Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand orgracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in itsprofoundest idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparitionto the soul.
But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man toaccount for it? To analyze it, would seem impossible. Can we, then, bythe citation of some of those instances wherein this thing ofwhiteness- though for the time either wholly or in great part strippedof all direct associations calculated to import to it aught fearful,but nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery,however modified;- can we thus hope to light upon some chance clueto conduct us to the hidden cause we seek?
Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety,and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls.
And though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressionsabout to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet fewperhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore maynot be able to recall them now.
Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be butloosely acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does thebare mention of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary,speechless processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hoodedwith new-fallen snow? Or to the unread, unsophisticated Protestantof the Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a WhiteFriar or a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors andkings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the WhiteTower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of anuntravelled American, than those other storied structures, itsneighbors- the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimertowers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiarmoods, comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the baremention of that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge isfull of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective ofall latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exertsuch a spectralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lullsus with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on thewaves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets? Or, tochoose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy,why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does "thetall pale man" of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallorunrustlingly glides through the green of the groves- why is thisphantom more terrible than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg?
Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-topplingearthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor thetearlessness of and skies that never rain; nor the sight of her widefield of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses alladroop (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburbanavenues of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack ofcards;- it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, thestrangest, saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken thewhite veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe.
Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admitsnot the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over herbroken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its owndistortions.
I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon ofwhiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating theterror of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind isthere aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness toanother mind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especiallywhen exhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness oruniversality. What I mean by these two statements may perhaps berespectively elucidated by the following examples.
