Dec. 16. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



481 



bable ; the thought is beautiful as well as curious : • It is 

 possible that some creatures may think half-an-hour as 

 long as we do a thousand years, or look upon that space 

 of duration which we call a minute as an hour, a week, a 

 month, or a whole age.' If Locke's theory be correct, it 

 follows that time will seem long or short, just in propor- 

 tion as our thoughts are quick or slow. Hence he who 

 dies in the very morning of life not unfrequently lives 

 longer than another who falls at threescore and ten. 

 Hence, too, the prediction of the prophet may be literally 

 true, ' The child shall die an hundred years old.' The 

 Eastern nations have long, to all appearance, had this 

 thought. I will give the exquisite illustration, drawn by 

 the masterly pen of Addison. 



" ' In the Koran it is said that the angel Gabriel took 

 Mahomet out of his bed one morning, to give him a sight 

 •of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in 

 hell, which the prophet took a distinct view of, and, after 

 having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was 

 brought back again to his bed. All this, says the Koran, 

 was transacted in so small a space of time, that Mahomet 

 on his return found his bed still warm, and took up an 

 earthen pitcher which was thrown down at the very in- 

 stant that the angel carried him away, before the water 

 was all spilt ! There is a very pretty story in the Turkish 

 tales which relates to this passage of the famous im- 

 postor, and bears some affinity to the subject we are now 

 upon.' " 



The story which follows (of a Sultan of Egypt 

 and a Mahometan doctor) is too long for in- 

 eertion ; it concludes with the morale — 



" The doctor took this occasion of instructing the Sultan 

 that nothing was impossible with God; that He, with 

 whom a thousand years are but as one day, can, if He 

 pleases, make a single day, nay, a single moment, appear 

 to any of His creatures as a thousand years." 



Emerson remarks in one of his striking Essays : 



"The SOUL circumscriheth all things. As I have said, 

 it contradicts all experience. In like manner it abolishes 

 time and space. The influence of the senses has, in most 

 men, overpowered the mind to that degree that the walls 

 of time and space have come to look solid, real, and in- 

 surmountable ; and to speak with levity of these limits 

 is, in the world, the sign of insanity. Yet time and space 

 are but the inverse measures of the force of the soul. A 

 man is capable of abolishing them both. The spirit sports 

 with time/ — 



' Can crowd eternity into an hour. 

 Or stretch an hour out to eternity.' 



We are often made to feel that there is another youth and 

 age than that which is measured from the year of our 

 natural birth. Some thoughts always find us young and 

 keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal 

 and eternal beauty. Every man parts from that contem- 

 plation \vith the feeling that it rather belongs to ages 

 than to mortal life. The least activity of the intellectual 

 powers redeems us in a degree from the influences of 

 time. In sickness, in languor, give us a strain of poetry 

 or a profound sentence, and we are refreshed ; or produce 

 a volume of Plato, or Shakspeare, or remind us of their 

 names, and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. 

 .... Always the soul's scale is one ; the scale of the 

 senses and the understanding is another. Before the 

 great revelations of the soul, time, space, and nature 

 shrink away," &c. — The Over- Soul. 



These Legends beautifully illustrate the great 

 truth that the soul is " its own place and time," 



and the sublime passage in the Apocalyptic vi- 

 sion : 



" And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and 

 upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware 

 by Him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven 

 and the things that therein are, and the earth and the 

 things that therein are, and the sea and the things which 

 are therein, that there should be time no longer." * 



P.S. — Since writing the above I have gotten 

 the last edition of Longfellow's Golden Legend, 

 which I am glad to find contains some notes which 

 were sadly wanting in the first edition. In one of 

 these notes he says, — 



" I have called this poem The Golden Legend, because 

 the story upon which it is founded seems to me to surpass 

 all other legends in beauty and significance. It exhibits, 

 amid the corruptions of the Middle Ages, the virtue of 

 disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, and the power of 

 Faith, Hope, and Charity, sufficient for all the exigencies 

 of life and death. The story is told, and perhaps invented, 

 by Hartmann von der Aue, a minnesinger of the twelfth 

 centurj'. The original may be found in Mailath's Alt- 

 deutsche Gedichte, with a modern German version. There 

 is another in Marbach's Volksbucher, No. 32." 



The original Legend, Der Arme Heinrich, may 

 be found at p. 145. of Mailath's Selection. In the 

 introduction to this " pearl of old German poetry," 

 as he styles it, the Count observes : 



" Es ist unmoglich, dieses wunderschone Gedicht anders, 

 denn mit tiefer Ruhrung und siisser VVehmuth zu lesen. 

 Es ist ein, vom Anfang bis an's Ende gleich gehaltenes, 

 vortrefiiiches Werk." 



After a sketch of the legend, he adds : 



" Im armen Heinrich ist aber noch ein besondei'es nnd 

 sehr beachtenswerthes Motiv, dass die Aeltern in des 

 Kindes Opfertod willigen, und ihn Heinrich annimmt; 

 sie glauben namlich, der Entschluss der IMaid sey durch 

 Eingebung des heiligen Geistes enstanden, und diess ist 

 auch der Gedanke, der, als das Kind abreist, ihre Noth 

 sanftet : wie der Dichter spricht." 



This postscript is foreign to the subject of my 

 Note ; but I was induced to add it, as Longfellow's 

 note is rather meagre, and Mailath's book rather 

 scarce. There may be difierent opinions as to the 

 merit of the original Legend, but there are pro- 

 bably few that will consider it improved by Mr. 

 Longfellow. However, this is not the place to 

 contrast the two. 



It is remarkable that Longfellow appends no 

 note whatsoever to the Legend of Mo7ik Felix, so 

 that my Note on the subject supplies a deside- 

 ratum. ElBIONNACH. 



* I shall perhaps, in another paper, notice some other 

 trance-legends which transport the soul — 



" To vast eternity's unbounded sea. 

 Where the green islands of the happy shine : " 



and also such well-authenticated cases of trance in mo- 

 dern times as throw light on these legends ; as, for in- 

 stance, the trance of Mr. Tennant, quoted from a Phila- 

 delphia paper by Mrs. Howitt in the Appendix to l!Jnne~ 

 moser, vol. ii. p. 432. 



