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‫ודוויי‬
THE COMING RACE.
1

1
 THE

COMING RACE

BY

EDWARD LORD LYTTON

LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
NEW YORK : 9 LAFAYETTE PLACE
1886

วัน)
 E I AN LIB
BOD L RARI
26 AUG86

OXFORD
 Inscribed
TO

MAX MÖLLER
IN TRIBUTE OF RESPECT AND ADMIRATION.
.

1
1
.

1
 THE COMING RACE.

CHAPTER I.
AM a native of in the United States
I
of America. My ancestors migrated from
England in the reign of Charles II. ; and my
grandfather was not undistinguished in the
War of Independence. My family, therefore,
enjoyed a somewhat high social position in
right of birth ; and being also opulent, they
were considered disqualified for the public
service. My father once ran for Congress,
but was signally defeated by his tailor. After
that event he interfered little in politics, and
lived much in his library. I was the eldest
of three sons, and sent at the age of six
teen to the old country , partly to complete
my literary education, partly to commence my
8 THE COMING RACE .

commercial training in a mercantile firm at

Liverpool . My father died shortly after I
was twenty -one; and being left well off, and
having a taste for travel and adventure, I
resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the al
mighty dollar, and became a desultory wan
derer over the face of the earth.
In the year 18—, happening to be in >

I was invited by a professional engineer, with

whom I had made acquaintance, to visit the
recesses of the mine, upon which he
was employed .
The reader will understand, ere he close
this narrative, my reason for concealing all
clue to the district of which I write , and will
perhaps thank me for refraining from any
description that may tend to its discovery.
Let me say, then, as briefly as possible, that
I accompanied the engineer into the interior
of the mine, and became so strangely fasci
nated by its gloomy wonders, and so interested
in my friend's explorations, that I prolonged
my stay in the neighbourhood, and descended
 THE COMING RACE . 9

daily, for some weeks, into the vaults and

galleries hollowed by nature and art beneath
the surface of the earth . The engineer was
persuaded that far richer deposits of mineral
wealth than had yet been detected would be
found in a new shaft that had been com
menced under his operations. In piercing
this shaft we came one day upon a chasm
jagged and seemingly charred at the sides,
as if burst asunder at some distant period by
volcanic fires. Down this chasm my friend
caused himself to be lowered in a “ cage,”
having first tested the atmosphere by the
safety -lamp. He remained nearly an hour in
the abyss. When he returned he was very
pale, and with an anxious, thoughtful expres
sion of face, very different from its ordinary
character, which was open, cheerful, and
fearless.
He said briefly that the descent appeared
to him unsafe, and leading to no result ; and ,
suspending further operations in the shaft, we
returned to the more familiar parts of the mine.
A2
10 THE COMING RACE .

All the rest of that day the engineer seemed

preoccupied by some absorbing thought. He
was unusually taciturn, and there was a scared ,
bewildered look in his eyes, as that of a man
who has seen a ghost. At night, as we two
were sitting alone in the lodging we shared
together near the mouth of the mine, I said to
my friend
“ Tell me frankly what you saw in that
chasm : I am sure it was something strange
and terrible . Whatever it be, it has left your
mind in a state of doubt . In such a case two
"
heads are better than one. Confide in me. "
The engineer long endeavoured to evade
my inquiries ; but as, while he spoke, he
helped himself unconsciously out of the
brandy -flask to a degree to which he was
wholly unaccustomed, for he was a very tem
perate man, his reserve gradually melted away.
He who would keep himself to himself should
imitate the dumb animals , and drink water.
At last he said , “ I will tell you all . When
the cage stopped , I found myself on a ridge
 THE COMING RACE . II

of rock ; and below me, the chasm , taking

a slanting direction , shot down to a consider
able depth, the darkness of which my lamp
could not have penetrated. But through it,
to my infinite surprise, streamed upward a
steady brilliant light. Could it be any vol
canic fire ; in that case, surely I should have
felt the heat. Still , if on this there was doubt,
it was of the utmost importance to our com
mon safety to clear it up. I examined the
sides of the descent , and found that I could
venture to trust myself to the irregular pro
jections or ledges, at least for some way. I
left the cage and clambered down. As I drew
near and nearer to the light, the chasm be
came wider, and at last I saw,> to my unspeak
able amaze, a broad level road at the bottom
of the abyss, illumined as far as the eye could
reach by what seemed artificial gas-lamps placed
at regular intervals, as in the thoroughfare of
a great city ; and I heard confusedly at a dis
tance a um as of human voices. I know,
of course, that no rival miners are at work
12 THE COMING RACE .

in this district. Whose could be those voices ?

What human hands could have levelled that
road and marshalled those lamps ?
“ The superstitious belief, common to miners,
that gnomes or fiends dwell within the bowels
of the earth, began to seize me. I shuddered
at the thought of descending further and
braving the inhabitants of this nether valley.
Nor indeed could I have done so without
ropes, as from the spot I had reached to
the bottom of the chasm the sides of the
rock sank down abrupt, smooth , and sheer.
I retraced my steps with some difficulty .
Now I have told you all.”
“ You will descend again ?”
“ I ought, yet I feel as if I durst not."
" A trusty companion halves the journey
and doubles the courage . I will go with you .
We will provide ourselves with ropes of suit
able length and strength - and - pardon me-
you must not drink more to -night. Our
hands and feet must be steady and firm to
>
morrow . ”
 THE COMING RACE . 13

CHAPTER II .

With the morning my friend's nerves were

rebraced , and he was not less excited by
curiosity than myself. Perhaps more ; for he
evidently believed in his own story, and I felt
considerable doubt of it : not that he would
have wilfully told an untruth, but that I
thought he must have been under one of
those hallucinations which seize on our fancy
or our nerves in solitary, unaccustomed places,
and in which we give shape to the formless
and sound to the dumb .
We selected six veteran miners to watch our
descent ; and as the cage held only one at a
time, the engineer descended first ; and when
he had gained the ledge at which he had
before halted, the cage re-arose for me. I
soon gained his side . We had provided our
selves with a strong coil of rope .
The light struck on my sight as it had done
the day before on my friend's. The hollow
through which it came sloped diagonally : it
14 THE COMING RACE .

seemed to me a diffused atmospheric light,

not like that from fire, but soft and silvery, as
from a northern star. Quitting the cage, we
descended, one after the other, easily enough,
owing to the juts in the side , till we reached
the place at which my friend had previously
halted, and which was a projection just spacious
enough to allow us to stand abreast. From
this spot the chasm widened rapidly like the
lower end of a vast funnel, and I saw dis
tinctly the valley, the road , the lamps which
my companion had described . He had exag
gerated nothing. I heard the sounds he had
heard - a mingled indescribable hum as of
voices and a dull tramp as of feet. Strain
ing my eye farther down , I clearly beheld at
a distance the outline of some large building.
It could not be mere natural rock, it was too
symmetrical, with huge, heavy, Egyptian -like 1

columns, and the whole lighted as from

within. I had about me a small pocket
telescope, and by the aid of this I could dis
tinguish, near the building I mention, two
 THE COMING RACE .
15

forms which seemed human, though I could

not be sure . At least they were living, for
they moved, and both vanished within the
building. We now proceeded to attach the
end of the rope we had brought with us to
the ledge on which we stood, by the aid of
clamps and grappling-hooks, with which, as
well as with necessary tools, we were

provided.
We were almost silent in our work . We
toiled like men afraid to speak to each other.
One end of the rope being thus apparently
made firm to the ledge, the other, to which
we fastened a fragment of the rock, rested on
the ground below, a distance of some fifty
feet. I was a younger and a more active
man than my companion, and having served
on board ship in my boyhood, this mode of
transit was more familiar to me than to him .
In a whisper I claimed the precedence, so that
when I gained the ground I might serve to
hold the rope more steady for his descent . I
got safely to the ground beneath , and the
16 THE COMING RACE.

engineer now began to lower himself. But he

had scarcely accomplished ten feet of the
descent, when the fastenings, which we had
fancied so secure , gave way, or rather the
rock itself proved treacherous and crumbled
beneath the strain ; and the unhappy man
was precipitated to the bottom , falling just at
my feet, and bringing down with his fall
splinters of the rock, one of which , fortunately
but a small one, struck and for the time
stunned me. When I recovered my senses I
saw my companion an inanimate mass beside
me, life utterly extinct. While I was bending
over his corpse in grief and horror, I heard
close at hand a strange sound between a snort
and a hiss ; and turning instinctively to the
quarter from which it came, I saw emerging
from a dark fissure in the rock a vast and
terrible head, with open jaws and dull , ghastly,
hungry eyes—the head of a monstrous reptile
resembling that of the crocodile or alligator,
but infinitely larger than the largest creature
of that kind I had ever beheld in my travels.
 THE COMING RACE . 17

I started to my feet and fled down the valley

at my utmost speed. I stopped at last, ashamed
of my panic and my flight, and returned to
the spot on which I had left the body of my
friend. It was gone ; doubtless the monster
had already drawn it into its den and devoured
it .. The rope and the grappling hooks still
lay where they had fallen , but they afforded
me no chance of return : it was impossible to
re-attach them to the rock above, and the sides
of the rock were too sheer and smooth for
human steps to clamber. I was alone in this
strange world , amidst the bowels of the earth .

CHAPTER III .

Slowly and cautiously I went my solitary

way down the lamplit road and towards the
large building I have described . The road
itself seemed like a great Alpine pass, skirting
rocky mountains of which the one through
whose chasms I had descended formed aa link.
18 THE COMING RACE .

Deep below to the left lay a vast valley, which

presented to my astonished eye the unmistak
able evidences of art and culture. There were
fields covered with a strange vegetation , similar
to none I have seen above the earth ; the colour
of it not green, but rather of aa dull leaden hue
or of a golden red .
There were lakes and rivulets which seemed
to have been curved into artificial banks ; some
of pure water, others that shone like pools of
naphtha . At my right hand, ravines and
defiles opened amidst the rocks, with passes
between, evidently constructed by art, and
bordered by trees resembling, for the most
part, gigantic ferns, with exquisite varieties of
feathery foliage, and stems like those of the
palm-tree. Others were more like the cane
plant, but taller, bearing large clusters of flowers.
Others again had the form of enormous fungi,
with short thick stems supporting a wide dome
like roof, from which either rose or drooped long
slender branches. The whole scene behind,
before, and beside me, far as the eye could
 THE COMING RACE . 19

reach , was brilliant with innumerable lamps.

The world without a sun was bright and warm
as an Italian landscape at noon , but the air less
oppressive, the heat softer. Nor was the scene
before me void of signs of habitation . I could
distinguish at a distance, whether on the banks
of lake or rivulet, or half -way upon eminences,
embedded amidst the vegetation, buildings that
must surely be the homes of men . I could
even discover, though far off, forms that
appeared to me human , moving amidst the
landscape. As I paused to gaze, I saw to the
right, gliding quickly through the air, what
appeared a small boat, impelled by sails shaped
like wings. It soon passed out of sight,
descending amidst the shades of a forest.
Right above me there was no sky, but only a
cavernous roof. This roof grew higher and
higher at the distance of the landscapes beyond,
till it became imperceptible, as an atmosphere
of haze formed itself beneath .
Continuing my walk, I started, -- from a bush
-

that resembled a great tangle of seaweeds ,

20 THE COMING RACE .

interspersed with fern -like shrubs and plants of

large leafage shaped like that of the aloe or
prickly pear, -a curious animal about the size
and shape of a deer. But as , after bounding
away a few paces, it turned round and gazed
at me inquisitively, I perceived that it was not
like any species of deer now extant above the
earth , but it brought instantly to my recollec
>

tion a plaster cast I had seen in some museumi

of a variety of the elk stag, said to have existed
before the Deluge. The creature seemed tame
enough, and, after inspecting me a moment or
two , began to graze on the singular herbage
around undismayed and careless.

CHAPTER IV .

I now came in full sight of the building.

Yes , it had been made by hands, and hollowed
partly out of a great rock. I should have sup
posed it at the first glance to have been of the
earliest form of Egyptian architecture. It was
 THE COMING RACE . 21

fronted by huge columns, tapering upward

from massive plinths, and with capitals that,
as I canie nearer, I perceived to be more orna
mental and more fantastically graceful than
Egyptian architecture allows. As the Corin
thian capital mimics the leaf of the acanthus,
so the capitals of these columns imitated the
foliage of the vegetation neighbouring them ,
some aloe-like, some fern -like. And now there
came out of this building a form - human ;
was it human ? It stood on the broad way and
looked around , beheld me and approached. It
came within a few yards of me, and at the
sight and presence of it an indescribable awe
and tremor seized me, rooting my feet to the
ground. It reminded me of symbolical images
of Genius or Demon that are seen on Etruscan
vases or limned on the walls of Eastern sepul
chres — images that borrow the outlines of
man , and are yet of another race. It was tall ,
not gigantic, but tall as the tallest men below
the height of giants.
Its chief covering seemed to me to be com
22 THE COMING RACE .

posed of large wings folded over its breast and

reaching to its knees ; the rest of its attire
was composed of an under tunic and leggings
of some thin fibrous material . It wore on its
head a kind of tiara that shone with jewels ,
and carried in its right hand a slender staff of
bright metal like polished steel . But the face !
it was that which inspired my awe and my
terror. It was the face of man , but yet of a
type of man distinct from our known extant
races . The nearest approach to it in outline
and expression is the face of the sculptured
sphinx - so regular in its calm , intellectual,
mysterious beauty. Its colour was peculiar,
more like that of the red man than any other
variety of our species, and yet different from it
-a richer and a softer hue, with large black eyes,
deep and brilliant, and brows arched as a semi
circle. The face was beardless ; but a name
less something in the aspect, tranquil though
the expression, and beauteous though the
features, roused that instinct of danger which
the sight of a tiger or serpent arouses, I felt
 THE COMING RACE . 23

that this manlike image was endowed with

forces inimical to man . As it drew near , a
cold shudder came over me. I fell on my
knees and covered my face with my hands.

CHAPTER V.
A voice accosted me—a very quiet and very
musical key of voice-in a language of which I
could not understand a word , but it served to
dispel my fear. I uncovered my face and looked
up. The stranger (I could scarcely bring myself
to call him man ) surveyed me with an eye that
seemed to read to the very depths of my heart.
He then placed his left hand on my forehead ,
and withi the staff in his right gently touched
my shoulder. The effect of this double contact
was magical. In place of my former terror
there passed into me a sense of contentment,
of joy, of confidence in myself and in the being
before me . I rose and spoke in my own
language. He listened to me with apparent
24 THE COMING RACE .

attention , but with a slight surprise in his

looks ; and shook his head, as if to signify that
I was not understood . He then took me by
the hand and led me in silence to the building.
The entrance was open-indeed there was no
door to it. We entered an immense hall,
lighted by the same kind of lustre as in the
scene without, but diffusing a fragrant odour.
The floor was in large tesselated blocks of pre
cious metals, and partly covered with a sort
of matlike carpeting. A strain of low music,
above and around, undulated as if from in
visible instruments, seeming to belong naturally
to the place, just as the sound of murmuring
waters belongs to a rocky landscape, or the
warble of birds to vernal groves .
A figure in a simpler garb than that of my
guide, but of similar fashion, was standing
motionless near the threshold . My guide
touched it twice with his staff, and it put itself
into a rapid and gliding movement, skimming
noiselessly over the floor. Gazing on it, I
then saw that it was no living form , but a
 THE COMING RACE. 25
mechanical automaton. It might be two
minutes after it vanished through a doorless
opening, half screened by curtains at the other
end of the hall, when through the same open
ing advanced a boy of about twelve years old ,
with features closely resembling those of my
guide, so that they seemed to me evidently son
and father. On seeing me the child uttered a
cry, and lifted a staff like that borne by my
guide, as if in menace. At a word from the
elder he dropped it. The two then conversed
for some moments, examining me while they
spoke. The child touched my garments, and
stroked my face with evident curiosity, uttering
a sound like a laugh, but with an hilarity more
subdued than the mirth of our laughter. Pre
sently the roof of the hall opened, and a plat
form descended, seemingly constructed on the
same principle as the “ lifts ” used in hotels and
warehouses for mounting from one story to
another.
The stranger placed himself and the child
on the platform , and motioned to me to do
26 THE COMING RACE .

the same , which I did . We ascended quickly

and safely, and alighted in the midst of a
corridor with doorways on either side.
Through one of these doorways I was
conducted into a chamber fitted up with an
Oriental splendour ; the walls were tesselated
with spars, and metals, and uncut jewels ;
cushions and divans abounded ; apertures as
for windows, but unglazed , were made in the
chamber, opening to the floor ; and as I passed
along I observed that these openings led into
spacious balconies, and commanded views of
the illumined landscape without. In cages
suspended from the ceiling there were birds of
strange form and bright plumage, which at
our entrance set up a chorus of song, modulated
into tune as is that of our piping bullfinches.
A delicious fragrance, from censers of gold
elaborately sculptured , filled the air. Several
automata, like the one I had seen , stood dumb
and motionless by the walls. The stranger
placed me beside him on a divan, and again
spoke to me, and again I spoke, but without
 THE COMING RACE . 27

the least advance towards understanding each

other.
But now I began to feel the effects of the
blow I received from the splinters of the falling
rock more acutely than I had done at first.
There came over me a sense of sickly faint
ness , accompanied with acute, lancinating pains
in the head and neck . I sank back on the seat,
and strove in vain to stifle a groan. On this
the child , who had hitherto seemed to eye me
with distrust or dislike , knelt by my side to
support me ; taking one of my hands in both
his own , he approached his lips to my fore
head , breathing on it softly. In a few moments
my pain ceased ; a drowsy, happy calm crept
over me ; I fell asleep.
How long I remained in this state I know
not, but when I woke I felt perfectly restored.
My eyes opened upon a group of silent forms,
seated around me in the gravity and quietude
of Orientals — all more or less like the first
stranger ; the same mantling wings, the same
fashion of garment, the same sphinx-like faces,
28 THE COMING RACE .

with the deep dark eyes and red man's colour ;

above all , the same type of race-race akin to
man's, but infinitely stronger of form and
grander of aspect, and inspiring the same un
utterable feeling of dread. Yet each counte
nance was mild and tranquil, and even kindly
in its expression. And strangely enough, it
seemed to me that in this very calm and
benignity consisted the secret of the dread
which the countenances inspired . They seemed
as void of the lines and shadows which care
and sorrow, and passion and sin , leave upon
the faces of men, as are the faces of sculptured
gods, or as, in the eyes of Christian mourners,
seem the peaceful brows of the dead.
I felt a warm hand on my shoulder ; it was
the child's . In his eyes there was a sort of
lofty pity and tenderness, such as that with
which we may gaze on some suffering bird or
butterfly. I shrank from that touch-I shrank
from that eye. I was vaguely impressed with
a belief that, had he so pleased, that child
could have killed me as easily as a man can
 THE COMING RACE . 29
kill a bird or a butterfly . The child seemed
pained at my repugnance, quitted me and
placed himself beside one of the windows.
The others continued to converse with each
other in a low tone, and by their glances to
wards me I could perceive that I was the
object of their conversation. One in especial
seemed to be urging some proposal affecting
me on the being whom I had first met, and
this last by his gesture seemed about to assent
to it, when the child suddenly quitted his post
by the window, placed himself between me
and the other forms, as if in protection , and
spoke quickly and eagerly. By some intuition
or instinct I felt that the child I had before so
dreaded was pleading in my behalf. Ere he
had ceased another stranger entered the room.
He appeared older than the rest, though not
old ; his countenance, less smoothly serene
than theirs, though equally regular in its
features, seemed to me to have more the
touch of hum akin to my own . He
listened quietly to the words addressed to
30 THE COMING RACE .

him , first by my guide, next by two others

of the group , and lastly by the child ; then
turned towards myself, and addressed me,
not by words, but by signs and gestures.
These I fancied that I perfectly understood,
and I was not mistaken . I comprehended
that he inquired whence I came. I extended
my arm and pointed towards the road which
had led me from the chasm in the rock ; then
an idea seized me. I drew forth my pocket
book and sketched on one of its blank leaves
a rough design of the ledge of the rock , the
rope, myself clinging to it ; then of the caver
nous rock below, the head of the reptile, the
lifeless form of my friend. I gave this primitive
kind of hieroglyph to my interrogator, who,
after inspecting it gravely , handed it to his next
neighbour, and it thus passed round the group.
The being I had at first encountered then said
a few words, and the child, who approached
and looked at my drawing, nodded as if he
comprehended its purport, and, returning to
the window, expanded the wings attached to
 THE COMING RACE . 31

his form , shook them once or twice, and then

launched himself into space without. I started
up in amaze and hastened to the window .
The child was already in the air,> buoyed on his
wings, which he did not flap to and fro as a
bird does, but which were elevated over his
head, and seemed to bear him steadily aloft
without effort of his own. His flight seemed
as swift as any eagle's ; and I observed that it
was towards the rock whence I had descended,
of which the outline loomed visible in the
brilliant atmosphere. In a very few minutes
he returned , skimming through the opening
from which he had gone, and dropping on the
floor the rope and grappling -hooks I had left
at the descent from the chasm . Some words
in a low tone passed between the beings
present: one of the group touched an auto
maton, which started forward and glided
from the room ; then the last comer, who had
addressed me by gestures, rose, took me by
the hand, and led me into the corridor. There
the platform by which I had mounted awaited
32 THE COMING RACE .

us ; we placed ourselves on it and were lowered

into the hall below. My new companion ,
still holding me by the hand, conducted me
from the building into a street (so to speak)
that stretched beyond it, with buildings on
either side, separated from each other by
gardens bright with rich -coloured vegetation
and strange flowers. Interspersed amidst these
gardens, which were divided from each other
by low walls , or walking slowly along the
road , were many forms similar to those I had
already seen. Some of the passers-by, on
observing me, approached my guide, evidently
by their tones , looks , and gestures addressing
to him inquiries about myself. In a few

moments a crowd collected round us , exa

mining me with great interest, as if I were
some rare wild animal. Yet even in gratify
ing their curiosity they preserved a grave and
courteous demeanour ; and after a few words
from my guide, who seemed to me to deprecate
obstruction in our road, they fell back with a
stately inclination of head, and resumed their
 THE COMING RACE . 33

own way with tranquil indifference. Midway

in this thoroughfare we stopped at a building
that differed from those we had hitherto passed ,
inasmuch as it formed three sides of a vast
court, at the angles of which were lofty
pyramidal towers ; in the open space between
the sides was a circular fountain of colossal
dimensions, and throwing up a dazzling spray
of what seemed to me fire. We entered the
building through an open doorway and came
into an enormous hall, in which were several
groups of children, all apparently employed in
work as at some great factory. There was a
huge engine in the wall which was in full
play, with wheels and cylinders, and resembling
our own steam-engines, except that it was
richly ornamented with precious stones and
metals, and appeared to emit a pale phosphor
escent atmosphere of shifting light. Many of
the children were at some mysterious work on
this machinery , others were seated before
tables ,I was not allowed to linger long
enough to examine into the nature of their
B
( 10.)
34 THE COMING RACE.

employment. Not one young voice was

heard—not one young face turned to gaze on
us. They were all still and indifferent as may
be ghosts, through the midst of which pass un
noticed the forms of the living.
Quitting this hall, my guide led me through
a gallery richly painted in compartments, with
a barbaric mixture of gold in the colours, like
pictures by Louis Cranach . The subjects de
scribed on these walls appeared to my glance
as intended to illustrate events in the history
of the race amidst which I was admitted. In
all there were figures, most of them like the
manlike creatures I had seen , but not all in the
same fashion of garb, nor all with wings.
There were also the effigies of various animals
and birds wholly strange to me, with back
grounds depicting landscapes or buildings. So
far as my imperfect knowledge of the pictorial
art would allow me to form an opinion, these
paintings seemed very accurate in design and
very rich in colouring, showing a perfect
knowledge of perspective, but their details not
 THE COMING RACE . 35

arranged according to the rules of composition

acknowledged by our artists- wanting, as it
were, a centre ; so that the effect was vague,
scattered, confused, bewildering— they were
like heterogeneous fragments of aa dream of art.
We now came into a room of moderate
size, in which was assembled what I after
wards knew to be the family of my guide,
seated at a table spread as for repast. The
forms thus grouped were those of my guide's
wife, his daughter and two sons. I recognised
at once the difference between the two sexes,
though the two females were of taller stature
and ampler proportions than the males ; and
their countenances, if still more symmetrical
in outline and contour, were devoid of the
softness and timidity of expression which gave
charm to the face of women as seen on the earth
above. The wife wore no wings, the daughter
wore wings longer than those of the males.
My guide uttered a few words, on which all
the persons seated rose, and with that peculiar
mildness of look and manner which I have
36 THE COMING RACE .

before noticed , and which is, in truth , the

common attribute of this formidable race, they
saluted me according to their fashion, which
consists in laying the right hand very gently on
the head and uttering a soft sibilant mono
syllable–S.Si, equivalent to "“ Welcome.”
The mistress of the house then seated me
beside her, and heaped a golden platter before
me from one of the dishes.
While I ate (and though the viands were
new to me, I marvelled more at the delicacy
than the strangeness of their flavour), my
companions conversed quietly, and so far as I
could detect, with polite avoidance of any
direct reference to myself, or any obtrusive
scrutiny of my appearance. Yet I was the
first creature of that variety of the human race
to which I belong that they had ever beheld,
and was consequently regarded by them as
a most curious and abnormal phenomenon.
But all rudeness is unknown to this people, and
the youngest child is taught to despise any
vehement emotional demonstration . When
 THE COMING RACE . 37
the meal was ended, my guide again took me
by the hand, and, re -entering the gallery,
touched a metallic plate inscribed with strange
figures, and which I rightly conjectured to be
of the nature of our telegraphs. A platform
descended, but this time we mounted to a
much greater height than in the former build
ing, and found ourselves in a room of moderate
dimensions, and which in its general character
had much that might be familiar to the associa
tions of a visitor from the upper world. There
were shelves on the wall containing what
appeared to be books, and indeed were so ;
mostly very small, like our diamond duode
cimos, shaped in the fashion of our volumes,
and bound in fine sheets of metal . There were
several curious -looking pieces of mechanism
scattered about , apparently models , such as
might be seen in the study of any professional
mechanician . Four automata (mechanical con
trivances which , with these people , answer the
ordinary purposes of domestic service ) stood
phantom - like at each angle in the wall. In
 ING E
38 THE COM RAC .

a recess was a low couch, or bed with pillows.

A window, with curtains of some fibrous
material drawn aside, opened upon a large
balcony. My host stepped out into the balcony ;
I followed him . We were on the uppermost
story of one of the angular pyramids ; the view
beyond was of a wild and solemn beauty impos
sible to describe,-the vast ranges of precipitous
rock which formed the distant background, the
interniediate valleys of mystic many - coloured
herbage, the flash of waters, many of them
like streams of roseate flame, the serene lustre
diffused over all by myriads of lamps, combined
to form аa whole which no words of mine can
convey adequate description ; so splendid was
it, yet so sombre ; so lovely, yet so awful.
But my attention was soon diverted from
these nether landscapes. Suddenly there arose,
as from the streets below, a burst of joyous
music ; then a winged form soared into the
space ; another as in chase of the first, another
and another ; others after others, till the crowd
grew thick and the number countless. But
 THE COMING RACE . 39

how describe the fantastic grace of these

forms in their undulating movements ! They
appeared engaged in some sport or amuse
ment; now forming into opposite squadrons ;
now scattering ; now each group threading the
other, soaring, descending, interweaving, sever
ing ; all in measured time to the music below,
as if in the dance of the fabled Peri.
I turned my gaze on my host in aa feverish
wonder. I ventured to place my hand on
the large wings that lay folded on his breast,
and in doing so a slight shock as of electri
city passed through me . I recoiled in fear ;
my host smiled, and, as if courteously to
gratify my curiosity, slowly expanded his
pinions. I observed that his garment be
neath thery became dilated as a bladder that
fills with air. The arms seemed to slide into
the wings, and in another moment he had
launched himself into the luminous atmos
phere, and hovered there, still , and with
outspread wings, as an eagle that basks in
the sun. Then, rapidly as an eagle swoops,
40 THE COMING RACE .

he rushed downwards into the midst of one of

the groups, skimming through the midst, and
as suddenly again soaring aloft. Thereon, three
forms, in one of which I thought to recognise
my host's daughter, detached themselves from
the rest, and followed him as a bird sportively
а
follows a bird. My eyes, dazzled with the lights
and bewildered by the throngs , ceased to dis
tinguish the gyrations and evolutions of these
winged playmates, till presently my host re
emerged from the crowd and alighted at my side.
The strangeness of all I had seen began
now to operate fast on my senses ; my mind
itself began to wander. Though not inclined
to be superstitious, nor hitherto believing that
man could be brought into bodily communica
tion with demons, I felt the terror and the
wild excitement with which , in the Gothic
ages, a traveller might have persuaded him
self that he witnessed a sabbat of fiends and
witches. I have a vague recollection of hav
ing attempted with vehement gesticulation ,
and forms of exorcism , and loud incoherent
 THE COMING RACE . 41

words, to repel my courteous and indulgent

host ; of his mild endeavours to calm and
soothe me ; of his intelligent conjecture that
my fright and bewilderment were occasioned
by the difference of form and movement be
tween us which the wings that had excited
my marvelling curiosity had, in exercise, made
still more strongly perceptible ; of the gentle
smile with which he had sought to dispel
my alarm by dropping the wings to the
ground and endeavouring to show me that
they were but a mechanical contrivance. That
sudden transformation did but increase my
horror, and as extreme fright often shows
itself by extreme daring, I sprang at his throat
like a wild beast. On an instant I was felled
to the ground as by an electric shock, and the
last confused images floating before my sight
ere I became wholly insensible, were the form
of my host kneeling beside me with one hand
on my forehead, and the beautiful calm face of
his daughter, with large, deep, inscrutable eyes
intently fixed upon my own.
B 2
42 THE COMING RACE .

CHAPTER VI .
I REMAINED in this unconscious state , as I
afterwards learned, for many days, even for
some weeks, according to our computation
of time. When I recovered I was in a strange
room , my host and all his family were gathered
round me, and to my utter amaze my host's
daughter accosted me in my own language
with but a slightly foreign accent.
“ How do you feel? ” she asked .
It was some moments before I could over
come my surprise enough to falter out, “ You
know my language ? How ? Who and what
are you ? ”
My host smiled and notioned to one of
his sons, who then took from a table a
number of thin metallic sheets on which were
traced drawings of various figures - a house, a
tree , a bird, a man , &c.
In these designs I recognised my own style
of drawing. Under each figure was written
the name of it in my language, and in my
 THE COMING RACE . 43

writing, and in another handwriting a word

strange to nie beneath it .
Said the host, “ Thus we began ; and my
daughter Zee, who belongs to the College of
Sages, has been your instructress and ours
too .”
Zee then placed before me other metallic
sheets, on which , in my writing, words first,
and then sentences, were inscribed. ' Under
each word and each sentence strange char
acters in another hand. Rallying my senses ,
I comprehended that thus a rude dictionary
had been effected. Had it been done while I
was dreaming ? “ That is enough 'now ,” said
Zee , in a tone of command. “ Repose and
take food.”

CHAPTER VII .

A ROOM to myself was assigned to me in this

vast edifice. It was prettily and fantastically
arranged , but without any of the splendour of
metal work or gems which was displayed in
44 THE COMING RACE .

the more public apartments. The walls were

hung with a variegated matting made from
the stalks and fibres of plants, and the floor
carpeted with the same.
The bed was without curtains , its supports
of iron resting on balls of crystal; the cover
ings, of a thin white substance resembling
cotton . There were sundry shelves contain
ing books. A curtained recess communicated
with an aviary filled with singing -birds, of
which I did not recognise one resembling
those I have seen on earth , except a beautiful
species of dove, though this was distinguished
from our doves by a tall crest of bluish plumes.
All these birds had been trained to sing in
artful tunes, and greatly exceeded the skill of
our piping bullfinches, which can rarely achieve
more than two tunes, and cannot, I believe,
sing those in concert. One might have sup
posed one's seif at an opera in listening to the
voices in my aviary. There were duets and
trios, and quartettes and choruses, all arranged
as in one piece of music. Did I want to
 THE COMING RACE . 45

silence the birds ? I had but to draw a curtain

over the aviary , and their song hushed as
they found themselves left in the dark. An
other opening formed a window, not glazed ,
but on touching a spring, a shutter ascended
from the floor, formed of some substance less
transparent than glass, but still sufficiently
pellucid to allow a softened view of the scene
without. To this window was attached a
balcony, or rather hanging-garden, wherein
grew many graceful plants and brilliant flowers.
The apartment and its appurtenances had thus
a character, if strange in detail, still familiar,
as a whole , to modern notions of luxury, and
would have excited admiration if found at
tached to the apartments of an English duchess
or a fashionable French author. Before I
arrived this was Zee's chamber ; she had hos
pitably assigned it to me.
Some hours after the waking up which is
described in my last chapter, I was lying
alone on my couch trying to fix my thoughts
on conjecture as to the nature and genus of
46 THE COMING RACE .

the people amongst whom I was thrown ,

when my host and his daughter Zee entered
the room. My host, still speaking my native
language, inquired , with much politeness,
whether it would be agreeable to me to con
verse , or if I preferred solitude. I replied,
that I should feel much honoured and obliged
by the opportunity offered me to express my
gratitude for the hospitality and civilities I
had received in a country to which I was a
stranger, and to learn enough of its customs
and manners not to offend through ignor
ance .

As I spoke, I had of course risen from my

couch ; but Zee, much to my confusion , curtly
ordered me to lie down again, and there was
something in her voice and eye, gentle as
both were, that compelled my obedience.
She then seated herself unconcernedly at the
foot of my bed, while her father took his
place on a divan a few feet distant.
“ But what part of the world do you
come from ,” asked my host, “ that we should
 THE COMING RACE . 47

appear so strange to you, and you to us ? I

have seen individual specimens of nearly all
the races differing from our own, except the
primeval savages who dwell in the most deso
late and remote recesses of uncultivated nature,
unacquainted with other light than that they
obtain from volcanic fires, and contented to
grope their way in the dark, as do many creep
ing, crawling, and even flying things. But
certainly you cannot be a member of those
barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do
you seem to belong to any civilised people.”
I was somewhat nettled at this last obser
vation, and replied that I had the honour to
belong to 'one of the most civilised nations of
the earth ; and that, so far as light was
concerned , while I admired the ingenuity and
disregard of expense with which my host and
his fellow -citizens had contrived to illumine
the regions unpenetrated by the rays of the
sun, yet I could not conceive how any who
had once beheld the orbs of heaven could
compare to their lustre the artificial lights
 NG
E MI CE
48 TH CO RA .

invented by the necessities of man . But my

host said he had seen specimens of most of the
races differing from his own , save the wretched
barbarians he had mentioned . Now, was it
possible that he had never been on the surface
of the earth , or could he only be referring to
communities buried within its entrails ?
My host was for some moments silent ; his
countenance showed a degree of surprise which
the people of that race very rarely manifest
under any circumstances, howsoever extraor
dinary . But Zee was more intelligent, and
exclaimed , “ So you see, my father, that there
is truth in the old tradition ; there always is
truth in every tradition commonly believed in
all times and by all tribes.”
" Zee,” said my host mildly, " you belong
to the College of Sages, and ought to be wiser
than I am ; but, as chief of the Light-preserving
Council, it is my duty to take nothing for
granted till it is proved to the evidence of my
own senses.” Then, turning to me, he asked
me several questions about the surface of the
 THE COMING RACE . 49

earth and the heavenly bodies ; upon which ,

though I answered him to the best of my
knowledge, my answers seemed not to satisfy
nor convince him . He shook his head quietly,
and, changing the subject rather abruptly, asked
how I had come down from what he was
pleased to call one world to the other. I
answered , that under the surface of the earth
there were mines containing minerals , or
metals, essential to our wants and our progress
in all arts and industries ; and I then briefly
explained the manner in which , while explor
ing one of these mines, I and my ill-fated
friend had obtained a glimpse of the regions
into which we had descended, and how the
descent had cost him his life ; appealing to the
rope and grappling-hooks that the child had
brought to the house in which I had been at
first received, as a witness of the truthfulness
of my story
My host then proceeded to question me as to
the habits and modes of life among the races
on the upper earth , more especially among
so THE COMING RACE .

those considered to be the most advanced in

that civilisation which he was pleased to
define “ the art of diffusing throughout a
community the tranquil happiness which
belongs to a virtuous and well -ordered house
hold .” Naturally desiring to represent in the
most favourable colours the world from which
I came, I touched but slightly, though in
dulgently, on the antiquated and decaying
institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on
the present grandeur and prospective pre
eminence of that glorious American Republic,
in which Europe enviously seeks its model
and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting
for an example of the social life of the United
States that city in which progress advances at
the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated
description of the moral habits of New York .
Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners,
that I did not make the favourable impression
I had anticipated, I elevated my theme ; dwell
ing on the excellence of democratic institu
tions, their promotion of tranquil happiness
 THE COMING RACE . SI
by the government of party, and the mode in
which they diffused such happiness through
out the community by preferring, for the
exercise of power and the acquisition of hon
ours, the lowliest citizens in point of pro
perty , education, and character. Fortunately
recollecting the peroration of a speech , on the
purifying influences of American democracy
and their destined spread over the world , made
by a certain eloquent senator ( for whose vote
in the Senate a Railway Company, to which
my two brothers belonged , had just paid
20,000 dollars), I wound up by repeating its
glowing predictions of the magnificent future
that smiled upon mankind - when the flag of
freedom should float over an entire continent ,
and two hundred millions of intelligent citizens,
accustomed from infancy to the daily use of
revolvers, should apply to a cowering universe
the doctrine of the Patriot Monroe .
When I had concluded , my host gently
shook his head , and fell into a musing study,
making a sign to me and his daughter to
52 THE COMING RACE .

remain silent while he reflected. And after a

time he said , in a very earnest and solemn
tone, “ If you think, as you say, that you ,
though a stranger, have received kindness at
the hands of me and mine, I adjure you to
reveal nothing to any other of our people
respecting the world from which you came,
unless, on consideration, I give you permission
to do so. Do you consent to this request ? ”
“ Of course I pledge my word to it, ” said
I, somewhat amazed ; and I extended my
right hand to grasp his. But he placed niy
hand gently on his forehead and his own right
hand on my breast, which is the custom
among this race in all matters of promise
or verbal obligations. Then turning to his
daughter, he said , “ And you , Zee, will not
repeat to any one what the stranger has said ,
or may say, to me or to you , of a world other
than our own .” Zee rose and kissed her

father on the temples , saying, with a smile,

" A Gy's tongue is wanton , but love can fetter
it fast. And if, my father, you fear lest a
 THE COMING RACE . 53

chance word from me or yourself could expose

our community to danger, by a desire to ex
plore a world beyond us, will not a wave of
the vril, properly impelled , wash even the
memory of what we have heard the stranger
say out of the tablets of the brain ? "
“ What is vril ? ” I asked .
Therewith Zee began to enter into an ex
planation of which I understood very little,
for there is no word in any language I know
which is an exact synonym for vril . I should
call it electricity, except that it comprehends
in its manifold branches other forces of nature,
to which , in our scientific nomenclature, differ
ing names are assigned, such as magnetism ,
galvanism, &c. These people consider that in
vril they have arrived at the unity in natural
energetic agencies , which has been conjectured
by many philosophers above ground , and which
Faraday thus intimates under the more cautious
term of correlation :
“ I have long held an opinion,” says that
illustrious experimentalist, “ almost amounting
 THE COMING RACE .
54
to a conviction, in common, I believe, with
many other lovers of natural knowledge, that
the various forms under which the forces of
matter are made manifest have one common
origin ; or, in other words , are so directly
related and mutually dependent, that they are
convertible, as it were, into one another, and
possess equivalents of power in their action .”
These subterranean philosophers assert that,
by one operation of vril, which Faraday would
perhaps call ' atmospheric magnetism ,' they
can influence the variations of temperature
in plain words, the weather ; that by other
operations, akin to those ascribed to mesmerism ,
electro -biology, odic force, &c. , but applied
scientifically through vril conductors, they can
exercise influence over minds and bodies ,
animal and vegetable, to an extent not sur
passed in the romances of our mystics. To
all such agencies they give the common name
of vril . Zee asked me if, in my world, it was
not known that all the faculties of the mind
could be quickened to a degree unknown in
 THE COMING RACE . 55

the waking state, by trance or vision, in which

the thoughts of one brain could be transmitted
to another, and knowledge be thus rapidly
interchanged . I replied , that there were among
us stories told of such trance or vision , and
that I had heard much and seen something
of the mode in which they were artificially
effected, as in mesmeric clairvoyance ; but
that these practices had fallen much into
disuse or contempt, partly because of the gross
impostures to which they had been made
subservient, and partly because, even where
the effects upon certain abnormal constitutions
were genuinely produced, the effects, when
fairly examined and analysed, were very un
satisfactory - not to be relied upon for any
systematic truthfulness or any practical purpose,
and rendered very mischievous to credulous
persons by the superstitions they tended to
produce. Zee received my answers with much
benignant attention , and said that similar
instances of abuse and credulity had been
familiar to their own scientific experience in
56 THE COMING RACE .

the infancy of their knowledge, and while the

properties of vril were misapprehended , but
that she reserved further discussion on this
subject till I was more fitted to enter into it.
She contented herself with adding, that it was
through the agency of vril, while I had been
placed in the state of trance, that I had been
made acquainted with the rudiments of their
language ; and that she and her father, who,
alone of the family, took the pains to watch
the experiment , had acquired a greater pro
portionate knowledge of my language than I
of their own ; partly because my language
was much simpler than theirs, comprising far
less of complex ideas ; and partly because
their organisation was, by hereditary culture,
much more ductile and more readily capable of
acquiring knowledge than mine. At this I
secretly demurred ; and having had , in the
course of a practical life, to sharpen my wits ,
whether at home or in travel, I could not allow
that my cerebral organisation could possibly be
duller than that of people who had lived all
 THE COMING RACE . 57

their lives by lamplight. However, while I

was thus thinking, Zee quietly pointed her
forefinger at my forehead and sent me to
sleep .

CHAPTER VIII .
WHEN I once more awoke I saw by my bed
side the child who had brought the rope and
grappling-hooks to the house in which I had
been first received, and which, as I afterwards
learned , was the residence of the chief magis ,
trate of the tribe. The child whose name was
Taë (pronounced Tar-ēē), was the magistrate's
eldest son. I found that during my last sleep
or trance I had made still greater advance in
the language of the country, and could con
verse with comparative ease and fluency.
This child was singularly handsome, even
for the beautiful race to which he belonged,
with a countenance very manly in aspect for
his years, and with a more vivacious and
energetic expression than I had hitherto seen
 NG
58 THE COMI RACE .

in the serene and passionless faces of the men .

He brought me the tablet on which I had
drawn the mode of my descent, and had also
sketched the head of the horrible reptile that
had scared me frommy friend's corpse . Point

ing to that part of the drawing, Taë put to

me a few questions respecting the size and
form of the monster, and the cave or chasm
from which it had emerged. His interest in
my answers seemed so grave as to divert him
for a while from any curiosity as to myself or
a

my antecedents. But to my great embarrass

ment, seeing how I was pledged to my host,
he was just beginning to ask me where I came
from , when Zee fortunately entered, and, over
hearing him , said, “ Taë, give to our guest
any information he may desire, but ask none
from him in return . To question him who
he is, whence he comes, or wherefore he is
here, would be a breach of the law which my
father has laid down for this house .
“ So be it,” said Taë, pressing his hand to
his heart ; and from that moment, till the one
 THE COMING RACE. 59

in which I saw him last, this child, with whom

I became very intimate, never once put to me
any of the questions thus interdicted .

CHAPTER IX .

It was not for some time, and until, by re

peated trances , if they are so to be called , my
mind became better prepared to interchange
ideas with my entertainers, and more fully to
comprehend differences of manners and customs,
at first too strange to my experience to be seized
by my reason , that I was enabled to gather
the following details respecting the origin and
history of this subterranean population, as por
tion of one great family race called the Ana.
According to the earliest traditions, the
remote progenitors of the race had once
tenanted a world above the surface of that
in which their descendants dwelt. Myths of
that world were still preserved in their
archives, and in those myths were legends of
60 THE COMING RACE .

a vaulted dome in which the lamps were

lighted by no human hand. But such legends
were considered by most conimentators as

allegorical fables. According to these tradi

tions the earth itself, at the date to which the
traditions ascend , was not indeed in its in
fancy, but in the throes and travail of tran
sition from one form of development to an
other, and subject to many violent revolutions
of nature . By one of such revolutions, that
portion of the upper world inhabited by the
ancestors of this race had been subjected to
inundations, not rapid , but gradual and un
controllable, in which all, save a scanty rem
nant, were submerged and perished . Whether
this be a record of our historical and sacred
Deluge, or of some earlier one contended for
by geologists, I do not pretend to conjecture ;
though , according to the chronology of this
people as compared with that of Newton , it
must have been many thousands of years
before the time of Noah . On the other hand ,
the account of these writers does not har
 THE COMING RACE . 61

monise with the opinions most in vogue

among geological authorities, inasmuch as it
places the existence of a human race upon
earth at dates long anterior to that assigned to
the terrestrial formation adapted to the intro
duction of mammalia . A band of the ill
fated race, thus invaded by the Flood , had ,
during the march of the waters, taken refuge
in caverns amidst the loftier rocks , and, wan
dering through these hollows, they lost sight
of the upper world for ever. Indeed, the
whole face of the earth had been changed
by this great revulsion ; land had been turned
into sea - sea into land. In the bowels of the
inner earth even now , I was informed as a
positive fact, might be discovered the remains
of human habitation - habitation not in huts
and caverns, but in vast cities whose ruins
attest the civilisation of races which flourished
before the age of Noah, and are not to be
classified with those genera to which philo
sophy ascribes the use of Aint and the ignor
ance of iron .
62 THE COMING RACE .

The fugitives bad carried with them the

knowledge of the arts they had practised above
ground - arts of culture and civilisation. Their
earliest want must have been tliat of supplying
below the earth the light they had lost above
it ; and at no time, even in the traditional
period, do the races, of which the one I now
sojourned with formed a tribe, seem to have
been unacquainted with the art of extracting
light from gases, or manganese, or petroleum .
They had been accustomed in their former
state to contend with the rude forces of nature ;
and indeed the lengthened battle they had
fought with their conqueror Ocean, which
had taken centuries in its spread, had quickened
their skill in curbing waters into dikes and
channels. To this skill they owed their pre
servation in their new abode . - For many
generations,” said my host, with a sort of
contempt and horror, “ these primitive fore
fathers are said to have degraded their rank
and shortened their lives by eating the flesh of
animals, many varieties of which had , like
 THE COMING RACE . 63

themselves, escaped the Deluge, and sought

shelter in the hollows of the earth ; other
animals, supposed to be unknown to the upper
world , those hollows themselves produced .”
When what we should term the historical
age emerged from the twilight of tradition,
the Ana were already established in different
communities, and had attained to a degree of
civilisation very analogous to that which the
more advanced nations above the earth now
enjoy. They were familiar with most of our
mechanical inventions, including the applica
tion of steam as well as gas. The communities
were in fierce competition with each other.
They had their rich and their poor ; they had
orators and conquerors ; they made war either
for a domain or an idea. Though the various
states acknowledged various forms of govern
ment, free institutions were beginning to pre
ponderate ; popular assemblies increased in
power ; republics soon became general ; the
democracy to which the most enlightened
European politicians look forward as the ex
64 THE COMING RACE .

treme goal of political advancement , and which

still prevailed among other subterranean races,
whom they despised as barbarians, the loftier
family of Ana, to which belonged the tribe I
was visiting, looked back to as one of the crude
and ignorant experiments which belong the

infancy of political science . It was the age of

envy and hate, of fierce passions, of constant
social changes more or less violent, of strife
between classes , of war between state and
state.. This phase of society lasted, however,
for some ages, and was finally brought to a
close, at least among the nobler and more
intellectual populations, by the gradual dis
covery of the latent powers stored in the all
permeating fluid which they denominate Vril.
According to the account I received from
Zee, who, as an erudite professor in the College
of Sages, had studied such matters more dili
gently than any other member of my host's
family, this fluid is capable of being raised and
disciplined into the mightiest agency over all
forms of matter, animate or inanimate. It
 THE COMING RACE . 6;

can destroy like the flash of lightning ; yet,

differently applied, it can replenish or invigorate
life, heal, and preserve, and on it they chiefly
rely for the cure of disease, or rather for
enabling the physical organisation to re -establish
the due equilibrium of its natural powers, and
thereby to cure itself. By this agency they
rend way through the most solid substances,
and open valleys for culture through the rocks
of their subterranean wilderness. From it
they extract the light which supplies their
lamps, finding it steadier, softer, and healthier
than the other inflammable materials they had
formerly used .
But the effects of the alleged discovery of
the means to direct the more terrible force of
vril were chiefly remarkable in their influence
upon social polity. As these effects became
familiarly known and skilfully administered ,
war between the Vril-discoverers ceased , for
they brought the art of destruction to such
perfection as to annul all superiority in num
bers, discipline, or military skill. The fire
( 10. ) с
66 THE COMING RACE.

lodged in the hollow of a rod directed by the

hand of a child could shatter the strongest
fortress, or cleave its burning way from the
van to the rear of an embattled host. If army
met army, and both had command of this
agency , it could be but to the annihilation of
each. The age of war was therefore gone,
but with the cessation of war other effects
bearing upon the social state soon became
apparent. Man was so completely at the
mercy cf man , each whom he encountered
being able, if so willing, to slay him on the
instant, that all notions of government by
force gradually vanished from political systems
and forms of law. It is only by force that
vast communities, dispersed through great
distances of space, can be kept together ; but
now there was no longer either the necessity
of self-preservation or the pride of aggrandise
ment to make one state desire to preponderate
in population over another.
The Vril-discoverers thus, in the course
of a few generations, peacefully split into
 THE COMING RACE . 67

communities of moderate size . The tribe

amongst which I had fallen was limited to
12,000 families. Each tribe occupied a terri
tory sufficient for all its wants , and at stated
periods the surplus population departed to
seek a realm of its own . There appeared no
necessity for any arbitrary selection of these
emigrants ; there was always a sufficient
number who volunteered to depart.
These subdivided states, petty if we regard
either territory or population , --all appertained
to one vast general family. They spoke the
same language, though the dialects might
slightly differ. They intermarried ; they main
tained the same general laws and customs ;
and so important a bond between these
several communities was the knowledge of
vril and the practice of its agencies, that
the word A - Vril was synonymous with
civilisation ; and Vril-ya, signifying c“. The
Civilised Nations,” was the common name
by which the communities employing the
uses of vril distinguished themselves from
68 THE COMING RACE .

such of the Ana as were yet in a state

of barbarism .
The government of the tribe of Vril-ya I
am treating of was apparently very compli
cated , really very simple. It was based upon
a principle recognised in theory, though little
carried out in practice, above ground-viz . ,
that the object of all systems of philosophical
thought tends to the attainment of unity, or
the ascent through all intervening labyrinths
to the simplicity of a single first cause or prin
ciple. Thus in politics, even republican writers
have agreed that a benevolent autocracy would
insure the best administration , if there were
any guarantees for its continuance, or against
its gradual abuse of the powers accorded to it.
This singular community elected therefore a
single supreme magistrate styled Tur ; he held
his office nominally for life, but he could
seldom be induced to retain it after the first
approach of old age. There was indeed in
this society nothing to induce any of its mem
bers to covet the cares of office. No honours ,
 THE COMING RACE . 69

no insignia of higher rank , were assigned to it.

The supreme magistrate was not distinguished
from the rest by superior habitation or revenue.
On the other hand , the duties awarded to him
were marvellously light and easy, requiring no
preponderant degree of energy or intelligence.
'There being no apprehensions of war, there
were no armies to maintain ; being no govern
ment of force, there was no police to appoint
and direct . What we call crime was utterly
unknown to the Vril-ya ; and there were no
courts of criminal justice . The rare instances
of civil disputes were referred for arbitration
to friends chosen by either party, or decided
by the Council of Sages, which will be de
scribed later. There were no professional
lawyers ; and indeed their laws were but
amicable conventions, for there was no power
to enforce laws against an offender who carried
in his staff the power to destroy his judges.
There were customs and regulations to com
pliance with which , for several ages, the people
had tacitly habituated themselves; or if in any
70 THE COMING RACE .

instance an individual felt such compliance

hard , he quitted the community and went
elsewhere. There was , in fact, quietly estab
lished amid this state , much the same compact
that is found in our private families, in which
we virtually say to any independent grown -up
member of the family whom we receive and
entertain, “ Stay or go, according as our habits
and regulations suit or displease you." But
though there were no laws such as we call
laws, no race above ground is so law -observing.
Obedience to the rule adopted by the com
munity has become as much an instinct as if
it were implanted by nature. Even in every
household the head of it makes a regulation
for its guidance, which is never resisted nor
even cavilled at by those who belong to the
family. They have a proverb, the pithiness
of which is much lost in this paraphrase, “ No
happiness without order, no order without
authority, no authority without unity .” The
mildness of all government among them , civil
or domestic, may be signalised by their idio
 THE COMING RACE . 71

matic expressions for such terms as illegal or

forbidden - viz ., “ It is requested not to do
so -and-so .” Poverty among the Ana is as
unknown as crime ; not that property is held
in common, or that all are equals in the extent
of their possessions or the size and luxury of
their habitations : but there being no difference
of rank or position between the grades of wealth
or the choice of occupations, each pursues his
own inclinations without creating envy or
vying ; some like a modest, some a more
splendid kind of life ; each makes himself
happy in his own way. Owing to this absence
of competition, and the limit placed on the
population, it is difficult for a family to fall
into distress ; there are no hazardous specula
tions, no emulators striving for superior wealth
and rank . No doubt , in each settlement all
originally had the same proportions of land
dealt out to them ; but some , more adven
turous than others, had extended their posses
sions farther into the bordering wilds, or had
improved into richer fertility the produce of
72 THE COMING RACE .

their fields, or entered into commerce or trade.

Thus, necessarily, some had grown richer than
others, but none had become absolutely poor,
or wanting anything which their tastes desired .
If they did so, it was always in their power to
migrate, or at the worst to apply, without
shame and with certainty of aid, to the rich ;
for all the members of the community con
sidered themselves as brothers of one affection
ate and united family. More upon this head
will be treated of incidentally as my narrative
proceeds.
The chief care of the supreme magistrate
was to communicate with certain active de
partments charged with the administration
of special details. The most important and
essential of such details was that connected
with the due provision of light . Of this
department my host, Aph-Lin, was the chief.
Another department, which might be called
the foreign, communicated with the neigh
bouring kindred states, principally for the
purpose of ascertaining all new inventions ;
 THE COMING RACE . 73

and to a third department, all such inventions

and improvements in machinery were com
mitted for trial . Connected with this depart
ment was the College of Sages-a college
especially favoured by such of the Ana as
were widowed and childless, and by the young
unmarried females, amongst whom Zee was
the most active , and , if what we call renown
or distinction was a thing acknowledged by
this people (which I shall later show it is not),
among the most renowned or distinguished.
It is by the female Professors of this College
that those studies which are deemed of least
use in practical life --- as purely speculative
philosophy, the history of remote periods,
and such sciences as entomology, conchology,
:-are the more diligently cultivated. Zee,
& c.-
whose mind , active as Aristotle's, equally em
braced the largest domains and the minutest
details of thought, had written two volumes on
the parasite insect that dwells amid the hairs
of a tiger's * paw, which work was considered
* The animal here referred to has many points of differ
C 2
74 THE COMING RACE .

the best authority on that interesting subject.

But the researches of the sages are not con
fined to such subtle or elegant studies. They
comprise various others more important, and
especially the properties of vril, to the percep
tion of which their finer nervous organisation
renders the female Professors eminently keen.
It is out of this college that the Tur, or chief
magistrate, selects Councillors, limited to three,
in the rare instances in which novelty of event
or circumstance perplexes his own judgment .
There are a few other departments of minor
consequence , but all are carried on so noise
lessly and quietly that the evidence of a go
vernment seems to vanish altogether, and social
order to be as regular and unobtrusive as if it
ence from the tiger of the upper world . It is larger, and
with a broader paw, and still more receding frontal. It
haunts the sides of lakes and pools, and feeds principally
on fishes, though it does not object to any terrestrial
animal of inferior strength that comes in its way. It is
becoming very scarce even in the wild districts, where it is
devoured by gigantic reptiles. I apprehend that it clearly
belongs to the tiger species, since the parasite animalcule
found in its paw , like that found in the Asiatic tiger's, is a
a

miniature image of itself.

 THE COMING RACE . 75

were a law of nature . Machinery is em

ployed to an inconceivable extent in all the
operations of labour within and without doors,
and it is the unceasing object of the depart
ment charged with its administration to ex
tend its efficiency. There is no class of
labourers or servants, but all who are re

quired to assist or control the machinery are

found in the children , from the time they
leave the care of their mothers to the marriage
able age, which they place at sixteen for the
Gy -ei (the females), twenty for the Ana ( the
males) . These children are formed into bands
and sections under their own chiefs, each follow
ing the pursuits in which he is most pleased , or
for which he feels himself most fitted . Some
take to handicrafts, some to agriculture, some
to household work , and some to the only
services of danger to which the population
is exposed ; for the sole perils that threaten
this tribe are, first, from those occasional con
vulsions within the earth , to foresee and guard
against which tasks their utmost ingenuity
76 THE COMING RACE .

irruptions of fire and water, the storms of

subterranean winds and escaping gases. At
the borders of the domain, and at all places
where such peril might be apprehended , vigi
lant inspectors are stationed with telegraphic
communication to the hall in which chosen
sages take it by turns to hold perpetual sit
tings. These inspectors are always selected
from the elder boys approaching the age of
puberty, and on the principle that at that age
observation is more acute and the physical
forces more alert than at any other. The
second service of danger, less grave, is in the
destruction of all creatures hostile to the life,
or the culture, or even the comfort, of the
Ana . Of these the most formidable are the
vast reptiles , of some of which antediluvian
relics are preserved in our museums, and cer
tain gigantic winged creatures, half-bird , half
reptile . These, together with lesser wild
animals, corresponding to our tigers or venom
ous serpents, it is left to the younger children
to hunt and destroy ; because , according to
 THE COMING RACE . 77

the Ana, here ruthlessness is wanted, and the

younger a child the more ruthlessly he will
destroy. There is another class of animals
in the destruction of which discrimination is
to be used , and against which children of
intermediate age are appointed-animals that
do not threaten the life of man , but ravage
the produce of his labour, varieties of the elk
and deer species, and a smaller creature much
akin to our rabbit, though infinitely more
destructive to crops, and much more cunning
in its mode of depredation . It is the first
object of these appointed infants, to tame the
more intelligent of such animals into respect
for enclosures signalised by conspicuous land
marks, as dogs are taught to respect a larder,
or even to guard the master's property. It is
only where such creatures are found untam
able to this extent that they are destroyed .
Life is never taken away for food or for sport,
and never spared where untamably inimical
to the Ana. Concomitantly with these bodily
services and tasks , the mental education of the
78 THE COMING RACE .

children goes on till boyhood ceases. It is

the general custom, then, to pass through a
course of instruction at the College of Sages,
in which , besides more general studies, the
pupil receives special lessons in such vocation
or direction of intellect as he himself selects .
Some, however, prefer to pass this period of
probation in travel, or to emigrate, or to settle
down at once into rural or commercial pur
suits . No force is put upon individual inclina
tion .

CHAPTER X.
The word Ana (pronounced broadly Arna )
corresponds with our plural men ; An ( pro
nounced Arn ), the singular, with man . The
word for woman is Gy (pronounced hard, as in
Guy ) ; it forms itself into Gy-ei for the plural ,
but the G becomes soft in the plural, like Jy
ci. They have a proverb to the effect that this
difference in pronunciation is symbolical, for
that the female sex is soft collectively , but
 THE COMING RACE . 79

hard to deal with in the individual. The Gy

ei are in the fullest enjoyment of all the rights
of equality with males, for which certain
philosophers above ground contend.
In childhood they perform the offices of
work and labour impartially with boys; and ,
indeed , in the earlier age appropriated to the
destruction of animals irreclaimably hostile,
the girls are frequently preferred, as being
by constitution more ruthless under the
influence of fear or hate . In the interval
between infancy and the marriageable age
familiar intercourse between the sexes is sus
pended. At the marriageable age it is re
newed, never with worse consequences than
those which attend upon marriage. All arts
and vocations allotted to the one sex are open
to the other, and the Gy-ei arrogate to them
selves a superiority in all those abstruse and
mystical branches of reasoning, for which they
say the Ana are unfitted by a duller sobriety
of understanding, or the routine of their
matter-of-fact occupations, just as young ladies
So THE COMING RACE .

in our own world constitute themselves

authorities in the subtlest points of theological
doctrine, for which few men , actively engaged
in worldly business, have sufficient learning or
refinement of intellect. Whether owing to
early training in gymnastic exercises or to
their constitutional organisation, the Gy -ei are
usually superior to the Ana in physical strength
(an important element in the consideration and
maintenance of female rights) . They attain
to loftier stature, and amid their rounder
proportions are embedded sinews and muscles
as hardy as those of the other sex . Indeed
they assert that, according to the original laws
of nature , females were intended to be larger
than males, and maintain this dogma by
reference to the earliest formations of life in
insects, and in the most ancient family of the
vertebrata ---viz ., fishes --in both of which the
females are generally large enough to make a
meal of their consorts if they so desire. Above
all , the Gy-ei have a eadier and more con
centrated power over that mysterious fluid or
 THE COMING RACE . 81

agency which contains the element of destruc

tion , with a larger portion of that sagacity
which comprehends dissimulation . Thus they
can not only defend themselves against all
aggressions from the males, but could , at any
moment when he least suspected his danger,
terminate the existence of an offending spouse.
To the credit of the Gy-ei, no instance of their
abuse of this awful superiority in the art of
destruction is on record for several ages. The
last that occurred in the community I speak
of appears ( according to their chronology ) to
have been about two thousand years ago. A
Gy, then in aa fit of jealousy , slew her husband ;
and this abominable act inspired such terror
among the males that they emigrated in a
body and left all the Gy-ei to themselves.
The history runs that the widowed Gy-ei, thus
reduced to despair, fell upon the murderess
when in her sleep (and therefore unarmed),
and killed her, and then entered into a solemn
obligation amongst themselves to abrogate for
ever the exercise of their extreme conjugal
82 THE COMING RACE .

powers, and to inculcate the same obligation

for ever and ever on their female children .
By this conciliatory process , a deputation
despatched to the fugitive consorts succeeded
in persuading many to return , but those who
did return were mostly the elder ones. The
younger, either from too craven a doubt of
their consorts, or too high an estimate of their
own merits, rejected all overtures, and, remain
ing in other communities, were caught up
there by other mates, with whom perhaps they
were no better off. But the loss of so large a
portion of the male youth operated as a salutary
warning on the Gy -ei, and confirmed them in
the pious resolution to which they had pledged
themselves. Indeed it is now popularly con
sidered that, by long hereditary disuse, the
Gy-ei have lost both the aggressive and the
defensive superiority over the Ana which they
once possessed, just as in the inferior animals
above the earth many peculiarities in their
original formation, intended by nature for
their protection , gradually fade or become
 THE COMING RACE . 83

inoperative when not needed under altered

circumstances . I should be sorry , however,
for any An who induced a Gy to make the
experiment whether he or she were the
stronger.
From the incident I have narrated , the Ana
date certain alterations in the marriage cus
toms, tending, perhaps, somewhat to the
advantage of the male . They now bind
themselves in wedlock only for three years ;
at the end of each third year either male or
female can divorce the other and is free to
marry again. At the end of ten years the
An has the privilege of taking a second wife,
allowing the first to retire if she so please.
These regulations are for the most part a dead
letter ; divorces and polygamy are extremely
rare, and the marriage state now seems singu
larly happy and serene among this astonishing
people ; –- the Gy-ei, notwithstanding their
boastful superiority in physical strength and
intellectual abilities, being much curbed into
gentle manners by the dread of separation or
84 THE COMING RACE .

of a second wife, and the Ana being very

much the creatures of custom , and not , except
under great aggravation , liking to exchange
for hazardous novelties faces and manners to
which they are reconciled by habit. But there
is one privilege the Gy-ei carefully retain, and
the desire for which perhaps forms the secret
motive of most lady asserters of woman rights
above ground. They claim the privilege, here
usurped by men , of proclaiming their love and
urging their suit ; in other words, of being
the wooing party rather than the wooed .
Such a phenomenon as an old maid does not
exist among the Gy-ei. Indeed it is very
seldom that a Gy does not secure any An upon
whom she sets her heart, if his affections be
not strongly engaged elsewhere. However
coy, reluctant, and prudish, the male she
courts may prove at first, yet her persever
ance, her ardour, her persuasive powers, her
command over the mystic agencies of vril,
are pretty sure to run down his neck into
what we call " the fatal noose .” Their
 THE COMING RACE . 85

argument for the reversal of that relationship

of the sexes which the blind tyranny of man
has established on the surface of the earth ,
appears cogent, and is advanced with a frank
ness which might well be commended to im
partial consideration . They say, that of the
two the female is by nature of a more loving
disposition than the male — that love occupies
a larger space in her thoughts, and is more
essential to her happiness, and that therefore
she ought to be the wooing party ; that other
wise the male is a shy and dubitant creature
that he has often a selfish predilection for the
single state — that he often pretends to misunder
stand tender glances and delicate hints — that, in
short, he must be resolutely pursued and cap
tured . They add , moreover, that unless the
Gy can secure the An of her choice, and one
whom she would not select out of the whole
world becomes her mate, she is not only less
happy than she otherwise would be, but she
is not so good a being, that her qualities of
heart are not sufficiently developed ; whereas
86 THE COMING RACE .

the An is a creature that less lastingly concen

trates his affections on one object ; that if he
cannot get the Gy whom he prefers he easily
reconciles himself to another Gy ; and, finally,
that at the worst, if he is loved and taken care
of, it is less necessary to the welfare of his
existence that he should love as well as be
loved ; he grows contented with his creature
comforts, and the many occupations of thought
which he creates for himself.
Whatever may be said as to this reasoning,
the system works well for the male ; for being
thus sure that he is truly and ardently loved ,
and that the more coy and reluctant he shows
himself, the more the determination to secure
him increases, he generally contrives to make
his consent dependent on such conditions as
he thinks the best calculated to insure, if not
a blissful, at least a peaceful life . Each indi
vidual An has his own hobbies, his own ways,
his own predilections, and , whatever they may
be, he demands a promise of full and unre
strained concession to them . This , in the
 THE COMING RACE : 87

pursuit of her object, the Gy readily promises ;

and as the characteristic of this extraordinary
people is an implicit veneration for truth , and
her word once given is never broken even
by the giddiest Gy, the conditions stipulated
for are religiously observed . In fact, notwith
standing all their abstract rights and powers,
the Gy-ei are the most amiable, conciliatory,
and submissive wives I have ever seen even in
the happiest households above ground . It is
an aphorism among them , that “ where a Gy
loves it is her pleasure to obey .” It will be
observed that in the relationship of the sexes
I have spoken only of marriage, for such is
the moral perfection to which this community
has attained, that any illicit connection is as
little possible amongst them as it would be to a
couple of linnets during the time they agreed
to live in pairs.
88 THE COMING RACE .

CHAPTER XI .

NOTHING had more perplexed me in seeking to

reconcile my sense to the existence of regions
extending below the surface of the earth , and
habitable by beings, if dissimilar from , still , in
all material points of organism , akin to those
in the upper world , than the contradiction thus
presented to the doctrine in which, I believe,
most geologists and philosophers concur - viz .,
that though with us the sun is the great source
of heat, yet the deeper we go beneath the crust
of the earth , the greater is the increasing heat,
being, it is said , found in the ratio of a degree
for every foot, commencing from fifty
below the surface. But though the domains
of the tribe I speak of were , on the higher
ground , so comparatively near to the surface,
that I could account for a temperature, therein ,
suitable to organic life, yet even the ravines
and valleys of that realm were much less hot
than philosophers would deem possible at such
a depth - certainly not warmer than the south
 THE COMING RACE . 89

of France, or at least of Italy. And accord

ing to all the accounts I received, vast tracts
immeasurably deeper beneath the surface, and
in which one might have thought only sala
manders could exist, were inhabited by innu
merable races organised like ourselves . I

cannot pretend in any way to account for a

fact which is so at variance with the recognised
laws of science, nor could Zee much help me
towards a solution of it. She did but conjec
ture that sufficient allowance had not been
made by our philosophers for the extreme
porousness of the interior earth--the vastness
of its cavities and irregularities , which served
to create free currents of air and frequent
winds—and for the various modes in which
heat is evaporated and thrown off. She
allowed , however, that there was a depth at
which the heat was deemed to be intolerable
to such organised life as was known to the
experience of the Vril-ya, though their philoso
phers believed that even in such places liſe of
some kind , life sentient, life intellectual, would
 THE COMING RACE .
90
be found abundant and thriving, could the
philosophers penetrate to it. " Wherever the
All-Good builds, ” said she, “ there, be sure ,
He places inhabitants. He loves not empty
dwellings." She added , however, that many
changes in temperature and climate had been
effected by the skill of the Vril-ya , and that
the agency of vril had been successfully em
ployed in such changes. She described a
subtle and life - giving medium called Lai ,
which I suspect to be identical with the
ethereal oxygen of Dr. Lewins, wherein work
all the correlative forces united under the name
of vril; and contended that wherever this
medium could be expanded, as it were, suffi
ciently for the various agencies of vril to have
ample play, a temperature congenial to the
highest forms of life could be secured . She
said also, that it was the belief of their na
turalists that flowers and vegetation had been
produced originally ( whether developed from
seeds borné from the surface of the earth in
the earlier convulsions of nature, or imported
 THE COMING RACE .
91
by the tribes that first sought refuge in cavern
ous hollows) through the operations of the
light constantly brought to bear on them , and
the gradual improvement in culture . She said
also that since the vril light had superseded all
other light-giving bodies , the colours of flower
and foliage had become more brilliant, and
vegetation had acquired larger growth.
Leaving these matters to the consideration
of those better competent to deal with them , I
must now devote a few pages to the very in
teresting questions connected with the lan
guage of the Vril-ya.

CHAPTER XII .

The language of the Vril-ya is peculiarly

interesting, because it seems to me to exhibit
with great clearness the traces of the three
main transitions through which language
passes in attaining to perfection of form .
92 THE COMING RACE .

One of the most illustrious of recent philo

logists, Max Müller, in arguing for the analogy
between the strata of language and the strata
of the earth , lays down this absolute dogma :
“ No language can , by any possibility, be
inflectional without having passed through
the agglutinative and isolating stratum . No
language can be agglutinative without clinging
with its roots to the underlying stratum of
isolation . ”--012 the Stratification of Language,
p . 20 .
Taking then the Chinese language as the
best existing type of the original isolating
stratum , as the faithful photograph of man
in his leading-strings trying the muscles of his
mind, groping his way, and so delighted with
his first successful grasps that he repeats them
"
again and again ,” * — we have, in the language
of the Vril-ya, still “ clinging with its roots
to the underlying stratum , ” the evidences of
the original isolation. It abounds in mono
syllables, which are the foundations of the
* Max Müller, “ Stratification of Language ," p. 13.
 THE COMING RACE . 93

language. The transition into the agglu

tinative form marks an epoch that must have
gradually extended through ages, the written
literature of which has only survived in a few
fragments of symbolical mythology and cer
tain pithy sentences which have passed into
popular proverbs. With the extant literature
of the Vril-ya the inflectional stratum com
mences . No doubt at that time there must
have operated concurrent causes, in the fusion
of races by some dominant people, and the
rise of some great literary phenomena by
which the form of language became arrested
and fixed . As the inflectional stage prevailed
over the agglutinative, it is surprising to see
how much more boldly the original roots of
the language project from the surface that
conceals them . In the old fragments and
proverbs of the preceding stage the mono
syllables which compose those roots vanish
amidst words of enormous length , com
prehending whole sentences from which no
one part can be disentangled from the other
94 THE COMING RACE .

and employed separately. But when the

inflectional form of language became so far
advanced as to have its scholars and gram
marians, they seem to have united in extir
pating all such polysynthetical or pollysyllabic
monsters, as devouring invaders of the abo
riginal forms. Words beyond three syllables
became proscribed as barbarous, and in pro
portion as the language grew thus simplified,
it increased in strength, in dignity, and in
sweetness. Though now very compressed in
sound , it gains in clearness by that com
pression. By a single letter, according to its
position, they contrive to express all that
with civilised nations in our upper world it
takes the waste, sometimes of syllables, some
times of sentences, to express. Let me here
cite one or two instances : An (which I will
translate man) , Ana (men) ; the letter s is
with them a letter implying multitude, accord
ing to where it is placed ; Sana means man
kind ; Ansa, a multitude of men. The prefix
of certain letters in their alphabet invariably
 THE COMING RACE . 95

denotes compound significations. For instance,

GI (which with them is a single letter, as th
is a single letter with the Greeks) at the com
mencement of a word infers an assemblage
or union of things, sometimes kindred , some
times dissimilar-as Oon, a house ; Gloon, a
town ( i.e. an assemblage of houses). Ata is
sorrow ; Glata, a public calamity. Aur-an is
the health or wellbeing of a man ; Glauran ,
the wellbeing of the state, the good of the
community ; and a word constantly in their
mouths is A-glauran, which denotes their
political creed-viz. , that “ the first principle
of a community is the good of all." Aub is
invention ; Sila, a tone in music. Glaubsila,
as uniting the ideas of invention and of musical
intonation, is the classical word for poetry
abbreviated , in ordinary conversation, to
Glaubs . Na, which with them is, like GI ,
but a single letter, always, when an initial,
implies something antagonistic to life or joy
or comfort, resembling in this the Aryan root
Nak, expressive of perishing or destruction,
 G
THE COMIN RACE .
96
Nax is darkness ; Narl , death ; Naria , sin or
evil . Nas—an uttermost condition of sin and
evil - corruption. In writing, they deem it
irreverent to express the Supreme Being by
any special name. He is symbolised by what
may be termed the hieroglyphic of a pyramid,
A. In prayer they address Him by a name
which they deem too sacred to confide to a
stranger, and I know it not. In conversation
they generally use a periphrastic epithet, such
as the All-Good. The letter V, symbolical of
the inverted pyramid, where it is an initial,
nearly always denotes excellence or power ;
as Vril, of which I have said so much ; Veed ,
an immortal spirit ; Veedya, immortality ;
Koom , pronounced like the Welsh Cwm ,
denotes something of hollowness. Koom
itself is a profound hollow , metaphorically a
cavern ; Koom-in, a hole ; Zi-koom , a valley ;
Koom -zi, vacancy or void ; Bodh - koom ,
ignorance (literally , knowledge-void). Koom
Posh is their name for the government of
the many, or the ascendancy of the most
 THE COMING RACE .
97
ignorant or hollow. Posh is an almost un
translatable idiom, implying, as the reader
will see later, contempt. The closest render
ing I can give to it is our slang term “ bosh ; ”
and thus Koom -Posh may be loosely rendered
“ Hollow - Bosh .” But when Democracy or
Koom -Posh degenerates from popular igno
rance into that popular passion or ferocity
which precedes its decease, as (to cite illustra
tions from the upper world) during the French
Reign of Terror, or for the fifty years of the
Roman Republic preceding the ascendancy of
Augustus, their name for that state of things
is Glek-Nas. Ek is strife ---Glek, the universal
strife . Nas as I before said, is corruption
or rot ; thus Glek-Nas may be construed,
sithe universal strife-rot.” Their compounds
are very expressive ; thus Bodh being know
ledge, and Too, a participle that implies the
action of cautiously approaching, -Too -bodh
is their word for Philosophy; Pah is a con
temptuous exclamation analogous to our idiom ,
" stuff and nonsense ; Pah -bodh ( literally,
D
( 10. )
 ING E
THE COM RAC .
98
stuff-and -nonsense-knowledge) is their term
for futile or false philosophy, and is applied
to a species of metaphysical or speculative
ratiocination formerly in vogue, which con
sisted in making inquiries that could not be
answered, and were not worth making ; such ,
for instance, as, “ Why does an An have five
toes to his feet instead of four or six ? Did
the first An, created by the All-Good , have
the same number of toes as his descendants ?
In the form by which an An will be recognised
by his friends in the future state of being, will
he retain any toes at all, and , if so, will they
be material toes or spiritual toes ? ” I take
these illustrations of Pah-bodh , not in irony or
jest, but because the very inquiries I name
formed the subject of controversy by the latest
cultivators of that “ science ' — 4000 years ago.
In the declension of nouns I was informed
that anciently there were eight cases (one more
than in the Sanskrit Grammar) ; but the effect
of time has been to reduce these cases, and
multiply , instead of these varying terminations,
 THE COMING RACE . 99

explanatory prepositions. At present, in the

Grammar submitted to my study, there were
four cases to nouns, three having varying ter
minations, and the fourth a differing prefix.
SINGULAR . PLURAL .
Nom . An, Man . Nom. Ana, Men .
Dat. Ano, to Man . Dat. Anoi, to Men .
Ac. Anam , Man . Ac. Ananda , Men .
Voc . Hil-An , O Man . Voc . Hil-Ananda, O Men.
In the elder inflectional literature the dual
form existed—it has long been obsolete.
The genitive case with them is also obso
lete ; the dative supplies its place : they say the
House to a Man, instead of the House of a
Man . When used (sometimes in poetry ), the
genitive in the termination is the same as the
nominative ; so is the ablative, the preposition
that marks it being a prefix or suffix at option,
and generally decided by ear, according to the
sound of the noun. It will be observed that the
prefix Hil marks the vocative case. It is always
retained in addressing another , except in the
most intimate domestic relations ; its onission
would be considered rude : just as in our old
100 THE COMING RACE.

forms of speech in addressing a king it would

have been deemed disrespectful to say “ King ,”
and reverential to say “ O King.” In fact, as
they have no titles of honour, the vocative
adjuration supplies the place of a title, and is
given in partially to all. The prefix Hil enters
into the composition of words that imply dis
tant communications, as Hil-ya, to travel .
In the conjugation of their verbs, which is
much too lengthy a subject to enter on here,
the auxiliary verb Ya, “ to go,” which plays
so considerable a part in the Sanskrit, appears
and performs a kindred office, as if it were a
radical in some language from which both had
descended . But another auxiliary of opposite
signification also accompanies it and shares its
labours - viz ., Zi , to stay or repose . Thus Ya
enters into the future tense , and Zi in the pre
terite of all verbs requiring auxiliaries. Yam,
I go - Yiam , I may go-Yani-Ya, I shall go
(literally, I go to go)—Zam-poo-yan, I have
gone (literally, I rest from gone).) Ya, as a
termination , implies by analogy, progress,
 THE COMING RACE . ΙΟΙ

movement, efflorescence . Zi , as a terminal ,

denotes fixity, sometimes in a good sense,
sonietimes in a bad , according to the
word with which it is coupled. Iva-zi ,
eternal goodness ; Nan-zi , eternal evil. Poo
(from) enters as a prefix to words that denote
repugnance, or things from which we ought
to be averse. Poo-pra, disgust ; Poo-naria,
falsehood, the vilest kind of evil . Poosh or
Posh I have already confessed to be untrans
latable literally. It is an expression of con
tempt not unmixed with pity. This radical
seems to have originated from inherent sym
pathy between the labial effort and the senti
ment that impelled it, Poo being an utterance
in which the breath is exploded from the lips
with more or less vehemence. On the other
hand, 2, when an initial , is with them a sound
in which the breath is sucked inward , and
thus Zu, pronounced Zoo (which in their
language is one letter), is the ordinary prefix
to words that signify something that attracts,
pleases, touches the heart-as Zummer, lover ;
102 THE COMING RACE .

Zutze, love ; Zuzulia, delight. This indrawn

sound of Z seems indeed naturally appropriate
to fondness. Thus, even in our language,
mothers say to their babies, in defiance of
9
grammar, “ Zoo darling ; ” and I have heard a
learned professor at Boston call his wife (he had
been only married a month) “ Zoo little pet. ”
I cannot quit this subject, however, without
observing by what slight changes in the dia
lects favoured by different tribes of the same
race, the original signification and beauty of
sounds may become confused and deformed .
Zee told me with much indignation that
Zummer (lover) , which , in the wayshe uttered
it, seemed slowly taken down to the very
depths of her heart, was, in some not very
distant communities of the Vril- ya, vitiated
into the half-hissing, half-nasal, wholly dis
agreeable, sound of Sŭbber. I thought to
myself it only wanted the introduction of 1
before u to render it into an English word
significant of the last quality an amorous Gy
would desire in her Zummer.
 THE COMING RACE . 103

I will but mention another peculiarity in this

language which gives equal force and brevity
to its forms of expression .
A is with them , as with us, the first letter
of the alphabet, and is often used as a prefix
word by itself to convey a complex idea of
sovereignty or chiefdom , or presiding prin
ciple. For instance, Iva is goodness ; Diva ,
goodness and happiness united ; A -Diva is
unerring and absolute truth . I have already
noticed the value of A in A - glauran, so, in
vril (to whose properties they trace their pre
sent state of civilisation) , A-vril, denotes, as I
have said, civilisation itself.
The philologist will have seen from the
above how much the language of the Vril
ya is akin to the Aryan or Indo-Germanic ;
but, like all languages, it contains words and
forms in which transfers from very opposite
sources of speech have been taken . The very
title of Tur, which they give to their supreme
magistrate, indicates theft from a tongue akin
to the Turanian. They say themselves that
104 THE COMING RACE .

this is a foreign word borrowed from a title

which their historical records show to have
been borne by the chief of a nation with
whom the ancestors of the Vril-ya were, in
very remote periods, on friendly terms, but
which has long become extinct, and they say
that when, after the discovery of vril, they
remodelled their political institutions, they
expressly adopted a title taken from an ex
tinct race and a dead language for that of their
chief magistrate, in order to avoid all titles
for that office with which they had previous
associations.
Should life be spared to me, I may collect
into systematic form such knowledge as I
acquired of this language during my sojourn
amongst the Vril-ya. But what I have already
said will perhaps suffice to show to genuine
philological students that a language which ,
preserving so many of the roots in the abo
riginal form , and clearing from the immediats,
but transitory, polysynthetical stage so many
rude incumbrances, has attained to such a
 THE COMING RACE . 105

union of simplicity and compass in its final

inflectional forms, must have been the gradual
work of countless ages and many varieties of
mind ; that it contains the evidence of fusion
between congenial races, and necessitated , in
arriving at the shape of which I have given
examples, the continuous culture of a highly
thoughtful people.
That , nevertheless , the literature which be
longs to this language is a literature of the
past ; that the present felicitous state of society
at which the Ana have attained forbids the
progressive cultivation of literature, especia!ly
in the two main divisions of fiction and history,
- I shall have occasion to show .

CHAPTER XIII .

This people have a religion, and, whatever

may be said against it, at least, it has these
strange peculiarities: firstly , that they all
believe in the creed they profess ; secondly ,
D 2
106 THE COMING RACE .

that they all practise the precepts which the

creed inculcates. They unite in the worship
of the one divine Creator and Sustainer of the
universe. They believe that it is one of the
properties of the all -permeating agency of vril,
to transmit to the well-spring of life and in
telligence every thought that a living creature
can conceive ; and though they do not con
tend that the idea of a Deity is innate, yet
they say that the An (man) is the only crea
ture, so far as their observation of nature
extends, to whom the capacity of conceiving that
idea, with all the trains of thought which open
out from it , is vouchsafed . They hold that
this capacity is a privilege that cannot have
been given in vain, and hence that prayer and
thanksgiving are acceptable to the divine
Creator, and necessary to the complete de
velopment of the human creature. They
offer their devotions both in private and
public. Not being considered one of their
species, I was not admitted into the building
or temple in which the public worship is
 THE COMING RACE . 107

rendered ; but I am informed that the service

is exceedingly short, and unattended with any
pomp of ceremony. It is aa doctrine with the
Vril-ya, that earnest devotion or complete
abstraction from the actual world cannot , with
benefit to itself, be maintained long at a stretch
by the human mind, especially in public, and
that all attempts to do so either lead to fana
ticism or to hypocrisy. When they pray in
private, it is when they are alone or with their
young children .
They say that in ancient times there was a
great number of books written upon specula
tions as to the nature of the Deity, and upon
worship supposed to be
the forms of belief or W
most agreeable to Him. But these were found
to lead to such heated and angry disputations
as not only to shake the peace of the com
munity and divide families before the most
united, but in the course of discussing the
attributes of the Deity, the existence of the
Deity Himself became argued away, or, what
was worse , became invested with the passions
108 THE COMING RACE

and infirmities of the human disputants.

For, " said my host , “ since a finite being
like an An cannot possibly define the Infinite,
so , when he endeavours to realise an idea of
the Divinity, he only reduces the Divinity
into an An like himself.” During the later
ages, therefore, all theological speculations,
though not forbidden , have been so dis
couraged as to have fallen utterly into disuse.
The Vril-ya unite in a conviction of aa future
state, more felicitous and more perfect than
the present. If they have very vague notions
of the doctrine of rewards and punishments,
it is perhaps because they have no systems of
rewards and punishments among themselves,
for there are no crimes to punish, and their
moral standard is so even that no An among
them is, upon the whole, considered more
virtuous than another . If one excels , perhaps,
in one virtue, another equally excels in some
other virtue ; if one has his prevalent fault or
infirmity, so also another has his. In fact, in
their extraordinary mode of life, there are so
 THE COMING RACE . 109

few temptations to wrong, that they are good

(according to their notions of goodness) merely
because they live. They have some fanciful
notions upon the continuance of life, when
once bestowed, even in the vegetable world ,
as the reader will see in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XIV .

THOUGH, as I have said , the Vril-ya discourage

>

all speculations on the nature of the Supreme

Being, they appear to concur in a belief by
which they think to solve that great problem
of the existence of evil which has so perplexed
the philosophy of the upper world . They
hold that wherever He has once given life,
with the perceptions of that life, however faint
it be, as in a plant, the life is never destroyed ;
it passes into new and improved forms , though

not in this planet (differing therein from the

ordinary doctrine of metempsychosis), and that
the living thing retains the sense of identity
IIO THE COMING RACE .

so that it connects its past life with its future,

and is conscious of its progressive improvement
in the scale of joy. For they say that, without
this assumption , they cannot, according to the
lights of human reason vouchsafed to them ,
discover the perfect justice which must be a
constituent quality of the All-Wise and the
All-Good . Injustice, they say , can only
emanate from three causes ; want of wisdom
to perceive what is just , want of benevolence
to desire, want of power to fulfil it ; and that
each of these three wants is incompatible in
the All-Wise, the All-Good, the All -Powerful.
But that, while even in this life, the wisdom ,
the benevolence, and the power of the Supreme
Being are sufficiently apparent to compel our
recognition, the justice necessarily resulting
from those attributes, absolutely requires an
other life, not for man only, but for every liv
>

ing thing of the inferior orders. That, alike in

the animal and the vegetable world , we see one
individual rendered, by circumstances beyond
its control, exceedingly wretched compared to
 THE COMING RACE . III

its neighbours - one only exists as the prey of

another-even a plant suffers from disease till
it perishes prematurely , while the plant next
to it rejoices in its vitality and lives out its
happy life free from a pang. That it is an
erroneous analogy from human infirmities to
reply by saying that the Supreme Being only
acts by general laws, thereby making his own
secondary causes so potent as to mar the
essential kindness of the First Cause ; and a
still meaner and more ignorant conception of
the All -Good, to dismiss with a brief contempt
all consideration of justice for the myriad forms
into which He has infused life, and assume
that justice is only due to the single product
of the An . There is no small and no great
in the eyes of the divine Life -Giver. But
once grant that nothing , however humble,
which feels that it lives and suffers, can perish
through the series of ages, that all its suffering
here , if continuous from the moment of its
birth to that of its transfer to another form of
being, would be more brief compared with
II2 THE COMING RACE.

eternity than the cry of the new -born is com

pared to the whole life of a man ; and once
suppose that this living thing retains its sense
of identity when so transferred ( for without
that sense it could be aware of no future being),
and though, indeed , the fulfilment of divine
justice is removed from the scope of our ken,
yet we have a right to assume it to be uniform
and universal, and not varying and partial ,
as it would be if acting only upon general
secondary laws ; because such perfect justice
flows of necessity from perfectness of know
ledge to conceive , perfectness of love to will ,
and perfectness of power to complete it.
However fantastic this belief of the Vril-ya
may be, it tends perhaps to confirm politically
the systems of government which , admitting
differing degrees of wealth , yet establishes
perfect equality in rank, exquisite mildness in
all relations and intercourse , and tenderness
to all created things which the good of the
community does not require them to destroy.
And though their notion of compensation to
 THE COMING RACE. 113

a tortured insect or a cankered flower may

seem to some of us a very wild crotchet, yet,
at least, it is not a mischievous one ; and it
may furnish matter for no unpleasing reflec
tion to think that within the abysses of earth ,
never lit by a ray from the material heavens,
there should have penetrated so luminous a
conviction of the ineffable goodness of the
Creator — so fixed an idea that the general
laws by which He acts cannot admit of any
partial injustice or evil, and therefore cannot
be comprehended without reference to their
action over all space and throughout all time.
And since, as I shall have occasion to observe
later, the intellectual conditions and social
systems of this subterranean race comprise and
harmonise great, and apparently antagonistic,
varieties in philosophical doctrine and specula
tion which have from time to time been
started , discussed , dismissed , and have re
appeared amongst thinkers or dreamers in the
upper world , --so I may perhaps appropriately
conclude this reference to the belief of the
114 THE COMING RACE .

Vril-ya, that self-conscious or sentient life

once given is indestructible among inferior
creatures as well as in man, by an eloquent
passage from the work of that eminent zoolo
gist, Louis Agassiz, which I have only just
met with , many years after I had committed
to paper those recollections of the life of the
Vril-ya which I now reduce into something
like arrangement and form : “ The relations
which individual animals bear to one another
are of such a character that they ought long
ago to have been considered as sufficient proof
that no organised being could ever have been
called into existence by other agency than
by the direct intervention of aa reflective mind.
This argues strongly in favour of the exist
ence in every animal of an immaterial prin
ciple similar to that which by its excellence
and superior endowments places man so much
above animals ; yet the principle unquestion
ably exists, and whether it be called sense,
reason , or instinct, it presents in the whole
range of organised beings a series of phe
 THE COMING RACE . IIS

nomena closely linked together, and upon it

are based not only the higher manifestations.
of the mind, but the very permanence of the
specific differences which characterise every
organism . Most of the arguments in favour
of the immortality of man apply equally to
the permanency of this principle in other living
beings. May I not add that a future life in
which man would be deprived of that great
source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral
improvement which results from the contem
plation of the harmonies of an organic world
would involve a lamentable loss ? And may
we not look to a spiritual concert of the com
bined worlds and all their inhabitants in the
presence of their Creator as the highest con
ception of paradise ? ” — Essay on Classification ,
sect. xvii. p. 97-99 .
116 THE COMING RACE .

CHAPTER XV .

Kind to me as I found all in this household,

the young daughter of my host was the most
considerate and thoughtful in her kindness.
At her suggestion I laid aside the habiliments
in which I had descended from the upper
earth , and adopted the dress of the Vril-ya,
with the exception of the artful wings which
served them , when on foot, as a graceful
mantle. But as many of the Vril-ya, when
occupied in urban pursuits, did not wear these
wings, this exception created no marked differ
ence between myself and the race among
which I sojourned, and I was thus enabled to
visit the town without exciting unpleasant
curiosity. Out of the household no one sus
pected that I had come from the upper world ,
and I was but regarded as one of some inferior
and barbarous tribe whom Aph -Lin entertained
as a guest .
The city was large in proportion to the
 THE COMING RACE . 117

territory round it, which was of no greater

extent than many an English or Hungarian
nobleman's estate ; but the whole of it , to the
verge of the rocks which constituted its boun
dary, was cultivated to the nicest degree,
except where certain allotments of mountain
and pasture were humanely left free to the
sustenance of the harmless animals they had
tamed , though not for domestic use. So great
is their kindness towards these humbler crea
tures, that a sum is devoted from the public
treasury for the purpose of deporting them
to other Vril-ya communities willing to receive
them ( chiefly new colonies), whenever they
become too numerous for the pastures allotted
to them in their native place. They do not,
however, multiply to an extent comparable to
the ratio at which , with us , animals bred for
slaughter increase. It seems a law of nature
that animals not useful to man gradually recede
froni the domains he occupies, or even become
extinct. It is an old custom of the various
sovereign states amidst which the race of the
118 THE COMING RACE .

Vril -ya are distributed, to leave between each

state a neutral and uncultivated border-land .
In the instance of the community I speak of,
this tract, being a ridge of savage rocks, was
impassable by foot, but was easily surmounted ,
whether by the wings of the inhabitants or the
air-boats, of which I shall speak hereafter.
Roads through it were also cut for the transit
of vehicles impelled by vril. These intercom
municating tracts were always kept lighted,
and the expense thereof defrayed by a special
tax to which all the communities compre
hended in the denomination of Vril-ya contri
bute in settled proportions. By these means
a considerable commercial traffic with other
states , both near and distant, was carried on .
The surplus wealth of this special community
was chiefly agricultural. The community was
also eminent for skill in constructing imple
ments connected with the arts of husbandry.
In exchange for such merchandise it obtained
articles more of luxury than necessity. There
were few things imported on which they set a
 THE COMING RACE . 119

higher price than birds taught to pipe artful

tunes in concert. These were brought from a
great distance, and were marvellous for beauty
of song and plumage. I understood that
extraordinary care was taken by their breeders
and teachers in selection , and that the species
had wonderfully improved during the last few
years. I saw no other pet animals among this
community except some very amusing and
sportive creatures of the Batrachian species,
resembling frogs, but with very intelligent
countenances, which the children were fond
of, and kept in their private gardens. They
appear to have no animals akin to our dogs
or horses, though that learned naturalist, Zee,
informed me that such creatures had once
existed in those parts, and might now be found
in regions inhabited by other races than the
Vril- ya. She said that they had gradually
disappeared from the more civilised world
since the discovery of vril, and the results
attending that discovery had dispensed with
their uses. Machinery and the invention of
I 20 THE COMING RACE .

wings had superseded the horse as a beast of

burden ; and the dog was no longer wanted
either for protection or the chase, as it had
been when the ancestors of the Vril-ya feared
the aggressions of their own kind , or hunted
the lesser animals for food . Indeed , however,
so far as the horse was concerned, this region
was so rocky that a horse could have been
there of little use either for pastime or burden.
The only creature they use for the latter pur
pose is a kind of large goat which is much
employed on farms. The nature of the sur
rounding soil in these districts may be said to
have first suggested the invention of wings and
air-boats. The largeness of space, in propor
tion to the rural territory occupied by the city,
was occasioned by the custom of surrounding
every house with a separate garden . The
broad main street, in which Aph -Lin dwelt,
expanded into a vast square, in which were
placed the College of Sages and all the public
offices ; a magnificent fountain of the luminous
Auid which I call naphtha (I am ignorant of
 THE COMING RACE. 121

its real nature) in the centre. All these public

edifices have a uniform character of massive
ness and solidity. They reminded me of the
architectural pictures of Martin . Along the
upper stories of each ran a balcony, or rather
a terraced garden, supported by columns, filled
with flowering plants, and tenanted by many
kinds of tame birds. From the square branched
several streets, all broad and brilliantly lighted,
and ascending up the eminence on either side.
In my excursions in the town I was never
allowed to go alone ; Aph-Lin or his daughter
was my habitual companion. In this com
munity the adult Gy is seen walking with any
young An as familiarly as if there were no
difference of sex.
The retail shops are not very numerous ;
the persons who attend on a customer are
all children of various ages, and exceedingly
intelligent and courteous, but without the
least touch of importunity or cringing. The
shopkeeper himself might or might not be
visible ; when visible , he seemed rarely em
122 THE COMING RACE .

ployed on any matter connected with his

professional business ; and yet he had taken
to that business from special liking to it , and
quite independently of his general sources of
fortune.
Some of the richest citizens in the com
munity kept such shops. As I have before
said, no difference of rank is recognisable, and
therefore all occupations hold the same equal
social status . An An, of whom I bought my

sandals, was the brother of the Tur, or chief

magistrate ; and though his shop was not
larger than that of any bootmaker in Bond
Street or Broadway, he was said to be twice
as rich as the Tur who dwelt in a palace.
No doubt, however, he had some country
seat .

The Ana of the community are, on the

whole, an indolent set of beings after the
active age of childhood. Whether by tempera
ment or philosophy, they rank repose among
the chief blessings of life. Indeed , when you
take away from a human being the incentives
a
 THE COMING RACE . 123

to action which are found in cupidity or ambi

tion, it seems to me no wonder that he rests
quiet.
In their ordinary movements they prefer
the use of their feet to that of their wings.
But for their sports or (to indulge in a bold
misuse of terms) their public promenades, they
employ the latter, also for the aerial dances I
have described, as well as for visiting their
country places, which are mostly placed on
lofty heights ; and, when still •young, they
prefer their wings, for travel into the other
regions of the Ana, to vehicular conveyances .
Those who accustom themselves to flight
can fly, if less rapidly than some birds, yet
from twenty -five to thirty miles an hour, and
keep up that rate for five or six hours at a
stretch . But the Ana generally, on reaching
middle age, are not fond of rapid movements
requiring violent exercise . Perhaps for this
reason , as they hold a doctrine which our
own physicians will doubtless approve-viz. ,
that regular transpiration through the pores
124 THE COMING RACE .

of the skin is essential to health , they habitually

use the sweating-baths to which we give the
name of Turkish or Roman, succeeded by
douches of perfumed waters. They have
great faith in the salubrious virtue of certain
perfumes .
It is their custom also, at stated but rare
periods, perhaps four times a-year when in
health , to use a bath charged with vril .*
They consider that this fuid, sparingly used ,
is a great sustainer of life ; but used in excess,
when in the normal state of health , rather
tends to reaction and exhausted vitality. For
nearly all their diseases, however, they resort
to it as the chief assistant to nature in throwing
off the complaint .
In their own way they are the most luxurious
of people, but all their luxuries are innocent.
They may be said to dwell in an atmosphere
. I once tried the effect of the vril bath . It was very
similar in its invigorating powers to that of the baths at
Gastein , the virtues of which are ascribed by many
physicians to electricity ; but though similar, the effect
of the vril bath was more lasting.
 THE COMING RACE . 125

of music and fragrance. Every room has its

mechanical contrivances for melodious sounds,
usually tuned down to soft-murmured notes,
which seem like sweet whispers from invisible
spirits. They are too accustomed to these gentle
sounds to find them a hindrance to conversa
tion, nor, when alone, to reflection . But they
have a notion that to breathe an air filled with
continuous melody and perfume has necessarily
an effect at once soothing and elevating upon
the formation of character and the habits of
thought. Though so temperate, and with
total abstinence from other animal food than
milk, and from all intoxicating drinks, they are
delicate and dainty to an extreme in food and
beverage ; and in all their sports even the old
exhibit a child- like gaiety. Happiness is the
end at which they aim, not as the excitement
of a moment, but as the prevailing condition
of the entire existence ; and regard for the
happiness of each other is evinced by the ex
quisite amenity of their mar rs .

Their conformation of skull has marked

126 THE COMING RACE .

differences from that of any known races

in the upper world, though I cannot help
thinking it a development, in the course of
countless ages, of the Brachycephalic type of
the Age of Stone in Lyell's “ Elements of
Geology,” C. X., p. 113 , as compared with
the Dolichocephalic type of the beginning of
the Age of Iron, correspondent with that now
so prevalent amongst us, and called the Celtic
type. It has the same comparative massive
ness of forehead, not receding like the Celtic
the same even roundness in the frontal organs ;
but it is far loftier in the apex, and far less
pronounced in the hinder cranial hemisphere
where phrenologists place the animal organs.
To speak as a phrenologist, the cranium com
mon to the Vril- ya has the organs of weight,
number, tune, form , order, causality, very
largely developed ; that of construction much
more pronounced than that of ideality. Those
which are called the moral organs, such as
conscientiousness and benevolence, are amaz
ingly full ; amativeness and combativeness are
 THE COMING RACE. 127

both small ; adhesiveness large ; the organ of

destructiveness (i.e., of determined clearance
of intervening obstacles) immense, but less
than that of benevolence ; and their philopro
genitiveness takes rather the character of com
passion and tenderness to things that need aid
or protection than of the animal love of
offspring I never met with one person
deformed or misshapen . The beauty of their
countenances is not only in symmetry of
feature, but in aa smoothness of surface , which
continues without line or wrinkle to the
extreme of old age, and a serene sweetness of
expression , combined with that majesty which
seems to come from consciousness of power
and the freedom of all terror, physical or
moral . It is that very sweetness , combined
a
with that majesty, which inspired in a beholder
like myself, accustomed to strive with the
passions of mankind , a sentiment of humilia
tion , of awe, of dread . It is such an expression
as a painter might give to a demi-god, a genius,
an angel. The males of the Vril-ya are
128 THE COMING RACE .

entirely beardless ; the Gy-ei sometimes, in

old age, develop a small moustache.
I was surprised to find that the colour of
their skin was not uniformly that which I had
remarked in those individuals whom I had
first encountered , -some being much fairer,
and even with blue eyes, and hair of a deep
golden auburn, though still of complexions
warmer or richer in tone than persons in the
north of Europe.
I was told that this admixture of colouring
arose from intermarriage with other and more
distant tribes of the Vril-ya, who, whether by
the accident of climate or early distincting of
race , were of fairer hues than the tribes of
which this community formed one. It was
considered that the dark-red skin showed the
most ancient family of Ana ; but they attached
no sentiment of pride to that antiquity , and , on
the contrary , believed their present excellence
of breed came from frequent crossing with
other families differing, yet akin ; and they
encourage such intermarriages , always pro
 THE COMING RACE . 129

vided that it be with the Vril-ya nations.

Nations which , not conforming their manners
and institutions to those of the Vril-ya, nor
indeed held capable of acquiring the powers
over the vril agencies which it had taken
them generations to attain and transmit, were
regarded with more disdain than citizens of
New York regard the negroes.
I learned from Zee , who had more lore in
all matters than any male with whom I was
brought into familiar converse, that the supe
riority of the Vril-ya was supposed to have
originated in the intensity of their earlier
struggles against obstacles in nature amidst
the localities in which they had first settled .
“ Wherever , ” said Zee, moralising, 66 where

ever goes on that early process in the history

of civilisation , by which life is made a struggle ,
in which the individual has to put forth all
his powers to compete with his fellow , we
invariably find this result -viz. , since in the
competition a vast number must perish , nature
selects for preservation only the stroEngest
( 10. )
130 THE COMING RACE .

specimens. With our race , therefore, even

before the discovery of vril, only the highest
organisations were preserved ; and there is
among our ancient books a legend, once
popularly believed , that we were driven from
a region that seems to denote the world you
come from , in order to perfect our condition
and attain to the purest elimination of our
species by the severity of the struggles our
forefathers underwent ; and that, when our
education shall become finally completed, we
are destined to return to the upper world, and
supplant all the inferior races now existing
therein .
Aph -Lin and Zee often conversed with me
in private upon the political and social con
ditions of that upper world , in which Zee so
philosophically assumed that the inhabitants
were to be exterminated one day or other by
the advent of the Vril-ya. They found in my
accounts ; -- in which I continued to do all I
could ( without launching into falsehoods so
positive that they would have been easily
 THE COMING RACE. 131

detected by the shrewdness of my listeners)

to present our powers and ourselves in the
most flattering point of view, perpetual sub
jects of comparison between our most civilised
populations and the meaner subterranean races
which they considered hopelessly plunged in
barbarism , and doomed to gradual if certain
extinction . But they both agreed in desiring
to conceal from their community all premature
opening into the regions lighted by the sun ;
both were humane, and shrunk from the
thought of annihilating so many millions of
creatures ; and the pictures I drew of our life,
highly coloured as they were, saddened them .
In vain I boasted of cur great men - poets ,
philosophers, orators, generals-and defied the
Vril-ya to produce their equals. “ Alas ! ”
said Zee, her grand face softening into an
angel -like compassion , “ this predominance of
the few over the many is the surest and most
fatal sign of a race incorrigibly savage. See
you not that the primary condition of mortal
happiness consists in the extinction of that
132 THE COMING RACE .

strife and competition between individuals,

which, no matter what forms of government
they adopt, render the many subordinate to
the few , destroy real liberty to the individual,
whatever may be the nominal liberty of the
state, and annul that calm of existence, with
out which , felicity, mental or bodily, cannot
be attained ? Our notion is, that the more
we can assimilate life to the existence which
our noblest ideas can conceive to be that of
spirits on the other side of the grave, why,
the more we approximate to a divine happiness
here, and the more easily we glide into the
conditions of being hereafter. For, surely, all
we can imagine of the life of gods, or of
blessed immortals, supposes the absence of
self -made cares and contentious passions , such
as avarice and anıbition . It seems to us that
it must be a life of serene tranquillity, not
indeed without active occupations to the intel
lectual or spiritual powers, but occupations, of
whatsoever nature they be, congenial to the
idiosyncrasies of each , not forced and repugnant
 THE COMING RACE . 133

--- a life gladdened by the untrammelled inter

change of gentle affections, in which the
moral atmosphere utterly kills hate and ven
geance, and strife and rivalry. Such is the
political state to which all the tribes and
families of the Vril-ya seek to attain, and to
wards that goal all our theories of government
are shaped. You see how utterly opposed is
such a progress to that of the uncivilised
nations from which you come, and which aim
at a systematic perpetuity of troubles, and
cures, and warring passions, aggravated more
and more as their progress storms its way on
ward . The most powerful of all the races in
our world , beyond the pale of the Vril-ya,
esteems itself the best governed of all political
societies, and to have reached in that respect
the extreme end at which political wisdom can
arrive, so that the other nations should tend
more or less to copy it. It has established, on
its broadest base , the Koom - Posh — viz., the
government of the ignorant upon the principle
of being the most numerous. It has placed
134 THE COMING RACE .

the supreme bliss in the vying with each other

in all things, so that the evil passions are never
in repose -- vying for power, for wealth, for
eminence of some kind ; and in this rivalry
it is horrible to hear the vituperation, the
slanders, and calumnies which even the best
and mildest among them heap on each o :her
without remorse or shame.”
“ Some years ago, ” said Aph -Lin , “ I
visited this people, and their misery and de
gradation were the more appalling because
they were always boasting of their felicity
and grandeur as compared with the rest of
their species. And there is no hope that this
people, which evidently resembles your own,
can improve, because all their notions tend to
further deterioration . They desire to enlarge
their dominion more and more , in direct
antagonism to the truth that, beyond a very
limited range, it is impossible to secure to a
community the happiness which belongs to a
well-ordered family ; and the more they ma
ture a system by which a few individuals are
 THE COMING RACE . 135

heated and swollen to a size above the stan

dard slenderness of the millions, the more they
<
chuckle and exact, and cry out; ' See by what
great exceptions to the common littleness of
our race we prove the magnificent' results of
our system !'
“ In fact,” resumed Zee , 6“ if the wisdom of
human life be to approximate to the serene
equality of immortals, there can be no more
direct flying off into the opposite direction
than a system which aims at carrying to the
utmost the inequalities and ' turbulences of
mortals. Nor do I see how, by any forms of
religious belief, mortals, so acting, could fit
themselves even to appreciate the joys of im
mortals to which they still expect to be trans
ferred by the mere act of dying. On the
contrary , minds accustomed to place happiness
in things so much the reverse of godlike,
would find the happiness of gods exceedingly
dull, and would long to get back to a world in
which they could quarrel with each other.”
 THE COMING RACE .
136

CHAPTER XVI .
I HAVE spoken so much of the Vril Staff that
my reader may expect me to describe it. This
I cannot do accurately, for I was never allowed
to handle it for fear of some terrible accident
occasioned by my ignorance of its use. It is
hollow , and has in the handle several stops,
keys, or springs by which its force can be
altered, modified, or directed—so that by one
process it destroys, by another it heals — by
one it can rend the rock, by another disperse
the vapour—by one it affects bodies, by an
other it can exercise a certain influence over
minds. It is usually carried in the convenient
size of a walking -staff, but it has slides by
which it can be lengthened or shortened at
will. When used for special purposes, the
upper part rests in the hollow of the palm ,
with the fore and middle fingers protruded . I
was assured , however, that its power was not
equal in all, but proportioned to the amount
of certain vril properties in the wearer, in
 THE COMING RACE . 137

affinity, or rapport, with the purposes to be

effected . Some were more potent to destroy ,
others to heal , &c. ; much also depended on
the calm and steadiness of volition in the
manipulator. They assert that the full exer
cise of vril power can only be acquired by
constitutional temperament—i.e. , by heredi
tarily transmitted organisation — and that a
female infant of four years old belonging to
the Vril -ya races can accomplish feats with
the wand placed for the first time in her hand ,
which a life spent in its practice would not
enable the strongest and most skilled mechani
cian, born out of the pale of the Vril -ya, to
achieve. All these wands are not equally
complicated ; those entrusted to children are
much simpler than those borne by sages of
either sex , and constructed with a view to the
special object in which the children are em
ployed ; which, as I have before said, is aniong
the youngest children the most destructive.
In the wands of wives and mothers the corre
lative destroying force is usually abstracted,
E 2
130 THE COMING RACE .

specimens. With our race , therefore, even

before the discovery of vril, only the highest
organisations were preserved ; and there is
among our ancient books a legend, once
popularly believed , that we were driven from
a region that seems to denote the world you
come fron , in order to perfect our condition
and attain to the purest elimination of our
species by the severity of the struggles our
forefathers underwent; and that, 'when our
education shall become finally completed, we
are destined to return to the upper world, and
supplant all the inferior races now existing
therein .
Aph-Lin and Zee often conversed with me
in private upon the political and social con
ditions of that upper world , in which Zee so
philosophically assumed that the inhabitants
were to be exterminated one day or other by
the advent of the Vril-ya. They found in my
accounts ,-in which I continued to do all I
could (without launching into falsehoods so
positive that they would have been easily
 THE COMING RACE . 131

detected by the shrewdness of my listeners)

to present our powers and ourselves in the
most flattering point of view, perpetual sub
jects of comparison between our most civilised
populations and the meaner subterranean races
which they considered hopelessly plunged in
barbarism, and doomed to gradual if certain
extinction . But they both agreed in desiring
to conceal from their community all premature
opening into the regions lighted by the sun ;
both were humane, and shrunk from the
thought of annihilating so many millions of
creatures ; and the pictures I drew of our life,
highly coloured as they were, saddened them.
In vain I boasted of cur great men - poets,
philosophers, orators, generals -- and defied the
Vril-ya to produce their equals. “ Alas ! ”
said Zee, her grand face softening into an
angel-like compassion , “ this predominance of
the few over the many is the surest and most
fatal sign of a race incorrigibly savage. See
you not that the primary condition of mortal
happiness consists in the extinction of that
 G
138 THE COMIN RACE .

the healing power fully charged . I wish I

could say more in detail of this singular con
ductor of the vril fluid , but its machinery is as
exquisite as its effects are marvellous.
I should say, however, that this people have
invented certain tubes by which the vril Auid
can be conducted towards the object it is
meant to destroy, throughout a distance al
most indefinite ; at least I put it modestly
when I say from soo to 600 miles. And their
mathematical science as applied to such pur
pose is so nicely accurate, that on the report
of some observer in an air -boat, any member
of the vril department can estimate unerringly
the nature of intervening obstacles, the height
to which the projectile instrument should be
raised , and the extent to which it should be
charged, so as to reduce tu ashes within a
space of time too short for me to venture to
specify it, a capital twice as vast as London.
Certainly these Ana are wonderful mechani
cians-- wonderful for the adaptation of the in
ventive faculty to practical uses.
 THE COMING RACE . 139

I went with my host and his daughter

Zee over the great public museum, whichi
occupies a wing in the College of Sages,
and in which are hoarded, as curious speci
mens of the ignorant and blundering experi
ments of ancient times, many contrivances
on which we pride ourselves as recent achieve
ments. In one department, carelessly thrown
aside as obsolete lumber, are tubes for destroy
ing life by metallic balls and an inflammable
powder, on the principle of our cannons and
catapults, and even still more murderous than
our latest improvements.
My host spoke of these with a smile of
contempt, such as an artillery officer might
bestow on the bows and arrows of the
Chinese. In another department there were
models of vehicles and vessels worked by
steam, and a balloon which might have been
constructed by Montgolfier. "" Such , " said
Zee, with an air of meditative wisdom
" such were the feeble triflings with nature
of our savage forefathers, ere they had even
140 THE COMING RACE .

a glimmering perception of the properties of

vril ! ”
This young Gy was a magnificent specimen
of the muscular force to which the females
of her country attain . Her features were
beautiful, like those of all her race : never
in the upper world have I seen a face so
grand and so faultless, but her devotion to
the severer studies had given to her counte
nance an expression of abstract thought
which rendered it somewhat stern when in
repose ; and such sternness became formidable
when observed in connection with her ample
shoulders and lofty stature . She was tall

even for a Gy, and I saw her liſt up a cannon

as easily as I could lift a pocket-pistol. Zee
inspired me with a profound terror - a terror
which increased when we came into a depart
ment of the museum appropriated to models
of contrivances worked by the agency of
vril ; for here, merely by a certain play of
her vril staff, she herself standing at a dis
tance, she put into movement large and
 THE COMING RACE . 141

weighty substances . She seemed to endow

them with intelligence, and to make them com
prehend and obey her command. She set com
plicated pieces of machinery into movement,
arrested the movement or continued it, until,
within an incredibly short time, various kinds
of raw material were reproduced as symmetri
cal works of art, complete and perfect. What
ever effect mesmerism or electro -biology pro
duces over the nerves and muscles of animated
objects, this young Gy produced by the
motions of her slender rod over the springs
and wheels of lifeless mechanism .
When I mentioned to my companions my
astonishment at this influence over inanimate
matter—while owning that, in our world, I
had witnessed phenomena which showed that
over certain living organisations certain other
living organisations could establish an influence
genuine in itself, but often exaggerated by
credulity or craft — Zee, who was more interested
in such subjects than her father, bade me stretch
forth myhand, and then, placing her own beside
142 THE COMING RACE .

it, she called my attention to certain distinctions

of type and character. In the first place, the
thumb of the Gy (and , as I afterwards noticed,
of all that race, male or female) was much
larger, at once longer and more massive, than
is found with our species above ground.
There is almost, in this, as great a difference
as there is between the thumb of a man and
that of a gorilla. Secondly, the palm is
proportionately thicker than ours—the texture
of the skin infinitely finer and softer — its
average warmth is greater. More remarkable
than all this, is a visible nerve, perceptible
under the skin , which starts from the wrist
skirting the ball of the thumb, and branch
ing, fork -like, at the roots of the fore and
middle fingers. “ With your slight forma
tion of thumb, ” said the philosophical young
Gy, “ and with the absence of the nerve
which you find more or less developed in
the hands of our race, you can never achieve
other than imperfect and feeble power over
the agency of vril ; but so far as the nerve
 THE COMING RACE . 143

is concerned, that is not found in the hands

of our earliest progenitors, nor in those of
the ruder tribes without the pale of the
Vril-ya. It has been slowly developed in
the course of generations, commencing in the
early achievements, and increasing with the
continuous exercise, of the vril power ; there
fore, in the course of one or two thousand
years, such a nerve may possibly be en
gendered in those higher beings of your
race, who devote themselves to that para
mount science through which is attained
command over all the subtler forces of nature
permeated by vril. But when you talk of
matter as something in itself inert and motion
less, your parents or tutors surely cannot
have left you so ignorant as not to know
that no form of matter is motionless and
inert : every particle is constantly in motion
and constantly acted upon by agencies, of
which heat is the most apparent and rapid,
but vril the most subtle, and, when skilfully
wielded , the most powerful. So that, in
144 THE COMING RACE .

fact, the current launched by my hand and

guided by my will does but render quicker
and more potent the action which is eter
nally at work upon every particle of matter,
however inert and stubborn it may seem . If
a heap of metal be not capable of originating
a thought of its own, yet, through its internal
susceptibility to movement, it obtains the
power to receive the thought of the intel
lectual agent at work on it ; and which,
when conveyed with a sufficient force of
the vril power, is as much compelled to
obey as if it were displaced by a visible
bodily force is animated for the time
being by the soul thus infused into it, so
that one may almost say that it lives and it
reasons , Without this we could not make our
automata supply the place of servants.”
I was too much in awe of the thews and
the learning of the young Gy to hazard the
risk of arguing with her. I had read some
where in my schoolboy days that a wise man,
disputing with a Roman emperor, suddenly
 THE COMING RACE . 145
drew in his horns ; and when the emperor
asked him whether he had nothing further to
say on his side of the question, replied , “ Nay,
Cæsar, there is no arguing against a reasoner
who commands twenty -five legions."
Though I had a secret persuasion that,
whatever the real effects of vril upon matter
Mr. Faraday could have proved her a very
shallow philosopher as to its extent or its
causes , I had no doubt that Zee could have
brained all the Fellows of the Royal Society,
one after the other, with a blow of her fist.
Every sensible man knows that it is useless to
argue with any ordinary female upon matters
he comprehends ; but to argue with a Gy
seven feet high upon the mysteries of vril,–
as well argue in a desert, and with a simoom !
Amid the various departments to which the
vast building of the College of Sages was
appropriated, that which interested me most
was devoted to the archæology of the Vril-ya,
and comprised a very ancient collection of
portraits. In these the pigments and ground
146 THE COMING RACE .

work employed were of so durable a nature

that even pictures said to be executed at dates
as remote as those in the earliest annals of
the Chinese retained much freshness of colour.
In examining this collection, two things espe
cially struck me : -- firstly, That the pictures
said to be between 6000 and 7000 years old
were of a much higher degree of art than any
produced within the last 3000 or 4000 years ;
and, secondly , That the portraits within the
former period much more resembled our own
upper world and European types of counten
ance . Some of them, indeed , reminded me
of the Italian heads which look out from the
canvas of Titian - speaking of ambition or
craft, of care or of grief, with furrows in which
the passions have passed with iron plough
share. These were the countenances of men
who had lived in struggle and conflict before
the discovery of the latent forces of vril had
changed the character of society—men who
had fought with each other for power or fame
as we in the upper world fight.
 THE COMING RACE . 147

The type of face began to evince a marked

change about a thousand years after the vril
revolution, becoming then, with each genera
tion , more serene, and in that serenity more
terribly distinct from the faces of labouring
and sinful men ; while in proportion as the
beauty and the grandeur of the countenance
itself became more fully developed, the art
of the painter became more tame and mono
tonous.

But the greatest curiosity in the collection

was that of three portraits belonging to the
pre-historical age, and according to mythical
tradition, taken by the orders of a philosopher,
whose origin and attributes were as much
mixed up with symbolical fable as those of
an Indian Budh or a Greek Prometheus .
From this mysterious personage, at once
a sage and a hero, all the principal sections
of the Vril-ya race pretend to trace a common
origin .
The portraits are of the philosopher himself,
of his grandfather, and great-grandfather.
148 THE COMING RACE .

They are all at full length . The philosopher

is attired in a long tunic which seems to form
a loose suit of scaly armour, borrowed, per
haps, from some fish or reptile, but the feet
and hands are exposed : the digits in both
are wonderfully long, and webbed . He has
little or no perceptible throat, and a low re
ceding forehead, not at all the ideal of a
sage's. He has bright brown prominent eyes,
a very wide mouth and high cheek-bones, and
a muddy complexion. According to tradition ,
this philosopher had lived to a patriarchal age,
extending over many centuries, and he re
membered distinctly in middle life his grand
father as surviving, and in childhood his
great-grandfather ; the portrait of the first he
had taken, or caused to be taken, while yet
alive—that of the latter was taken from his
effigies in mummy. The portrait of the
grandfather had the features and aspect of the
philosopher, only much more exaggerated :
he was not dressed, and the colour of his body
was singular ; the breast and stomach yellow,
 THE COMING RACE . 149

the shoulders and legs of a dull bronze hue :

the great -grandfather was a magnificent speci
men of the Batrachian genus, a Giant Frog,
pur et simple.
Among the pithy sayings which , according
to tradition , the philosopher bequeathed to
posterity in rhythmical form and sententious
brevity, this is notably recorded : “ Humble
yourselves, my descendants ; the father of
your race was a twat (tadpole) : exalt your
selves, my descendants , for it was the same
Divine Thought which created your father
that develops itself in exalting you ."
Aph-Lin told me this fable while I gazed
on the three Batrachian portraits. I said in
reply : “ You make a jest of my supposed ig
norance and credulity as an uneducated Tish ,
but though these horrible daubs may be of
great antiquity, and were intended , perhaps,
for some rude caricature, I presume that none
of your race, even in the less enlightened
ages, ever believed that the great-grandson
of a Frog became a sententious philosopher ;
150 THE COMING RACE.

or that any section , I will not say of the lofty

Vril-ya , but of the meanest varieties of the
human race, had its origin in a Tadpole."
“ Pardon me,” answered Aph - Lin : . “ in
what we call the Wrangling or Philosophical
Period of History, which was at its height
about seven thousand years ago, there was a
very distinguished naturalist, who proved to
the satisfaction of numerous disciples such
analogical and anatomical agreements in struc
ture between an An and a Frog, as to show
that out of the one must have developed the
other. They had some diseases in common ;
they were both subject to the same parasitical
worms in the intestines ; and, strange to say,
the An has, in his structure, a swimming
bladder, no longer of any use to him , but
which is a rudiment that clearly proves his
descent from a Frog. Nor is there any argu
a

ment against this theory to be found in the

relative difference of size, for there are still
existent in our world Frogs of a size and
stature not inferior to our own , and many
 THE COMING RACE. 151

thousand years ago they appear to have been

still larger."
“ I understand that,” said I, “ because Frogs
thus enormous are, according to our eminent
geologists, who perhaps saw them in dreams,
said to have been distinguished inhabitants of
the upper world before the Deluge ; and such
Frogs are exactly the creatures likely to have
flourished in the lakes and morasses of your
subterranean regions. But pray, proceed .”
“ In the Wrangling Period of History, what
ever one sage asserted another sage was sure
to contradict. In fact, it was a maxim in that
age, that the human reason could only be
sustained aloft by being tossed to and fro in
the perpetual motion of contradiction ; and
therefore another sect of philosophers main
tained the doctrine that the An was not the
descendant of the Frog, but that the Frog was
clearly the improved development of the An.
The shape of the Frog, taken generally, was
much more symmetrical than that of the An ;
beside the beautiful confirmation of its lower
152 THE COMING RACE .

limbs, its flanks and shoulders, the majority of

the Ana in that day were almost deformed , and
certainly ill-shaped. Again, the Frog had the
power to live alike in land and in water-a
mighty privilege, partaking of a spiritual
essence denied to the An, since the disuse of
his swimming -bladder clearly proves his de
generation from a higher development of
species. Again, the earlier races of the Ana
seem to have been covered with hair, and ,
even to a comparatively recent date, hirsute
bushes deformed the very faces of our an
cestors, spreading wild over their cheeks and
chins, as similar bushes , my poor Tish, spread
wild over yours. But the object of the higher
races of the Ana through countless genera
tions has been to erase all vestige of connection
with hairy vertebrata, and they have gradually
eliminated that debasing capillary excrement
by the law of sexual selection ; the Gy-ei
naturally preferring youth or the beauty of
smooth faces. But the degree of the Frog in
the scale of the vertebrata is shown in this,
 THE COMING RACE . 153

that he has no hair at all , not even on his

head . He was born to that hairless perfection
which the most beautiful of the Ana, despite
the culture of incalculable ages, have not yet
attained. The wonderful complication and
delicacy of a Frog's nervous system and
arterial circulation were shown by this school
to be more susceptible of enjoyment than our
inferior, or at least simpler, physical frame
allows us to be. The examination of a Frog's
hand, if I may use that expression, accounted
for its keener susceptibility to love, and to
social life in general. In fact, gregarious and
amatory as are the Ana, Frogs are still more
So. In short, these two schools raged against
each other, one asserting the An to be the
perfected type of the Frog ; the other that the
Frog was the highest development of the
An. The moralists were divided in opinion
with the naturalists, but the bulk of them
sided with the Frog-preference school. They
said , with much plausibility, that in moral
conduct (viz . , in the adherence to rules best
 154 THE COMING RACE .

adapted to the health and welfare of the indi

vidual and the community) there could be no
doubt of the vast superiority of the Frog. All
history showed the wholesale immorality of
the human race, the complete disregard, even
by the most renowned among them , of the
laws which they acknowledged to be essential
to their own, and the general happiness and
well -being. But the severest critic of the Frog
race could not detect in their manners a single
aberration from the moral law tacitly recog
‘nised by themselves. And what; after all ,
can be the profit of civilisation if superiority
in moral conduct be not the aim for which
it strives, and the test by which its progress
should be judged ?
“ In fine, the adherents to this theory pre
sumed that in some remote period the Frog
race had been the improved development of
the Human ; but that, from causes which
defied rational conjecture, they had not main
tained their original position in the scale of
nature ; while the Ana, though of inferior
 THE COMING RACE . 155

organisation, had , by dint less of their virtues

than their vices, such as ferocity and cunning,
gradually acquired ascendancy, much as among
the human race itself tribes utterly barbarous
have, by superiority in similar vices, utterly
destroyed or reduced into insignificance tribes
originally excelling them in mental gifts and
culture. Unhappily these disputes became
involved with the religious notions of that
age ; and as society was then administered
under the government of the Koom-Posh ,
who, being the most ignorant, were of course
the most inflammable class—the multitude
took the whole question out of the hands of
the philosophers ; political chiefs saw that the
Frog dispute, so taken up by the populace ,
could become a most valuable instrument of
their ambition ; and for not less than one
thousand years war and massacre prevailed ,
during which period the philosophers on both
sides were butchered, and the government of
the Koom -Push itself was happily brought to
an end by the ascendancy of a family that
156 THE COMING RACE .

clearly established its descent from the abori

ginal tadpole, and furnished despotic rulers
to the various nations of the Ana. These
despots finally disappeared, at least from our
communities, as the discovery of vril led to
the tranquil institutions under which flourish
all the races of the Vril-ya.”
" And do no wranglers or philosophers
now exist to revive the dispute ; or do they
all recognise the origin of your race in the
tadpole ? ”
“ Nay , such disputes, ” said Zee, with a
lofty smile, “ belong to the Pah -bodh of the
dark ages, and now only serve for the amuse
ment of infants. When we know the ele
ments out of which our bodies are composed ,
elements common to the humblest vegetable
plants, can it signify whether the All-Wise
combined those elements out of one form
more than another, in order to create that in
which He has placed the capacity to receive
the idea of Himself, and all the varied gran
deurs of intellect to which that idea gives
 THE COMING RACE . 157

birth ? The An in reality commenced to

exist as An with the donation of that capacity,
and, with that capacity, the sense to acknow
ledge that, however through the countless
ages his race may improve in wisdom, it can
never combine the elements at his command
into the form of a tadpole.”
“ You speak well, Zee,” said Aph-Lin ;
“ and it is enough for us short- lived mortals
to feel аa reasonable assurance that whether the
origin of the An was a tadpole or not, he is no
more likely to become a tadpole again than the
institutions of the Vril-ya are likely to relapse
into the heaving quagmire and certain strife-rot
of a Koom - Posh .”

CHAPTER XVII .

The Vril-ya, being excluded from all sight of

the heavenly bodies, and having no other
difference between night and day than that
which they deem it convenient to make for
 158 THE COMING RACE .

themselves, —do not, of course, arrive at their

divisions of time by the same process that we
do ; but I found it easy, by the aid of my
watch , which I luckily had about me, to com
pute their time with great nicety. I reserve
for a future work on the science and literature
of the Vril-ya, should I live to complete it, all
details as to the manner in which they arrive
at their notation of time : and content myself
here with saying, that in point of duration ,
their year differs very slightly from ours, but
that the divisions of their year are by no
means the same. Their day (including what
we call night) consists of twenty hours of our
time, instead of twenty -four, and of course
their year comprises the correspondent increase
in the number of days by which it is summed
up . They subdivide the twenty hours of their
day thus — eight hours,* called the “ Silent
Hours , ” for repose ; eight hours, called the
*
For the sake of convenience, I adopt the words hours,
days, years, &c. , in any general reference to subdivisions
of time among the Vril-ya-those terms but loosely corre
sponding, however, with such subdivisions.
 THE COMING RACE . 159

“ Earnest Time, ” for the pursuits and occupa

tions of life ; and four hours, called the “ Easy
Time” (with which what I may term their
day closes ), allotted to festivities, sport, recrea
tion , or family converse, according to their
several taste and inclinations. But, in truth ,
out of doors there is no night. They main
tain , both in the streets and in the surrounding
country, to the limits of their territory, the
same degree of light at all hours. Only,
within doors, they lower it to a soft twilight
during the Silent Hours. They have a great
horror of perfect darkness, and their lights are
never wholly extinguished . On occasions of
festivity they continue the duration of full
light, but equally keep note of the distinction
between night and day, by mechanical con
trivances which answer the purpose of our
clocks and watches. They are very fond of
music ; and it is by music that these chrono
meters strike the principal division of time.
At every one of their hours, during their day,
the sounds coming from all the timepieces in
160 THE COMING RACE .

their public buildings, and caught up, as it

were, by those of houses or hamlets scattered
amidst the landscapes without the city, have
an effect singularly sweet, and yet singularly
solemn. But during the Silent Hours these
sounds are so subdued as to be only faintly
heard by a waking ear. They have no change
of seasons, and, at least in the territory of this
tribe, the atmosphere seemed to me very
equable, warm as that of an Italian summer,
and humid rather than dry ; in the forenoon
usually very still, but at times invaded by
strong blasts from the rocks that made the
borders of their domain . But time is the
same to them for sowing or reaping as in the
Golden Isles of the ancient poets . At the
same moment you see the younger plants in
blade or bud , the older in ear or fruit. All
fruit-bearing plants, however, after fruitage,
either shed or change the colour of their
leaves. But that which interested me most
in reckoning up their divisions of time was
the ascertainment of the average duration of
 THE COMING RACE . 161

life amongst them. I found on minute in

quiry that this very considerably exceeded the
term allotted to us on the upper earth. What
seventy years are to us, one hundred years are
to them . Nor is this the only advantage they
have over us in longevity, for as few among
us attain to the age of seventy, so, on the con
trary, few among them die before the age of
one hundred ; and they enjoy a general degree
of health and vigour which makes life itself a
blessing even to the last. Various causes con
tribute to this result : the absence of all
alcoholic stimulants ; temperance in food ;
more especially, perhaps, a serenity of mind
undisturbed by anxious occupations and eager
passions. They are not tormented by our
avarice or our ambition ; they appear perfectly
indifferent even to the desire of fame; they
are capable of great affection , but their love
shows itself in a tender and cheerful complais
ance, and , while forming their happiness,
seems rarely, if ever, to constitute their woe.
As the Gy is sure only to marry where she
( 10. ) F
162 THE COMING RACE .

herself fixes her choice, and as here, not less

than above ground, it is the female on whom
the happiness of home depends ; so the Gy,
having chosen the mate she prefers to all
others, is lenient to his faults, consults his
humours, and does her best to secure his at
tachment. The death of a beloved one is of
course with them, as with us, a cause of
sorrow ; but not only is death with them so
much more rare before that age in which it
becomes a release , but when it does occur the
survivor takes much more consolation than , I
am afraid , the generality of us do, in the cer
tainty of reunion in another and yet happier
life.
All these causes , then , concur to their
healthful and enjoyable longevity , though ,
no doubt, much also must be owing to
hereditary organisation . According to their
records, however, in those earlier stages of
their society when they lived in communi
ties resembling ours , agitated by fierce com
petition , their lives were considerably shorter,
 THE COMING RACE . 163
and their maladies more numerous and grave.
They themselves say that the duration of
life, too , has increased , and is still on the
increase, since their discovery of the invigo
rating and medicinal properties of vril, applied
for remedial purposes . They have few pro
fessional and regular practitioners of medicine,
and these are chiefly Gy-ei, who, especially
if widowed and childless, find great delight
in the healing art, and even undertake surgical
operations in those cases required by accident,
or, more rarely, by disease.
They have their diversions and entertain
ments, and , during the Easy Time of their
day, they are wont to assemble in great
numbers for those winged sports in the air
which I have already described. They have
also public halls for music, and even theatres,
at which are performed pieces that appeared
to me somewhat to resemble the plays of
the Chinese dramas that are thrown back
into dist ant times their events and per
sonages , in which all classic unities are out
164 THE COMING RACE .

rageously violated , and the hero, in one scene

a child , in the next is an old man , and so
forth . These plays are of very ancient com
position . They appeared to me extremely
dull , on the whole, but were relieved by
startling mechanical contrivances, and a kind
of farcical broad humour, and detached
passages of great vigour and power expressed
in language highly poetical, but somewhat
overcharged with metaphor and trope. In
fine, they seemed to me very much what
the plays of Shakespeare seemed to a Parisian
in the time of Louis XV. , or perhaps to an
Englishman in the reign of Charles II .
The audience, of which the Gy -ei con
stituted the chief portion , appeared to enjoy
greatly the representation of these dramas,
which , for so sedate and majestic a race of
females, surprised me, till I observed that
all the performers were under the age of
adolescence, and conjectured truly that the
mothers and sisters came to please their
children and brothers .
 THE COMING RACE , 165
I have said that these dranas are of great
antiquity. No new plays, indeed no imagina
tive works sufficiently important to survive
their immediate day, appear to have been
composed for several generations. In fact,
though there is no lack of new publications,
and they have even what may be called
newspapers , these are chiefly devoted to
mechanical science, reports of new inventions,
announcements respecting various details of
business-in short, to practical matters. Some
times a child writes a little tale of adventure,
or a young Gy vents her amorous hopes or
fears in a poem ; but these effusions are of
very little merit, and are seldom read except
by children and maiden Gy-ei. The most
interesting works of a purely literary cha
racter are those of explorations and travels
into other regions of this nether world, which
are generally written by young emigrants,
and are read with great avidity by the rela
tions and friends they have left behind.
I could not help expressing to Aph-Lin
166 THE COMING RACE .

my surprise that a community in which

mechanical science had made so marvellous
a progress, and in which intellectual civilisa
tion had exhibited itself in realising those
objects for the happiness of the people, which
the political philosophers above ground had,
after ages of struggle, pretty generally agreed
to consider unattainable visions, should , never
theless, be so wholly without a contempora
neous literature, despite the excellence to
which culture had brought a language at
once rich and simple, vigorous and musical.
My host replied — “ Do you not perceive
that a literature such as you mean would
be wholly incompatible with that perfection
of social or political felicity at which you do
us the honour to think we have arrived ?
We have at last, after centuries of struggle,
settled into a form of government with whichi
we are content, and in which , as we allow
no differences of rank , and no honours are
paid to administrators distinguishing them
from others, there is no stimulus given to
 THE COMING RACE . 167
individual ambition . No one would read
works advocating theories that involved any
political or social change, and therefore no
one writes them . If now and then an An
feels himself dissatisfied with our tranquil
mode of life , he does not attack it ; he goes
away . Thus all that part of literature (and
to judge by the ancient books in our public
libraries, it was once a very large part) which
relates to speculative theories on society is
become utterly extinct. Again , formerly there
was a vast deal written respecting the attri
butes and essence of the All-Good, and the
arguments for and against a future state ;
but now we all recognise two facts, that
there is a Divine Being, and there is a future
state, and we all equally agree that if we
wrote our fingers to the bone, we could not
throw any light upon the nature and con
ditions of that future state, or quicken our
apprehensions of the attributes and essence
of that Divine Being. Thus another part of
literature has become also extinct, happily for
168 THE COMING RACE .

our race ; for in the times when so much

was written on subjects which no one could
determine, people seem to live in a perpetual
state of quarrel and contention. So, too,
vast part of our ancient literature consists of
historical records of wars and revolutions
during the times when the Ana lived in large
and turbulent societies, each seeking aggran
disement at the expense of the other. You
see our serene mode of life now ; such it . has
been for ages . We have no events to chro
nicle. What more of us can be said than
that they were born, they were happy, they
died ' ? Coming next to that part of litera
ture which is more under the control of the
imagination, such as what we call Glaubsila,
6
or colloquially Glaubs,' and you call poetry,
the reasons for its decline amongst us are
abundantly obvious.
“ We find, by referring to the great master
pieces in that department of literature which
we all still read with pleasure, but of which
none would tolerate imitations, that they
 THE COMING RACE . 169
consist in the portraiture of passions which
we no longer experience - ambition , vengeance,
unhallowed love , the thirst for warlike re
nown ,and such like. The old poets lived
in an atmosphere impregnated with these
passions, and felt vividly what they expressed
glowingly. No one can express such passions
now , for no one can feel them , or meet with
any sympathy in his readers if he did. Again,
the old poetry has a main element in its
dissection of those complex mysteries of human
character which conduce to abnormal vices
and crimes, or lead to signal and extraordinary
virtues . But our society, having got rid of
temptations to any prominent vices and
crimes, has necessarily rendered the moral
average so equal , that there are no very
salient virtues . Without its ancient food of
strong passions, vast crimes, heroic excel
lences, poetry therefore is, if not actually
starved to death, reduced to a very meagre
diet. There is still the poetry of descrip
tion — description of rocks , and trees, and
F 2
170 THE COMING RACE ,

waters, and common household life ; and

our young Gy-ei weave much of this insipid
"

kind of composition into their love verses."

“ Such poetry,” said I, " might surely be
made very charming ; and we have critics
amongst us who consider it a higher kind
than that which depicts the crimes, or analyses
the passions, of man. At all events , poetry
of the insipid kind you mention is a poetry
that nowadays commands more readers than
any other among the people I have left above
ground.”
“ Possibly ; but then I suppose the writers
take great pains with the language they em
ploy, and devote themselves to the culture
and polish of words and rhythms as an
art ? "
Certainly they do : all great poets must
do that. Though the gift of poetry may be
inborn, the gift requires as much care to
make it available as a block of metal does
to be made into one of your engines. ”
“ And doubtless your poets have some
 THE COMING RACE . 171

incentive to bestow all those pains upon such

verbal prettinesses ? ”
• Well, I presume their instinct of song
would make them sing as the bird does ; but
to cultivate the song into verbal or artificial
prettiness , probably does need an inducement
from without, and our poets find it in the
love of fame--- perhaps, now and then, in the
want ofmoney.”
Precisely so . But in our society we
attach fame to nothing which man , in that
moment of his duration which is called
• life,' can perform . We should soon lose
that equality which constitutes the felicitous
essence of our commonwealth if we selected
any individual for pre-eminent praise : pre
eminent praise would confer pre-eminent
power, and the moment it were given , evil
passions, now dormant, would awake ; other
men would immediately covet praise, then
would arise envy, and with envy hate, and
with hate calumny and persecution. Our
history tells us that most of the poets and
172 THE COMING RACE .

most of the writers who , in the old time,

were favoured with the greatest praise, were
also assailed by the greatest vituperation, and
even , on the whole, rendered very unhappy,
partly by the attacks of jealous rivals, partly
by the diseased mental constitution which
an acquired sensitiveness to praise and to
blame tends to engender. As for the stimulus
of want ; in the first place, no man in our
community knows the goad of poverty ; and
secondly , if he did, almost every occupation
would be more lucrative than writing.
“ Our public libraries contain all the books
of the past which time has preserved ; those
books, for the reasons above stated , are
infinitely better than any can write nowa
days, and they are open to all to read with
out cost. We are not such fools as to pay
for reading inferior books, when we can read
superior books for nothing.”
“ With us, novelty has an attraction ; and
a new book, if bad , is read when an old
book, though good , is neglected .”
 THE COMING RACE. 173

" Novelty, to barbarous states of society

struggling in despair for something better,
has no doubt an attraction, denied to us,
who see nothing to gain in novelties ; but,
after all, it is observed by one of our great
authors four thousand years ago, that he
who studies old books will always find in
them something new, and he who reads new
books will always find in them something
old.' But to return to the question you have
raised, there being then among us no stimulus
to painstaking labour, whether in desire of
fame or in pressure of want, such as have
the poetic temperament, no doubt, vent it
in song, as you say the bird sings ; but for
lack of elaborate culture it fails of an audience,
and, failing of an audience , dies out , of itself,
amidst the ordinary avocations of life .”
“ But how is it that these discouragements
to the cultivation of literature do not operate
against that of science ?”
“ Your question amazes me. The motive

to science is the love of truth apart from

174 THE COMING RACE.

all consideration of fame, and science with

us too is devoted almost solely to practical
uses , essential to our social conservation and
the comforts of our daily life. No fame is
asked by the inventor, and none is given to
him ; he enjoys an occupation congenial to
his tastes, and needing no wear and tear of
the passions. Man must have exercise for
his mind as well as body ; and continuous
exercise, rather than violent , is best for both .
Our most ingenious cultivators of science are,
as a general rule, the longest lived and the
niost free from disease. Painting is an amuse
ment to many, but the art is not what it
was in former times, when the great painters
in our various communities vied with each
other for the prize of a golden crown, which
gave them a social rank equal to that of the
kings under whom they lived . You will
thus doubtless have observed in our archæo
logical department how superior in point of
art the pictures were several thousand years
ago . Perhaps it is because music is , in
 THE COMING RACE . 175

reality, more allied to science, than it is to

poetry, that, of all the pleasurable arts, music
is that which flourishes the most amongst us .
Still , even in music the absence of stimulus in
praise or fame has served to prevent any great
superiority of one individual over another ;
and we rather excel in choral music, with
the aid of our vast mechanical instruments,
in which we make great use of the agency of
water,* than in single performers. We have
had scarcely any original composer for some
ages. Our favourite airs are very ancient in
substance, but have admitted many compli
cated variations by inferior, though ingenious,
musicians.”
“ Are there no political societies among the
Ana which are animated by those passions,
subjected to those crimes, and admitting those
disparities in condition, in intellect, and in
morality, which the state of your tribe, or
* This may remind the student of Nero's invention of a
musical machine, by which water was made to perform the
part of an orchestra , and on which he was employed when
the conspiracy against him broke out.
176 THE COMING RACE .

indeed of the Vril-ya generally, has left behind

in its progress to perfection ? If so, among
such societies perhaps Poetry and her sister
arts still continue to be honoured and to
improve ? ”
“ There are such societies in remote regions,
but we do not admit them within the pale of
civilised communities ; we scarcely even give
them the name of Ana, and certainly not that
of Vril-ya. They are barbarians, living chiefly
in that low stage of being, Koom-Posh , tend
ing necessarily to its own hideous dissolution
in Glek -Nas. Their wretched existence is
passed in perpetual contest and perpetual
change. When they do not fight with their
neighbours, they fight among themselves.
They are divided into sections, which abuse,
plunder, and sometimes murder cach other,
and on the most frivolous points of difference
that would be unintelligible to us if we had
not read history, and seen that we too have
passed through the same early state of igno
rance and barbarism . Any trifle is sufficient
 THE COMING RACE . 177

to set them together by the ears. They pre

tend to be all equals, and the more they have
struggled to be so , by removing old distinc
tions and starting afresh , the more glaring
and intolerable the disparity becomes, because
nothing in hereditary affections and associa
tions is left to soften the one naked distinction
between the many who have nothing and
the few who have much . Of course the
many hate the few , but without the few they
could not live. The many are always assail
ing the few ; sometimes they exterminate the
few ; but as soon as they have done so, a
new few starts out of the many, and is harder
to deal with than the old few . For where
societies are large, and competition to have
something is the predominant fever, there
must be always many losers and few gainers.
In short, the people I speak of are savages
groping their way in the dark towards some
gleam of light, and would demand our com
miseration for their infirmities, if, like all
savages, they did not provoke their own
178 THE COMING RACE .

destruction by their arrogance and cruelty.

Can you imagine that creatures of this kind,
armed only with such miserable weapons as
you may see ir our museum of antiquities,
clumsy iron tubes, charged with saltpetre,
have more than once threatened with destruc
tion a tribe of the Vril-ya, which dwells
nearest to them, because they say they have
thirty millions of population-and that tribe
may have fifty thousand if the latter do
-

not accept their notions of Soc -Sec (money

getting) on some trading principles which
they have the impudence to call a law of
civilisation ? ' "
“ But thirty millions of population are for
midable odds against fifty thousand ! ”
My host stared at me astonished. 66 Stran
ger,” said he, “ you could not have heard me
say that this threatened tribe belongs to the
Vril-ya ; and it only waits for these savages
to declare war, in order to commission some
half -a -dozen small children to sweep away
their whole population ."
 THE COMING RACE . 179

At these words I felt a thrill of horror,

recognising much more affinity with “ the
savages,” than I did with the Vril -ya, and re
membering all I had said in praise of the
glorious American institutions, which Aph
Lin stigmatised as Koom - Posh . Recovering
my self-possession, I asked if there were
modes of transit by which I could safely visit
this temerarious and remote people .
- You can travel with safety, by vril agency,
either along the ground or amid the air,
throughout all the range of the communities
with which we are allied and akin ; but I
cannot vouch for your safety in barbarous
nations governed by different laws from ours ;
nations, indeed, so benighted , that there are
among them large numbers who actually live
by stealing from each other, and one could
not with safety in the Silent Hours even leave
the doors of one's own house open . ”
Here our conversation was interrupted by
the entrance of Taë , who came to inform us
that he, having been deputed to discover and
180 THE COMING RACE .

destroy the enormous reptile which I had seen

on my first arrival, had been on the watch for
it ever since his visit to me, and had begun to
suspect that my eyes had deceived me, or
that the creature had made its way through
the cavities within the rocks to the wild
regions in which dwelt its kindred race, –
when it gave evidences of its whereabouts by
a great devastation of the herbage bordering
one of the lakes . And ,” said Taë , “ I feel
sure that within that lake it is now hiding.
So ” ( turning to me) “ I thought it might
amuse you to accompany me to see the way
we destroy such unpleasant visitors.” As I
looked at the face of the young child , and
called to mind the enormous size of the
creature he proposed to exterminate, I felt
myself shudder with fear for him, and perhaps
fear for myself, if I accompanied him in such
a chase. But my curiosity to witness the
destructive effects of the boasted vril , and my
unwillingness to lower myself in the eyes of
an infant by betraying apprehensions of per
 THE COMING RACE . 181

sonal safety, prevailed over my first impulse.

Accordingly, I thanked Taë for his courteous
consideration for my amusement, and pro
fessed my willingness to set out with him on
so diverting an enterprise.

CHAPTER XVIII .

As Taë and myself, on quitting the town, and

leaving to the left the main road which led to
it, struck into the fields, the strange and
solemn beauty of the landscape, lighted up,
by numberless lamps, to the verge of the hori
zon , fascinated my eyes, and rendered me for
>

some time an inattentive listener to the talk of

my companion.
Along our way various operations of agri
culture were being carried on by machinery,
the forms of which were new to me, and for
the most part very graceful ; for among these
people art being so cultivated for the sake of
mere utility, exhibits itself in adorning or
182 THE COMING RACE .

refining the shapes of useful objects. Precious

metals and gems are so profuse among them ,
that they are lavished on things devoted to
purposes the most commonplace ; and their
love of utility leads them to beautify its tools,
and quickens their imagination in a way un
known to themselves.
In all service, whether in or out of doors,
they make great use of automaton figures,
which are so ingenious, and so pliant to the
operations of vril , that they actually seem
gifted with reason. It was scarcely possible
to distinguish the figures I beheld , apparently
guiding or superintending the rapid move
ments of vast engines, from human forms
endowed with thought.
By degrees, as we continued to walk on ,
my at:ention became roused by the lively and
acute remarks of my companion. The intelli
gence of the children among this race is
marvellously precocious, perhaps from the
habit of having entrusted to them, at so early
an age, the toils and responsibilities of middle
 THE COMING RACE . 183
age. Indeed, in conversing with Taë, I felt as
if talking with some superior and observant
man of my own years. I asked him if he
could form any estimate of the number of
communities into which the race of the Vril-ya
is subdivided.
“ Not exactly," he said , “ because they
multiply, of course, every year as the surplus
of each community is drafted off. But I
heard my father say that, according to the
last report, there were a million and a half of
communities speaking our language, and
adopting our institutions and forms of life and
government ; but, I believe, with some differ
ences, about which you had better ask Zee.
She knows more than most of the Ana do.
An An cares less for things that do not con
cern him than a Gy does ; the Gy-ei are
inquisitive creatures. "
“ Does each community restrict itself to the
same number of families or amount of popula
tion that you do ? ”
“ No ; some havemuch smaller populations,
184 THE COMING RACE .

some have larger - varying according to the

extent of the country they appropriate, or to
the degree of excellence to which they have
brought their machinery. Each community
sets its own liniit according to circumstances,
taking care always that there shall never arise
any class of poor by the pressure of population
upon the productive powers of the domain ;
and that no state shall be too large for a
government resembling that of a single well
ordered family. I imagine that no Vril com
munity exceeds thirty thousand households.
But, as a general rule, the smaller the com
munity, provided there be hands enough to
do justice to the capacities of the territory it
occupies, the richer each individual is, and the
larger the sum contributed to the general
treasury ,—above all, the happier and the more
tranquil is the whole political body, and the
more perfect the products of its industry.
The state which all tribes of the Vril-ya
acknowledge to be the highest in civilisation,
and which has brought the vril force to its
 THE COMING RACE . 185
fullest development, is perhaps the smallest .
It limits itself to four thousand families ; but
every inch of its territory is cultivated to the
utmost perfection of garden ground ; its
machinery excels that of every other tribe,
and there is no product of its industry in any
department which is not sought for, at extra
ordinary prices, by each community of our
race . All our tribes make this state their
model, considering that we should reach the
highest state of civilisation allowed to mortals
if we could unite the greatest degree of hap
piness with the highest degree of intellectual
achievement ; and it clear that the smaller
the society the less difficult that will be. Ours
is too large for it."
This reply set me thinking. I reminded
myself of that little state of Athens, with only
twenty thousand free citizens, and which to
this day our mightiest nations regard as the
supreme guide and model in all departments
of intellect. But then Athens permitted fierce
rivalry and perpetual change, and was certainly
186 THE COMING RACE .

not happy. Rousing myself from the reverie

into which these reflections had plunged me,
I brought back our talk to the subjects con
nected with emigration .
“ But,” said I, “ when, I suppose yearly, a
certain number among you agree to quit home
and found a new community elsewhere, they
must necessarily be very few , and scarcely
sufficient, even with the help of the machines
they take with them, to clear the ground , and
build towns , and form a civilised state with
the comforts and luxuries in which they had
been reared .”
“ You mistake. All the tribes of the Vril
ya are in constant communication with each
other, and settle amongst themselves each
year what proportion of one community will
unite with the emigrants of another, so as
to form a state of sufficient size, and the place
for emigration is agreed upon at least a year
before, and pioneers sent from each state to
level rocks, and embank waters, and construct
houses ; so that when the emigrants at last
 THE COMING RACE . 187

go, they find a city already made, and a

country around it at least partially cleared .
Our hardy life as children makes us take
cheerfully to travel and adventure. I mean
to emigrate myself when of age."
“ Do the emigrants always select places
hitherto uninhabited and barren ? "
“ As yet generally, because it is our rule
never to destroy except where necessary to
our wellbeing. Of course, we cannot settle
in lands already occupied by the Vril-ya ; and
if we take the cultivated lands of the other
races of Ana, we must utterly destroy the
previous inhabitants . Sometimes, as it is ,
we take waste spots, and find that a trouble
some, quarrelsome race of Ana, especially if
under the administration of Koom-Posh or
Glek-Nas, resents our vicinity, and picks a
quarrel with us ; then, of course, as menacing
our welfare, we destroy it ; there is no coming
to terms of peace with a race so idiotic that
it is always changing the form of government
which represents it. Koom -Posh ,” said the
188 THE COMING RACE .

child , emphatically, “ is bad enough , still it

has brains, though at the back of its head ,
and is not without a heart ; but in Glek -Nas
the brain and heart of the creatures disappear,
and they become all jaws, claws, and belly .”
“ You express yourself strongly. Allow
me to inform you that I myself, and I am
proud to say it, am the citizen of a Koom
>
Posh ? ”
“ I no longer," answered Taë, “ wonder to
see you here so far from your home. What
was the condition of your native community
before it became a Koom -Posh ? ”
“ A settlement of emigrants—like those
settlements which your tribe sends forth
but so far unlike your settlements that it was
dependent on the state from which it came.
It shook off that yoke, and crowned with
eternal glory, became a Koom -Posh .”
“ Eternal glory ! how long has the Koom
Posh lasted ? ”
“ About 100 years.”
“ The length of an An’s life — a very young
 THE COMING RACE. 189

community. In much less than another 100

years your Koom - Posh will be aa Glek -Nas.”
“ Nay, the oldest states in the world I come
from , have such faith in its duration, that they
are all gradually shaping their institutions so
as to melt into ours, and their most thoughtful
politicians say that, whether they like it or
not, the inevitable tendency of these old states
is towards Kom -Posh -erie .”
66 The old states ? ”
66
Yes, the old states."
“ With populations very small in proportion
to the area of productive land ? ”
“ On the contrary, with populations very
large in proportion to that area .”
“ I see ! old states indeed ! -so old as to
become drivelling if they don't pack off that
surplus population as we do ours - very old
states ! -very, very old ! Pray, Tish , do you
think it wise for very old men to try to turn
head-over-heels as very young children do ?
And if you asked them why they attempted
such antics, should you not laugh if they
190 THE COMING RACE .

answered that by imitating very young chil

dren they could become very young children
themselves ? Ancient history abounds with
instances of this sort a great many thousand
years ago — and in every instance a very old
state that played at Koom-Posh soon tumbled
into Glek-Nas. Then , in horror of its own
self, it cried out for a master, as an old man
in his dotage cries out for a nurse ; and after
a succession of masters or nurses, more or
less long, that very old state died out of
history. A very old state attempting Koom
Posh - erie is like a very old man who pulls
down the house to which he has been ac
customed, but he has so exhausted his vigour
in pulling down, that all he can do in the
way of rebuilding is to run up a crazy hut,
in which himself and his successors whine
C
out How the wind blows ! How the walls
shake ! ' "
“ My dear Taë, I make all excuse for your
unenlightened prejudices, which every school
boy educated in a Koom -Posh could easily
 THE COMING RACE . 191

controvert, though he might not be so pre

cociously learned in ancient history as you
appear to be .”
“ I learned ! not a bit of it . But would
a schoolboy, educated in your Koom - Posh,
ask his great-great-grandfather, or great-great
grandmother to stand on his or her head with
the feet uppermost ? and if the poor old folks
hesitated - say, “ What do you fear ?—see how
I do it ! '
66
Taë, I disdain to argue with a child of
your age. I repeat, I make allowances for
your want of that culture which a Koom -Posh
alone can bestow . "
“ I, in my turn,” answered Taë, with an
air of the suave but lofty good-breeding which
characterises his race, “ not only make allow
ances for you as not educated among the
Vril -ya, but I entreat you to vouchsafe me
your pardon for insufficient respect to the
habits and opinions of so amiable a — Tish ! ”
I ought before to have observed that I was
commonly called Tish by my host and his
192 THE COMING RACE .

family, as being a polite and indeed a pet

name, metaphorically signifying a small bar
barian, literally a Froglet; the children apply
it endearingly to the tame species of Frog
which they keep in their gardens .
We had now reached the banks of aa lake,
and Taë here paused to point out to me the
ravages made in fields skirting it. - The
enemy certainly lies within these waters,”
said Taë . “ Observe what shoals of fish
are crowded together at the margin. Even
the great fishes with the small ones, who
are their habitual prey and who generally
shun them , all forget their instincts in the
presence of a common destroyer. This rep
tile certainly must belong to the class of the
Krek-a, a class more devouring than any
other, and said to be among the few surviv
ing species of the world's dreadest inhabitants
before the Ana were created . The appetite
of a Krek is insatiable—it feeds alike upon
vegetable and animal life ; but for the swift
footed creatures of the elk species it is too
 THE COMING RACE . 193

slow in its movements . Its favourite dainty

is an An when it can catch liim unawares ;
and hence the Ana destroy it relentlessly
whenever it enters their dominion . I have
heard that when our forefathers first cleared
this country , these monsters , and others like
them, abounded, and , vril being then undis
covered, many of our race were devoured.
It was impossible to exterminate them wholly
till that discovery which constitutes the power
and sustains the civilisation of our race. But
after the uses of vril became familiar to us,
all creatures inimical to us were soon anni
hilated . Still , once a-year or so, one of
these enormous reptiles wanders from the
unreclaimed and savage districts beyond , and
within my memory one seized upon a young
Gy who was bathing in this very lake. Had
she been on land and armed with her staff,
it would not have dared even to show itself ;
for, like all savage creatures, the reptile has
a marvellous in which warns it against
the bearer of the vril wand. How they
( 10. ) G
194 THE COMING RACE .

teach their young 10 avoid him, though seen

for the first time, is one of those mysteries
which you may ask Zee to explain, for I
cannot.* So long as I stand here, the monster
will not stir from its lurking - place ; but we
>
must now decoy it forth .”
6. Will not that be difficult ? ”
“ Not at all. Seat yourself yonder on that
crag (about one hundred yards from the
bank), while I retire to a distance. In a
short time the reptile will catch sight or
scent of you, and, perceiving that you are no
vril- bearer, will come forth to devour you.
As soon as it is fairly out of the water, it
becomes my prey.”
“ Do you mean to tell me that I am to
be the decoy to that horrible monster which
could engulf me within its jaws in a second !
I beg to decline . ”
* The reptile in this instinct does but resemble our wild
birds and animals, which will not come in reach of a man
armed with a gun. When the electric wires were first put
up, partridges struck against them in their flight, and fell
down wounded. No younger generations of partridges
meet with a similar accident.
 THE COMING RACE. 195
The child laughed . “ Fear nothing," said
he ; “ only sit still.”
Instead of obeying this command, I made
a bound, and was about to take fairly to my
heels, when Taë touched me lightly on the
shoulder, and, fixing his eyes steadily on
mine, I was rooted to the spot. All power
of volition left me . Submissive to the infant's
gesture, I followed him to the crag he had
indicated , and seated myself there in silence.
Most readers have seen something of the
effects of electro-biology, whether genuine or
spurious. No professor of that doubtful craft
had ever been able to influence a thought or
a movement of mine, but I was a mere
machine at the will of this terrible child .
Meanwhile he expanded his wings, soared
aloft, and alighted amidst a copse at the
brow of aa hill at some distance.
I was alone ; and turning my eyes with an
indescribable sensation of horror towards the
lake, I kept them fixed on its water, spell
bound. It might be ten or fifteen minutes,
196 THE COMING RACE .

to me it seemed ages, before the still surface,

gleaming under the lamplight, began to be
agitated towards the centre. At the same
time the shoals of fish near the margin evinced
their sense of the enemy's approach by splash
and leap and bubbling circle. I could detect
their hurried flight hither and thither , some
even casting themselves ashore. A long ,
dark, undulous furrow came moving along
the waters , nearer and nearer, till the vast
head of the reptile emerged —its jaws bristling
with fangs, and its dull eyes fixing themselves
hungrily on the spot where I sat motionless.
And now its fore feet were on the strand
now its enormous breast , scaled on either
side as in armour , in the centre showing
corrugated skin of a dull venomous yellow ;
and now its whole length was on the land,
a hundred feet or more from the jaw to the
tail . Another stride of those ghastly feet
would have brought it to the spot where I
at . There was but a mon between me
and this grim form of death, when what
 THE COMING RACE . 197

seemed a flash of lightning shot through the

air, snote, and, for a space in time briefer than
that in which a man can draw his breath ,
enveloped the monster ; and then, as the flash
vanished, there lay before me a blackened,
charred, smouldering mass , a something gigan
tic, but of which even the outlines of form
were burned away , and rapidly crumbling
into dust and ashes. I remained still seated,
still speechless , ice-cold with a new sensation of
dread : what had been horror was now awe .
I felt the child's hand on my head - fear
—the
left me- spell was broken-I rose up .
“ You see with what ease the Vril-ya destroy
their enemies," said Taë ; and then, moving
towards the bank, he contemplated the smoul
dering relics of the monster, and said quietly,
“ I have destroyed larger creatures, but none
with so much pleasure. Yes, it is a Krek ;
what suffering it must have inflicted while
it lived ! ” Then he took up the poor fishes
that had flung themselves ashore, and restored
them mercifully to their native element.
198 THE COMING RACE .

CHAPTER XIX .

As we walked back to the town , Taë took a

new and circuitous way, in order to show me
what, to use a familiar term , I will call the
“ Station , ” from which emigrants or travellers
to other communities commence their jour
neys. I had, on a former occasion, expressed a
wish to see their vehicles . These I found to
be of two kinds, one for land -journeys, one
for aerial voyages : the former were of all
sizes and forms, some not larger than an
ordinary carriage, some movable houses of
one story and containing several rooms, fur
nished according to the ideas of comfort or
luxury which are entertained by the Vril-ya.
The aerial vehicles were of light substances,
not the least resembling our balloons, but
rather our boats and pleasure-vessels, with
helm and rudder, with large wings as paddles,
and a central machine worked by vril. All
the vehicles both for land or air were indeed
worked by that potent and mysterious agency .
 THE COMING RACE . 199

I saw a convoy set out on its journey, but

it had few passengers, containing chiefly
articles of merchandise, and was bound to a
neighbouring community ; for anong all the
tribes of the Vril-ya there is considerable com
mercial interchange. I may here observe,
that their money currency does not consist of
the precious metals, which are too common
among them for that purpose. The smaller
coins in ordinary use are manufactured from
a peculiar fossil shell, the comparatively scarce
remnant of some very early deluge, or other
convulsion of nature, by which a species has
become extinct. It is minute, and flat as an
oyster, and takes a jewel-like polish. This
coinage circulates among all the tribes of the
Vril-ya. Their larger transactions are carried
on much like ours, by bills of exchange, and
thin metallic plates which answer the purpose
of our bank -notes.
Let me take this occasion of adding that the
taxation among the tribe I became acquainted
with was very considerable, compared with
200 THE COMING RACE .

the amount of population . But I never heard

that any one grumbled at it, for it was devoted
to purposes of universal utility, and indeed
necessary to the civilisation of the tribe. The
cost of lighting so large a range of country, of
providing for emigration , of maintaining the
public buildings at which the various opera
tions of national intellect were carried on,
from the first education of an infant to the
departments to which the College of Sages
were perpetually trying new experiments in
mechanical science : all these involved the
necessity for considerable state funds. To
these I must add an item that struck me as
very singular. I have said that all the human
labour required by the state is carried on by
children up to the marriageable age. For this
labour the state pays , and at a rate immeasur
ably higher than our remuneration to labour
even in the United States. According to their
theory, every child , male or female, on attain
ing the marriageable age, and there terminating
the period of labour, should have acquired
 THE COMING RACE . 201

enough for an independent competence during

life . As, no matter what the disparity of
fortune in the parents, all the children must
equally serve, so all are equally paid according
to their several ages or the nature of their
work . When the parents or friends choose
to retain a child in their own service, they
must pay into the public fund in the sanie
ratio as the state pays to the children it em
ploys ; and this sum is handed over to the child
when the period of service expires. This
practice serves, no doubt, to render the notion
of social equality familiar and agreeable ; and
if it may be said that all the children form
democracy, no less truly it may be said that
all the adults form an aristocracy. The ex
quisite politeness and refinement of manners
among the Vril-ya, the generosity of their
sentiments , the absolute leisure they enjoy
for following out their own private pursuits ,
the amenities of their domestic intercourse ,
in which they seem as members of one noble
order that can have no distrust of each other's
G2
202 THE COMING RACE .

word or deed, all combine to make the Vril-ya

the most perfect nobility which a political
disciple of Plato or Sidney could conceive for
the ideal of an aristocratic republic.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM the date of the expedition with Taë

which I have just narrated, the child paid me
frequent visits. He had taken a liking to me,
which I cordially returned. Indeed, as he
was not yet twelve years old, and had not
commenced the course of scientific studies
with which childhood closes in that country,
my intellect was less inferior to his than to
that of the elder members of his race, especially
of the Gy -ei, and most especially of the
accomplished Zee. The children of the Vril
ya, having upon their minds the weight of so
many active duties and grave responsibilities,
are not generally mirthful; but Taë, with all
his wisdom , had much of the playful good
 THE COMING RACE . 203
humour one often finds the characteristic of
elderly men of genius. He felt that sort of
pleasure in my society which a boy of a
similar age in the upper world has in the
company ofa pet dog or monkey. It amused
him to try and teach me the ways of his
people, as it amuses a nephew of mine to
make his poodle walk on his hind legs or
jump through a hoop. I willingly lent my
self to such experiments, but I never achieved
the success of the poodle. I was very much
interested at first in the attempt to ply the
wings which the youngest of the Vril- ya use
as nimbly and easily as ours do their legs and
arms ; but my efforts were attended with con
tusions serious enough to make me abandon
them in despair.
The wings, as I before said, are very large,
reaching to the knee, and in repose thrown
back so as to form a very graceful mantle.
They are composed from the feathers of a
gigantic bird that abounds in the rocky heights
of the country - the colour mostly white, but
204 THE COMING RACE .

sometimes with reddish streaks. They are

fastened round the shoulders with light but
strong springs of steel ; and, when expanded,
the arms slide through loops for that purpose,
forming, as it were, a stout central mem
brane. As the arms are raised , a tubular

lining beneath the vest or tunic becomes, by

mechanical contrivance, inflated with air, in
creased or diminished at will by the movement
of the arms, and serving to buoy the whole
form as on bladders. The wings and the
balloon-like apparatus are highly charged with
vril ; and when the body is thus wafted up
ward, it seems to become singularly lightened
of its weight. I found it easy enough to soar
from the ground ; indeed when the wings
were spread it was scarcely possible not to
soar, but then came the difficulty and the
danger. I utterly failed in the power to use
and direct the pinions, though I am con
sidered among my own race unusually alert
and ready in bodily exercises, and am a very
practised swimmer. I could only make the
 THE COMING RACE. 205

most confused and blundering efforts at flight .

I was the servant of the wings ; the wings
were not my servants — they were beyond my
control ; and when by a violent strain of
muscle, and, I must fairly own, in that ab
normal strength which is given by excessive
fright, I curbed their gyrations and brought
them near to the body, it seemed as if I lost
the sustaining power stored in them and the
connecting bladders, as when air is let out of
a balloon , and found myself precipitated again
to earth ; saved, indeed , by some spasmodic
flutterings, from being dashed to pieces, but
not saved from the bruises and the stun of a
heavy fall. I would , however, have perse
vered in my attempts, but for the advice or
the commands of the scientific Zee, who had
benevolently accompanied my flutterings, and
indeed, on the last occasion, flying just under
me, received my form as it fell on her own
expanded wings, and preserved me from
breaking my head on the roof of the pyramid
from which we had ascended .
206 THE COMING RACE .

“ I see,” she said, " that your trials are in

vain , not from the fault of the wings and
their appurtenances, nor from any imperfect
ness and malformation of your own corpuscular
system , but from irremediable, because organic,
defect in your power of volition . Learn that
the connection between the will and the
agencies of that fluid which has been sub
jected to the control of the Vril-ya was never
established by the first discoverers, never
achieved by a single generation ; it has gone
on increasing, like other properties of race,
in proportion as it has been uniformly trans
mitted from parent to child, so that, at last,
it has become an instinct ; and an infant An
of our race , wills to fly as intuitively and
unconsciously as he wills to walk. He thus
plies his invented or artificial wings with as
much safety as a bird plies those with which
it is born . I did not think sufficiently of this
when I allowed you to try an experiment
which allured me, for I longed to have in you
a companion. I shall abandon the experiment
 THE COMING RACE . 207

now . Your life is becoming dear to me. "

Herewith the Gy's voice and face softened,
and I felt more seriously alarmed than I had
been in my previous flights.
Now that I am on the subject of wings, I
ought not to omit mention of a custom among
the Gy -ei which seems to me very pretty and
tender in the sentiment it applies. A Gy
wears wings habitually while yet a virgin-
she joins the Ana in their aerial sports-she
adventures alone and afar into the wilder
regions of the sunless world ; in the boldness
and height of her soarings, not less than in
the grace of her movements, she excels the
opposite sex . But from the day of marriage
she wears wings no more, she suspends them
with her own willing hand over the nuptial
couch , never to be resumed unless the mar
riage tie be severed by divorce or death.
Now when Zee's voice and eyes thus
softened - and at that softening I prophetically
recoiled and shuddered— Taë, who had ac
companied us in our flights, but who, child
208 THE COMING RACE .

like, had been much more amused with my

awkwardness than sympathising in my fears
or aware of my danger, hovered over us,
poised amidst the still radiant air, serene and
motionless on his outspread wings, and hear
ing the endearing words of the young Gy,
laughed aloud. Said he, “ If the Tish cannot
learn the use of wings, you may still be his
companion , Zee, for you can suspend your
own ."

CHAPTER XXI .

I had for some time observed in niy host's

highly informed and powerfully proportioned
daughter that kindly and protective sentiment
which, whether above the earth or below it,
an all-wise Providence has bestowed upon
the feminine division of the human race.
But until very lately I had ascribed it to that
6
affection for “ pets ' which a human female
at every age shares with a human child . I
now became painfully aware that the feeling
 THE COMING RACE . 209

with which Zee deigned to regard me was

different from that which I had inspired in
Tač. But this conviction gave me none of
that complacent gratification which the vanity
of man ordinarily conceives from a flattering
appreciation of his personal merits on the
part of the fair sex ; on the contrary , it
inspired me with fear. Yet of all the Gy-ei
in the community, if Zee were perhaps the
wisest and the strongest, she was, by common
repute, the gentlest, and she was certainly the
most popularly beloved . The desire to aid ,
to succour, to protect , to comfort, to bless ,
seemed to pervade her whole being. Though
the complicated miseries that originate in
penury and guilt are unknown to the social
system of the Vril-ya, still, no sage had yet
discovered in vril an agency which could banish
sorrow from life ; and wherever amongst her
people sorrow found its way, there Zee followed
in the mission of comforter. Did some sister
Gy fail to secure the love she sighed for ?
Zee sought her out, and brought all the
210 THE COMING RACE .

resources of her lore, and all the consola

tions of her sympathy, to bear upon a grief
that so needs the solace of a confident. In
the rare cases when grave illness seized upon
childhood or youth , and the cases , less rare ,
when, in the hardy and adventurous pro
bation of infants, some accident, attended
with pain and injury occurred, Zee forsook
her studies and her sports, and becanie the
healer and the nurse . Her favourite flights
were towards the extreme boundaries of the
domain where children were stationed on

guard against outbreaks of warring forces in

nature, or the invasions of devouring animals ,
so that she might warn them of any peril
which her knowledge detected or foresaw , or
be at hand if any harm should befall. Nay,
even in the exercise of her scientific acquire
ments there was a concurrent benevolence of
purpose and will. Did she learn any novelty
in invention that would be useful to the
practitioner of some special art or craft ? she
hastened to communicate and explain it. Was
 THE COMING RACE . 211

some veteran sage of the College perplexed

and wearied with the toil of an abstruse
study ? she would patiently devote herself to
his aid, work out details for him , sustain his
spirits with her hopeful smile, quicken his.
wit with her luminous suggestion, be to him ,
as it were, his own good genius made visible
as the strengthener and inspirer. The same
tenderness she exhibited to the inferior crea
tures. I have often known her bring home
some sick and wounded animal, and tend and
cherish it as a mother would tend and cherish
her stricken child . Many a time when I sat
in the balcony, or hanging garden , on which
my window opened, I have watched her rising
in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few
moments groups of infants below, catching
sight of her, would soar upward with joyous
sounds of greeting ; clustering and sporting
around her, so that she seemed a very centre
of innocent delight. When I have walked
with her amidst the rocks and valleys thout
the city, the elk-deer would scent or see her
212 THE COMING RACE .

from afar, come bounding up, eager for the

caress of her hand, or follow her footsteps,
till dismissed by some musical whisper that
the creature had learned to comprehend . It
is the fashion among the virgin Gy-ei to
wear on their foreheads a circlet, or coronet,
with gems resembling opals, arranged in four
points or rays like stars. These are lustreless
in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril
wand they take a clear lambent flame, which
illuminates, yet not burns. This serves as an
ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp,
if, in their wanderings beyond their artificial
lights, they have to traverse the dark. ere

are times, when I have seen Zee's thoughtful

majesty of face lighted up by this crowning
halo , that I could scarcely believe her to be aa
creature of mortal birth, and bent my head
before her as the vision of a being among the
celestial orders. But never once did my heart

feel for this lofty type of the noblest woman

hood a sentiment of human love. Is it that,
among the race I belong to, man's pride so
1
 THE COMING RACE . 213

far influences his passions that woman loses

to him her special charm of woman if he feels
her to be in all things eminently superior to
himself ? But by what strange infatuation
could this peerless daughter of a race which,
in the supremacy of its powers and the felicity
of its conditions, ranked all other races in the
category of barbarians, have deigned to honour
me with her preference ? In personal quali
fications, though I passed for good-looking
among the people I came from , the handsomest
of my countrymen might have seemed insigni
ficant and homely beside the grand and serene
type of beauty which characterised the aspect
of the Vril-ya.
That novelty, the very difference between
myself and those to whom Zee was accustomed,
might serve to bias her fancy was probable
enough, and as the reader will see later, such
a cause might suffice to account for the pre
dilection with which I was distinguished by a
young Gy scarcely out of her childhood, and
very inferior in all respects to Zee. But who
214 THE COMING RACE .

ever will consider those tender characteristics

which I have just ascribed to the daughter of
Aph -Lin , may readily conceive that the main
cause of my attraction to her was in her
instinctive desire to cherish , to comfort, to
protect, and, in protecting, to sustain and to
exalt. Thus, when I look back, I account for
the only weakness unworthy of her lofty nature,
which bowed the daughter of the Vril-ya to
a woman's affection for one so inferior to
herself as was her father's guest. But be the
cause what it may, the consciousness that I
had inspired such affection thrilled me with
awe — a moral awe of her very perfections, of
her mysterious powers, of the inseparable dis
tinctions between her race and my own ; and
with that awe, I must confess to my shame,
there combined the more material and ignoble
dread of the perils to which her preference
would expose me.
Could it be supposed for a moment that the
parents and friends of this exalted being could
view without indignation and disgust the
 THE COMING RACE. 215
possibility of an alliance between herself and
a Tish ? Her they could not punish, her
they could not confine nor restrain . Neither
in domestic nor in political life do they ac
knowledge any law of force amongst them
selves ; but they could effectually put an end
to her infatuation by a flash of vril inflicted
upon me.
Under these anxious circumstances, fortu
nately, my conscience and sense of honour
were free from reproach. It became clearly
my duty, if Zee's preference continued mani
fest, to intimate it to my host, with, of course,
all the delicacy which is ever to be preserved
by a well-bred man in confiding to another
any degree of favour by which one of the
fair sex may condescend to distinguish him.
Thus, at all events, I should be freed from
responsibility or suspicion of voluntary parti
cipation in the sentiments of Zee ; and the
superior wisdom of my host might probably
suggest some sage extrication from my peril
ous dilemma. In this resolve I obeyed the
216 THE COMING RACE .

ordinary instinct of civilised and moral man ,

who, erring though he be, still generally
prefers the right course in those cases where
it is obviously against his inclinations, his
interests, and his safety to elect the wrong
one .

CHAPTER XXII .

As the reader has seen , Aph-Lin had not

favoured my general and unrestricted inter
course with his countrymen . Though relying
on my promise to abstain from giving any
information as to the world I had left, and
still more on the promise of those to whom
had been put the same request, not to question
me, which Zee had extracted from Taë, yet
he did not feel sure that, if I were allowed to
mix with the strangers whose curiosity the
sight of me had aroused, I could sufficiently
guard myself against their inquiries. When
I went out, therefore, it was never alone ; I
was always accompanied either by one of my
 THE COMING RACE . 217

host's family, or my child-friend Taë. Bra ,

Aph-Lin's wife, seldom stirred beyond the
gardens which surrounded the house, and was
fond of reading the ancient literature, which
contained something of romance and adven
ture not be found in the writings of recent
ages, and presented pictures of a life unfamiliar
to her experience and interesting to her im
agination ; pictures, indeed , of a life more
resembling that which we lead every day
above -ground, coloured by our sorrows, sins,
and passions, and much to her what the Tales
of the Genii or the Arabian Nights are to us .
But her love of reading did not prevent Bra
from the discharge of her duties as mistress
of the largest household in the city. She
went daily the round of the chambers, and
saw that the automata and other mechanical
contrivances were in order, that the numerous
children employed by Aph-Lin, whether in his
private or public capacity, were carefully tended.
Bra also inspected the accounts of the whole
estate, and it was her great delight to assist
218 THE COMING RACE .

her husband in the business connected with

his office as chief administrator of the Lighting
Department, so that her avocations necessarily
kept her much within doors. The two sons
were both completing their education at the
College of Sages; and the elder, who had a
strong passion for mechanics, and especially
for works connected with the machinery of
timepieces and automata, had decided in
devoting himself to these pursuits, and was
now occupied in constructing a shop, or ware
house, at which his inventions could be
exhibited and sold . The younger son pre
ferred farming and rural occupations; and
when not attending the college, at which he
chiefly studied the theories of agriculture,
was much absorbed by his practical application
of that science to his father's lands. It will
be seen by this how completely equality of
ranks is established among this people —a
shopkeeper being of exactly the same grade
in estimation as the large landed proprietor.
Aph - Lin was the wealthiest member of the
 THE COMING RACE . 219
community, and his eldest son preferred keep
ing a shop to any other avocation ; nor was
this choice thought to show any want of
elevated notions on his part.
This young man had been much interested
in examining my watch , the works of which
were new to him , and was greatly pleased
when I made him a present of it. Shortly
after, he returned the gift with interest, by
a watch of his own construction, marking both
the time as in my watch and the time as
kept among the Vril-ya. I have that watch
still, and it has been much admired by many
among the most eminent watchmakers of
London and Paris. It is of gold, with diamond
hands and figures, and it plays a favourite tune
among the Vril- ya in striking the hours : it
only requires to be wound up once in ten
months, and has never gone wrong since I
had it. These young brothers being thus
occupied, my usual companions in that family,
when I went abroad, were my host or his
daughter. Now, agreeably with the honour
220 THE COMING RACE .

able conclusions I had come to, I began to

excuse myself from Zee's invitations to go out
alone with her, and seized an occasion when
that learned Gy was delivering a lecture at the
College of Sages to ask Aph-Lin to show me
his country -seat. As this was at some little
distance, and as Aph-Lin was not fond of
walking, while I had discreetly relinquished
all attempts at flying, we proceeded to our
destination in one of the aerial boats belonging
to my host. A child of eight years old, in
his employ, was our conductor. My host and
myself reclined on cushions , and I found the
movement very easy and luxurious.
* Aph -Lin ,” said I, “ you will not, I trust,
be displeased with me if I ask your permission
to travel for a short time, and visit other
tribes or communities of your illustrious race.
I have also a strong desire to see those nations
which do not adopt your institutions, and
which you consider as savages. It would
interest me greatly to notice what are the
distinctions between them and the races whom
 THE COMING RACE . 221

we consider civilised in the world I have

left.”
“ It is utterly impossible that you should
go hence alone,” said Aph - Lin. " Even
among the Vril-ya you would be exposed to
great dangers. Certain peculiarities of for
mation and colour, and the extraordinary
phenomenon of hirsute bushes upon your
cheeks and chin, denoting in you a species of
An distinct alike from our race and any known
race of barbarians yet extant, would attract,
of course, the special attention of the College
of Sages in whatever community of Vril-ya
you visited , and it would depend upon the
individual temper of some individual sage
whether you would be received , as you have
been here hospitably , or whether you would
not be at once dissected for scientific purposes.
Know that when the Tur first took you to
his house, and while you were there put to
sleep by Taë in order to recover from your
previous pain or fatigue, the sages summoned
by the Tur were divided in opinion whether
222 THE COMING RACE .

you' were a harniless or an obnoxious animal.

During your unconscious state your teeth
were examined , and they clearly showed that
you were not only graminivorous, but carni
vorous . Carnivorous animals of your size
are always destroyed as being of dangerous
and savage nature . Our teeth, as you have
doubtless observed ,* are not those of the
creatures who devour fesh. It is, indeed,
maintained by Zee and other philosophers,
that as, in remote ages, the Ana did prey
upon living beings of the brute species, their
teeth must have been fitted for that purpose.
But, even if so, they have been modified by
hereditary transmission , and suited to the
food on which we now exist ; nor are even
the barbarians, who adopt the turbulent and
ferocious institutions of Glek -Nas, devourers
of Aesh like beasts of prey.
“ In the course of this dispute it was pro
posed to dissect you ; but Taë begged you
I never had observed it ; and, if I had , am not physio
logist enough to have distinguished the difference.
 THE COMING RACE . 223

off, and the Tur being, by office, averse to

all novel experiments at variance with our
custom of sparing life, except where it is
clearly proved to be for the good of the com
munity to take it, sent to me, whose business
it is, as the richest man of the state, to afford
hospitality to strangers from a distance. It
was at my option to decide whether or not you
were a stranger whom I could safely admit.
Had I declined to receive you, you would have
been handed over to the College of Sages,
and what might there have befallen you I
do not like to conjecture. Apart from this
danger, you might chance to encounter some
child of four years old, just put in possession
of his yril staff; and who, in alarm at your
strange appearance , and in the impulse of the
moment, might reduce you to a cinder. Taë
himself was about to do so when he first
saw you , had his father not checked his hand .
Therefore I say you cannot travel alone, but
with Zee you would be safe ; and I have no
doubt that she would accompany you on a
224 THE COMING RACE .

tour round the neighbouring communities

of Vril-ya (to the savage states, No ! ) : I will
ask her.”
Now, as my main object in proposing to
travel was to escape from Zee, I hastily ex
claimed , “ Nay, pray do not ! I relinquish
my design. You have said enough as to its
dangers to deter me from it ; and I can scarcely
think it right that a young Gy of the personal
attractions of your lovely daughter should
travel into other regions without a better pro
tector than aa Tish of my insignificant strength
and stature.”
Aph-Lin emitted the soft sibilant sound
which is the nearest approach to laughter that
a full-grown An permits to himself ere he re
plied : “ Pardon my discourteous but momen
tary indulgence of mirth at any observation
seriously made by my guest. I could not but
be amused at the idea of Zee, who is so fond
of protecting others that children call her the
GUARDIAN,' needing a protector herself against
any dangers arising from the audacious admira
 THE COMING RACE . 225

tion of males. Know that our Gy-ei, while

unmarried , are accustomed to travel alone
among other tribes, to see if they find there
some An who may please them more than
the Ana they find at home. Zee has already
made three such journeys, but hitherto her
heart has been untouched .”
Here the opportunity which I sought was
afforded to me, and I said , looking down, and
with faltering voice, “ Will you, my kind host,
promise to pardon me, if what I am about to
say gives you offence ? ”
Say only the truth , and I cannot be of
fended ; or, could I be so , it would be not for
me, but for you to pardon.”
• Well, then, assist me to quit you, and ,
much as I should have liked to witness more
of the wonders, and enjoy more of the felicity,
which belong to your people, let me return to
my own . ”
“ I fear there are reasons why I cannot do
that ; at all events, not without permission of
the Tur, and he, probably, would not grant
H
it.
( 10. )
226 THE COMING RACE .

You are not destitute of intelligence ; you may

(though I do not think so) have concealed the
degree of destructive powers possessed by your
people ; you might, in short, bring upon us
some danger ; and if the Tur entertains that
idea, it would clearly be his duty either to put
an end to you , or enclose you in a cage for
the rest of your existence. But why should
you wish to leave a state of society which you
so politely ailow to be more felicitous than
your own ? ”
“ O Aph-Lin ! my answer is plain. Lest
in aught, and unwittingly , I should betray
your hospitality ; lest, in that caprice of will
which in our world is proverbial among the
other sex , and from which even a Gy is not
free, your adorable daughter should deign to
regard me, though a Tish, as if I were a
civilised An, and - and - and
“ Court you as her spouse," put in Aph
Lin gravely, and without any visible sign of
surprise or displeasure.
“ You have said it.”
 THE COMING RACE . 227

“ That would be a misfortune,” resumed

my host, after a pause, “ and I feel that you
have acted as you ought in warning me. It
is, as you imply, not uncommon for an un
wedded Gy to conceive tastes as to the object
she covets which appear whimsical to others;
but there is no power to compel a young Gy
to any course opposed to that which she
chooses to pursue . All we can do is to reason

with her, and experience tells us that the

whole College of Sages would find it vain to
reason with a Gy in a matter that concerns
her choice in love. I grieve for you , because
such a marriage would be against the Ag
lauran , or good of the community, for the
children of such a marriage would adulterate
the race : they might even come into theworld
with the teeth of carnivorous animals ; this
could not be allowed : Zee, as a Gy, cannot be
controlled ; but you, as a Tish, can be destroyed.
I advise you , then, to resist her addresses ; to
tell her plainly that you can never return her
love. This happens constantly. Many an
228 THE COMING RACE .

An, however ardently wooed by one Gy,

rejects her, and puts an end to her persecution
by wedding another. The same course is
open to you .”
“ No ; for I cannot wed another Gy with
out equally injuring the community, and ex
posing it to the chance of rearing carnivorous
children .”
All I can say, and I say it
6. That is true .
with the tenderness due to a Tish , and the
respect due to a guest , is frankly this—if you
yield, you will become a cinder. I must leave
it to you to take the best way you can to de
fend yourself. Perhaps you had better tell
Zee that she is ugly. That assurance on the
lips of him she woos generally suffices to chill
the most ardent Gy. Here we are at my
country -house ."
 THE COMING RACE . 229

CHAPTER XXIII .

I CONFESS that my conversation with Aph

Lin and the extreme coolness with which he
stated his inability to control the dangerous
caprice of his daughter, and treated the idea
of the reduction into a cinder to which her
amorous flame might expose my too seductive
person , took away the pleasure I should other
wise have had in the contemplation of my
host's country -seat, and the astonishing per
fection of the machinery by which his farm
ing operations were conducted . The house
differed in appearance from the massive and
sombre building which Aph -Lin inhabited in
the city, and which seemed akin to the rocks
out of which the city itself had been hewn
into shape. The walls of the country -seat
were composed by trees placed a few feet
apart from each other, the interstices being
filled in with the transparent metallic substance
which serves the purpose of glass among the
230 THE COMING RACE .

Ana . These trees were all in flower, and

the effect was very pleasing, if not in the best
taste . We were received at the porch by
lifelike automata, who conducted us into a
chamber, the like to which I never saw before,
but have often on summer days dreamily
imagined. It was a bower-half room , half
garden. The walls were one mass of climbing
flowers . The open spaces, which we call
windows, and in which, here, the metallic
surfaces were slided back, commanded various
views ; some, of the wide landscape with its
lakes and rocks : some, of small limited ex
panse answering to our conservatories, filled
with tiers of flowers. Along the sides of the
room were flower-beds, interspersed with
cushions for repose. In the centre of the
floor were a cistern and a fountain of that
liquid light which I have presumed to be
naphtha. It was luminous and of a roseate
hue ; it sufficed without lamps to light up the
room with a subdued radiance. All around
the fountain was carpeted with a soft deep
 THE COMING RACE . 231
lichen, not green (I have never seen that
colour in the vegetation of this country ), but
a quiet brown, on which the eye reposes with
the same sense of relief as that with which in
the upper world it reposes on green. In the
outlets upon Aowers (which I have compared
to our conservatories) there were singing
birds innumerable, which , while we remained
in the room , sang in those harmonies of tune
to which they are, in these parts, so won
derfully trained . The roof was open. The
whole scene had charms for every sense
music from the birds, fragrance from the
flowers, and varied beauty to the eye at every
aspect. About all was a voluptuous repose .
What a place, methought, for a honeymoon ,
if a Gy bride were a little less formidably
armed not only with the rights of women
but with the powers of man ! but when one
thinks of a Gy, so learned , so tall, so stately,
so much above the standard of the creature
we call woman as was Zee , no ! even if had

felt no fear of being reduced to a cinder, it

232 THE COMING RACE .

is not of her I should have dreamed in that

bower so constructed for dreams of poetic
love.
The automata reappeared, serving one of
those delicious liquids which form the inno
cent wines of the Vril-ya.
“ Truly,” said I, “ this is a charming
residence, and I can scarcely conceive why
you do not settle yourself here instead of
amid the gloomier abodes of the city."
“ As responsible to the community for the
administration of light, I am compelled to
reside chiefly in the city, and can only come
hither for short intervals.”
But since I understand from you that no
honours are attached to your office, and it
involves some trouble, why do you accept
it ? ”
“ Each of us obeys without question the
command of the Tur. He said , ' Be it re
quested that Aph -Lin shall be Commissioner
of Light,' so I had no choice ; but having
held the office now for a long time, the cares ,
 THE COMING RACE . 233

which were at first unwelcome, have become ,

if not pleasing, at least endurable. We are
all formed by custom-even the difference of
our race from the savage is but the trans
mitted continuance of custom, which becomes,
through hereditary descent, part and parcel of
our nature. You see there are Ana who even
reconcile themselves to the responsibilities of
chief magistrate , but no one would do so if
his duties had not been rendered so light, or
if there were any questions as to compliance
with his requests . ”
“ Not even if you thought the requests un
wise or unjust ? ”
“ We do not allow ourselves to think so ,
and indeed , everything goes on as if each and
all governed themselves according to immemo
rial custom .
" When the chief magistrate dies or retires,
how do you provide for his successor ? ”
“ The An who has discharged the duties
of chief ma for many years is the best
person to choose one by whom those duties
H2
234 THE COMING RACE.

may be understood, and he generally names

his successor.”
“ His son, perhaps ? ”
“ Seldom that ; for it is not an office any
one desires or seeks, and a father naturally
hesitates to constrain his son . But if the Tur
himself decline to make a choice, for fear it
might be supposed that he owed some grudge
to the person on whom his choice would settle,
then there are three of the College of Sages
who draw lots among themselves which shall
have the power to elect the chief. We con
sider that the judgment of one An of ordinary
capacity is better than the judgment of three
or more, however wise they may be ; for
among three there would probably be disputes ;
and where there are disputes, passion clouds
judgment. The worst choice made by one
who has no motive in choosing wrong, is
better than the best choice made by many who
have many motives for not choosing right.”

“ You reverse in your policy the maxims

adopted in my country.”
 THE COMING RACE . 235

“ Are you all, in your country , satisfied

with your governors ? "
“ All ! certainly not ; the governors that
most please some are sure to be those most
>
displeasing to others.”
“ Then our system is better than yours. ”
“ For you it may be ; but according to our
system a Tish could not be reduced to a cinder
if a female compelled him to marry her ; and
as a Tish I sigh to return to my native
world . "
" Take courage, my dear little guest ; Zee
can't compel you to marry her. She can only
entice you to do so . Don't be enticed . Come
and look round my domain .”
We went forth into a close, bordered with
sheds ; for though the Ana keep no stock for
food, there are some animals which they rear
for milking and others for shearing. The
former have no resemblance to our cows, nor
the latter to our sheep, nor do I believe such
species exist amongst them. They use the milk
of three varieties of animal: one resembles the
236 THE COMING RACE .

antelope, but is much larger, being as tall as a

camel ; the other two are smaller, and, though
differing somewhat from each other, resemble
no creature I ever saw on earth . They are
very sleek and of rounded proportions ; their
colour that of the dappled deer, with very
mild countenances and beautiful dark eyes.
The milk of these three creatures differs in
richness and in taste . It is usually diluted
with water, and flavoured with the juice of
peculiar and perfumed fruit, and in itself is
very nutritious and palatable. The animal
whose fleece serves them for clothing and
many other purposes, is more like the Italian
she -goat than any other creature, but is con
siderably larger, has no horns, and is free
from the displeasing odour of our goats. Its
fleece is not thick, but very long and fine ; it
varies in colour, but is never white, more
generally of аa slate-like or lavender hue. For
clothing it is generally worn dyed to suit the
taste of the wearer . These animals were ex
ceedingly tame, and were treated with extra
 THE COMING RACE . 237

ordinary care and affection by the children

(chiefly female ) who tended them .
We then went through vast storehouses
filled with grains and fruits . I may here
observe that the main staple of food among
these people consists —firstly , of aa kind of corn
much larger in ear than our wheat , and which
by culture is perpetually being brought into
new varieties of flavour ; and, secondly , of a
fruit of about the size of a small orange ,
which , when gathered , is hard and bitter . It
is stowed away for many months in their
warehouses , and then becomes succulent and
tender . Its juice , which is of dark-red colour ,
enters into most of their sauces . They have
many kinds of fruit of the nature of the olive ,
from which delicious oils are extracted . They
have a piant somewhat resembling the sugar
cane , but its juices are less sweet and of a
delicate perfume. They have no bees nor
honey -kneading insects , but they make much
use of a sweet gum that oozes from a conifer
ous plant, not unlike the araucaria. Their
238 THE COMING RACE .

soil teems also with esculent roots and vege

tables, which it is the aim of their culture to
improve and vary to the utmost. And I
never remember any meal among this people ,
however it might be confined to the family
household , in which some delicate novelty in
such articles of food was not introduced . In
fine, as I before observed, their cookery is
exquisite , so diversified and nutritious that one
does not miss animal food ; and their own
physical forms suffice to show that with them,
at least, meat is not required for superior pro
duction of muscular fibre . They have no
grapes — the drinks extracted from their fruits
are innocent and refreshing. Their staple
beverage, however, is water , in the choice of
which they are very fastidious, distinguishing
at once the slightest impurity.
“ My youngest son takes great pleasure in
augmenting our produce,” said Aph - Lin as
we passed through the storehouses, “ and
therefore will inherit these lands , which con
stitute the chief part of my wealth. To my
 THE COMING RACE . 239
eldest son such inheritance would be a great
trouble and affliction . "
“ Are there many sons among you who
think the inheritance of vast wealth would be
a great trouble and affliction ? ”
Certainly ; there are indeed very few of
the Vril-ya who do not consider that aa fortune
much above the average is a heavy burden .
We are rather a lazy people after the age of
childhood, and do not like undergoing more
cares than we can help, and great wealth does
give its owner many cares. For instance, it
marks us out for public offices, which none of
us like and none of us can refuse. It necessi
tates our taking a continued interest in the
affairs of any of our poorer countrymen , so
that we may anticipate their wants and see
that none fall into poverty . There is an old
proverb amongst us which says, “ The poor
man's need is the rich man's shame
“ Pardon me, if I interrupt you for a
moment . You then allow that some, even
of the Vril-ya, know want, and need relief? ”
240 THE COMING RACE .

“ If by want you mean the destitution that

prevails in a Koom -Posh, that is impossible
with us, unless an An has, by some extra
ordinary process, got rid of all his means,
cannot or will not emigrate, and has either
tired out the affectionate aid of his rela
tions or personal friends, or refuses to accept
it . ”

" Well, then , does he not supply the place

of an infant or automaton, and become a
labourer — a servant ? ”
“ No : then we regard him as an unfortunate
person of unsound reason, and place him, at
the expense of the State, in a public building,
where every comfort and every luxury that
can mitigate his affliction are lavished upon
him . But an An does not like to be con
sidered out of his mind , and therefore such
cases occur so seldom that the public building
I speak of is now a deserted ruin , and the
last inmate of it was an An whom I recollect
to have seen in my childhood . He did not
seem conscious of loss of reason , and wrote
 THE COMING RACE . 241

glaubs (poetry) . When I spoke of wants, I

meant such wants as an An with desires larger
than his means sometimes entertains - for
expensive singing -birds, or bigger houses, or
country gardens ; and the obvious way to
satisfy such wants is to buy of him something
that he sells . Hence Ana like myself, who
are very rich , are obliged to buy a great many
things they do not require, and live on a very
large scale where they might prefer to live on
a small one. For instance, the great size of
my house in the town is a source of much
trouble to my wife, and even to myself ; but I
am compelled to have it thus incommodiously
large, because, as the richest An of the com
munity, I am appointed to entertain the
strangers from the other communities when
they visit us, which they do in great crowds
twice a -year, when certain periodical entertain
ments are held , and when relations scattered
throughout all the realms of the Vril-ya joy
fully reunite for a time. This hospitality, on
a scale so extensive, is not to my taste, and
242 THE COMING RACE .

therefore I should have been happier had I

been less rich . But we must all bear the lot
assigned to us in this short passage through
time that we call life. After all, what are a
hundred years more or less, to the ages through
which we must pass hereafter ! Luckily, I
have one son who likes great wealth . It is a
rare exception to the general rule, and I own I
cannot myself understand it . "
After this conversation I sought to return to
the subject which continued to weigh on my
heart — viz., the chances of escape from Zee.
But my host politely declined to renew that
topic, and summoned our air -boat. On our
way back we were met by Zee, who, having
found us gone , on her return from the College
of Sages , had unfurled her wings and flown in
search of us.
Her grand, but to me unalluring, counte
nance brightened as she beheld me, and,
poising herself beside the boat on her large
outspread plumes, she said reproachfully to
Aph -Lin— " O father ! was it right in you to
 THE COMING RACE. 243

hazard the life of your guest in a vehicle to

which he is so unaccustomed ? He might, by
an incautious movement, fall over the side ;
and, alas ! he is not like us, he has no wings.
It were death to him to fall. Dear one,” (she
added, accosting my shrinking self in a softer
voice), “ have you no thought of me, that you
should thus hazard a life which has become
almost a part of mine ? Never again be thus
rashi, unless I am thy companion. What terror
9
thou hast stricken into me! ”
I glanced furtively at Aph-Lin, expecting,
at least, that he would indignantly reprove
his daughter for expressions of anxiety and
affection, which, under all the circumstances ,
would , in the world above ground, be con
sidered immodest in the lips of a young
female, addressed to a male not affianced to
her, even if of the same rank as herself.
But so confirmed are the rights of females
in that region, and so absolutely foremost
among those rights do females claim the
privilege of courtship, that Aph -Lin would no
244 THE COMING RACE .

more have thought of reproving his virgin

daughter, than he would have thought of
disobeying the Tur. In that country , custom ,
as he implied, is all and all.
He answered mildly, “ Zee, the Tish was in
no danger, and it is my belief that he can take
very good care of himself.”
“ I would rather that he let me charge
myself with his care. Oh, heart of my heart,
it was in the thought of thy danger that I
first felt how much I loved thee ! ”
Never did man feel in so false a position as
I did. These words were spoken loud in the
hearing of Zee's father - in the hearing of the
child who steered. I blushed with shame
for them, and for her, and could not help
replying, angrily : “ Zee, either you mock
me, which , as your father's guest, misbecomes
>

you, or the words you utter are improper for

a maiden Gy to address even to an An of
her own race, if he has not wooed her with
the consent of her parents. How much more
improper to address them to a Tish, who
 THE COMING RACE . 245

has never presumed to solicit your affec

tions, and who can never regard you with
other sentiments than those of reverence and
awe ! ”
Aph -Lin made me a covert sign of approba
tion, but said nothing.
“ Be not so cruel ! ” exclaimed Zee , still in
sonorous accents . “ Can love command it
self where it is truly felt ? Do you suppose
that a maiden Gy will conceal a sentiment
that it elevates her to feel ? What a country
you níust have come from !”
Here Aph-Lin gently interposed , saying,
“ Among the Tish - a the rights of your sex
do not appear to be established, and at all
events my guest may converse with you
more freely if unchecked by the presence of
others. ”
To this remark Zee made no reply, but
darting on me a tender reproachful glance,
agitated her wings and fled homeward.
some aid
“ I had counted, at least, on
from my host,” said I, bitterly, “ in the
246 THE COMING RACE.

perils to which his own daughter exposes

me .

“ I gave you the best aid I could . To con

tradict a Gy in her love affairs is to confirm
her purpose. She allows no counsel to come
between her and her affections."

CHAPTER XXIV .

On alighting from the air-boat, a child ac

costed Aph - Lin in the hall with a request
that he would be present at the funeral
obsequies of a relation who had recently
departed from that nether world.
Now, I had never seen a burial-place or
cemetery amongst this people, and, glad to
seize even so melancholy an occasion to defer
an encounter with Zee, I asked Aph-Lin if
I might be permitted to witness with him
the interment of his relation ; unless, indeed ,
it were regarded as one of those sacred
 THE COMING RACE . 247

ceremonies to which a stranger to their race

might not be admitted.
“ The departure of an An to a happier
world , ” answered my host, “ when , as in
the case of my kinsman, he has lived so long
in this as to have lost pleasure in it, is rather
a cheerful though quiet festival than a sacred
ceremony, and you may accompany me if
you will .”
Preceded by the child-messenger, we walked
up the main street to a house at some little
distance, and, entering the hall, were con
ducted to a room on the ground -floor, where
we found several persons assembled round a
couch on which was laid the deceased . It
was an old man, who had, as I was told ,
lived beyond his 130th year. To judge by
the calm smile on his countenance, he had
passed away without suffering. One of the
sons, who was now the head of the family,
and who seemed in vigorous middle life, though
he was considerably more than seventy ,
stepped forward with a cheerful face and
248 THE COMING RACE .

told Aph-Lin “ that the day before he died

his father had seen in a dream his departed
Gy, and was eager to be reunited to her, and
restored to youth beneath the nearer smile
of the All-Good.”
While these two were talking, my attention
was drawn to a dark metallic substance at the
farther end of the room . It was about
twenty feet in length , narrow in proportion ,
and all closed round , save , near the roof,
there were small round holes through which
might be seen a red light. From the interior
emanated a rich and sweet perfume; and
while I was conjecturing what purpose this
machine was to serve, all the timepieces in
the town struck the hour with their solemn
musical chime ; and as that sound ceased ,
music of a more joyous character, but still of
a joy subdued and tranquil, rang throughout
the chamber, and from the walls beyond , in
a choral peal. Symphonious with the melody,
those present lifted their voice in chant. The
words of this liymn were simple. They
 THE COMING RACE . 249
expressed no regret, no farewell, but rather
a greeting to the new world whither the
deceased had preceded the living. Indeed , in
their language, the funeral hymn is called the
6
* Birth Song. ' Then the corpse, covered by
a long cerement, was tenderly lifted up by
six of the nearest kinsfolk and borne towards
the dark thing I have described . I pressed
forward to see what happened. A sliding
door or panel at one end was lifted up — the
body deposited within , on a shelf—the door
reclosed—a spring at the side touched-a
sudden whishing, sighing sound heard from
within ; and lo ! at the other end of the
machine the lid fell down , and a small hand
ful of smouldering dust dropped into a patera
placed to receive it. The son took up the
patera and said (in what I understood after
wards was the usual form of words) , “ Behold
how great is the Maker ! To this little dust
He gave form and life and soul. It needs not
this little dust for Him to renew form and life
250 THE COMING RACE .

and soul to the beloved one we shall soon see

again .”
Each present bowed his head and pressed
his hand to his heart. Then a young female
child opened a small door within the wall,
and I perceived , in the recess, shelves on
which were placed many pateræ like that
which the son held, save that they all had
covers. With such a cover a Gy now ap
proached the son , and placed it over the cup,
on which it closed with a spring . On the
lid were engraven the name of the deceased ,
and these words ::- “ Lent to us” (here the
date of birth) . “ Recalled from us ” (here the
date of death ).
The closed door shut with a musical sound,
and all was over.
 THE COMING RACE . 251

CHAPTER XXV.

“ AND this,” said I, with my mind full of

what I had witnessed— “ this, I presume, is
your usual form of burial ? ”
“ Our invariable form ," answered Aph - Lin .
>
“ What is it amongst your people ? ”
“ We inter the body whole within the
earth .”
“ What ! to degrade the form you have
loved and honoured, the wife on whose breast
you have slept, to the loathsomeness of corrup
tion ? ”
“ But if the soul lives again, can it matter
whether the body waste within the earth or
is reduced by that awful mechanism, worked,
no doubt by the agency of vril, into a pinch
9)
of dust ? ”
“ You answer well, ” said my host, “ and
there is no arguing on a matter of feeling ;
but to me your custom is horrible and repulsive,
252 THE COMING RACE.

and would serve to invest death with gloomy

and hideous associations . It is something ,
too, to my mind, to be able to preserve the
token of what has been our kinsman or friend
within the abode in which we live. We thus

feel more sensibly that he still lives, though

not visibly so to us. But our sentiments in
this, as in all things, are created by custom .
Custom is not to be changed by a wise An ,
any more than it is changed by a wise
Community, without the gravest delibera
tion, followed by the most earnest conviction .
It is only thus that change ceases to be
changeability , and once made is made for
good.”
When we regained the house, Aph-Lin
summoned some of the children in his service
and sent them round to several of his friends,
requesting their attendance that day, during
the Easy Hours , to a festival in honour of
his kinsman's recall to the All-Good . This
was the largest and gayest assembly I ever
witnessed during my stay among the Ana,
 THE COMING RACE . 253

and was prolonged far into the Silent

Hours.
The banquet was spread in a vast chamber
reserved especially for grand occasions. This
differed from our entertainments , and was not
without a certain resemblance to those we
read of in the luxurious age of the Roman
empire. There was not one great table set out,
but numerous small tables, each appropriated
to eight guests. It is considered that beyond
that number conversation languishes and
friendship cools. The Ana never laugh loud,
as I have before observed , but the cheerful
ring of their voices at the various tables
betokened gaiety of intercourse. As they
have no stimulant drinks , and are temperate
in food, though so choice and dainty, the
banquet itself did not last long. The tables
sank through the floor, and then came
musical entertainments for those who liked
them . Many, however, wandered away :
some of the younger ascended on their wings,
for the hall was roofless, forming aërial
254 THE COMING RACE .

dances ; others strolled through the various

apartments, examining the curiosities with
which they were stored , or formed theniselves
into groups for various games , the favourite of
which is a complicated kind of chess played
by eight persons. I mixed with the crowd,
but was prevented joining in their con
versation by the constant companionship
of one or the other of my host's sons ,
appointed to keep me from obstructive ques
tionings. The guests, however, noticed
me but slightly ; they had grown accus
tomed to my appearance, seeing me so often
in the streets, and I had ceased to excite much
curiosity .
To my great delight Zee avoided me, and
evidently sought to excite my jealousy by
marked attentions to a very handsomeyoung
An, who (though, as is the modest custom
of the males when addressed by females, he
answered with downcast eyes and blushing
cheeks, and was demure and shy as young
ladies new to the world are in most civilised
 THE COMING RACE . 255

countries, except England and America) was

evidently much charmed by the tall Gy, and
ready to falter a bashful “ Yes ” if she had
actually proposed. Fervently hoping that she
would , and more and more averse to the
idea of reduction to a cinder after I had seen
the rapidity with which a human body can
be hurried into a pinch of dust, I amused
myself by watching the manners of the other
young people. I had the satisfaction of ob
serving that Zee was no singular assertor of
a female's most valued rights. Wherever I
turned my eyes, or lent my ears, it seemed to
me that the Gy was the wooing party, and the
An the coy and reluctant one. The pretty
innocent airs which an An gave himself on
being thus courted , the dexterity with which
he evaded direct answer to professions of
attachment, or turned into jest the flattering
compliments addressed to him, would have
done honour to the most accomplished coquette.
Both my male chaperons were subjected greatly
to these seductive influences, and both acquitted
256 THE COMING RACE .

themselves with wonderful honour to their

tact and self- control.
I said to the elder son , who preferred
mechanical employments to the management
of a great property , and who was of an
eminently philosophical temperament, — " I -

find it difficult to conceive how at your age ,

and with all the intoxicating effects on the
senses, of music and lights and perfumes, you
can be so cold to that impassioned Gy who
has just left you with tears in her eyes at your
cruelty .”
The young An replied with a sigh , “ Gentle

Tish, the greatest misfortune in life is to marry

one Gy ifyou are in love with another . ”
“ Oh ! you are in love with another ? ”
- Alas ! yes.”
9
And she does not return your love ? ”
" I don't know . Sometimes a look , a tone,
makes me hope so ; but she has never plainly
told me that she loves me.”
“ Have you n whispered in her own ear
that you love her ? ”
 THE COMING RACE . 257

“ Fie ! what are you thinking of? What

world do you come from ? Could I so betray
the dignity of my sex ? Could I be so un
Anly — 60 lost to shame, as to own love
to a Gy who has not first owned hers to
me? "
“ Pardon : I was not quite aware that you
pushed the modesty of your sex so far. But
does no An ever say to a Gy, ' I love you , '
till she says it first to him ? ”
“ I can't say that no An has ever done so,
but if he ever does, he is disgraced in the eyes
of the Ana, and secretly despised by the Gy
ei. No Gy, well brought up, would listen to
him ; she would consider that he audaciously
infringed on the rights of her sex, while
outraging the modesty which dignifies his
own. It is very provoking,” continued the
An, “ for she whom I love has certainly
courted no one else, and I cannot but think
she likes me. Sometimes I suspect that she
does not court me because she fears I would
ask some unreasonable settlement as to the
( 10.) 1
258 THE COMING RACE.

surrender of her rights. But if so, she cannot

really love me, for where a Gy really loves
she foregoes all rights."
“ Is this young Gy present ?”
“ Oh yes. She sits yonder talking to my
mother.”
I looked in the direction to which my eyes
were thus guided , and saw a Gy dressed in
robes of bright red, which among this people
>

is a sign that a Gy as yet prefers a single state .

She wears igrey, a neutral tint, to indicate that
she is looking about for a spouse ; dark purple
if she wishes to intimate that she has made a
choice ; purple and orange when she is be
trothed or married ; light blue when she is
divorced or a widow and would marry again .
Light blue is of course seldom seen.
Among a people where all are of so high a
type of beauty, it is difficult to single out one
as peculiarly handsome. My young friend's
choice seemed to me to possess the average
of good looks ; but there was an expression
in her face that pleased me more than did
 THE COMING RACE . 259

the faces of the young Gy-ei generally, be

cause it looked less bold -- less conscious of
female rights . I observed that, while she
talked to Bra, she glanced , from time to time,
sidelong at my young friend.
Courage,” said I ; “ that young Gy loves
you."
Ah , but if she will not say so, how am I
the better for her love ? ”
“ Your mother is aware of your attach
ment ? ”
Perhaps so. I never owned it to her.
It would be un -Anly to confide such weakness
to a mother. I have told my father ; he may
have told it again to his wife.”
“ Will you permit me to quit you for a
moment and glide behind your mother and
your beloved ? I am sure they are talking
about you . Do not hesitate. I promise that
I will not allow myself to be questioned till I
rejoin you."
The young An pressed his hand on his
heart, touched me lightly on the head, and
260 THE COMING RACE .

allowed me to quit his side. I stole unob

served behind his mother and his beloved. I
overheard their talk .
Bra was speaking ; said she, “ There can be
no doubt of this : either my son, who is of
marriageable age, will be decoyed into mar
riage with one of his many suitors, or he will
join those who emigrate to a distance and we
shall see him no more . If you really care for
him, my dear Lo, you should propose .”
“ I do care for him, Bra ; but I doubt if I
could really ever win his affections. He is
fond of his inventions and timepieces ; and I
am not like Zee, but so dull that I fear I could
not enter into his favourite pursuits, and then
he would get tired of me, and at the end of
three years divorce me, and I could never marry
another - never.”
“ It is not necessary to know about time
pieces to kno: v how to be so necessary to the
happiness of an An who cares for timepieces,
that he would rather give up the timepieces
than divorce his Gy . You see, my dear Lo,"
 THE COMING RACE. 261

continued Bra, “ that precisely because we are

the stronger sex, we rule the other, provided
we never show our strength . If you were
superior to my son in making timepieces and
automata , you should, as his wife, always let
him suppose you thought him superior in that
art to yourself. The An tacitly allows the
pre-eminence of the Gy in all except his own
special pursuit. But if she either excels him
in that, or affects not to admire him for his
proficiency in it, he will not love her very
long ; perhaps he may even divorce her. But
where a Gy really loves, she scon learns to
love all that the An does. ”
The young Gy made no answer to this
address. She looked down musingly, then a
smile crept over her lips, and she rose, still
silent, and went through the crowd till she
paused by the young An who loved her. I
followed her steps, but discreetly stood at a
little distance while I watched them . Some
what to my surprise, till I recollected the coy
tactics among the Ana, the lover seemed to
262 THE COMING RACE .

receive her advances with an air of indiffer

ence. He even moved away, but she pursued
his steps, and a little time after, both spread
their wings and vanished amid the luminous
space above.
Just then I was accosted by the chief
magistrate, who mingled with the crowd
distinguished by no signs of deference or
homage. It so happened that I had not seen
this great dignitary since the day I had en
tered his dominions, and recalling Aph-Lin's
words as to his terrible doubt whether or not
I should be dissected, a shudder crept over me
at the sight of his tranquil countenance.
“ I hear much of you, stranger, from my
son Taë,” said the Tur, laying his hand
politely on my bended head. " He is very
fond of your society, and I trust you are
not displeased with the customs of our
people. ”
I muttered some unintelligible answer,
which I intended to be an assurance of my
gratitude for the kindness I had received from
 THE COMING RACE . 263
the Tur, and my admiration of his country
men, but the dissecting -knife gleamed before
my mind's eye and choked my utterance . A

softer voice said, “ My brother's friend must

be dear to me . ' And looking up I saw a
young Gy, who might be sixteen years old,
standing beside the magistrate and gazing at
me with a very benignant countenance. She
had not come to her full growth , and was
scarcely taller than myself ( viz ., about 55 feet
10 inches), and, thanks to that comparatively
diminutive stature, I thought her the loveliest
Gy I had hitherto seen. I suppose something
in my eyes revealed that impression , for her
countenance grew yet more benignant.
“ Taë tells me, ” she said , " that you have
not yet learned to accustom yourself to wings.
That grieves me, for I should have liked to
fly with you . "
“ Alas ! ” I replied , “ I can never hope to
enjoy that happiness. I am assured by Zee
that the safe use of wings is a hereditary gift,
and it would take generations before one
264 THE COMING RACE .

of my race could poise himself in the air

like a bird . "
“ Let not that thought vex you too much , "
replied this amiable Princess, “ for, after all
there must come a day when Zee and myself
must resign our wings for ever. Perhaps
when that day comes we might be glad if
the An we chose was also without wings.”
The Tur had left us, and was lost amongst
the crowd. I began to feel at ease with
Taë's charming sister, and rather startled her
by the boldness of my compliment in replying
" that no An she could choose would ever
use his wings to fly away from her.” It is
so against custom for an An to say such civil
things to a Gy till she has declared her
passion for him, and been accepted as his
betrothed, that the young maiden stood quite
dumbfounded for a few moments. Neverthe
less she did not seem displeased . At last
recovering herself, she invited me to accom
pany her into one of the less crowded rooms
and listen to the songs of the birds. I
 THE COMING RACE . 265

followed her steps as she glided before me,

and she led me into a chamber almost
deserted . A fountain of naphtha was playing
in the centre of the room ; round it were
ranged soft divans, and the walls of the
room were opened on one side to an aviary
in which the birds were chanting their artful
chorus. The Gy seated herself on one of
the divans, and I placed myself at her side.
“ Taë tells me,” she said, “ that Aph-Lin has
made it the law * of his house that you are
not to be questioned as to the country you
come from or the reason why you visit us.
Is it so ? ”
" It is .”
" May 1, at least, without sinning against
that law, ask at least if the Gy-ei in your

* Literally " has said, In this house be it requested."

Words synonymous with law , as implying forcible obliga .
tion, are avoided by this singular people. Even had it
been decreed by the Tur that his College of Sages should
dissect me , the decree would have ran blandly thus,—“ Be
it requested that, for the good of the community , the
carnivorous Tish be requested to submit himself to dis
section ."
I 2
266 THE COMING RACE .

country are of the same pale colour as your

self, and no taller ? "
“ I do not think, o beautiful Gy, that I 1

infringe the law of Aph -Lin, which is more

binding on myself than any one, if I answer
questions so innocent. The Gy-ei in my
country are much fairer of hue than I am, and
their average height is at least a head shorter
than mine .”
“ They cannot then be so strong as the
Ana amongst you ? But I suppose their
superior vril force makes up for such extra
ordinary disadvantage of size ? "
“ They do not profess the vril force as you
know it. But still they are very powerful in
my country, and an An has small chance of
a happy life if he be not more or less governed
by his Gy."
“ You speak feelingly,” said Taë's sister, in
a tone of voice half sad , half petulant. “ You
>
are married , of course ? ”
“ No -- certainly not. ”
“ Nor betrothed ? ”
 THE COMING RACE . 267
“ Nor betrothed . ”
“ Is it possible that no Gy has proposed
to you ? "
“ In my country the Gy does not propose ;
the An speaks first."
“ What a strange reversal of the laws of
nature !” said the maiden, “ and what want
ofmodesty in your sex ! But have you never
proposed, never loved one Gy more than
another ? ”
I felt embarrassed by these ingenuous ques
tionings, and said, “ Pardon me, but I think
we are beginning to infringe upon Aph -Lin's
injunction. Thus much only will I say in
answer, and then, I implore you, ask no more ,
I did once feel the preference you speak of ;
I did propose , and the Gy would willingly
have accepted me, but her parents refused
their consent.
“ Parents ! Do you mean seriously to tell
me that parents can interfere with the choice
of their daughters ? ”
“ Indeed they can, and do very often . ”
268 THE COMING RACE .

“ I should not like to live in that country,"

said the Gy, simply ; “ but I hope you will
never go back to it.”
I bowed my head in silence. The Gy
gently raised my face with her right hand ,
and looked into it tenderly . “ Stay with us, ”
she said ; stay with us, and be loved. ”
What I might have answered, what dangers
of becoming a cinder I might have en
countered, I still tremble to think, when the
light of the naphtha fountain was obscured
by the shadow of wings ; and Zee, flying
through the open roof, alighted beside us.
She said not a word, but, taking my arm with
her mighty hand , she drew me away, as a
mother draws a naughty child , and led me
through the apartments to one of the corridors,
on which , by the mechanism they generally
prefer to stairs, we ascended to my own room.
This gained , Zee breathed on my forehead ,
touched my breast with her staff, and I was
instantly plunged into a profound sleep.
When I awoke some hours later, and heard
 THE COMING RACE . 269
the song of the birds in the adjoining aviary ,
the remembrance of Taë's sister, her gentle
looks and caressing words, vividly returned to
me ; and so impossible is it for one born and
reared in our upper world's state of society
to divest himself of ideas dictated by vanity
and ambition, that I found myself instinctively
building proud castles in the air.
" Tish though I be,” thus ran my medita
tions — “ Tish though I be, it is then clear
that Zee is not the only Gy whom my appear
ance can captivate . Evidently I am loved by
A PRINCESS, the first maiden of this land , the
daughter of the absolute Monarch whose
autocracy they so idly seek to disguise by the
republican title of chief magistrate. But for
the sudden swoop of that horrible Zee, this
Royal Lady would have formally proposed to
me ; and though it may be very well for
Aph -Lin, who is only a subordinate minister,
a mere Commissioner of Light, to threaten
me with destruction if I accept his daughter's
hand , yet a Sovereign, whose word is law ,
270 THE COMING RACE .

could compel the community to abrogate any

custom that forbids intermarriage with one
of a strange race, and which in itself is a
contradiction to their boasted equality of
ranks .
“ It is not to be supposed that his daughter,
who spoke with such incredulous scorn of
the interference of parents, would not have
sufficient influence with her Royal Father to
save me from the combustion to which Aph
Lin would condemn my form . And if I
were exalted by such an alliance, who knows
but what the Monarch might elect me as his
successor. Why not ? Few among this in
dolent race of philosophers like the burden
of such greatness. All might be pleased to
see the supreme power lodged in the hands
of an accomplished stranger who has experi
ence of other and livelier forms of existence ;
and , once chosen , what reforms I would
institute ! What additions to the really plea
sant but too monotonous life of this realm
my familiarity with the civilised nations above
 THE COMING RACE . 271

ground would effect ! I am fond of the

sports of the field. Next to war, is not the
chase a king's pastime ? In what varieties
of strange game does this nether world
abound ! How interesting to strike down
creatures that were known above ground-be
fore the Deluge ! But how ? By that terrible
vril, in which , from want of hereditary
transmission, I could never be a proficient.
No, but by a civilised handy breech -loader
which these ingenious mechanicians could
not only make, but no doubt improve ; nay,
surely I saw one in the Museum . Indeed , as
absolute king, I should discountenance vril
altogether, except in cases of war. Apropos
of war, it is perfectly absurd to stint a people
so intelligent, so rich, so well armed , to a
petty limit of territory, sufficing for 10,000 or
12,000 families. Is not this restriction a mere
philosophical crotchet, at variance with the
aspiring element in human nature, such as
has been partially, and with complete failure,
tried in the upper world by the late Mr.
272 THE COMING RACE .

Robert Owen . Of course one would not go

to war with neighbouring nations as well
armed as one's own subjects ; but then, what
of those regions inhabited by races unac
quainted with vril, and apparently resembling,
in their democratic institutions, my American
countrymen ? One might invade them with
out offence to the vril nations, our allies ,
appropriate their territories, extending, perhaps
to the most distant regions of the nether earth ,
and thus rule over an empire in which the
sun never sets. (I forgot, in my enthusiasm ,
that over those regions there was no sun to
set.) As for the fantastical notion against
conceding fame or renown to an eminent
individual , because, forsooth , bestowal of
honours insures contest in the pursuit of
them , stimulates angry passions, and mars
the felicity of peace-it is opposed to the very
elements, not only of the human but the
brute creation , which are all, if tamable,
participators in the sentiment of praise and
emulation. What renown would be given
 THE COMING RACE . 273

to a king who thus extended his empire ! I

should be deemed a demigod ." Thinking of
that, the other fanatical notion of regulating
this life by reference to one which , no doubt,
we Christians firmly believe in , but never
take into consideration, I resolved that en
lightened philosophy compelled me to abolish
a heathen religion so superstitiously at vari
ance with modern thought and practical
action. Musing over these various projects,
I felt how much I should have liked at that
moment to brighten my wits by a good glass
of whisky --and -water. Not that I am habitu
ally a spirit-drinker, but certainly there are
times when a little stimulant of alcoholic
nature, taken with a cigar, enlivens the
imagination. Yes ; certainly among these
herbs and fruits there would be a liquid
from which one could extract a pleasant
vinous alcohol ; and with a steak cut off one
of those elks (ah ! what offence to science to
reject the animal food which our first medical
men agree in recommending to the gastric
274 THE COMING RACE .

juices of mankind !) one would certainly pass

a more exhilarating hour of repast. Then ,
too, instead of those antiquated dramas per
formed by childish amateurs, certainly, when
I am king, I will introduce our modern opera
and a corps de ballet, for which one might find,
among the nations I shall conquer, young
females of less formidable height and thews
than the Gy -ei — not armed with vril, and not
insisting upon one's marrying them .
I was so completely rapt in these and
similar reforms, political , social , and moral ,
calculated to bestow on the people of the
nether world the blessings of a civilisation
known to the races of the upper, that I did
not perceive that Zee had entered the chamber
till I heard a deep sigh, and raising my eyes,
beheld her standing by my couch.
I need not say that, according to the
manners of this people, a Gy can, without
indecorum, visit an An in his chamber, though
an An would be considered forward and im
modest to the last degree if he entered the
 THE COMING RACE . 275

chamber of a Gy without previously obtaining

her permission to do so. Fortunately I was
in the full habiliments I had worn when Zee
had deposited me on the couch. Nevertheless
I felt much irritated, as well as shocked , by
her visit, and asked in a rude tone what she
wanted .

Speak gently, beloved one, I entreat you, ”

said she, “ for I am very unhappy . I have
not slept since we parted.”
“ A due sense of your shameful conduct to
me as your father's guest might well suffice
to banish sleep from your eyelids. Where
was the affection you pretend to have for me,
where was even that politeness on which the
Vril- ya pride themselves, when, taking ad
vantage alike of that physical strength in
which your sex, in this extraordinary region ,
excels our own , and of those detestable and
unhallowed powers which the agencies of
vril invest in your eyes and finger-ends, you
exposed me to humiliation before your as
sembled visitors, before Her Royal Highness
276 THE COMING RACE .

-I mean, the daughter of your own chief

magistrate, -carrying me off to bed like a
naughty infant, and plunging me into sleep,
without asking my consent ? ”
66
Ungrateful! Do you reproach me for
the evidences of my love ? Can you think
that, even if unstung by the jealousy which
attends upon love till it fades away in blissful
trust when we know that the heart we have
wooed is won, I could be indifferent to the
perils to which the audacious overtures of
that silly little child might expose you ? '
“ Hold ! Since you introduce the subject
of perils, it perhaps does not misbecome me
to say that my most imminent perils come
from yourself, or at least would come if I
believed in your love, and accepted your
addresses. Your father has told me plainly
that in that case I should be consumed into
a cinder with as little coinpunction as if I
were the reptile whom Taë blasted into
ashes with the flash of his wand .”
“ Do not let that fear chill your heart to
 THE COMING RACE , 277

me,” exclaimed Zee, dropping on her knees and

absorbing my right hand in the space of her
ample palm . “ It is true , indeed , that we
two cannot wed as those of the same race
wed ; true that the love between us must be
pure as that which, in our belief, exists be
tween lovers who reunite in the new life
beyond that boundary at which the old life
ends . But is it not happiness enough to be
together wedded in mind and in heart ?
Listen : I have just left my father. He
consents to our union on those terms. I
have sufficient influence with the College
of Sages to insure their request to the Tur
not to interfere with the free choice of a
Gy, provided that her wedding with one of
another race be but the wedding of souls. Oh,
think you that true love needs ignoble union ?
It is not that I yearn only to be by your
side in this life, to be part and parcel of your
joys and sorrows here : I ask here for a tie
:

which will bind us for ever and for ever in the

world of immortals. Do you reject me ? ”
278 THE COMING RACE .

As she spoke, she knelt, and the whole

character of her face was changed ; nothing
of sternness left to its grandeur ; a divine
light, as that of an immortal, shining out
from its human beauty. But she rather awed
me as angel than moved me as woman , and
after an embarrassed pause, I faltered forth
evasive expressions of gratitude, and sought,
as delicately as I could, to point out how
humiliating would be my position amongst
her race in the light of a husband who might
never be permitted the name of father.
“ But, ” said Zee, “ this community does
not constitute the whole world . No ; nor do
all the populations comprised in the league
of the Vril -ya. For thy sake I will renounce
my country and my people. We will fly
together to some region where thou shalt
be safe. I am strong enough to bear thee
on my wings across the deserts that intervene.
I am skilled enough to cleave open, amid the
rocks, valleys in which to build ou home.

Solitude, and a hut with thee, would be to me

 THE COMING RACE . 279

society and the universe. Or wouldst thou

return to thine own world, above the surface
of this, exposed to the uncertain seasons, and
lit but by the changeful orbs which constitute
by thy description the fickle character of those
savage regions ? If so , speak the word , and
I will force the way for thy return , so that
I am thy companion there, though, there as
here, but partner of thy soul, and fellow
traveller with thee to the world in which
there is no parting and no death ."
I could not but be deeply affected by the
tenderness, at once so pure and so impassioned,
with which these words were uttered , and
in a voice that would have rendered musical
the roughest sounds in the rudest tongue .
And for a moment it did occur to me that I
might avail myself of Zee's agency to effect a
safe and speedy return to the upper world.
But a very brief space for reflection sufficed
to show me how dishonourable and base a
return for such devotion it would be allure
thus away, from her own people and a home
280 THE COMING RACE .

in which I had been so hospitably treated ,

a creature to whom our world would be so
abhorrent, and for whose barren , if spiritual
love, I could not reconcile myself to renounce
the more human affection of mates less ex
alted above my erring self. With this senti
ment of duty towards the Gy combined
another of duty towards the whole race I
belonged to . Could I venture to introduce
into the upper world a being so formidably
giſted — a being that with a movement of
her staff could in less than an hour reduce
New York and its glorious Koom - Posh into
a pinch of snuff ? Rob her of one staff,
with her science she could easily construct
another ; and with the deadly lightnings that
armed the slender engine her whole frame
was charged . If thus dangerous to the cities
and populations of the whole upper earth ,
could she be a safe companion to myself in
case her affection should be subjected to
change or embittered by jealousy ? These
thoughts, which it takes so many words to
 THE COMING RACE . 281

express, passed rapidly through my brain and

decided my answer .
“ Zee,” I said , in the softest tones I could
command , and pressing respectful lips on the
hand into whose clasp mine had vanished
Zee, I can find no words to say how deeply
I am touched, and how highly I am honoured,
by a love so disinterested and self-immolating.
My best return to it is perfect frankness.
Each nation has it customs. The customs of
yours do not allow you to wed me ; the
customs of mine are equally opposed to such
a union between those of races so widely
differing. On the other hand , though not
deficient in courage among my own people,
or amid dangers with which I am familiar,
I cannot , without a shudder of horror, think
of constructing a bridal home in the heart
of some dismal chaos, with all the elements
of nature, fire and water and mephitic gases,
at war with each other, and with the proba
bility that at some moment, while you were
busied in cleaving rocks or conveying vril into
282 THE COMING RACE.

lamps, I should be devoured by a krek which

your operations disturbed from its hiding
place. I, a mere Tish, do not deserve the love
of a Gy, so brilliant, so learned, so potent as
yourself. Yes, I do not deserve that love, for
I cannot return it. ”
Zee released my hand , rose to her feet, and
turned her face away to hide her emotions;
then she glided noiselessly along the room ,
and paused at the threshold . Suddenly,
impelled as by a new thought, she returned
to my side and said , in a whispered tone
“ You told me you would speak with
perfect frankness. With perfect frankness,
then, answer me this question, If you cannot
>
love me , do you love another ? ”
. Certainly, I do not. ”
“ You do not love Taë's sister ? ”
66
I never saw her before last night.”
" That is no answer . Love is swifter than
vril. You hesitate to tell me . Do not think
it is only jealousy.that prompts me to caution
you. If the Tur's daughter should declare
 THE COMING RACE . 283

love to you—if in her ignorance she confides

to her father any preference that may justify
his belief that she will woo you - he will have
no option but to request your immediate
destruction, as he is specially charged with
the duty of consulting the good of the com
munity, which could not allow a daughter of
the Vril-ya to wed a son of the Tish-a, in that
sense of marriage which does not confine
itself to union of the souls . Alas ! there

would then be for you no escape. She has

no strength of wing to uphold you through
the air ; she has no science wherewith to
make a home in the wilderness. Believe that
here my friendship speaks, and that my
jealousy is silent.”
With those words Zee left me . And re

calling those words, I thought no more of

succeeding to the throne of the Vril-ya, or
of the political , social, and moral reforms I
should institute in the capacity of Absolute
Sovereign.
284 THE COMING RACE .

CHAPTER XXVI.

AFTER the conversation with Zee just recorded,

I fell into a profound melancholy. The curious
interest with which I had hitherto examined
the life and habits of this marvellous com
munity was at an end. I could not banish
from my mind the consciousness that I was
among a people who, however kind and
courteous, could destroy me at any moment
without scruple or compunction. The virtuous
and peaceful life of the people which, while
new to me, had seemed so holy a contrast to
the contentions, the passions, the vices of the
upper world, now began to oppress me with
a sense of dulness and monotony. Even the
serene tranquillity of the lustrous air preyed
on my spirits. I longed for a change, even
to winter, or storm , or darkness. I began to
feel that, whatever our dreams of perfectibility,
our restless aspirations towards a better, and
higher, and calmer sphere of being, we, the
 THE COMING RACE . 285
mortals of the upper world , are not trained
or fitted to enjoy for long the very happi
ness of which we dream or to which we
aspire.
Now , in this social state of the Vril-ya, it
was singular to mark how it contrived to
unite and to harmonise into one system nearly
all the objects which the various philosophers
of the upper world have placed before human
hopes as the ideals of a Utopian future. It
was a state in which war, with all its calamities,
was deemed impossible,-a state in which the
freedom of all and each was secured to the
uttermost degree, without one of those ani
mosities which make freedom in the upper
world depend on the perpetual striſe of hostile
parties. Here the corruption which debases
democracies was as unknown as the discontents
which undermine the thrones of monarchies .
Equality here was not a name ; it was a
reality. Riches were not persecuted, because
they were not envied . Here those problems
connected with the labours of a working class,
286 THE COMING RACE.

hitherto insoluble above ground , and above

ground conducing to such bitterness between
classes, were solved by a process the simplest,
-a distinct and separate working class was
dispensed with altogether. Mechanical inven
tions, constructed on principles that baffled
my research to ascertain, worked by an agency
infinitely more powerful and infinitely more
easy of management than aught we have yet
extracted from electricity or steam, with the
aid of children whose strength was never over
tasked, but who loved their employment as
sport and pastime, sufficed to create a Public
wealth so devoted to the general use that not
a grumbler was ever heard of. The vices that
rot our cities, here had no footing. Amuse
ments abounded, but they were all innocent.
No merry -niakings conduced to intoxication ,
to riot, to disease. Love existed, and was
ardent in pursuit, but its object, once secured,
was faithful. The adulterer, the profligate,
the harlot, were phenomena so unknown in
this commonwealth , that even to find the
 THE COMING RACE . 287
words by which they were designated one
would have had to search throughout an
obsolete literature composed thousands of
years before. They who have been students of
theoretical philosophies above ground, ' know
that all these strange departures from civilised
life do but realise ideas which have been
broached, canvassed, ridiculed, contested for ;
sometimes partially tried, and still put forth
in fantastic books, but have never come to
practical result. Nor were these all the steps
towards theoretical perfectibility which this
community had made. It had been the sober
belief of Descartes that the life of man could
be prolonged, not, indeed , on this earth, to
eternal duration, but to what he called the
age of the patriarchs, and modestly defined to
be from 100 to 150 years average length.
Well , even this dream of sages was here ful
filled — nay, more than fulfilled ; for the vigour
of middle life was preserved even after the
term of a century was passed . With this
longevity was combined a greater blessing
288 THE COMING RACE .

than itself — that of continuous health . Such

diseases as befell the race were removed with
ease by scientific applications of that agency
life-giving as life-destroying-which is inherent
in vril . Even this idea is not unknown above
ground, though it has generally been confined
to enthusiasts or charlatans, and emanates
from confused notions about mesmerism , odic
force, &c. Passing by such trivial contrivances
as wings, which every schoolboy knows has
been tried and found wanting, from the
mythical or pre -historical period , I proceed
to that very delicate question, urged of late
as essential to the perfect happiness of our
human species by the two most disturbing
and potential influences on upper-ground
society, — Womankind and Philosophy. I
mean, the Rights of Women .
Now, it is allowed by jurisprudists that it
is idle to talk of rights where there are not
corresponding powers to enforce them ; and
above ground, for some reason or other, man,
in his physical force, in the use of weapons
 THE COMING RACE . 289
offensive and defensive, when it conies to
positive personal contest, can , as a rule of
general application, master women . But
among this people there can be no doubt
about the rights of women , because, as I
have before said, the Gy, physically speaking,
is bigger and stronger than the An ; and her
will being also more resolute than his, and
will being essential to the direction of the
vril force, she can bring to bear upon him,
more potently than he on herself, the mystical
agency which art can extract from the occult
properties of nature. Therefore all that our
female philosophers above ground contend
for as to rights of women, is conceded as
matter of course in this happy commonwealth.
Besides such physical powers, the Gy-ei have
(at least in youth) a keen desire for accom
plishments and learning which exceeds that
of the male ; and thus they are the scholars,
the professors — the learned portion, in short,
of the community
Of course, in this state of society the
( 10. ) K
 THE COMING RACE .
290

female establishes, as I have shown, her most

valued privilege, that of choosing and court
ing her wedding partner. Without that privi
lege, she would despise all the others. Now,
above ground, we should not unreasonably
apprehend that aa female, thus potent and thus
privileged, when she had fairly hunted us
down and married us, would be very imperious
and tyrannical. Not so with the Gy-ei : once
married, the wings once suspended , and more
amiable, complacent, docile mates, more
sympathetic, more sinking their loftier capa
cities into the study of their husbands' com
paratively frivolous tastes and whims, no poet
could conceive in his visions of conjugal bliss.
Lastly, among the more important charac
teristics of the Vril-ya, as distinguished from
our mankind - lastly, and most important on
the bearings of their life and the peace of
their commonwealths, is their universal agree
ment in the existence of a merciful beneficent
Deity, and of a future world to the duration
of which a century or two are moments too
 THE COMING RACE , 291
brief to waste upon thoughts of fame and
power and avarice ; while with that agree
ment is combined another-viz . , since they
can know nothing as to the nature of that
Deity beyond the fact of His supreme good
ness, nor of that future world beyond the
fact of its felicitous existence , so their reason
forbids all angry disputes on insoluble ques
tions. Thus they secure for that state in the
bowels of the earth what no community ever
secured under the light of the stars-all the
blessings and consolations of a religion with
out any of the evils and calamities which are
engendered by strife between one religion and
another.
It would be, then, utterly impossible to
deny that the state of existence among the
Vril-ya, is thus, as a whole, immeasurably
more felicitous than that of super-terrestrial
races , and, realising the dreams of our most
sanguine philanthropists, almost approaches to
a poet's conception of some angelical order.
And yet, if you would take a thousand of the
 THE COMING RACE .
292
best and most philosophical of human beings
you could find in London , Paris, Berlin, New
York, or even Boston, and place them as citi
zens in this beatified community, my belief is,
that in less than a year they would either die
of ennui, or attempt some revolution by which
they would militate against the good of the
community, and be burned into cinders at the
request of the Tur.
Certainly I have no desire to insinuate,
through the medium of this narrative, any
ignorant disparagement of the race to which I
belong. I have, on the contrary, endeavoured
to make it clear that the principles which
regulate the social system of the Vril-ya forbid
them to produce those individual examples of
human greatness which adorn the annals of
the upper world . Where there are no wars
there can be no Hannibal, no Washington, no
Jackson , no Sheridan ;-where states are so
happy that they fear no danger and desire no
change, they cannot give birth to a Demos
thenes, a Webster, a Sumner, a Wendel
 THE COMING RACE . 293

Holmes, or a Butler ; and where a society

attains to a moral standard , in which there
are no crimes and no sorrows from which
tragedy can extract its aliment of pity and
sorrow , no salient vices or follies on which
comedy can lavish its mirthful satire, it has
lost the chance of producing a Shakespeare,
or a Molière , or a Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
But if I have no desire to disparage my
fellow-men above ground in showing how
much the motives that impel the energies and
ambition of individuals in a society of contest
and struggle — become dormant or annulled in
a society which aims at securing for the aggre
gate the calm and innocent felicity which we
presume to be the lot of beatified immor
tals ; neither, on the other hand , have I the
wish to represent the commonwealths of the
Vril-ya as an ideal form of political society, to
the attainment of which our own efforts of
reform should be directed . On the contrary ,
it is because we have so combined , gh
out the series of ages, the elements which
294 THE COMING RACE .

compose human character, that it would be

utterly impossible for us to adopt the modes
of life, or to reconcile our passions to the
modes of thought, among the Vril-ya,-that
I arrived at the conviction that this people
though originally not only of our human race,
but, as seems to me clear by the roots of their
language, descended from the same ancestors
as the great Aryan family, from which in
varied streams has flowed the dominant
civilisation of the world ; and having, accord
ing to their myths and their history, passed
through phases of society familiar to ourselves,
-had yet now developed into a distinct
species with which it was impossible that any
community in the upper world could amalga
mate : and that if they ever emerged from
these nether recesses into the light of day,
they would, according to their own traditional
persuasions of their ultimate destiny, destroy
and replace our existent varieties of man .
It may, indeed, be said, since more than
one Gy could be found to conceive a partiality
 THE COMING RACE . 295

for so ordinary a type of our superterrestrial

race as myself, that even if the Vril-ya did
appear above ground, we might be saved from
extermination by intermixture of race . But
this is too sanguine a belief. Instances of
such mésalliance would be as rare as those of
intermarriage between the Anglo -Saxon emi
grants and the Red Indians. Nor would time
be allowed for the operation of familiar inter
course .
The Vril-ya, on emerging, induced
by the charm of aa sunlit heaven to form their
settlements above ground, would commence
at once the work of destruction , seize upon
the territories already cultivated, and clear off,
without scruple, all the inhabitants who re
sisted that invasion . And considering their
contempt for the institutions of Koom-Posh or
Popular Government, and the pugnacious
valour of my beloved countrymen , I believe
that if the Vril-ya first appeared in free
America - as, being the choicest portion of
the habitable earth, they would doubtless be
induced to do—and said, “ This quarter of
296 THE COMING RACE.

the globe we take ; Citizens of a Koom -Posh,

make way for the development of species in
the Vril-ya ,” my brave compatriots would
show fight, and not a soul of them would be
left in this life, to rally round the Stars and
Stripes, at the end of aa week.
I now saw but little of Zee , save at meals,
when the family assembled , and she was
then reserved and silent. My apprehensions
of danger from an affection I had so little
encouraged or deserved, therefore, now faded
away, but my dejection continued to increase.
I pined for escape to the upper world, but I
racked my brains in vain for any means to
effect it. I was never permitted to wander
forth alone, so that I could not even visit the
spot on which I had alighted, and see if it
were possible to re-ascend to the mine. Nor
even in the Silent Hours when the household
was locked in sleep, could I have let myself
down from the lofty floor in which my
apartment was placed . I knew not how to
command the automata who stood mockingly
 THE COMING RACE . 297

at my beck beside the wall , nor could I

ascertain the springs by which were set in
movement the platforms that supplied the
place of stairs. The knowledge how to
avail myself of these contrivances had been
purposely withheld from me . Oh, that I
could but have learned the use of wings , so
freely here at the service of every infant,
then I might have escaped from the case
ment, regained the rocks, and buoyed myself
aloft through the chasm of which the per
pendicular sides forbade place for human
footing !

CHAPTER XXVII.
One day, as I sat alone and brooding in my
chamber, Taë flew in at the open window,
and alighted on the couch beside me. I
was always pleased with the visits of a child,
in whose society, if humbled, I was less
eclipsed than in that of Ana who had com
K2
298 THE COMING RACE .

pleted their education and matured their

understanding. And as I was permitted to
wander forth with him for my companion,
and as I longed to revisit the spot in which
I had descended into the nether world, I
hastened to ask him if he were at leisure
for a stroll beyond the streets of the city.
His countenance seemed to me graver than
!
usual as he replied , “ I came hither on pur
pose to invite you forth.”
We soon found ourselves in the street,
and had not got far from the house when
we encountered five or six young Gy -ei, who.
were returning from th fields vith baskets

full of flowers, and chanting a song in chorus

as they walked . A young . Gy sings more
often than she talks. They stopped on seeing
us , accosting Taë with familiar kindness , and
me with the courteous gallantry which dis
tinguishes the Gy- ei in their manner towards
our weaker sex.

And here I may observe that, though a

virgin Gy is so frank in her courtship to the
 THE COMING RACE. 299
individual she favours, there is nothing that
approaches to that general breadth and loud
ness of manner which those young ladies of
the Anglo -Saxon race , to whom the dis
tinguished epithet of “ fast ” is accorded,
exhibit towards young gentlemen whom they
do not profess to love. No : the bearing
of the Gy-ei towards males in ordinary is
very much that of high -bred men in the
gallant societies of the upper world towards
ladies whom they respect but do not woo ;
deferential, complimentary, exquisitely polished
-what we should call “ chivalrous . "
Certainly I was a little put out by the num
ber of civil things addressed to my amour propre,
which were said to me by these courteous
young Gy-ei. In the world I came from , a
man would have thought himself aggrieved,
treated with irony, “ chaffed ” (if so vulgar a
slang word may be allowed on the authority
of the popular novelists who use it so freely ),
when one fair Gy complimented me on the
freshness of my complexion , another on the
300 THE COMING RACE .

choice of colours in my dress, a third, with

a sly smile, on the conquests I had made at
Aph-Lin's entertainment. But I knew already
that all such language was what the French
call banal, and did but express in the female
mouth, below earth , that sort of desire
to pass for amiable with the opposite sex
which, above earth , arbitrary custom and
hereditary transmission demonstrate by the
mouth of the male. And just as a high-bred
young lady, above earth , habituated to such
compliments, feels that she cannot , without
impropriety, return them, nor evince any
great satisfaction at receiving them ; so I, who
had learned polite manners at the house of
so wealthy and dignified a Minister of that
nation, could but smile and try to look pretty in
bashfully disclaiming the compliments showered
upon me . While we were thus talking, Taë's
sister, it seems, had seen us from the upper
rooms of the Royal Palace at the entrance of
the town , and, precipitating herself on her
wings, alighted in the midst of the group.
 THE COMING RACE . 301
Singling me out, she said , though still with
the inimitable deference of manner which I
have called “ chivalrous,” yet not without a
certain abruptness of tone which , as addressed
to the weaker sex, Sir Philip Sidney might
have termed “ rustic,” “ Why do you never
come to see us ? ”
While I was deliberating on the right
answer to give to this unlooked -for question,
Taë said quickly and sternly, “ Sister, you
forget - the stranger is of my sex. It is not
for persons of my sex, having due regard for
reputation and modesty, to lower themselves
by running after the society of yours .”
This speech was received with evident
approval by the young Gy-ei in general ; but
Taë's sister looked greatly abashed. Poor
thing !-and a PRINCESS too !
Just at this moment a shadow fell on the
space between me and the group ; and,
turning round, I beheld the chief magistrate
coming close upon us, with the silent and
stately pace peculiar to the Vril- ya. At the
302 THE COMING RACE .

sight of his countenance, the same terror

which had seized me when I first beheld it

returned . On that brow , in those eyes, there
was that same indefinable something which
marked the being of a race fatal to our own
that strange expression of serene exemption
from our common cares and passions, of
conscious superior power, compassionate and
inflexible as that of a judge who pronounces
doom. I shivered, and , inclining low , pressed
the arm of my child -friend, and drew him
onward silently. The Tur placed himself
before our path, regarded me for a moment
without speaking, then turned his eye quietly
his daughter's face, and, with a grave
salutation to her and the other Gy-ei, went
through the midst of the group, -still with
out a word .
 THE COMING RACE . 303

CHAPTER XXVIII.

WHEN Taö and I found ourselves alone on

the broad road that lay between the city and
the chasm through which I had descended
into this region beneath the light of the stars
and sun, I said under my breath , “ Child and
friend, there is a look in your father's face
which appals me. I feel as if, in its awful
tranquillity , I gazed upon death ."
Taë did not immediately reply. He seemed
agitated, and as if debating with himself by
what words to soften some unwelcome intelli
gence. At last he said , “ None of the Vril-ya
fear death : do you ?”
“ The dread of death is implanted in the
breasts of the race to which I belong . We
can conquer it at the call of duty, of honour,
of love . We can die for a truth , for aa native
land , for those who are dearer to us than
ourselves. But if death do really threaten me
304 THE COMING RACE ,

now and here, where are such counter -actions

to the natural instinct which invests with
awe and terror the contemplation of severance
between soul and body !”
Taë looked surprised , but there was great
tenderness in his voice as he replied, “ I will
tell my father what you say. I will entreat
him to spare your life.”
“ He has, then, already decreed to destroy
it ? ”

“ 'Tis my sister's fault or folly ,” said Taë,

with some petulance. “ But she spoke this
morning to my father ; and, after she had
spoken, he summoned me, as a chief among
the children who are commissioned to destroy
such lives as threaten the community, and
6
he said to me, “ Take thy vril staff, and seek
the stranger who has made himself dear to
thee, Be his end painless and prompt.'
“ And," I faltered, recoiling from the
child— " and it is, then, for my murder that
thus treacherously thou hast invited me forth ?
 THE COMING RACE. 305
No, I cannot believe it . I cannot think thee
guilty of such a crime .”
“ It is no crime to slay those who threaten
the good of the community ; it would be a
crime to slay the smallest insect that cannot
harm us.”
“ If you mean that I threaten the good of
the community because your sister honours
me with the sort of preference which a child
may feel for a strange plaything, it is not
necessary to kill me. Let me return to

the people I have left, and by the chasm

through which I descended . With a slight
help from you, I might do so now . You , by
the aid of your wings, could fasten to the
rocky ledge within the chasm the cord that
you found, and have no doubt preserved .
Do but that ; assist me but to the spot from
which I alighted, and I vanish from your
world for ever, and as surely as if I were
among the dead.”
“ The chasm through which you descended !
306 THE COMING RACE.

Look round ; we stand now on the very place

where it yawned. What see you ? Only
solid rock . The chasm was closed , by the
orders of Aph-Lin, as soon as communication
between him and yourself was established in
your trance, and he learned from your own
lips the nature of the world from which you
came . Do you not remember when Zee bade
me not question you as to yourself or your
race ? On quitting you that day, Aph - Lin
accosted me, and said, “ No path between the
stranger's home and ours should be left un
closed, or the sorrow and evil of his home
may descend to ours . Take with thee the
children of thy band, smite the sides of the
cavern with your vril staves till the fall of
their fragments fills up every chink through
which a gleam of our lamps could force its
way .' ”
As the child spoke, I stared aghast at the
blind rocks before me. Huge and irregular,
the granite masses, showing by charred dis
 THE COMING RACE . 307
coloration where they had been shattered, rose
from footing to roof-top ; not a cranny !
“ All hope, then , is gone," I murmured,
sinking down on the craggy wayside, “ and
I shall nevermore see the sun.” I covered
my face with my hands, and prayed to Him
whose presence I had so often forgotten
when the heavens had declared His handi
work. I felt His presence in the depths of
the nether earth, and amid the world of the
grave . I looked up, taking comfort and
courage from my prayers, and gazing with
a quiet smile into the face of the child, said ,
Now, if thou must slay me, strike.”
.

Taë shook his head gently. “ Nay, ” he

said, “ my father's request is not so formally
made as to leave me no choice. I will speak
with him, and I may prevail to save thee.
Strange that thou shouldst have that fear of
death which we thought was only the instinct
of the inferior creatures to whom the convic
tion of another life has not been vouchsafed.
308 THE COMING RACE .

With us, nut an infant knows such a fear.

Tell me, my dear Tish,” he continued, after
a little pause , " would it reconcile thee more
to departure from this form of life to that
form which lies on the other side of the
1
moment called · death,' did I share thy
journey ? If so , I will ask my father whether
it be allowable for me to go with thee . I
am one of our generation destined to emigrate,
when of age for it, to some regions unknown
within this world. I would just as soon

emigrate now to regions unknown, in another

world . The All -Good is no less there than
here. Where is He not ? ”
66
* Child ," said I, seeing by Taë's coun
tenance that he spoke in serious earnest,
“ it is crime in thee to slay me ; it were a
crime not less in me to say, “ Slay thyself.'
The All-Good chooses His own time to give
us life, and His own time to take it away.
Let us go back. If, on speaking with thy
father, he decides on my death, give me the
 THE COMING RACE . 309

longest warning in thy power, so that I may

pass the interval in self-preparation.”
We walked back to the city, conversing but
by fits and starts. We could not understand
each other's reasonings , and I felt for the
fair child, with his soft voice and beautiful
face, much as a convict feels for the exe
cutioner who walks beside him to the place
of doom.

CHAPTER XXIX.

In the midst of those hours set apart for

sleep and constituting the night of the Vril-ya,
I was awakened from the disturbed slumber
into which I had not long fallen , by a hand
on my shoulder. I started , and beheld Zee
standing beside me.
“ Hush , ” she said, in a whisper; “ let no
one hear us . Dost thou think that I have
ceased to watch over thy safety because I
310 THE COMING RACE .

could not win thy love ? I have seen Tač.

He has not prevailed with his father, who
had meanwhile conferred with the three sages
whom , in doubtful matters, he takes into
council, and by their advice he has ordained
thee to perish when the world re-awakens to
life. I will save thee. Rise and dress. ”
Zee pointed to a table by the couch on
which I saw the clothes I had worn on

quitting the upper world , and which I had

exchanged subsequently for the more pic
turesque garments of the Vril-ya. The young
Gy then moved towards the casement and
stepped into the balcony, while hastily and
wonderingly I donned my own habiliments.
When I joined her on the balcony, her face
was pale and rigid . Taking me by the hand,
she said softly, “ See how brightly the art
of the Vril-ya has lighted up the world in
which they dwell. To-morrow that world
will be dark to me.” She drew me back 1
into the room without waiting for my answer,
 THE COMING RACE . 311

thence into the corridor, from which we

descended into the hall. We passed into
the deserted streets and along the broad
upward road which wound beneath the rocks.
Here, where there is neither day nor night,
the Silent Hours are unutterably solemn ,
the vast space illumined by mortal skill is so
wholly without the sight and stir of mortal
life. Soft as were our footsteps, their sounds
vexed the ear, as out of harmony with the
universal repose. I was aware in my own
mind, though Zee said it not, that she had
decided to assist my return to the upper
world , and that we were bound towards
the place from which I had descended. Her
silence infected me, and commanded nine.
And now we approached the chasm . It had
been reopened ; not presenting, indeed , the
same aspect as when I had emerged from
it, but, through that closed wall of rock
before which I had last stood with Taē, a
new cleft had been riven, and along its
312 THE COMING RACE .

blackened sides still glimmered sparks and

smouldered embers. My upward gaze could
rot, however, penetrate more than a few feet
into the darkness of the hollow void, and I
stood dismayed , and wondering how that
grim ascent was to be made.
Zee divined my doubt. “ Fear not, ” said
she, with a faint smile ; “ your return is as
sured . I began this work when the Silent
Hours commenced, and all else were asleep :
believe that I did not pause till the path back
into thy world was clear. I shall be with
thee a little while yet. We do not part until
‫در و‬
thou sayest, ‘ Go, for I need thee no more .'
My heart smote me with remorse at these
words . " Ah ! ” I exclaimed , “ would that
thou were of my race or I of thine, then I
should never say, ' I need thee no more . '”
“ I bless thee for those words, and I shall
remember them when thou art gone,” an
swered the Gy tenderly.
During this brief interchange of words, Zee
 THE COMING RACE .
313
had turned away from me, her form bent and her
head bowed over her breast . Now, she rose
to the full height of her grand stature, and
stood fronting me. While she had been thus
averted from my gaze, she had lighted up the
circlet that she wore round her brow, so that
it blazed as if it were a crown of stars. Not
only her face and her form , but the atmos
phere around, were illumined by the efful
gence of the diadem.
“ Now , ” said she, " put thine arms around
me for the first and last time. Nay, thus ;
courage, and cling firm .”
As she spoke her form dilated , the vast
wings expanded. Clinging to her, I was
borne aloft through the terrible chasm . The
starry light from her forehead shot around
and before us through the darkness. Brightly,
and steadfastly, and swiftly as an angel may
soar heavenward with the soul it rescues from
the grave, went the ht of the Gy, till I
heard in the distance the hum of human
314 THE COMING RACE .

voices, the sounds of human toil. We halted

on the flooring of one of the galleries of the
mine, and beyond, in the vista, burned the
dim , rare, feeble lamps of the miners. Then
I released my hold. The Gy kissed me on
my forehead passionately, but as with a
mother's passion, and said, as the tears gushed
from her eyes , “ Farewell for ever. Thou

wilt not let me go into thy world --thou canst

never return to mine . Ere our household
shake off slumber, the rocks will have again
closed over the chasm , not to be re-opened by
me, nor perhaps by others, for ages yet un
guessed. Think of me sometimes, and with
kindness . When I reach the life that lies
beyond this speck in time, I shall look round
for thee . Even there, the world consigned to
thyself and thy people may have rocks and
gulfs which divide it from that in which I
rejoin those of my race that have gone before,
and I may be powerless to cleave way to re
gain thee as I have cloven way to lose. ”
 THE COMING RACE . 315
Her voice ceased . I heard the swan -like
sough of her wings, and saw the rays of her
starry diadem receding far and farther through
the gloom .
I sate myself down for some time, musing
sorrowfully ; then I rose and took my way
with slow footsteps towards the place in which
I heard the sounds of men. The miners I
encountered were strange to me, of another
nation than my own . They turned to look
at me with some surprise, but finding that I
could not answer their brief questions in their
own language, they returned to their work
and suffered me to pass on unmolested . In
fine, I regained the mouth of the mine, little
troubled by other interrogatories ; -save those
of a friendly official to whom I was known,
and luckily he was too busy to talk much with
me.
I took care not to return to my former
lodging, but hastened that very day to quit a
neighbourhood where I could not long have
escaped inquiries to which I could have given
 NG
316 THE COMI RACE .

no satisfactory answers. I regained in safety

my own country, in which I have been long
peacefully settled , and engaged in practical
business, till I retired, on a competent fortune,
three years ago. I have been little invited and
little tempted to talk of the rovings and adven
tures of my youth . Somewhat disappointed ,
as most men are , in matters connected with
household love and domestic life, I often think
of the young Gy as I sit alone at night, and
wonder how I could have rejected such a love,
no matter what dangers attended it, or by
what conditions it was restricted . Only, the
more I think of a people calmly developing, in
regions excluded from our sight and deemed
uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpass
ing our most disciplined modes of force, and
virtues to which our life, social and political,
becomes antagonistic in proportion as our
civilisation advances,—the more devoutly I
pray that ages may yet elapse before there
emerge into sunlight our inevitable destroyers.
 THE COMING RACE . 317

Being, however, frankly told by my physician

that I am afflicted by a complaint which ,
though it gives little pain and no perceptible
notice of its encroachments , may at any
moment be fatal, I have thought it my duty
to my fellow -men to place on record these
forewarnings of The Coming Race .

THE END .

BALLANTYNE PRESS : EDINBIRGH AND LONDON .

 ROUTLEDGE'S POCKET LIBRARY
IN MONTHLY VOLUMES .

“ A series of beautiful little books, tastefully bound." -- Times.

“ Beautifully printed and tastefully bound." - Saturday Review .
" Deserves warm praise for the taste shown in its production ,
The ‘ Library ' ought to be very popular. " - Athenæum .

1. BRET HARTE'S POEMS.

2. THACKERAY'S PARIS SKETCH BOOK .

3. HOOD'S COMIC POEMS.

4. DICKENS'S CHRISTMAS CAROL .

5. POEMS BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES .

6. WASHINGTON IRVING'S SKETCH BOOK .

7. MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME .

8. GOLDSMITH'S VICAR OF WAKEFIELD .

9. HOOD'S SERIOUS POEMS.

10. LORD LYTTON'S COMING RACE ,
1
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