David Starr Jordan - "The Philosophy of Despair"

Anthony Trollope - "The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries"

Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc) - "Jacqueline, v1"

George MacDonald - "Malcolm"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Hypatia

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Hypatia




At last, after signing himself with the cross, he began. The
subject was one of the psalms which had just been read--a battle
psalm, concerning Moab and Amalek, and the old border wars of
Palestine. What would he make of that?

He seemed to start lamely enough, in spite of the exquisite grace of
his voice, and manner, and language, and the epigrammatic terseness
of every sentence. He spent some minutes over the inscription of
the psalm--allegorised it--made it mean something which it never did
mean in the writer's mind, and which it, as Raphael well knew, never
could mean, for his interpretation was founded on a sheer mis-
translation. He punned on the Latin version--derived the meaning of
Hebrew words from Latin etymologies .... And as he went on with the
psalm itself, the common sense of David seemed to evaporate in
mysticism. The most fantastic and far-fetched illustrations, drawn
from the commonest objects, alternated with mysterious theosophic
dogma. Where was that learning for which he was so famed? Where
was that reverence for the old Hebrew Scriptures which he professed?
He was treating David as ill as Hypatia used to treat Homer--worse
even than old Philo did, when in the home life of the old
Patriarchs, and in the mighty acts of Moses and Joshua, he could
find nothing but spiritual allegories wherewith to pamper the
private experiences of the secluded theosophist. And Raphael felt
very much inclined to get up and go away, and still more inclined to
say, with a smile, in his haste, 'All men are liars.'....

And yet, what an illustration that last one was! No mere fancy, but
a real deep glance into the working of the material universe, as
symbolic of the spiritual and unseen one. And not drawn, as
Hypatia's were, exclusively from some sublime or portentous
phenomenon, but from some dog, or kettle, or fishwife, with a homely
insight worthy of old Socrates himself. How personal he was
becoming, too! ....No long bursts of declamation, but dramatic
dialogue and interrogation, by-hints, and unexpected hits at one and
the other most commonplace soldier's failing .... And yet each
pithy rebuke was put in a universal, comprehensive form, which made
Raphael himself wince--which might, he thought, have made any man,
or woman either, wince in like manner. Well, whether or not
Augustine knew truths for all men, he at least knew sins for all
men, and for himself as well as his hearers. There was no denying
that. He was a real man, right or wrong. What he rebuked in
others, he had felt in himself, and fought it to the death-grip, as
the flash and quiver of that worn face proclaimed .... But yet, why
were the Edomites, by an utterly mistaken pun on their name, to
signify one sort of sin, and the Ammonites another, and the
Amalekites another? What had that to do with the old psalm? What
had it to do with the present auditory? Was not this the wildest
and lowest form of that unreal, subtilising, mystic pedantry, of
which he had sickened long ago in Hypatia's lecture-room, till he
fled to Bran, the dog, for honest practical realities?

No .... Gradually, as Augustine's hints became more practical and
orated, Raphael saw that there was in his mind most real and organic
connection, true or false, in what seemed at first mere arbitrary
allegory. Amalekites, personal sins, Ausurian robbers and
ravishers, were to him only so many different forms of one and the
same evil. He who helped any of them fought against the righteous
God: he who fought against them fought for that God; but he must
conquer the Amalekites within, if he expected to conquer the
Amalekites without. Could the legionaries permanently put down the
lust and greed around them, while their own hearts were enslaved to
lust and greed within? Would they not be helping it by example,
while they pretended to crush it by sword-strokes? Was it not a
mockery, an hypocrisy? Could God's blessing be on it? Could they
restore unity and peace to the country while there was neither unity
nor peace within them? What had produced the helplessness of the
people, the imbecility of the military, but inward helplessness,
inward weakness? They were weak against Moors, because they were
weak against enemies more deadly than Moors. How could they fight
for God outwardly, while they were fighting against him inwardly?
He would not go forth with their hosts. How could He, when He was
not among their hosts? He, a spirit, must dwell in their spirits
.... And then the shout of a king would be among them, and one of
them should chase a thousand .... Or if not--if both people and
soldiers required still further chastening and humbling--what
matter, provided that they were chastened and humbled? What matter
if their faces were confounded, if they were thereby driven to seek
His Name, who alone was the Truth, the Light, and the Life? What if
they were slain? Let them have conquered the inward enemies, what
matter to them if the outward enemies seemed to prevail for a
moment? They should be recompensed at the resurrection of the just,
when death was swallowed up in victory. It would be seen then who
had really conquered in the eyes of the just God--they, God's
ministers, the defenders of peace and justice, or the Ausurians, the
enemies thereof .... And then, by some quaintest turn of fancy, he
introduced a word of pity and hope, even for the wild Moorish
robbers. It might be good for them to have succeeded thus far; they
might learn from their Christian captives, purified by affliction,
truths which those captives had forgotten in prosperity. And,
again, it might be good for them, as well as for Christians, to be
confounded and made like chaff before the wind, that so they too
might learn His Name....And so on, through and in spite of all
conceits, allegories, overstrained interpretations, Augustine went
on evolving from the Psalms, and from the past, and from the future,
the assertion of a Living, Present God, the eternal enemy of
discord, injustice, and evil, the eternal helper and deliverer of
those who were enslaved and crushed thereby in soul or body .... It
was all most strange to Raphael .... Strange in its utter
unlikeness to any teaching, Platonist or Hebrew, which he had ever
heard before, and stranger still in its agreement with those
teachings; in the instinctive ease with which it seemed to unite and
justify them all by the talisman of some one idea--and what that
might be, his Jewish prejudices could not prevent his seeing, and
yet would not allow him to acknowledge. But, howsoever he might
redden with Hebrew pride; howsoever he might long to persuade
himself that Augustine was building up a sound and right practical
structure on the foundation of a sheer lie; he could not help
watching, at first with envy, and then with honest pleasure, the
faces of the rough soldiers, as they gradually lightened up into
fixed attention, into cheerful and solemn resolve.

'What wonder?' said Raphael to himself, 'what wonder, after all? He
has been speaking to these wild beasts as to sages and saints; he
has been telling them that God is as much with them as with prophets
and psalmists .... I wonder if Hypatia, with all her beauty, could
have touched their hearts as he has done?'

And when Raphael rose at the end of this strange discourse, he felt
more like an old Hebrew than be had done since he sat upon his
nurse's knee, and heard legends about Solomon and the Queen of
Sheba. What if Augustine were right after all? What if the Jehovah
of the old Scriptures were not merely the national patron of the
children of Abraham, as the Rabbis held; not merely, as Philo held,
the Divine Wisdom which inspired a few elect sages, even among the
heathen; but the Lord of the whole earth, and of the nations
thereof?--And suddenly, for the first time in his life, passages
from the psalms and prophets flashed across him, which seemed to
assert this. What else did that whole book of Daniel and the
history of Nebuchadnezzar mean--if not that? Philosophic
latitudinarianism had long ago cured him of the Rabbinical notion of
the Babylonian conqueror as an incarnate fiend, devoted to Tophet,
like Sennacherib before him. He had long in private admired the
man, as a magnificent human character, a fairer one, in his eyes,
than either Alexander or Julius Caesar .... What if Augustine had
given him a hint which might justify his admiration? .... But more.
.... What if Augustine were right in going even further than Philo
and Hypatia? What if this same Jehovah, Wisdom, Logos, call Him
what they might, were actually the God of the spirits, as well as of
the bodies of all flesh? What if he was as near--Augustine said
that He was--to the hearts of those wild Markmen, Gauls, Thracians,
as to Augustine's own heart? What if He were--Augustine said He
was--yearning after, enlightening, leading home to Himself, the
souls of the poorest, the most brutal, the most sinful?--What if He
loved man as man, and not merely one favoured race or one favoured
class of minds? .... And in the light of that hypothesis, that
strange story of the Cross of Calvary seemed not so impossible after
all .... But then, celibacy and asceticism, utterly non-human as
they were, what had they to do with the theory of a human God?

And filled with many questionings, Raphael was not sorry to have the
matter brought to an issue that very evening in Synesius's sitting-
room. Majoricus, in his blunt, soldierlike way, set Raphael and
Augustine at each other without circumlocution; and Raphael, after
trying to smile and pooh-pooh away the subject, was tempted to make
a jest on a seeming fallacious conceit of Augustine's--found it more
difficult than he thought to trip up the serious and wary logician,
lost his temper a little--a sign, perhaps, of returning health in a
sceptic--and soon found himself fighting desperately, with Synesius
backing him, apparently for the mere pleasure of seeing a battle,
and Majoricus making him more and more cross by the implicit
dogmatic faith with which he hewed at one Gordian knot after
another, till Augustine had to save himself from his friends by
tripping the good Prefect gently up, and leaving him miles behind
the disputants, who argued on and on, till broad daylight shone in,
and the sight of the desolation below recalled all parties to more
material weapons, and a sterner warfare.

But little thought Raphael Aben-Ezra, as he sat there, calling up
every resource of his wit and learning, in the hope, half malicious,
half honestly cautious, of upsetting the sage of Hippo, and
forgetting all heaven and earth in the delight of battle with his
peers, that in a neighbouring chamber, her tender limbs outspread
upon the floor, her face buried in her dishevelled locks; lay
Victoria, wrestling all night long for him in prayer and bitter
tears, as the murmur of busy voices reached her eager ears, longing
in vain to catch the sense of words, on which hung now her hopes and
bliss-how utterly and entirely, she lead never yet confessed to
herself, though she dare confess it to that Son of Man to whom she
prayed, as to One who felt with tenderness and insight beyond that
of a brother, a father, even of a mother, for her maiden's blushes
and her maiden's woes.



CHAPTER XXII: PANDEMONIUM


But where was Philammon all that week?

For the first day or two of his imprisonment he had raved like some
wild beast entrapped. His new-found purpose and energy, thus
suddenly dammed back and checked, boiled up in frantic rage. He
tore at the bars of his prison; he rolled himself, shrieking, on the
floor. He called in vain on Hypatia, on Pelagia, on Arsenius--on
all but God. Pray he could not, and dare not; for to whom was he to
pray? To the stars?--to the Abysses and the Eternities? ....

Alas! as Augustine said once, bitterly enough, of his own Manichaean
teachers, Hypatia had taken away the living God, and given him
instead the four Elements .... And in utter bewilderment and
hopeless terror he implored the pity of every guard and gaoler who
passed along the corridor, and conjured them, as brothers, fathers,
men, to help him. Moved at once by his agony and by his exceeding
beauty, the rough Thracians, who knew enough of their employer's
character to have little difficulty in believing his victim to be
innocent, listened to him and questioned him. But when they offered
the very help which he implored, and asked him to tell his story,
the poor boy's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. How could he
publish his sisters shame? And yet she was about to publish it
herself! .... And instead of words, he met their condolences with
fresh agonies, till they gave him up as mad; and, tired by his
violence, compelled him, with blows and curses, to remain quiet; and
so the week wore out, in dull and stupefied despair, which trembled
on the very edge of idiocy. Night and day were alike to him. The
food which was thrust in through his grate remained untasted; hour
after hour, day after day, he sat upon the ground, his head buried
in his hands, half-dozing from mere exhaustion of body and mind.
Why should he care to stir, to eat, to live? He had but one purpose
in heaven and earth: and that one purpose was impossible.

At last his cell-door grated on its hinges.

'Up, my mad youth!' cried a rough voice. 'Up, and thank the favour
of the gods, and the bounty of our noble--ahem!--Prefect. To-day he
gives freedom to all prisoners. And I suppose a pretty boy like you
may go about your business, as well as uglier rascals!'

Philammon looked up in the gaoler's face with a dim half-
comprehension of his meaning.

'Do you hear?' cried the man with a curse. 'You are free. Jump up,
or I shut the door again, and your one chance is over.'

'Did she dance Venus Anadyomene?'

'She! Who?'

'My sister! Pelagia!'

'Heaven only knows what she has not danced in her time! But they
say she dances to-day once more. Quick! out, or I shall not be
ready in time for the sports. They begin an hour hence. Free
admission into the theatre to-day for all--rogues and honest men,
Christians and heathens--Curse the boy! he's as mad as ever.'

So indeed Philammon seemed; for, springing suddenly to his feet, he
rushed out past the gaoler, upsetting him into the corridor, and
fled wildly from the prison among the crowd of liberated ruffians,
ran from the prison home, from home to the baths, from the baths to
the theatre, and was soon pushing his way, regardless of etiquette,
towards the lower tiers of benches, in order, he hardly knew why, to
place himself as near as possible to the very sight which he dreaded
and abhorred.

As fate would have it, the passage by which he had entered opened
close to the Prefect's chair of state, where sat Orestes, gorgeous
in his robes of office, and by him--to Philammon's surprise and
horror--Hypatia herself.

More beautiful than ever, her forehead sparkling, like Juno's own,
with a lofty tiara of jewels, her white Ionic robe half hidden by a
crimson shawl, there sat the vestal, the philosopher. What did she
there? But the boy's eager eyes, accustomed but too well to note
every light and shade of feeling which crossed that face, saw in a
moment how wan and haggard was its expression. She wore a look of
constraint, of half-terrified self-resolve, as of a martyr: and yet
not an undoubting martyr; for as Orestes turned his head at the stir
of Philammon's intrusion, and flashing with anger at the sight,
motioned him fiercely back, Hypatia turned too, and as her eyes met
her pupil's she blushed crimson, and started, and seemed in act to
motion him back also; and then, recollecting herself, whispered
something to Orestes which quieted his wrath, and composed herself,
or rather sank into her place again, as one who was determined to
abide the worst.

A knot of gay young gentlemen, Philammon's fellow-students, pulled
him down among them, with welcome and laughter; and before he could
collect his thoughts, the curtain in front of the stage had fallen,
and the sport began.

The scene represented a background of desert mountains, and on the
stage itself, before a group of temporary huts, stood huddling
together the black Libyan prisoners, some fifty men, women, and
children, bedizened with gaudy feathers and girdles of tasselled
leather, brandishing their spears and targets, and glaring out with
white eyes on the strange scene before them, in childish awe and
wonder.

Along the front of the stage a wattled battlement had been erected,
while below, the hyposcenium had been painted to represent rocks,
thus completing the rough imitation of a village among the Libyan
hills.

Amid breathless silence, a herald advanced, and proclaimed that
these were prisoners taken in arms against the Roman senate and
people, and therefore worthy of immediate death: but that the
Prefect, in his exceeding clemency toward them, and especial anxiety
to afford the greatest possible amusement to the obedient and loyal
citizens of Alexandria, had determined, instead of giving them at
once to the beasts, to allow them to fight for their lives,
promising to the survivors a free pardon if they acquitted
themselves valiantly.

The poor wretches on the stage, when this proclamation was
translated to them, set up a barbaric yell of joy, and brandished
their spears and targets more fiercely than ever.

But their joy was short. The trumpets sounded the attack: a body of
gladiators, equal in number to the savages, marched out from one of
the two great side passages, made their obeisance to the applauding
spectators, and planting their scaling-ladders against the front of
the stage, mounted to the attack.

The Libyans fought like tigers; yet from the first, Hypatia, and
Philammon also, could see that their promised chance of life was a
mere mockery. Their light darts and naked limbs were no match for
the heavy swords and complete armour of their brutal assailants, who
endured carelessly a storm of blows and thrusts on heads and faces
protected by visored helmets: yet so fierce was the valour of the
Libyans, that even they recoiled twice, and twice the scaling-
ladders were hurled down again, while more than one gladiator lay
below, rolling in the death-agony.

And then burst forth the sleeping devil in the hearts of that great
brutalised multitude. Yell upon yell of savage triumph, and still
more savage disappointment, rang from every tier of that vast ring
of seats, at each blow and parry, onslaught and repulse; and
Philammon saw with horror and surprise that luxury, refinement,
philosophic culture itself, were no safeguards against the infection
of bloodthirstiness. Gay and delicate ladies, whom he had seen
three days before simpering delight at Hypatia's heavenward
aspirations, and some, too, whom he seemed to recollect in Christian
churches, sprang from their seats, waved their hands and
handkerchiefs, and clapped and shouted to the gladiators. For, alas!
there was no doubt as to which side the favour of the spectators
inclined. With taunts, jeers, applause, entreaties, the hired
ruffians were urged on to their work of blood. The poor wretches
heard no voice raised in their favour: nothing but contempt, hatred,
eager lust of blood, glared from those thousands of pitiless eyes;
and, broken-hearted, despairing, they flagged and drew back one by
one. A shout of triumph greeted the gladiators as they climbed over
the battlement, and gained a footing on the stage. The wretched
blacks broke up, and fled wildly from corner to corner, looking
vainly for an outlet....

And then began a butchery .... Some fifty men, women, and children
were cooped together in that narrow space .... And yet Hypatia's
countenance did not falter. Why should it? What were their
numbers, beside the thousands who had perished year by year for
centuries, by that and far worse deaths, in the amphitheatres of
that empire, for that faith which she was vowed to re-establish. It
was part of the great system; and she must endure it.

Not that she did not feel; for she, too, was woman; and her heart,
raised far above the brutal excitement of the multitude, lay calmly
open to the most poignant stings of pity. Again and again she was
in the act to entreat mercy for some shrieking woman or struggling
child; but before her lips could shape the words, the blow had
fallen, or the wretch was whirled away from her sight in the dense
undistinguishable mass of slayers and slain. Yes, she had begun,
and she must follow to the end .... And, after all, what were the
lives of those few semi-brutes, returning thus a few years earlier
to the clay from which they sprang, compared with the regeneration
of a world? .... And it would be over in a few minutes more, and
that black writhing heap be still for ever, and the curtain fall
.... And then for Venus Anadyomene, and art, and joy, and peace,
and the graceful wisdom and beauty of the old Greek art, calming and
civilising all hearts, and softening them into pure devotion for the
immortal myths, the immortal deities, who had inspired their
forefathers in the glorious days of old .... But still the black
heap writhed; and she looked away, up, down, and round, everywhere,
to avoid the sickening sight; and her eye caught Philammon's gazing
at her with looks of horror and disgust .... A thrill of shame
rushed through her heart, and blushing scarlet, she sank her head,
and whispered to Orestes--


'Have mercy!--spare the rest!'

'Nay, fairest vestal! The mob has tasted blood, and they must have
their fill of it, or they will turn onus for aught I know. Nothing
so dangerous as to check a brute, whether he be horse, dog, or man,
when once his spirit is up. Ha! there is a fugitive! How well the
little rascal runs!'

As he spoke, a boy, the only survivor, leaped from the stage, and
rushed across the orchestra toward them, followed by a rough cur-
dog.

'You shall have this youth, if he reaches us.'

Hypatia watched breathless. The boy had just arrived at the altar
in the centre of the orchestra, when he saw a gladiator close upon
him. The ruffian's arm was raised to strike, when, to the
astonishment of the whole theatre, boy and dog turned valiantly to
bay, and leaping on the gladiator, dragged him between them to the
ground. The triumph was momentary. The uplifted hands, the shout
of 'Spare him!' came too late. The man, as he lay, buried his sword
in the slender body of the child, and then rising, walked coolly
back to the side passages, while the poor cur stood over the little
corpse, licking its hands and face, and making the whole building
ring with his doleful cries. The attendants entered, and striking
their hooks into corpse after corpse, dragged them out of sight,
marking their path by long red furrows in the sand; while the dog
followed, until his inauspicious howlings died away down distant
passages.

Philammon felt sick and giddy, and half rose to escape. But
Pelagia! .... No--he must sit it out, and see the worst, if worse
than this was possible. He looked round. The people were coolly
sipping wine and eating cakes, while they chatted admirably about
the beauty of the great curtain, which had fallen and hidden the
stage, and represented, on a ground of deep-blue sea, Europa carried
by the bull across the Bosphorus, while Nereids and Tritons played
around.

A single flute within the curtain began to send forth luscious
strains, deadened and distant, as if through far-off glens and
woodlands; and from the side passages issued three Graces, led by
Peitho, the goddess of persuasion, bearing a herald's staff in her
hand. She advanced to the altar in the centre of the orchestra, and
informed the spectators that, during the absence of Ares in aid of a
certain great military expedition, which was shortly to decide the
diadem of Rome, and the liberty, prosperity, and supremacy of Egypt
and Alexandria, Aphrodite had returned to her lawful allegiance, and
submitted for the time being to the commands of her husband,
Hephaestus; that he, as the deity of artificers, felt a peculiar
interest in the welfare of the city of Alexandria, the workshop of
the world, and had, as a sign of his especial favour, prevailed upon
his fair spouse to exhibit, for this once, her beauties to the
assembled populace, and, in the unspoken poetry of motion, to
represent to them the emotions with which, as she arose new-born
from the sea, she first surveyed that fair expanse of heaven and
earth of which she now reigned undisputed queen.

A shout of rapturous applause greeted this announcement, and
forthwith limped from the opposite slip the lame deity himself,
hammer and pincers on shoulder, followed by a train of gigantic
Cyclops, who bore on their shoulders various pieces of gilded metal
work.

Hephaestus, who was intended to supply the comic element in the vast
pantomimic pageant, shambled forward with studied uncouthness, amid
roars of laughter; surveyed the altar with ludicrous contempt;
raised his mighty hammer, shivered it to pieces with a single blow,
and beckoned to his attendants to carry off the fragments, and
replace it with something more fitting for his august spouse.