Strange Visitors | Page 7

used extensively, though we have many books
printed in the mode usually adopted on earth.
All nature is constantly changing and progressing. The bards who sang
upon the earth centuries ago--Homer, Virgil, the Greek and Roman, the
Celtic and Saxon writers of old--have passed beyond the spirit sphere
which I inhabit to a spirit planet still more refined, and have left behind
only the records of their strange experience.
The eighteenth century cannot walk side by side with the third or fourth
century more readily in the spirit world than on earth.
The character of the spirit literature of the present day is essentially
scientific and explorative. We have in our world, as you have in yours,
intrepid travellers--learned men, who make voyages to almost
inaccessible planets--and they return even as those of earth, with
sketches and graphic outlines of the strange sights they have witnessed;
and those less venturesome who remain at home are as anxious as your
citizens might be to hear accounts of wonderful regions that have been
visited. And such books of travel are sought eagerly.
We have but few works on theology; the nature and essence of God is
discussed with us, but not so elaborately as with you.
Spirits who have passed into a second life have so nearly approached

the mystery of a Divine Being that they do not desire to debate the
subject.
A large proportion of our writers are devoted to what you would here
term transcendental thought, a kind of literature which lies between
poetry and music, which awakens a feeling of ecstasy, and gives, as it
were, wings to the soul.
The poets who sang upon earth during the last century, of whom Shelly,
Keats, and Byron are an English type, and Halleck, Pierrepont, Dana,
and Willis the American representatives, are among the most inspired
and far-reaching of our present writers of poetry and song.
Our literature has one great advantage over that of earth, in that our
separate nationalities become merged in one grand unit. We do not
need translators, as we have adopted a universal written language.
There are some writers who still retain, as I have said, the modes
adopted on earth, but those who have been resident any length of time
in the spirit sphere employ the plan of writing by signs, which are
understood and acknowledged by every nationality.
I should like, in closing, to introduce an extract from an old volume
which I found in a library in the city of Spring Garden.
It was written by Addison during his sojourn in that city, in the year
1720, and is in the form of a letter, supposed to be written to a friend on
earth. In it he essays to portray the expansion of mind he has
experienced in his new home through the magnetic influence of thought
language:
"Behold the far off luminary suspended millions and billions and
trillions of miles in space; then turn the eye yonder and see that
infinitesimal point of vegetation, earth--a speck, countless multitudes of
which heaped and piled together would form but a point compared with
that majestic sun!
"Yet behold it move and expand beneath the long fibrous rays which
that effulgent orb sends down through so many billions of miles to the

place of its minute existence. Even as that poor little existence shoots
out its fibres to meet those rays which have travelled such great lengths,
so a spirit in the spheres feels the quickening, effulgent rays thrown out
by the brain of some prophet or poet existing millions and billions and
trillions of miles away on some distant spirit planet, and his thought
expands and enlarges beneath the warming action of that far-off brain,
until it assumes a shape and form which its own emulation never
prophesied."

BYRON.
TO HIS ACCUSERS.
I.
My soul is sick of calumny and lies: Men gloat on evil--even woman's
hand Will dabble in the mire, nor heed the cries Of the poor victim
whom she seeks to brand In thy sweet name, Religion, through the land!
Like the keen tempest she doth strip her prey, Tossing him bare and
wrecked upon the strand, While vaunting her misdeeds before the day,
Bearing a monument which crumbles like the clay.
II.
My sister, have I lived to see thy name Dishonored? Thou, who wast
my pride, my stay; Shall Jealousy and Fraud thy love defame And I be
dumb? Just Heaven, let a ray From thy majestic light illume earth's
clay,[A] That through her I may scorch the slander vile, And light
throughout the land a torch to-day, Which shall reveal how false and
full of guile Are they who seek thy name, Augusta, to defile.
[Footnote A: The Clairvoyant.]
III.
She who has borne my title and my