The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
SUPPLEMENTAL NIGHTS To The Book Of The Thousand And One Nights With Notes Anthropological And Explanatory By Richard F. Burton VOLUME FOUR Privately Printed By The Burton Club To William H. Chandler, Esq,. Pembroke College, Oxford. My Dear Mr. Chandler, As without your friendly and generous aid this volume could
His inner Being by divine works, that one day the invisible form of it
appeared to His disciples--and the other Mysteries of the Gospels, the
magnetic cures wrought by Christ, and the gift of tongues, all to him
confirmed his doctrine. I remember once hearing him say on this
subject, that the greatest work that could be written nowadays was a
History of the Primitive Church. And he never rose to such poetic
heights as when, in the evening, as we conversed, he would enter on an
inquiry into miracles, worked by the power of Will during that great
age of faith. He discerned the strongest evidence of his theory in
most of the martyrdoms endured during the first century of our era,
which he spoke of as _the great era of the Mind_.
"Do not the phenomena observed in almost every instance of the
torments so heroically endured by the early Christians for the
establishment of the faith, amply prove that Material force will never
prevail against the force of Ideas or the Will of man?" he would say.
"From this effect, produced by the Will of all, each man may draw
conclusions in favor of his own."
I need say nothing of his views on poetry or history, nor of his
judgment on the masterpieces of our language. There would be little
interest in the record of opinions now almost universally held, though
at that time, from the lips of a boy, they might seem remarkable.
Louis was capable of the highest flights. To give a notion of his
talents in a few words, he could have written _Zadig_ as wittily as
Voltaire; he could have thought out the dialogue between Sylla and
SUPPLEMENTAL NIGHTS To The Book Of The Thousand And One Nights With Notes Anthropological And Explanatory By Richard F. Burton VOLUME FOUR Privately Printed By The Burton Club To William H. Chandler, Esq,. Pembroke College, Oxford. My Dear Mr. Chandler, As without your friendly and generous aid this volume could