The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-lytton — Read

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 ascribed it to that affection for 'pets' which a human female at / every age shares with a human child. I now became painfully aware that / the feeling with which Zee deigned to regard me was different from that / which I had inspired in Taee. But this conviction gave me none of that / complacent gratification which the vanity of man ordinarily conceives / from a flattering appreciation of his personal merits on the part of / the fair sex; on the contrary, it inspired me with fear. Yet of all / the Gy-ei in the community, if Zee were perhaps the wisest and the / strongest, she was, by common repute, the gentlest, and she was / certainly the most popularly beloved. The desire to aid, to succour, to / protect, to comfort, to bless, seemed to pervade her whole being. Though / the complicated miseries that originate in penury and guilt are unknown / to the social system of the Vril-ya, still, no sage had yet discovered / in vril an agency which could banish sorrow from life; and wherever / amongst her people sorrow found its way, there Zee followed in the / mission of comforter. Did some sister Gy fail to secure the love she / sighed for? Zee sought her out, and brought all the resources of her / lore, and all the consolations of her sympathy, to bear upon a grief / that so needs the solace of a confidant. In the rare cases, when grave / illness seized upon childhood or youth, and the cases, less rare, / when, in the hardy and adventurous probation of infants, some accident, / attended with pain and injury occurred, Zee forsook her studies and / her sports, and became the healer and nurse. Her favourite flights / were towards the extreme boundaries of the domain where children were / stationed on guard against outbreaks of warring forces in nature, or the / invasions of devouring animals, so that she might warn them of any peril / which her knowledge detected or foresaw, or be at hand if any harm had / befallen. Nay, even in the exercise of her scientific acquirements there / was a concurrent benevolence of purpose and will. Did she learn any / novelty in invention that would be useful to the practitioner of some / special art or craft? she hastened to communicate and explain it. Was / some veteran sage of the College perplexed and wearied with the toil of / an abstruse study? she would patiently devote herself to his aid, work / out details for him, sustain his spirits with her hopeful smile, quicken / his wit with her luminous suggestion, be to him, as it were, his own / good genius made visible as the strengthener and inspirer. The same / tenderness she exhibited to the inferior creatures. I have often known / her bring home some sick and wounded animal, and tend and cherish it as / a mother would tend and cherish her stricken child. Many a time when I / sat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have / watched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few moments / groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar upward with / joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and sporting around her, so that / she seemed a very centre of innocent delight. When I have walked with / her amidst the rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would / scent or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress / of her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical / whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the fashion / among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their foreheads a circlet, or coronet, / with gems resembling opals, arranged in four points or rays like stars. / These are lustreless in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand / they take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. This / serves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in their / wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have to traverse the / dark. There are times, when I have seen Zee's thoughtful majesty of face / lighted up by this crowning halo, that I could scarcely believe her to / be a creature of mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the vision / of a being among the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feel / for this lofty type of the noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love. / Is it that, among the race I belong to, man's pride so far influences / his passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman if he / feels her to be in all things eminently superior to himself? But by what / strange infatuation could this peerless daughter of a race which, in the / supremacy of its powers and the felicity of its conditions, ranked all / other races in the category of barbarians, have deigned to honour me / with her preference? In personal qualifications, though I passed for / good-looking amongst the people I came from, the handsomest of my / countrymen might have seemed insignificant and homely beside the grand / and serene type of beauty which characterised the aspect of the Vril-ya.