a
better poet than Keats in Marietta Pery, and a far greater than Goethe or
Byron in the unknown author of the invocation to "Intialo." But all that
I _truly mean_ is that the former is nearer to old tradition, and more
succinct than the English bard--"only this and nothing more"--while in
"Intialo" we have given, as no one ever expressed it, the true ideal of
the magician who, overcoming all qualms of conscience, whether innate or
suggested, and trampling under foot all moral human conventions, rises to
_will_, and victory over all enemies, especially the demons of the
threshold. As a poem, I no more claim special merit for it than I would
for Marietta's; {253} indeed, to the very considerable number of "highly
cultivated" people who only perceive poetry in form and style, and cannot
find it in the grandest conceptions unless they are elegantly expressed,
what I have given in this connection will not appear as poetry at all.

CAIN AND HIS WORSHIPPERS
THE SPELL OF THE MIRROR--THE INVOCATION TO CAIN--THE WITCH-HISTORY OF
CAIN AND ABEL

"Rusticus in Luna
Quem sarcina deprimit una,
Monstrat per spinas
Nulli prodesse rapinas."

--ALEXANDER NECKHAM, A.D. 1157.

This is, for reasons which I will explain anon, one of the most curious
traditions which have been preserved by the Tuscan peasantry. I had made
inquiry whether any conjuring by the aid of a mirror existed--"only this
and nothing more"--when, some time after, I received the following:

LA SCONGIURAZIONE DELLO SPECCHIO.
_When one wishes to enchant a lover_.

"Go at midnight when there is a fine full moon, and take a small mirror,
which must be kept in a box of a fine red colour, and at each of the four
corners of the box put a candle with a pin, or with a pin in its point,
and observe that two of the pins must have red heads, and two black, and
form a cross, and note that every candle must have two tassels hanging
from it, one red and one black.

"And within the box first of all put a good layer of coarse salt, and
form on the salt a ring or wreath of incense, and in the middle of this a
cross of cummin, and above all put the small mirror. Then take the
photograph of your lover, but not the real photograph but the negative,
because it must be on a plate of glass (_lastra di vetro_). Then take
some hairs of the lover and join them to the photograph (_s