The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-lytton — Read

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; and I have no doubt that it requires much skill and practice / in the exercise of its various powers. It is hollow, and has in the / handle several stops, keys, or springs by which its force can be / altered, modified, or directed -- so that by one process it destroys, by / another it heals -- by one it can rend the rock, by another disperse the / vapour -- by one it affects bodies, by another it can exercise a certain / influence over minds. It is usually carried in the convenient size of / a walking-staff, but it has slides by which it can be lengthened or / shortened at will. When used for special purposes, the upper part rests / in the hollow of the palm with the fore and middle fingers protruded. / I was assured, however, that its power was not equal in all, but / proportioned to the amount of certain vril properties in the wearer in / affinity, or 'rapport' with the purposes to be effected. Some were more / potent to destroy, others to heal, &c.; much also depended on the calm / and steadiness of volition in the manipulator. They assert that the / full exercise of vril power can only be acquired by the constitutional / temperament -- i.e., by hereditarily transmitted organisation -- and that / a female infant of four years old belonging to the Vril-ya races can / accomplish feats which a life spent in its practice would not enable / the strongest and most skilled mechanician, born out of the pale of the / Vril-ya to achieve. All these wands are not equally complicated; those / intrusted to children are much simpler than those borne by sages of / either sex, and constructed with a view to the special object on which / the children are employed; which as I have before said, is among the / youngest children the most destructive. In the wands of wives and / mothers the correlative destroying force is usually abstracted, the / healing power fully charged. I wish I could say more in detail of this / singular conductor of the vril fluid, but its machinery is as exquisite / as its effects are marvellous.

I should say, however, that this people have invented certain tubes by / which the vril fluid can be conducted towards the object it is meant / to destroy, throughout a distance almost indefinite; at least I put / it modestly when I say from 500 to 1000 miles. And their mathematical / science as applied to such purpose is so nicely accurate, that on / the report of some observer in an air-boat, any member of the vril / department can estimate unerringly the nature of intervening obstacles, / the height to which the projectile instrument should be raised, and the / extent to which it should be charged, so as to reduce to ashes within a / space of time too short for me to venture to specify it, a capital twice / as vast as London.