Chapter Vii : 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 the more public apartments. The walls were hung with a variegated matting made from the stalks and fibres...
Chapter Xiv : 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 th...
Chapter X : CHAPTER X THE word Ana (pronounced broadly Arna) corresponds with our plural men; An (pronounced 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-ei. They have a proverb...
Chapter Vi : 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...
Chapter Xxvi : 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 community was at an end. I could not banish from my mind the consciousness that I was among a people who...
Chapter Xii : 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. One of the most illustrious of recent philologists, Max Mller...
Chapter I : VRIL, THE POWER OF THE COMING RACE BY SIR EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON [1871] CHAPTER I I AM a native of , in the United States 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...
Chapter Iii : 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 a link. Deep below to the left lay...
Chapter Xi : 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...
Chapter Xiii : 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, that they all practise the precepts which the creed inculcates. They unite in the worship of the one...
Chapter Ix : CHAPTER IX IT was not for some time, and until, by repeated 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...
Chapter Xxv : 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...
Chapter Xvii : 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 themselves,--do not, of course, arrive at their divisions of time by the same process that we do; but I found it...
Chapter Xvi : 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...
Chapter Viii : CHAPTER VIII WHEN I once more awoke I saw by my bedside 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 magistrate of the tribe. The child, whose name was Ta (pronounced...
Chapter Xxii : CHAPTER XXII AS the reader has seen, Aph-Lin had not favoured my general and unrestricted intercourse 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...
Chapter Iv : CHAPTER IV I NOW came in full sight of the building. Yes, it bad been made by hands, and hollowed partly out of a great rock. I should have supposed it at the first glance to have been of the earliest form of Egyptian architecture. It was fronted by huge columns, tapering upward from massive...
Chapter Xxiii : 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...
Chapter Xxiv : CHAPTER XXIV ON alighting from the air-boat, a child accosted 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...
Chapter Xxviii : CHAPTER XXVIII WHEN Ta 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...
Chapter Ii : CHAPTER II WITH the morning my friend's nerves were re-braced, 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...
Chapter Xxix : 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...
Chapter Xxvii : CHAPTER XXVII ONE day, as I sat alone and brooding in my chamber, Ta 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 completed their education and matured...
Chapter Xxi : CHAPTER XXI I HAD for some time observed in my 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...
Chapter Xviii : CHAPTER XVIII AS Ta 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 horizon, fascinated my eyes, and rendered me for some time...
Chapter Xix : CHAPTER XIX AS we walked back to the town, Ta 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 journeys. I had, on a former occasion, expressed a wish to see their...
Chapter V : 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...
Chapter Xv : 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 excepti...
Chapter Xx : CHAPTER XX FROM the date of the expedition with Ta 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...
