CHAPTER III

Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books

Well, I have called at Blank Street.

On inquiring at the door, the servant told me that Mr. Jennings was engaged very particularly with a gentleman, a clergyman from Kenlis, his parish in the country.  Intending to reserve my privilege, and to call again, I merely intimated that I should try another time, and had turned to go, when the servant begged my pardon, and asked me, looking at me a little more attentively than well-bred persons of his order usually do, whether I was Dr. Hesselius; and, on learning that I was, he said, “Perhaps then, sir, you would allow me to mention it to Mr. Jennings, for I am sure he wishes to see you.”

The servant returned in a moment, with a message from Mr. Jennings, asking me to go into his study, which was in effect his back drawing-room, promising to be with me in a very few minutes.

This was really a study—­almost a library.  The room was lofty, with two tall slender windows, and rich dark curtains.  It was much larger than I had expected, and stored with books on every side, from the floor to the ceiling.  The upper carpet—­for to my tread it felt that there were two or three—­was a Turkey carpet.  My steps fell noiselessly.  The bookcases standing out, placed the windows, particularly narrow ones, in deep recesses.  The effect of the room was, although extremely comfortable, and even luxurious, decidedly gloomy, and aided by the silence, almost oppressive.  Perhaps, however, I ought to have allowed something for association.  My mind had connected peculiar ideas with Mr. Jennings.  I stepped into this perfectly silent room, of a very silent house, with a peculiar foreboding; and its darkness, and solemn clothing of books, for except where two narrow looking-glasses were set in the wall, they were everywhere, helped this somber feeling.

While awaiting Mr. Jennings’ arrival, I amused myself by looking into some of the books with which his shelves were laden.  Not among these, but immediately under them, with their backs upward, on the floor, I lighted upon a complete set of Swedenborg’s “Arcana Caelestia,” in the original Latin, a very fine folio set, bound in the natty livery which theology affects, pure vellum, namely, gold letters, and carmine edges.  There were paper markers in several of these volumes, I raised and placed them, one after the other, upon the table, and opening where these papers were placed, I read in the solemn Latin phraseology, a series of sentences indicated by a pencilled line at the margin.  Of these I copy here a few, translating them into English.

“When man’s interior sight is opened, which is that of his spirit, then there appear the things of another life, which cannot possibly be made visible to the bodily sight."...

“By the internal sight it has been granted me to see the things that are in the other life, more clearly than I see those that are in the world.  From these considerations, it is evident that external vision exists from interior vision, and this from a vision still more interior, and so on."...