United States or Senegal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Before the end of his own generation his works were introduced as text-books into Roman schools; during the Middle Age he was the great poet whom it was heresy not to admire; Dante owned him as a master and a model; and the people finally embalmed him in their folk-lore as a mysterious conjurer and necromancer.
Yet the moral reality was even greater than the visible. I felt that I was within reach of the chief seat of all the leading events of the Continent since the birth of monarchy; every step which I might tread among those piles was historical; within that clouded circumference, like the circle of a necromancer, had been raised all the dazzling and all the disturbing spirits of the world.
Next day it was Franz's turn to try and win the Princess. Franz felt just as certain of succeeding as Fritz had been. A certain necromancer in Franz's town had been a party in a suit which came before the Burgomaster's court.
In another case you observe only a lump of coal, a phial of pitch, a flask of oil; and the necromancer of the place has dipped his rod down into the central darkness of the earth and drawn up light like the day's. Yet beyond: an iron stirrup and a slender spur, and the sewing-girl has but to set her foot there and escape the shapes that dog her.
She must escape from these sleepers, whose spirits had been expelled by the potent necromancer, opium, from these empty tenements whose occupants had fled. The idea of the cool night air in the open streets was delicious. She staggered to her feet, swaying drunkenly, but determined to reach the door.
So, to the people as well as to the nobles, physician and alchemist, mathematician and astronomer, astrologer and necromancer were six attributes, all meeting in the single person of the physician. In those days a superior physician was supposed to be cultivating magic; while curing his patient he was drawing their horoscopes.
Not the wizard that we have seen before, but a little old man bent half double with age, and of whom little was to be seen save a long white beard and an appropriate robe. He leant heavily upon a staff, and sank into his chair with evident pain and difficulty. "What would ye with me?" said the necromancer, in feeble, querulous tones.
It was in 1717 that Rich devised this new form of entertainment, though it was not till 1724, when "The Necromancer, or History of Dr. Faustus" was produced by Rich, which took the town by storm, that Pantomime became such a rage.
Alas! it was the Hohenzollern State which was to annex and subject the German Empire. Little did the Germans know Prussian tenacity. Little did they know the rapacity of the Black Eagle. Still less did they know the black magic of the necromancer Bismarck. Treitschke reminds us in his “Politik” of an incident which is characteristic of the relation of the German Empire to Prussia.
But greater would be the affright of the Indian necromancer, if, mirrored in the pool of water at his feet, he could catch a prophetic glimpse of the noonday marvels which the white man is destined to achieve; if he could see, as in a dream, the stone front of the stately hall, which will cast its shadow over this very spot; if he could be aware that the future edifice will contain a noble Museum, where, among countless curiosities of earth and sea, a few Indian arrow-heads shall be treasured up as memorials of a vanished race!
Word Of The Day