iphonies in the choral service, rises
Fanny and the rose in June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny.
Then come both together, as in a chorus; roses and Fannies, Fannies and
roses, without end--thick as blossoms in paradise. Then comes a venerable
crocodile, in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, or in a coat with sixteen
capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand from the box of the
Bath mail. And suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial,
sculptured with the hours, and with the dreadful legend of TOO LATE. Then
all at once we are arrived at Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely
households[7] of the roe-deer: these retire into the dewy thickets; the
thickets are rich with roses; the roses call up (as ever) the sweet
countenance of Fanny, who, being the granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens
a dreadful host of wild semi-legendary animals,--griffins, dragons,
basilisks, sphinxes,--till at length the whole vision of fighting images
crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human
charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered
heraldically with unutterable horrors of monstrous and demoniac natures,
whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with
the fore-finger pointing, in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to
heaven, and having power (which, without experience, I never could have
believed) to awaken the pathos that kills in the very bosom of the horrors
that madden the grief that gnaws at the heart, together with the monstrous
creations of darkness that shock the belief, and make dizzy the reason of
man. This is the peculiarity that I wish the reader to notice, as having
first been made known to me for a possibility by this early vision of
Fanny on the Bath road. The peculiarity consisted in the confluence of two
different keys, though apparently repelling each other, into the music
and governing principles of the same dream; horror, such as possesses the
maniac, and yet, by momentary transitions, grief, such as may be supposed
to possess the dying mother when leaving her infant children to the mercies
of the cruel. Usually, and perhaps always, in an unshaken nervous system,
these two modes of misery exclude each other--here first they met in horrid
reconciliation. There was also a separate peculiarity in the quality of the
horror. This was afterwards developed into far more revolting complexities
of misery and incomprehensible da