Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of human malice
omitted so potent an auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect
of that passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy symbol of
their faction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their
bailiff in the market-place!
Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of all
mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue. It
cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of
the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering
there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of
consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here. And
from that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue of the
shroud in which we wrap them. Nor even in our superstitions do we
fail to throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms; all ghosts
rising in a milk-white fog--Yea, while these terrors seize us, let us
add, that even the king of terrors, when personified by the
evangelist, rides on his pallid horse.
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious
thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest
idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.
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