The Empress and Duchess’s Visit to the Duchess’s Native World is a spiritual journey from the Blazing-World into the Duchess’s homeland, where the Empress encounters divided governments, war-damaged estates, and the Duke of Newcastle. The visit turns an apparent excursion into a searching comparison of political orders and a reunion of souls: the Empress recognizes the costs of rule, the Duchess confronts her husband’s losses, and their companionship opens the way to an attempted settlement between him and Fortune.

Departure and the Journey of Two Souls

The journey follows the Empress’s desire to see the world from which the Duchess came and to observe its different sovereign governments, laws, and customs. The Duchess tries to dissuade her, warning that her homeland is troubled by factions, divisions, and wars, but the Empress remains determined. To keep the journey from being noticed by the Emperor or obstructed by his subjects, she arranges for an Immaterial Spirit to take the place of her soul in her body. She asks for an honest and ingenious substitute, preferably female; the Spirits explain that they have no distinction of sex, but promise a spirit so like her own soul that no one will detect the exchange. The Duchess explains that, when her soul is absent, her body is governed by its sensitive and rational corporeal motions.

The Empress and the Duchess then travel together as souls, moving lightly and swiftly and, in a moment, viewing the world and its inhabitants. Their passage is not an ordinary voyage through visible landscapes. Their vehicles are made of the finest, purest air and have human shapes, so that human beings can neither see nor hear them. The episode thus makes travel a change of standpoint: the two women can observe assemblies, courts, and royal households without being observed in return.

A World of Ambition and Uneasy Power

The Empress’s first broad impression is that human beings share troubling qualities despite their many nations, governments, laws, and religions. She sees them as ambitious, proud, self-conceited, vain, wasteful, deceitful, envious, malicious, unjust, revengeful, irreligious, and factious. States, kingdoms, and commonwealths are not content with their own shares but seek to encroach on their neighbors. Their glory is bound up with plunder and slaughter, even though victories cost more than they gain and defeat can mean ruin. The Empress is especially struck that people value dirt above human lives and vanity above tranquility.

Her judgment is tempered by her own experience of sovereignty. The Duchess observes that the Empress rules not just a world but a peaceful, quiet, and obedient one, and wonders at her criticism of rulers’ pursuit of glory. The Empress answers that even a well-ordered world makes its ruler work: order requires industry, contrivance, and direction, while the magnificent state expected of great princes brings its own burdens. The Duchess draws from this exchange the conclusion that moderation is the greatest happiness in any world, and the Empress agrees. Their conversation makes the visit more than a contrast between a perfect polity and a flawed one: it acknowledges that political order itself demands labor and that magnificence is not an uncomplicated pleasure.

The two souls inspect religious and political assemblies, courts of justice, and other public institutions. The Empress considers the Grand Seignior the greatest of the monarchs she has observed because his word is law and his power absolute. The Duchess qualifies that judgment: he cannot change Mahomet’s laws and religion, so those institutions also govern him. The Empress points out that he can appoint and remove subjects from particular church and state governments, giving him command over both in practice. The exchange distinguishes the appearance of absolute authority from the constraints and instruments through which a ruler governs.

The Theatre and the Royal Court

In the metropolitan city, the Empress notices gentlemen entering a theatre and learns from the Duchess that comedies and tragedies are acted there. She enjoys the performance but judges its elements in an order different from the one the Duchess expects: the actors make a better show than the spectators, the scenes a better one than the actors, and the music and dancing please her more than the play. She reads the scenes as standing for wit, the dancing for humor, and the music as the chorus. The Duchess warns that the wits of that world would condemn such a preference, since their poets dismiss relation in favor of theatrical invention. The Empress questions the distinction: plays themselves draw on old Greek and Roman stories or newly discovered worlds. The Duchess agrees that most plays use old stories but explains that new actions, prologues, scenes, music, and dancing combine with them to make new plays. Their discussion puts the Empress’s preference for what she regards as natural or useful expression against the theatrical conventions valued in the Duchess’s world.

At court, the Empress sees the King, Queen, royal family, and leading nobles gathered in a magnificent display. She admires the King’s balance of majesty and affability, neither quality overwhelming the other, and praises the Queen’s virtue and piety. The royal family appears to her divinely distinguished, and the King’s speech leads her to imagine him instructed by Mercury and Apollo. The Duchess adds that her own husband had been the King’s earthly governor. The court is therefore not only an object of the Empress’s political observation; it also connects the royal order she admires to the Duchess’s personal history.

Reunion at Welbeck

After a short stay at court, the Duchess grows melancholy because she longs to speak with the soul of her husband. The Empress agrees to accompany her once the King, Queen, and royal family have retired. The Duke lives about 112 miles away, in Nottinghamshire. On the way, they pass through Sherwood Forest, which delights the Empress as a dry, level, wooded place, pleasant to travel in during both winter and summer. They arrive at Welbeck, the Duke’s residence, surrounded by dense woodland. The Empress remarks that she has seen more wood on the seas, meaning ships, than on land.

The Duchess explains why the landscape is so altered: a long civil war has destroyed many of the kingdom’s finest timber trees and principal palaces. The Duke has lost half his woods, along with houses, land, and movable goods; the losses to his estate amount to more than half a million pounds. The Empress wishes that he could have some of the gold in the Blazing-World to repair the damage. The Duchess thanks her for the kind wish but observes that wishes cannot restore what has been ruined, adding that God has given her husband the patience to bear his losses and misfortunes. At Welbeck, the Empress sees a house that is useful rather than magnificent. The Duchess says the Duke also has Bolsover Castle, five miles away, but that it stands stripped of its furnishings; the Empress nevertheless wants to see its structure.

The Duke appears in the courtyard to watch his horses of manage. Seeing him, the Duchess’s soul becomes so joyful that her airy vehicle grows bright, an outward change the narrative presents as evidence that the passions of souls or spirits can alter their bodily vehicles. The Empress watches the equestrian exercise and approves it as a noble pastime appropriate to heroic persons. Inside, she sees the Duke practice swordsmanship and is equally impressed by his skill. The Duchess, concerned that he is exercising vigorously before a meal and might overheat himself, enters his body; the Empress follows. The Duke consequently has three souls in one body. His wisdom, honesty, wit, courtesy, and nobility delight the Empress’s soul, and she and the Duke’s soul become enamored. The Duchess initially feels jealousy but sets it aside, reasoning that no adultery can occur between Platonic lovers and that Platonism is divine.

The conversation among the three souls is pleasant and extended. The Duke entertains the Empress with scenes, songs, music, witty discourse, recreation, and harmless sports, so that time passes more quickly than they expect. The visit’s spiritual intimacy is set against the physical absence of the two women from their own bodies and the Duke’s ordinary surroundings: the Duchess’s love for her husband, the Empress’s admiration of him, and their intellectual companionship coexist without turning the encounter into an ordinary domestic visit.

Return and the Dispute with Fortune

A Spirit eventually tells the Empress that, although the Emperor and his subjects have not noticed her soul’s absence, the Emperor’s soul is melancholy for want of his beloved. The Empress must return to her body in the Blazing-World. The Duke’s and Duchess’s souls regret her departure and wish she could remain longer, but accept that she must go. Before leaving, the Duchess asks the Empress to make an agreement between her husband and Fortune. She explains that they have been enemies ever since she became the Duke’s wife and that, by his account, Fortune has crossed him for as long as he can remember.

The Empress says she cannot speak with Fortune without an Immaterial Spirit, and has no Fly-men or Bird-men with her to send into the air, where Spirits chiefly dwell. The Duchess proposes that the Duke send a lawyer to plead his case, but the Empress fears Fortune would bribe the lawyers and that the Duke might lose. Instead, she suggests that each side choose a friend to plead its cause. The Duchess objects that an agreement requires a judge or umpire; the Empress replies that an impartial judge is difficult to find anywhere in nature or hell, and that only heaven could provide one. Although she cannot yet say how such a judge might be obtained, she invites the Duchess to return with her to the Blazing-World to see what can be done. The Duchess accepts, saying it is her duty to attend the Empress and that she has no other interest to consider. She then tells the Duke of the proposed reconciliation. He says he has long tried to gain Fortune’s friendship without success, but agrees to send Prudence and Honesty to plead his case. Thus the visit ends not with a settlement but with a plan: the reunion at Welbeck carries the Duke’s grievance back into the Empress’s political world, where mediation will be attempted.