The Blazing World

’Tis true, said the Duchess; but if it pleases your Majesty, we will go into that part of the world whence I came to wait on your Majesty, and there you shall see as powerful a monarch as the grand-seignior; for though his dominions are not of so large extent, yet they are much stronger, his laws are easy and safe, and he governs so justly and wisely, that his subjects are the happiest people of all the nations or parts of that world. This monarch, said the Empress, I have a great mind to see. Then they both went, and in a short time arrived into his dominions; but coming into the metropolitan city, the Empress’s soul observed many gallants go into an house; and enquiring of the Duchess’s soul, what house that was? She told her, it was one of the theatres where comedies and tragedies were acted. The Empress asked, whether they were real? No, said the Duchess, they are feigned. Then the Empress desired to enter into the theatre; and when she had seen the play that was asked, the Duchess asked her how she liked that recreation? I like it very well, said the Empress; but I observe that the actors make a better show than the spectators; and the scenes a better than the actors, and the music and dancing is more pleasant and acceptable than the play itself; for I see, the scenes stand for wit, the dancing for humour, and the music is the chorus. I am sorry, replied the Duchess, to hear your Majesty say so; for if the wits of this part of the world should hear you, they would condemn you. What, said the Empress, would they condemn me for preferring a natural face before a signpost; or a natural humour before an artificial dance; or music before a true and profitable relation? As for relation, replied the Duchess, our poets defy and condemn it into a chimney-corner, fitter for old women’s tales, than theatres. Why, said the Empress, do not your poets’ actions comply with their judgments? For their plays are composed of old stories, either of Greek or Roman, or some newfound world. The Duchess answered her Majesty, that it was true, that all or most of their plays were taken out of old stories; but yet they had new actions, which being joined to old stories, together with the addition of new prologues, scenes, music and dancing, made new plays.

After this, both the souls went to the court, where all the royal family was together, attended by the chief of the nobles of their dominions, which made a very magnificent show; and when the soul of the Empress viewed the King and Queen, she seemed to be in amaze, which the Duchess’s soul perceiving, asked the Empress how she liked the King, the Queen, and all the royal race? She answered, that in all the monarchs she had seen in that world, she had not found so much majesty and affability mixed so exactly together, that none did overshadow or eclipse the other; and as for the Queen, she said, that virtue sat triumphant in her face, and piety was dwelling in her heart; and that all the royal family seemed to be endued with a divine splendor: but when she had heard the King discourse, she believed that Mercury and Apollo had been his celestial instructors; and, my dear lord and husband, added the Duchess, has been his earthly governor. But after some short stay in the court, the Duchess’s soul grew very melancholy; the Empress asking the cause of her sadness? She told her, that she had an extreme desire to converse with the soul of her noble lord and dear husband, and that she was impatient of a longer stay. The Empress desired the Duchess to have but patience so long, until the King, the Queen, and the royal family were retired, and then she would bear her company to her lord and husband’s soul, who at that time lived in the country some 112 miles off; which she did: and thus these two souls went towards those parts of the kingdom where the Duke of Newcastle was.

But one thing I forgot all this while, which is, that although thoughts are the natural language of souls; yet by reason souls cannot travel without vehicles, they use such language as the nature and propriety of their vehicles require, and the vehicles of those two souls being made of the purest and finest sort of air, and of a human shape: This purity and fineness was the cause that they could neither be seen nor heard by any human creature; when as, had they been of some grosser sort of air, the sound of that air’s language would have been as perceptible as the blowing of Zephyrus.

And now to return to my former story; when the Empress’s and Duchess’s soul were travelling into Nottinghamshire, (for that was the place where the Duke did reside) passing through the Forest of Sherwood, the Empress’s soul was very much delighted with it, as being a dry, plain and woody place, very pleasant to travel in, both in winter and summer; for it is neither much dirty nor dusty at no time: At last they arrived at Welbeck, a house where the Duke dwelled, surrounded all with wood, so close and full, that the Empress took great pleasure and delight therein, and told the Duchess she never had observed more wood in so little compass in any part of the kingdom she had passed through. The truth is, said she, there seems to be more wood on the seas (she meaning the ships) than on the land. The Duchess told her, the reason was, that there had been a long civil war in that kingdom, in which most of the best timber-trees and principal palaces were ruined and destroyed; and my dear lord and husband, said she, has lost