THE EAR OF THE SPIRIT.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 764, 12 March 1910, Page 9

THE EAR OF THE SPIRIT.

r Headers of Tennyson: remember how in his South Sea island Enoch Arden seemed 'to hear the bells of. his native parish, which were being rung in celebration of fins wife's marriage to Philip. The iniCideut,' '.'it''is-vknown,- was- "suggested by ■a iiothen 111 which lunglake narrates an analogous experience, of liis own, but .by, the historian in the of a .conversation in, which he submitted , that phenomenon inigljt. be explained .by .a,'. Singing in- his -ears" aided by the imaginative memory;" ' Tennyson, • h'owe\ei, is. too-good, a .poet to .do. more, than suggest so rationalistic an explanation and-leaves his reader free; if he will to consider it a case of., the mystical transmission of sounds. In the case of the human voice transmissions of words or of mere thoughts are;of not infrequent occurrence in the literature of fiction, j-eunyson himself furnishes, one ill his . Aylmer's Field." - .-It '..occurs, in. .that ;passage which' yields,,a . quotation that i.aas found much favour , with!.flio'se" who tare interested -in telepathy L ;.:' .-'

"Star to star vibrates light, may soul to • soul >. - v' , Strike through a finer element of her own?"

Mitli, who has lieen separated .from Leolin by . her father's pride, dies calling out her lover's name, and at that exact moment- her lover, far off in London, starts awake from sleep with the cry, les, Edith, yes." It is an incident that chugs to memory, but it is not so well handled as that in "Jafie Eyre," which no doubt suggested it. There the heroine is almost on the point of consenting to many St. John. Kivers, when suddenly an-influence comes upon her' which raises all. her faculties' to an infinitely higher power 'of .themselves, and she hears a voice which she recognises as Rochester's calling,' Jane, Jane, Jane/- She instantly calls .out, "I am coming. Wait for me. 1 will come," and Rochester, who has littered the cry, f and wild does not know where Jane is, hears, leagues away, the answer, and, judges she must be living in a mountain, country, for the words are. .repeated by : a mountain 1 echo. It is a drop from-Charlotte Bronte to Charles vlieade, . but m "The : : Cloister and the .Hearth, Gerard, as - he. plunges into the liber with full purpose of -suicide, utters the'shrill cry "Margaret,", and the sound reaches the young mother in Holland, and she wonders why it is sad. It is not an absolutely new departure lior is it a mere variant upon this device that we have m "It Never Can Happen Again." mere Lizeranue as she lies a-dying says: L see my daddy, I shall J Poy-lot, and, sure enough, by and by Blind' Jim, straining his ears in expectation of bis daughter's voice, seems to hear it, and running forth to meet her, blunders into the way. of the motorcar.—"Manchester Guardian."