee's countenance that he spoke in
serious earnest, "it is crime in thee to slay me; it were a
crime not less in me to say, 'Slay thyself.' The All-Good
chooses His own time to give us life, and his own time to take
it away. Let us go back. If, on speaking with thy father, he
decides on my death, give me the longest warning in thy power,
so that I may pass the interval in self-preparation."


Chapter XXIX.


In the midst of those hours set apart for sleep and
constituting the night of the Vril-ya, I was awakened from the
disturbed slumber into which I had not long fallen, by a hand
on my shoulder. I started and beheld Zee standing beside me.

154"Hush," she said in a whisper; let no one hear us. Dost thou
think that I have ceased to watch over thy safety because I
could not win thy love? I have seen Taee. He has not prevailed
with his father, who had meanwhile conferred with the three
sages who, in doubtful matters, he takes into council, and by
their advice he has ordained thee to perish when the world
re-awakens to life. I will save thee. Rise and dress."

Zee pointed to a table by the couch on which I saw the clothes
I had worn on quitting the upper world, and which I had
exchanged subsequently for the more picturesque garments of the
Vril-ya. The young Gy then moved towards the casement and
stepped into the balcony, while hastily and wonderingly I
donned my own habiliments. When I joined her on the balcony,
her face was pale and rigid. Taking me by the hand, she said
softly, "See how brightly the art of the Vril-ya has lighted up
the world in which they dwell. To-morrow the world will be
dark to me." She drew me back into the room without waiting for
my answer, thence into the corridor, from which we descended
into the hall. We passed into the deserted streets and along
the broad upward road which wound beneath the rocks. Here,
where there is neither day nor night, the Silent Hours are
unutterably solemn- the vast space illumined by mortal skill is
so wholly without the sight and stir of mortal life. Soft as
were our footsteps, their sounds vexed the ear, as out of
harmony with the universal repose. I was aware in my own mind,
though Zee said it not, that she had decided to assist my
return to the upper world, and that we were bound towards the
place from which I had descended. Her silence infected me and
commanded mine. And now we approached the chasm. It had been
re-opened; not presenting, indeed, the same aspect as when I
had emerged from it, but through that closed wall of rock
before which I had last stood with Taee, a new clift had been
riven, and along its blackened sides still glimmered sparks and
smouldered embers. My upward gaze could not, however,
155penetrate more than a few feet into the darkness of the hollow
void, and I stood dismayed, and wondering how that grim ascent
was to be made.

Zee divined my doubt. "Fear not," said she, with a faint
smile; "your return is assured. I began this work when the
Silent Hours commenced, and all else were asleep; believe that
I did not paused till the path back into thy world was clear.
I shall be with thee a little while yet. We do not part until
thou sayest, 'Go, for I need thee no more.'"

My heart smote me with remorse at these words. "Ah!" I exclaimed,
"would that thou wert of my race or I of thine, then I should
never say, "I need thee no more.'"

"I bless thee for those words, and I shall remember them when
thou art gone," answered the Gy, tenderly.

During this brief interchange of words, Zee had turned away
from me, her form bent and her head bowed over her breast.
Now, she rose to the full height of her grand stature, and
stood fronting me. While she had been thus averted from my
gaze, she had lighted up the circlet that she wore round her
brow, so that it blazed as if it were a crown of stars. Not
only her face and her form, but the atmosphere around, were
illumined by the effulgence of the diadem.

"Now," said she, "put thine arm around me for the first and
last time. Nay, thus; courage, and cling firm."

As she spoke her form dilated, the vast wings expanded.
Clinging to her, I was borne aloft through the terrible chasm.
The starry light from her forehead shot around and before us
through the darkness. Brightly and steadfastly, and swiftly as
an angel may soar heavenward with the soul it rescues from the
grave, went the flight of the Gy, till I heard in the distance
the hum of human voices, the sounds of human toil. We halted
on the flooring of one of the galleries of the mine, and
beyond, in the vista, burned the dim, feeble lamps of the
miners.
156
Then I released my hold. The Gy kissed me on my forehead,
passionately, but as with a mother's passion, and said, as the
tears gushed from her eyes, "Farewell for ever. Thou wilt not
let me go into thy world- thou canst never return to mine. Ere
our household shake off slumber, the rocks will have again
closed over the chasm not to be re-opened by me, nor perhaps by
others, for ages yet unguessed. Think of me sometimes, and
with kindness. When I reach the life that lies beyond this
speck in time, I shall look round for thee. Even there, the
world consigned to thyself and thy people may have rocks and
gulfs which divide it from that in which I rejoin those of my
race that have gone before, and I may be powerless to cleave
way to regain thee as I have cloven way to lose."

Her voice ceased. I heard the swan-like sough of her wings,
and saw the rays of her starry diadem receding far and farther
through the gloom.

I sate myself down for some time, musing sorrowfully; then I
rose and took my way with slow footsteps towards the place in
which I heard the sounds of men. The miners I encountered were
strange to me, of another nation than my own. They turned to
look at me with some surprise, but finding that I could not
answer their brief questions in their own language, they
returned to their work and suffered me to pass on unmolested.
In fine, I regained the mouth of the mine, little troubled by
other interrogatories;- save those of a friendly official to
whom I was known, and luckily he was too busy to talk much with
me. I took care not to return to my former lodging, but
hastened that very day to quit a neighbourhood where I could
not long have escaped inquiries to which I could have given no
satisfactory answers. I regained in safety my own country, in
which I have been long peacefully settled, and engaged in
practical business, till I retired on a competent fortune,
three years ago. I have been little invited and little tempted
to talk of the rovings and adventures of my youth. Somewhat
157disappointed, as most men are, in matters connected with
household love and domestic life, I often think of the young Gy
as I sit alone at night, and wonder how I could have rejected
such a love, no matter what dangers attended it, or by what
conditions it was restricted. Only, the more I think of a
people calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight
and deemed uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our
most disciplined modes of force, and virtues to which our life,
social and political, becomes antagonistic in proportion as our
civilisation advances,- the more devoutly I pray that ages may
yet elapse before there emerge into sunlight our inevitable
destroyers. Being, however, frankly told by my physician that
I am afflicted by a complaint which, though it gives little
pain and no perceptible notice of its encroachments, may at any
moment be fatal, I have thought it my duty to my fellow-men to
place on record these forewarnings of The Coming Race.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.07.2010

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