This wise mistrust of the ghostly mirror is so old and so far spread that we meet with it in the folk lore13 of every land. An English tradition warns us that the new moon, which brings us such good fortune when we look at it in the calm evening sky, carries a message of evil to those who see it first reflected in a looking-glass. For such unlucky mortals the lunar virus distils14 slow poison and corroding15 care. The child who is suffered to see his own image in a mirror before he is a year old is marked out for trouble and many disappointments. The friends who glance at their reflections standing16 side by side are doomed17 to quick dissension. The Swedish girl who looks into her glass by candlelight risks the loss of{78} her lover. A universal superstition, which has found its way even to our own prosaic18 time and country, forbids a bride to see herself in a mirror after her toilet is completed. If she be discreet19, she turns away from that fair picture which pleases her so well, and then draws on her glove, or has some tiny ribbon, flower, or jewel fastened to her gown, that the sour Fates may be appeased20, and evil averted21 from her threshold. In Warwickshire and other parts of rural England it was long the custom to cover all the looking-glasses in a house of death, lest some affrighted mortal should behold22 in one the pale and shrouded23 corpse24 standing by his side. There is a ghastly story of a servant maid who, on leaving the chamber25 where her dead master lay, glanced in the uncovered mirror, and saw the sheeted figure on the bed beckoning26 her rigidly27 to its side.
Some such tale as this must have been told me in my infancy28, for in no other way can I account for the secret terror I felt for the little oval mirror which hung by my bed at school. Every night I turned it carefully with its face to the wall, lest by some evil{79} chance I should arise and look in it. Every night I was tormented29 with the same haunting notion that I had not remembered to turn it; and then, shivering with cold and fright, I would creep out of bed, and, with averted head and tightly shut eyes, feel my way to the wretched thing, and assure myself of what I knew already, that its harmless back alone confronted me. I never asked myself what it was I feared to see;—some face that was not mine, some apparition30 born of the darkness and of my own childish terror. Nor can I truly say that this apprehension31, inconvenient32 though it seemed on chilly33 winter nights, did not carry with it a vague, sweet pleasure of its own. Little girls of eleven may be no better nor wiser for the scraps34 of terrifying folk lore which formed part of my earliest education, yet in one respect, at least, I triumphed by their aid. Even the somewhat spiritless monotony of a convent school was not without its vivifying moments for a child who carried to bed with her each night a horde35 of goblin fears to keep her imagination lively.
Superstitions36 of a less ghostly character{80} cluster around the mirror, and are familiar to us all. To break one is everywhere an evil omen4. “Seven years’ trouble, but no want,” follow fast upon such a mishap37 in Yorkshire, while in Scotland, the cracking of a looking-glass, like the falling of the doomed man’s picture from the wall, is a presage38 of approaching death. Such portents39 as these, however,—though no one who is truly wise presumes to treat them with levity,—are powerless to thrill us with that indefinable and subtle horror which springs from causeless emotions. Scott, in his prologue40 to “Aunt Margaret’s Mirror,” has well defined the peculiar41 fear which is without reason and without cure. The old lady who makes her servant maid draw a curtain over the glass before she enters her bedroom, “so that she” (the maid) “may have the first shock of the apparition, if there be any to be seen,” is of far too practical a turn to trouble herself about the rationality of her sensations. “Like many other honest folk,” she does not like to look at her own reflection by candlelight, because it is an eerie42 thing to do. Yet the tale she tells of the Paduan doctor and his magic mir{81}ror is, on the other hand, neither interesting nor alarming. It has all the dreary43 qualities of a psychical44 research report which cannot even provoke us to a disbelief.
In fact, divining-crystals, when known as such professionally, are tame, hard-working, almost respectable institutions. In the good old days of necromancy45, magicians had no need of such mechanical appliances. Any reflecting surface would serve their turn, and a bowl of clear water was enough to reveal to them all that they wanted to know. It was of more importance, says Brand, “to make choice of a young maid to discern therein those images or visions which a person defiled46 cannot see.” Even the famous mirror, through whose agency Dr. Dee and his seer, Kelly, were said to have discovered the Gunpowder47 Plot, was in reality nothing more than a black polished stone, closely resembling coal.
The devil’s looking-glass, a stone.”
Yet in an old Prayer-Book of 1737 there is a woodcut representing the king and Sir Kenelm Digby gazing into a circular mirror, in which are reflected the Houses of Parliament,{82} and a man entering them with a dark lantern in his hand. Above, the eye of Providence49 is seen darting50 a ray of light upon the mirror. Below are legs and hoofs51, as of evil spirits flying rapidly away. The truth is, so many conflicting details are related of Dr. Dee’s useful and benevolent52 possession that it has lost a little of its vraisemblance. We are wont53 to rank it confusedly with such mystic treasures as the mirror which told the fortunate Alasnam whether or not a maid were as chaste54 as she was beautiful, or the glass which Reynard described with such minute and charming falsehoods to the royal lioness, who would fain have gratified her curiosity by a sight of its indiscreet revelations.
It is never through magic mirrors, nor crystal balls, nor any of the paraphernalia55 now so abundantly supplied by painstaking56 students of telepathy that we approach that shadowy land over which broods perpetual fear. Let us rather turn meekly57 back to the fairy-taught minister of Aberfoyle, and learn of him the humiliating truth that “every drop of water is a Mirrour to returne the Species of Things, were our visive Faculty58 sharpe enough to ap{83}prehend them.” In other words, we stand in need, not of elaborate appliances, but of a chastened spirit. If we seek the supernatural with the keen apprehension which is begotten59 of credulity and awe60, we shall never find ourselves disappointed in our quest. The same reverend authority tells us that “in a Witch’s Eye the Beholder61 cannot see his own Image reflected, as in the Eyes of other people,” which is an interesting and, it may be, a very useful thing to know.
Two curious stories having relation to the ghostly character of the mirror will best serve to illustrate62 my text. The first is found in Shelley’s journal; one of the inexhaustible store supplied to the poet by “Monk” Lewis, and is about a German lady who, dancing with her lover at a ball, saw in a glass the reflection of her dead husband gazing at her with stern, reproachful eyes. She is said to have died of terror. The second tale is infinitely63 more picturesque64. In the church of Santa Maria Novella at Florence is the beautiful tomb of Beata Villana, the daughter of a noble house, and married in extreme youth to one of the family of Benintendi. Tradition{84} says that she was very fair, and that, being arrayed one night for a festival, she stood looking long in the mirror, allured65 by her own loveliness. Suddenly her eyes were opened, and she saw, close by her side, a demon66 dressed with costly67 raiment like her own, and decked with shining jewels like those she wore upon her arms and bosom68. Appalled69 by this vision of evil, Beata Villana fled from the vanities of the world, and sought refuge in a convent, where she died a holy death in 1360, being then but twenty-eight years of age. Her marble effigy70 rests on its carven bed in the old Florentine church, and smiling angels draw back the curtains to show her sweet, dead beauty, safe at last from the perilous71 paths of temptation. In such a legend as this there lingers for us still the elements of mystery and of horror which centuries of prosaic progress are powerless to alienate72 from that dumb witness of our silent, secret hours, the mirror.
点击收听单词发音
1 discriminating | |
a.有辨别能力的 | |
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2 superstition | |
n.迷信,迷信行为 | |
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3 frankly | |
adv.坦白地,直率地;坦率地说 | |
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4 omen | |
n.征兆,预兆;vt.预示 | |
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5 malign | |
adj.有害的;恶性的;恶意的;v.诽谤,诬蔑 | |
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6 homely | |
adj.家常的,简朴的;不漂亮的 | |
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7 insinuating | |
adj.曲意巴结的,暗示的v.暗示( insinuate的现在分词 );巧妙或迂回地潜入;(使)缓慢进入;慢慢伸入 | |
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8 distinctive | |
adj.特别的,有特色的,与众不同的 | |
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9 unnatural | |
adj.不自然的;反常的 | |
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10 furtive | |
adj.鬼鬼崇崇的,偷偷摸摸的 | |
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11 inquiry | |
n.打听,询问,调查,查问 | |
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12 treacherous | |
adj.不可靠的,有暗藏的危险的;adj.背叛的,背信弃义的 | |
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13 lore | |
n.传说;学问,经验,知识 | |
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14 distils | |
v.蒸馏( distil的第三人称单数 );从…提取精华 | |
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15 corroding | |
使腐蚀,侵蚀( corrode的现在分词 ) | |
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16 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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17 doomed | |
命定的 | |
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18 prosaic | |
adj.单调的,无趣的 | |
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19 discreet | |
adj.(言行)谨慎的;慎重的;有判断力的 | |
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20 appeased | |
安抚,抚慰( appease的过去式和过去分词 ); 绥靖(满足另一国的要求以避免战争) | |
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21 averted | |
防止,避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 ); 转移 | |
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22 behold | |
v.看,注视,看到 | |
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23 shrouded | |
v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 );保密 | |
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24 corpse | |
n.尸体,死尸 | |
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25 chamber | |
n.房间,寝室;会议厅;议院;会所 | |
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26 beckoning | |
adj.引诱人的,令人心动的v.(用头或手的动作)示意,召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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27 rigidly | |
adv.刻板地,僵化地 | |
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28 infancy | |
n.婴儿期;幼年期;初期 | |
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29 tormented | |
饱受折磨的 | |
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30 apparition | |
n.幽灵,神奇的现象 | |
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31 apprehension | |
n.理解,领悟;逮捕,拘捕;忧虑 | |
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32 inconvenient | |
adj.不方便的,令人感到麻烦的 | |
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33 chilly | |
adj.凉快的,寒冷的 | |
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34 scraps | |
油渣 | |
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35 horde | |
n.群众,一大群 | |
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36 superstitions | |
迷信,迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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37 mishap | |
n.不幸的事,不幸;灾祸 | |
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38 presage | |
n.预感,不祥感;v.预示 | |
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39 portents | |
n.预兆( portent的名词复数 );征兆;怪事;奇物 | |
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40 prologue | |
n.开场白,序言;开端,序幕 | |
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41 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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42 eerie | |
adj.怪诞的;奇异的;可怕的;胆怯的 | |
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43 dreary | |
adj.令人沮丧的,沉闷的,单调乏味的 | |
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44 psychical | |
adj.有关特异功能现象的;有关特异功能官能的;灵魂的;心灵的 | |
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45 necromancy | |
n.巫术;通灵术 | |
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46 defiled | |
v.玷污( defile的过去式和过去分词 );污染;弄脏;纵列行进 | |
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47 gunpowder | |
n.火药 | |
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48 feats | |
功绩,伟业,技艺( feat的名词复数 ) | |
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49 providence | |
n.深谋远虑,天道,天意;远见;节约;上帝 | |
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50 darting | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的现在分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
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51 hoofs | |
n.(兽的)蹄,马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.(兽的)蹄,马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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52 benevolent | |
adj.仁慈的,乐善好施的 | |
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53 wont | |
adj.习惯于;v.习惯;n.习惯 | |
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54 chaste | |
adj.贞洁的;有道德的;善良的;简朴的 | |
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55 paraphernalia | |
n.装备;随身用品 | |
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56 painstaking | |
adj.苦干的;艰苦的,费力的,刻苦的 | |
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57 meekly | |
adv.温顺地,逆来顺受地 | |
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58 faculty | |
n.才能;学院,系;(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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59 begotten | |
v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 );产生,引起 | |
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60 awe | |
n.敬畏,惊惧;vt.使敬畏,使惊惧 | |
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61 beholder | |
n.观看者,旁观者 | |
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62 illustrate | |
v.举例说明,阐明;图解,加插图 | |
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63 infinitely | |
adv.无限地,无穷地 | |
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64 picturesque | |
adj.美丽如画的,(语言)生动的,绘声绘色的 | |
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65 allured | |
诱引,吸引( allure的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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66 demon | |
n.魔鬼,恶魔 | |
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67 costly | |
adj.昂贵的,价值高的,豪华的 | |
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68 bosom | |
n.胸,胸部;胸怀;内心;adj.亲密的 | |
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69 appalled | |
v.使惊骇,使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的;丧胆的 | |
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70 effigy | |
n.肖像 | |
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71 perilous | |
adj.危险的,冒险的 | |
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72 alienate | |
vt.使疏远,离间;转让(财产等) | |
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