We were brought up together;
there was not quite a year difference in our ages. I need not say
that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute.
Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and
contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together.
Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition; but,
with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense application, and
was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge. She busied
herself with following the aerial creations of the poets; and in the
majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home--the
sublime shapes of the mountains; the changes of the seasons; tempest
and calm; the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of our
Alpine summers--she found ample scope for admiration and delight.
While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit
the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating
their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to
divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of
nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are
among the earliest sensations I can remember.
On the birth
of a second son, my junior by seven years, my parents gave up
entirely their wandering life, and fixed themselves in their native
country. We possessed a house in Geneva, and a campagne on Belrive,
the eastern shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a
league from the city. We resided principally in the latter, and the
lives of my parents were passed in considerable seclusion. It was my
temper to avoid a crowd, and to attach myself fervently to a few. I
was indifferent, therefore, to my schoolfellows in general; but I
united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among
them. Henry Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a
boy of singular talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship, and
even danger, for its own sake. He was deeply read in books of
chivalry and romance. He composed heroic songs, and began to write
many a tale of enchantment and knightly adventure. He tried to make
us act plays, and to enter into masquerades, in which the characters
were drawn from the heroes of Roncesvalles, of the Round Table of
King Arthur, and the chivalrous train who shed their blood to redeem
the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidels.
No human
being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents
were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. We
felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to
their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights
which we enjoyed. When I mingled with other families, I distinctly
discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude
assisted the development of filial love.
My temper was
sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by some law in my
temperature they were turned, not towards childish pursuits, but to
an eager desire to learn, and not to learn all things
indiscriminately. I confess that neither the structure of languages,
nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states,
possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth
that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of
things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man
that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the
metaphysical, or, in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the
world.
Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with
the moral relations of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues
of heroes, and the actions of men, were his theme; and his hope and
his dream was to become one among those whose names are recorded in
story, as the gallant and adventurous benefactors of our species.
The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine dedicated lamp in
our peaceful home. Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice,
the sweet glance of her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and
animate us. She was the living spirit of love to soften and attract:
I might have become sullen in my study, rough through the ardour of
my nature, but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her
own gentleness. And Clerval--could aught ill entrench on the noble
spirit of Clerval?--yet he might not have been so perfectly humane,
so thoughtful in his generosity--so full of kindness and tenderness
amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to
him the real loveliness of beneficence, and made the doing good the
end and aim of his soaring ambition.
I feel exquisite
pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before
misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of
extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.
Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record
those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of
misery: for when I would account to myself for the birth of that
passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arise, like a
mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but,
swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its
course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.
Natural
philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire,
therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my
predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years of age, we
all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon: the
inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the
inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of
Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he
attempts to demonstrate, and the wonderful facts which he relates,
soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to
dawn upon my mind; and, bounding with joy, I communicated my
discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title
page of my book, and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor,
do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash."
If,
instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to
me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, and
that a modern system of science had been introduced, which possessed
much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the
latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and
practical; under such circumstances, I should certainly have thrown
Agrippa aside, and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was,
by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even
possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the
fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father
had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted
with its contents; and I continued to read with the greatest
avidity.
When I returned home, my first care was to procure
the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and
Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these
writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few
beside myself. I have described myself as always having been embued
with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature. In spite
of the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modern
philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and
unsatisfied. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt
like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean
of truth. Those of his successors in each branch of natural
philosophy with whom I was acquainted appeared, even to my boy's
apprehensions, as tyros engaged in the same pursuit.
The
untaught peasant beheld the elements around him, and was acquainted
with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little
more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal
lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect,
anatomise, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause,
causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown
to him. I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that
seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and
rashly and ignorantly I had repined.
But here were books,
and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more. I took
their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple.
It may appear strange that such should arise in the eighteenth
century; but while I followed the routine of education in the
schools of Geneva, I was, to a great degree, self taught with regard
to my favourite studies. My father was not scientific, and I was
left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's
thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance of my new preceptors, I
entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the
philosopher's stone and the elixir of life; but the latter soon
obtained my undivided attention. Wealth was an inferior object; but
what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease
from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a
violent death!
Nor were these my only visions. The raising
of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite
authors, the fulfilment of which I most eagerly sought; and if my
incantations were always unsuccessful, I attributed the failure
rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or
fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was occupied by
exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand
contradictory theories, and floundering desperately in a very slough
of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and
childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my
ideas.
When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to
our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and
terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of
Jura; and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from
various quarters of the heavens. I remained, while the storm lasted,
watching its progress with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the
door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and
beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so
soon as the dazzling light vanished the oak had disappeared, and
nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next
morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was
not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribands of
wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.
Before
this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of
electricity. On this occasion a man of great research in natural
philosophy was with us, and, excited by this catastrophe, he entered
on the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of
electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to
me. All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa,
Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by
some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my
accustomed studies. It seemed to me as if nothing would or could
ever be known. All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly
grew despicable. By one of those caprices of the mind, which we are
perhaps most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former
occupations; set down natural history and all its progeny as a
deformed and abortive creation; and entertained the greatest disdain
for a would-be science, which could never even step within the
threshold of real knowledge. In this mood of mind I betook myself to
the mathematics, and the branches of study appertaining to that
science, as being built upon secure foundations, and so worthy of my
consideration.
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and
by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I
look back, it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of
inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian
angel of my life--the last effort made by the spirit of preservation
to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars, and
ready to envelope me. Her victory was announced by an unusual
tranquillity and gladness of soul, which followed the relinquishing
of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies. It was thus that I
was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution, happiness
with their disregard.
It was a strong effort of the spirit
of good; but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her
immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.
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