175 
THE WHITE WHALE 
and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls. 
And though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions 
about to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few 
perhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore 
may not be able to recall them now. 
Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be hut loosely 
acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare men- 
tion of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary, speechless 
processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, downcast and hooded with new- 
fallen snow? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of the 
Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a White 
Friar or a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul? 
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors 
and kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White 
Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an 
untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neigh- 
bours — the By ward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer 
towers, the White # mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar 
moods, comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention 
of that name, while the thought of Virginia’s Blue Ridge is full of a 
soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all latitudes 
and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a spectral- 
ness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal 
thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves, followed by 
the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets ? Or, to choose a wholly un- 
substantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading 
the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does “the tall pale man” of the 
Hartz forest, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides through the 
green of the groves — why is this phantom more terrible than all the 
whooping imps of the Blocksburg? 
Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earth- 
quakes ; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas ; nor the tearlessness of 
arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning 
spires, wrenched copestones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards 
of anchored fleets) ; and her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over 
upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards ; — it is not these things alone 
which make tearless Lima, the strangest, saddest city thou canst see. 
