Oass__ |ff3 / Book_JSjT 1^47 ►tf IS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/philosophyofmyst02dend THE PHILOSOPHY OF MYSTERY. BY WALTER COOPER DENDY, FELLOW AND HONORARY LIBRARIAN OF THE M£;:TCAL SOCIETY OF LONDON ; SENIOR SURGEON TO THE ROYAL INFIRMARY FOR CHILDREN, &C, &C. NEW-YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET. 18 47. % 6 ^ H ^t so fntreatetb tins serious anti terrible matter of Spir* Ues, tfyat uoto anb tijett fnsert^tifi some strange stories of eoun* tcrfci)ts, Uotl) botb bery iybcly btsplay tljeir faiseboob, aub also not a*Uttle recreate I;is rcaber : atib yet fit tfte enbe be so aptlj conclutrctb to tlje purpose, tijat W bystories seeme itot fble tales, or impertinent bajjarfes, but bery truetbes, naturallo fallius uubcr tfoe compasse of JjCs matter." CONTENTS. THE CHALLENGE. Scenery on the Wye.— A Ghost Seer.— Tintern Abbey.— Faith and Skep- ticism in the Reality of Phantoms Page 7-11 NATURE AND MOTIVES OF GHOSTS. Notions of the Ancients regarding the Nature of Ghosts. — Confidence of the Ancients in their Appearance. — Modern Incidents in illustration of real Appearance. — Qualities of Ghosts. — Motives of Apparitions. — Ancient and modern Stories 12-23 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. Ancient spectral Prophecy. —Modern Stories in Illustration of prophetic Spectres. — Philosophy and Poesy of Shakspeare. — Holy Influence of Spec- tral Visitations. — Stories of apparently special Influence of the Deity 23-38 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. Reasons for early Faith in Phantoms. — Modern Errors regarding classic Su- perstitions. — Shallowness and Fallacy of modern Incidents. — Explanation of Ghost Stories by Coincidence. — Incidents in proof of Coincidence. — Proneness of intellectual Minds to credulity and Exaggeration. — Innocent Invention of an Incident at Bowood 39-56 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. Influence of interesting Localities. — Definition of a Phantom. — An intense Idea. — Demonomania. — Stings of Conscience. — Curious Effect of peculiar Study or intense Thought. — Darkness and Obscurity. — Romance of Real- ity. — A mysterious Incident 56-71 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. Second Sight. — National Propensity to the Sight. — Romance and Poetry of the Mountains. — Morbid Predisposition to Second Sight. — Unearthly Visions on the eve of Dissolution. — Glimpses of Reason in dying Mani- acs 71-83 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION. Phantoms of intellectual Minds. — Illusion of Opium. — Illustrations of Nar- cotic Influence 84-92 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. Inspiration of Poesy and Painting. — Skakspeare. — Fuseli. — Blake. — Philos- ophy and Madness. — Illusion of Tasso. — Truth of Poesy. — Splendid Illu- sions at the onset of Mania.— Melancholy Constitution and Decay of Po ■ etic Minds. — Letter of a Cheromaniac. — Sensibility. — Unhappy Conse- quences of cherishing Romance. — Fragment of John Keats 93-104 IV CONTENTS. FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. Philosophy of Moral Causes. — Effect of Thought and of the Function of the Stomach in producing physical Changes in the Brain. — Stories in Proof of this Influence. — Illusions from Derangements of Vision. — Curious Cases of ocular Spectra from peculiar Conditions of the Eye. ... Page 104-116 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. Stories of Supernatural Appearances 116-126 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF SPECTRAL ILLU- SION. Credulity. — Arrangement of Causes of Spectral Illusion. — Illustration of Atmospheric Illusions. — Natural Phenomena. — Fata Morgana.— Schat- tenman of the Brocken. — Romance of unlettered Minds 126-144 ILLUSIONS OF ART. Monkish Impostures.— Optical Toys.— Spontaneous Combustion. . 144-149 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. Elemental Causes. — Impositions at Woodstock. — Tedworth. — Cock Lane.— Subterranean Sounds. — Currents of Air. — Memnon. — Phonic Instru- ments. — Vocal Curiosity in young Richmond 149-157 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. Origin of Faery. — Legends of the Mythology of various Climes. — Cauld Lad of Hilton 157-167 DEMONOLOGY. Classic and Indian Mythology. — Imbodying of a Demon. — Stories Illustra tive of the Superstitions of Ireland and Cornwall. — Legend of the Change- lings. — Poetry of Nature. — Preadamite Beings 168-179 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND Psychology of the Greeks and of the Moderns. — Essence of Phrenology. — Lord Brougham. — Priestley. — Paley. — Johnson. — Modes of Sepulture. { — Paradise.— Atheism.— Deity.— Hindoo Mythology.— Senile Intellect 179-194 NATURE OF SLEEP. Unconsciousness of Sleep. — Necessity of Slumber. — Malady of Collins.— Somnolency of the Brute and of Savages. — Periods of Sleep. — Sleepless- ness and its Antidotes 195-206 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION OF DREAMING. Unconsciousness of the Dream. — Arguments on this Question. — Episode of a dreaming Life 206-215 PROPHECY OF DREAMS. Ancient Prophetic Dreams. — Stories of modern Prophecies in Dreaming 215-223 CONTENTS. MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. Associations of Dreaming. — Incongruous Combinations. — Source of Ideas in Dreams. — Innate Idea.— Undreaming Minds. — Flitting of the Spirit. — Fallacy of Mental Energy in the Dream. — Illusion of Dreams. — Mar- montel 223-236 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE OF DREAMS. Celerity of Ideas in the Dream. — Sacred Records of Dreams. — Danger of profane Discussion of Scripture.— Fallacy of Dreams. — Consequences of Credulity in Dreams 236-256 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. Blending of Metaphysics and Philosophy.— Confusion of ancient and mod- ern Classifications of Dreams. — Curious Cases of suspended Memory. — Auecdotes of Tenacity of Memory. — Physiology of Memory. — Ghost of an amputated Limb 257-269 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. Curious Cases of Associations. — Deranged Memory. — Dreams of Animals. —Poetic Illustrations 269-279 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD IN THE BRAIN. Conditions of the Brain. — Analogy of Dreaming and Mania. — Sympathetic Causes of Dreaming. — Repletion. — Effects of Posture in inducing Dreams. —Phrenological Illustrations 280-293 INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. Illustrative Incidents.— Nightmare of the Mind 294-302 SOMNILOQUENCE. SOMNAMBULISM. Stories of Sleep-talking. — Stories of Sleep-walking. — Changes of Disposi- tion in Somnambulism. — Abeyance of Memory during the Interval. — Ex- actness and Energy during Somnambulism.— Concentration of Power. — • Unconsciousness.— Analysis of Sleep-waking.— Theory of Reflex Action of the Nervous System. — Irresistibility.— Disease of the Brain in Som- nambulists 302-327 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. Dance of the Middle Ages.— Tarantulism.— Saint Vitus's Dance.— Tigre- tier.— Lycanthropy.— Fanaticism during the Commonwealth.— Moravi- ans.— The Kent Tragedy.— Stories of Imitative Suicide.— Effects of Stra- monium, and of Gaseous Inhalation 327-339 RE VERY. Abstraction of Idiocy.— Cretinism.— Wandering of the Mind.— Concentra tiveness.— Anecdotes Illustrative of Illusive Abstraction 340-352 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. Anecdotes in Illustration, — Brown Study. — Apathy. — Heroism. — Revery of Philosophy.— Sonata di Diavolo,— Revery at Caerphilly.— Intense Impres- sion.— Abstraction of Deep Study.— Revery of the Dying 352-365 VI CONTENTS. SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY Description of Trance. — Leg-ends of Deep Sleepers. — Stories of Modern Trances. — Analogies from Intense Impression. — Periodical Catalepsy 365-376 PREMATURE INTERMENT. RESUSCITATION. Stories in Illustration. — Romance, Life in Death.— Causes of Resuscitation. — Disunion of Mind and Body.— Insensibility of the Decollated Head. — Sensations during Hanging and Drowning. — Case of Dr. Adam Clarke 376-391 TRANSMIGRATION. ANALYSIS OF TRANCE. State of the Spirit after Death. — Fables of Transmigration. — Superstition in India and England. — Tenacity of Life. —Hybernation. — Sleep of Plants. —Physiology of Trance 391-402 MESMERISM. Its Origin. — Commissions for its Investigation. — Caspar Hauser. — Sensa- tions of Magnetism. — Magnetized Trees. — Operations during Magnetic Trance. — Transference of Senses. — Mineral Traction. — Clairvoyance. — Trance of Santa Theresa. — Prophetess of Prevorst. — Magnetic Aura. — Personal Sympathy. — Socrates. — Fascino. — Prince Hohenlohe 403-429 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. Occult Science. — A Gipsy. — Spells and Charms. — Relics. — Ordeals. — Phi- losophy of Prophetic Fulfilment. — Melancholy Effects of Prophecy. — As- trology. — Conclusion 429-442 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MYSTERY, THE CHALLENGE. " There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." — Hamlet. There was a shallop floating on the Wye, among the gray rocks and leafy woods of Chepstow. With- in it were two fair girls reclining: : the one blend- ing the romantic wildness of a maid of Italy with the exquisite purity of English nature ; the other illuming with the devotion of a vestal the classic beauty of a Greek. There was a young and learned bachelor sitting at the helm. Study had stamped an air of thought- fulness on his brow ; yet a smile was ever playing on his lips, as his heart felt the truth and influence of the beautiful life around him. Listen, gentle reader, we pray thy courtesy and thy patience, as a rude, unskilful pen traces the breathed thoughts of these wanderers of the Wye. Castaly. We have roamed, dear Ida, among the classic lands of the far-off Mediterranean : we have looked from her pinnacles of snow on the sil- very gleaminess of Switzerland, and from purple sierras on the sunny splendour of Spain ; yet these English meadows, with their fringes of wild bloom, come o'er the heart with all the freshness of an in- fant's dream. Yon majestic crag of Wyndcliff is flinging its purple shadows athwart the water, and 8 THE CHALLENGE. floods of golden glory are streaming through the beech-woods of Piercefield ; and see, our little sail, white as the wing of a swan, is wafting us towards Abbey Tintern, along this beautiful valley, where the river almost doubles on itself; meandering among its mead-flowers and its mosses, as loth to leave its luxuriant bed. Listen ! the breath of evening is among the trees that dip in the ripple of the Wye their leaves of shivering gold. What a scene for minions of the moon to revel in! Say, shall we charm the lingering hours of this midsum- mer night among the ivied cloisters of the abbey % But where is Astrophel, our moon-struck student, who, like Chaucer's scholar, keeps " at his bed's head, A twenty books clothed in black and red, Of Aristotle and his philosophy ?-" They have not taught him courtesy, or he would not steal away from the light of our eyes to com- mune with owls and ivy-bushes. Yet we promise him our smile for your sake, Evelyn. Indeed, I am thinking his mysteries will chime in admirably with the solemnity of this lone abbey. We appoint him master of our revels. Evelyn. Let your smile be in pity, fair Castaly, on the illusions of Astrophel. Ensconced in his dark closet, within a charmed ring of black-letter folios, he has wofully warped his studies, and has read himself into the belief that he is a gifted seer. Yet love him, lady, for his virtues ; for his history is a very paradox. His heart is melting with char- ity for the beings of earth, yet his mind is half weaned from their fellowship. At his imminent peril, he leaps into the Isis to save a drowning boy, and the world calls him misanthrope withal. It is the fate indeed of many a cloistered scholar, whose THE CHALLENGE. 9 " desires are dolphin like, And soar above the element they live in." Such is Astrophel. Ida. He looks his part to perfection. There is a shadowy expression in his dark eye, as it were poring over the volume of his own thoughts. Be- neath the slender shaft of yon eastern window, be- hold this proselyte to the sublime science of shad- ows. He approaches. Ev. The hour is on him yet. Astrophel ! Astrophel. Whisper, and tread lightly, Evelyn, for this is haunted ground. Underneath this vel- vet turf rest the mouldering bones of a noble. I have held communion in my slumber with the spirit by which they were once animated and moved; and the mysteries of the tomb have been unfolded to me. The eidolon of Roger Bigod has thrice come across my sight. Cast. A ghost! Ev. And Astrophel believes the truth of this vis- ion ! Such fantasy might well become the Cister- cian monks, who once stalked along these gloomy cloisters, but not an Oxford scholar. Astr. And why not an Oxford scholar, Evelyn? I do believe in the existence of beings out of the common course of nature ; and, indeed, the history of the world has ever proved the general leaning to this belief, and my own mind feels that this uni- versal adoption is a proof of reality of existence. Smile at or reason with me, you will not shake my faith, for I believe it true ; and even Johnson confessed, that " although all argument might be against it, yet all belief is for it." Ev. The diffusion of this fallacy, Astrophel, proves only the universal sameness of the constitu- tion of mind. You may, indeed, cite the high au- ority of Johnson, that " a belief in the apparitions 10 THE CHALLENGE. of the dead could become universal onlyby its truth." Yet, if this one word apparition be rightly inter- preted, it will not imply the existence of real phan- toms, however ethereal, before the eye, for the no- tion so construed would have been a grand error of Imlac ; no, he adopts* an indefinite expression, con- scious that mere metaphysics were not illustrative, of this subtle question. There was one Theophilus Insulanus, who, I think, calls all those who have not faith in phan^ toms irreligious, because, forsooth, " these ghosts are never employed on subjects of frivolous con- cern." I may be under the ban of this flimsy en- thusiast, but you will not gain me as a proselyte, Astrophel, for, like our great poet, I have seen too many ghosts myself. Yet I know some few self-created wizards, who have solved to their hearts' content those two grand mysteries, the real existence and the purpose of ghostly visitations ; who, like Owain Glyndwr, " can call spirits from the vasty deep," and even expect that they will " come when they do call for them." Others have laboured under self-glamou- rie, and believed themselves magicians, until put to the proof. I remember the painter, Richard Cos- way, was under this illusion ; and when the old cyn- ic Northcote desired him to raise Sir Joshua' Rey- nolds, the pseudo-magus confessed himself foiled by advancing this simple excuse, " I would, were it not sinful /" It were well if these monomaniacs were laid in the famous bed of St. Hilary at Poictiers ; for there, with the muttering of a^prayer or two, as the le- gend tells us, madmen may be cured. But, in truth, the light of divine reason has so far dispelled these fancies for the supernatural, that very few of us, I presume, are confident in the hope THE CHALLENGE. 11 of raising a ghost when we want one ; or of laying it in the Red Sea for a hundred years, by two cler- gymen, with "bell, book, and candle," and scraps of mystic Latin, when it becomes rude or trouble- some. Ida. Will you not concede that many visionaries have believed, and written from pure and even holy motives 1 Ev. There is no doubt of this, lady ; yet while it has fanned the flame of superstition in minds of low- er intellect, with many, the endeavour to prove too much has marred these motives, and weakened faith, even in the credulous ; so that we may hope the wild romances of Beaumont, and Burthogge, and Baxter, and Aubrey, and Glanville, and that arch- mystagogue Moreton (whose book is half full of prolix dialogues between ghosts and ghost-seers), will soon be mere objects of interest and curiosity to the black-letter bibliomaniac and the more eru- dite legend-hunter. Cast. We will not submit to your anathema, Eve- lyn. This learned clerk has challenged our faith. What a treasury of secrets might he unfold to us from the mystic tomes of antiquity, the wonders of profane psychology; from the tales of Arabia to Va* theck and the Epicurean, from the classic mythol- ogy of Homer to the wild romances of his humble prototype Ossian. Let it be a match : we will listen, Astrophel, while you " unsphere the spirit of Plato ;" and here we sit in judgment, on the velvet throne of this our court of T intern. 12 NATURE OP GHOSTS. NATURE AND MOTIVES OF GHOSTS. " In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets." Hamlet, 4to B. Astr. It is not from the sources of mythology alone that I adduce my illustrations of the reality of ghosts, but from the myriads of incidents which ancient and modern history record. Yet may I well crave your courtesy for the scraps of fable, and perchance of imposture, that may unwittingly creep into my discourse. Listen to me. It was believed by the ancients that each body possessed three ghosts — to be released on its dis- solution. The manes at once emigrated to the re- gion of Pluto ; the spiritus ascended to the skies ; the umbra or shade still wandered on the earth ; or, as the poet has more comprehensively sung, " Bis duo sunt homini, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra ; Quatuor ista loci bis duo suscipiunt : Terra tegit carnem, tumulum circumvolat umbra, Orcus habet manes, spiritus astra petit." Meaning that there are four principles in man, and this is their destiny : the flesh to earth ; the ghost to the tomb ; the soul to Hades ; and the spirit to heaven. The Queen of Carthage, confiding in this creed, threatens iEneas that her umbra will haunt him upon earth, while her manes will rejoice in his tor- ments. The notions of other mystic scholars are thus re- corded by old Burton in his " Anatomy of Melan- choly ;" as those of Surius, " that there be certain monsters of hell and places appointed for the pun- ishment of men's souls, as at Hecla in Iceland, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, NATURE OP GHOSTS. 13 and sometimes talk with the living. Saint Greg- ory, Durand, and the rest of the schoolmen derive as much from iEtna in Sicily, Lipara, Hiera, and those volcanoes in America, and that fearful Mount Hecklebergin Norway, where lamentable screeches and howlings are continually heard, which strike a terror to the auditors : fiery chariots are continual- ly seen to bring in the souls of men in the likeness of crows, and devils ordinarily goe in and out." And then, to bring this fantasy to a climax by a pandemonium of ghosts, listen to Bredenbachius, in his " Perigranions in the Holy Land," where " once a yeare dead bodies arise about March, and walk, and after a while hide themselves again : thousands of people come yearly to see them." And this reminds me of the phantom of old Booty, who, at the hour of his death in England, was seen by the crew of a ship running into the crater of Stromboli in the remote Mediterranean — a story which even in the present century was made the subject of discussion in a justice court. Now, you must know, the ancients believed that only those who died of the sword possessed this privilege. These are the words of Flavius Josephus : " What man of virtue is there that does not know that those souls which are severed from their fleshly bodies in battles by the sword are received by the ether, that purest of elements, and joined to that company which are placed among the stars : that they be- come good demons and propitious heroes, and show themselves as such to their posterity afterward ; while upon those souls that wear away in and with their distempered bodies comes a subterranean night to dissolve them to nothing, and a deep ob- livion to take away all the remembrance of them ? And this, notwithstanding they be clean from all B 14 NATURE OF GHOSTS. spots and defilements of this world ; so that in this case the soul, at the same time, comes to the utmost bounds of its life, and of its body, and of its memo- rial also." The mystery of the nature of these ghosts I may not presume to define ; but there are many learned writers of antiquity who believed in their material- ity, and broached the intricate question of their quality and formation. The alchymist Paracelsus writes of the astral element or spirit, one of the two bodies which com- pose our nature : being more ethereal, it survived some time after the death of the more substantial form, and sometimes became the familiar spirit of the magician. And what writes Lucretius the Epi- curean to illustrate his credence in apparitions 1 That the surfaces of bodies are constantly thrown off by a sort of centrifugal force ; that an exact im- age is often presented to us by this surface coming off, as it were, entire, like the cast skin of the rattle- snake or the shell of the chrysalis ; and thus the ideas of our absent or departed friends strike on the mind. The olden chymists, in the age of Louis XIV., accounted for spectral forms by the saline atoms of a putrid corpse being set free, and combining again in their pristine form. Listen, I pray you, to this grave philosophy of an abstruse essay, written in 1794. " The apparitions of souls departed do, by the virtue of their formative plastic power, frame unto themselves the vehicles in which they appear out of the moisture of their bodies. So ghosts do often appear in churchyards, and that but for a short time, to wit, before the moisture is wholly dried up." " Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp, Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres, Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave." NATURE OF GHOSTS. 15 And we read in the Chronicles that " during the time the ancients burned, not buried their dead, there was no such appearance of ghosts as is now." Why waves the coarse grass ranker over the grave % It is touched by the larva of the rotting carcass, which, ascending from its putrid chrys- alis a butterfly or Psyche, flits a while like an ephemera,, and drops again into the vault. A sentiment something like this, I believe, was the grand cause of the enrolment of the mummies by the Egyptians ; for they thought while the body remained entire, the soul was flitting about it : and the early Christians even believed that a por- tion, at least, of the soul remained uncorrupted by the body. Evelyn will grant that among the Romans there was a devout wish to be buried near venerated beings and saints, an emanation from whose bodies, they believed, would inspire the hearts of the be- lievers. And here I will relate a story from the Dinan Journal of 1840, and also the fragment of a very mysterious tale, told with all the solemnity of a faithful chronicle : " We had the curious spectacle of a long pro- cession of girls from Pleudiheus, passing through our streets to the chapel of St. Anne, to offer up prayers for the repose of the soul of the mother of one of them, who has been dead twenty-two years, and who every five years has appeared to her daughter, urging her to have masses said for her. This time the troubled spirit prescribed the day, hour, and place of the service, and even the precise dresses she would have the votaries wear. Consequently, they were all lightly clothed in white, although the rain fell and the streets were 16 NATURE OF GHOSTS. full of mud. Some of the inhabitants of Dinan affirm that they saw the ghost of the deceased marching at the head of the procession to the door of the chapel, where it remained till the mass was finished, and then suddenly vanished." Returning from the harbour to Cadiz with some Spanish donas, the Baron Geramb heard a voice in French, crying, " Save me ! Help, help !" but at the time he took little or no heed of the mat- ter. On the morrow was seen on the shore of the harbour a body on a black board, with lighted tapers by its side, which was covered by the baron's direction. During a tempest in the evening, some secret impulse directed him again to the shore. Before his bewildered sight arose from the spot a shapeless phantom, wrapped in the black winding- sheet which he had provided. The phantom moved along with gigantic strides, assuming a globular form, and then, whirling in spiral circles, bounded off, and appeared at a dis- tance like a giant. The spectre led the baron to the streets of Cadiz, its course being accompanied by a noise as of the tinkling of autumnal leaves. In Cadiz a door suddenly opened with force, and the spectre rushed like lightning into the house and plunged into the cellar. There was the sound of deep groaning, and the baron descended into the vault : there lay the corpse, naked and livid, and on it was prostrated an aged man, uttering the deep sighs of abject misery and despair. In a gloomy corner of this cave of death leaned the phantom, revolving in its spiral whirls, and then changing to a floating cloud of light ; and then there beamed forth the pale features of a youth ; undulating as if on the bosom of a wave, which murmured in the ear. Then came the chanting pf anthems and prayers for the dead, and a glitter- NATURE OF GHOSTS. 17 ing young girl in white robes glided into the cellar and knelt in devotion by the body. The phantom — and so the legend proceeds. There is a wondrous mystery, I grant, envelop- ing this story ; but if there be any truth in that alchymic reanimation, Palingenesy — " If chemists from a rose's ashes fc>~ Can raise the rose itself in glasses ;" nay, if the sparkling diamond shines forth from a mass of charcoal, why may not the ashes of a body be made into a ghost, illustrative of the philosophy of substantial apparitions, adopted by Kircher — a body rebuilt, after being resolved for a time into its constituent elements 1 The Parisian alchymists of the seventeenth century, indeed, demonstrated this mystery, and raised a phoenix from its ashes. They submitted to the process of distillation some earth from the cemetery of the Innocents, during which ceremony they were scared by the appear- ance of perfect human shapes struggling in the glass vessels they were employing. And, lastly, Dr. Ferriar thus deposes : A ruffian was executed, his body dissected, and his scull pulverized by an anatomist. The student, who slept in the chamber of experiment, saw, in the night-time, a progressive getting together of the fragments, until the crimi- nal became perfect and glided out at the door. And here is a legend of deeper mystery still. There was a merry party collected in a town in France, and among all the gay lords and ladies there assembled there was none who caused so great a sensation as a beautiful young lady, who danced, played, and sang in the most exquisite style. There were only two unaccountable cir- cumstances belonging to her : one was, that she never went to church or attended family prayers ; the other, that she always wore a slender black 2 B2 18 NATURE OF GHOSTS. velvet band or girdle round her waist. She waa often asked about these peculiarities, but she al- ways evaded the interrogatories, and still, by hei amiable manners and beauty, won all hearts. One evening, in a dance, her partner saw an oppor- tunity of pulling the loop of her little black girdle behind : it fell to the ground, and immediately the lady became pale as a sheet, then gradually shrunk and shrunk, till at length nothing was to be seen in her place but a small heap of gray ashes. And what think you now, Evelyn ? Ev. I think your candle burned very blue, As- trophel, when you were poring over these mid- night legends ; yet I believe I may by-and-by explain the story of your Lady of the Ashes — all, excepting the mystery of the sable girdle. But methinks you should not have stopped short of the qualities by which we may recognise the genus of these phantoms. There was once, as I have heard, a ghost near Cirencester, which vanished in a very nice perfume and a melodious twang, and Master Lilly therefore concluded it to be a fairy : and Propertius, I know, writes of another ; and he de- cided that the scent diffused on her disappearance proclaimed her to be a goddess ! Glanville has set himself to argue upon, nay, demonstrate all questions regarding materiality and immateriality, and the nature of spirits ; puzzling us with math- ematical diagrams, and occupying fifteen chapters on the nature of the witch of Endor : and Andrew Moreton, too, in his " Secrets," comments, with pedantic profanation, on the "infernal paw-wawi?ig of this condemned creature." Coleridge, and even Sir Walter, who had a mighty love of legends, propose a question, whether she was a ventriloquist or an aristocratic fortune-teller, or an astrologer or a gipsy, imposing on the credulity of Saul. And NATURE OF GHOSTS. 19 yet that same Sir Walter very shrewdly suggested to Sir William Gell the manufacture of a ghost with a thin sheet of tin, painted white, so that by half a turn the spectre would instantly vanish. Cast. A ghost, I believe, according to the rules of fantasy, ought to be without matter or form, or, indeed, any sensible properties. Yet are very se- rious tales related of guns bursting when fired at them, and swords broken by their contact, and of loud voices issuing from filmy phantoms, through which the moonbeams are seen to glimmer. A spirit ought, of course, to communicate with us in another way than that which we know, and possess those ethereal faculties of creeping through chinks or keyholes, and of resuming its airy form, like the sylph of Belinda, when the " glittering forfex'"' had cut it in twain. An exquisite morceau of such a phantom just now flits across my memory. It is of two old ladies dwelling in two border castles in Scotland. One of these dames was visited by the spectre bust of a man, and the other by the lower half of him. Which had the better bargain I know not, but I believe — Astr. Nay, it were not difficult, lady, to over- whelm me with tales like yours — the idle and un- meaning gossip of a winter's night ; but there are many spectral visitations so intimately associated with events, that the faculty even of prophecy can- not be doubted. Bodine, as Burton writes, is fully satisfied that " these souls of men departed, if cor- poreal, are of some shape, and that absolutely round, like sun and moone, because that is the most perfect form ; that they can assume other aerial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleas- ure, appear in what likeness they will themselves ; that they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant and so likewise transform bod- 20 MOTIVES OF GHOSTS. ies of others into what form they please, and, with admirable celerity, remove them from place to place ; that they can represent castles in the ayre, armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange ob- jects to mortal men's eyes ; cause smells, savours, deceive all the senses, foretel future events, and do many strange miracles." .Then the eccentric Francis Grose has thus summed up many of their wondrous attributes : " The spirit of a person deceased is either com- missioned to return for some especial errand, such as the discovery of a murder, to procure restitution of lands, or money unjustly withheld from an or- phan or widow ; or, having committed some injus- tice while living, cannot rest till that is redressed. Sometimes the occasion of spirits revisiting this world is to inform their heir in what secret place or private drawer in an old trunk they had hid the title-deeds of the estate, or where, in trouble- some times, they had buried the money and plate. Some ghosts of murdered persons, whose bodies have been secretly buried, cannot be at ease till their bones have been taken up and deposited in sacred ground, with all the rites of Christian burial." The ghost of Hamlet's father walked on the plat- form at Elsineur to incite his son to revenge his murder ; and many modern phantoms have, enli- vened the legends of our local histories, bent on the same mysterious errand. The mythology of the ancients, and the fairy superstition of our own land, are also replete with legends of these apparitions. The rites of sepul- ture were essential for the repose of the manes. If the body was not quietly entombed, the soul was wandering on the banks of Styx for one hundred years ere it was permitted Charon to ferry it across the river. Thus spoke the shade of Patro- clus to Achilles in his dream : MOTIVES OP GHOSTS 21 "Thou sleep'st, Achilles, and Patroculus, erst Thy best beloved, in death forgotten lies. Haste, give me burial : I would pass the gates Ol Hades, for the shadows of the dead Mow drive me from their fellowship afar." And this js a prevailing sentiment among the North American Indians : '• The bones of our countrymen lie uncovered, their bloody bed has not been washed clean, their spirits cry against us : they must be appeased." In the letter of Pliny the consul to Sura, we learn that there was at Athens a house haunted by a chain-rattling ghost. Athenodorus, the philoso- pher, hired the house, determined to quiet the rest- less spirit. " When it grew towards evening, he ordered a couch to be prepared for him in the fore- part of the house, and after calling for a light, to- gether with his pencil and tablets, he directed all his people to retire. The first part of the night passed in usual silence, when at length the chains began to rattle. However, he neither lifted up his eyes nor laid down his pencil, but diverted his observation by pursuing his studies with greater earnestness. The noise increased, and advanced nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at last in the chamber. He looked up and saw the ghost ex- actly in the manner it had been described to him : it stood before him beckoning with the finger. Athenodorus made a sign with his hand that it should wait a little, and threw his eyes again upon his papers ; but the ghost still rattling his chains in his ears, he looked up and saw him beckoning him as before. Upon this he immediately arose, and, with the light in his hand, followed it. The spec- tre slowly stalked along as if encumbered with his chains, and, turning into the area of the house, sud- denly vanished. Athenodorus, being thus desert ed, made a mark with some grass and leaves where 22 MOTIVES OF GHOSTS. the spirit left him. The next day he gave informa- tion to the magistrates, and advised them to order that spot to be dug up. This was accordingly done, and the skeleton of a man in chains was there found ; for the body, having lain a considerable time in the ground, was putrified, and had mouldered away from the fetters. The bones, being collected to- gether, were publicly buried; and thus, after the ghost was appeased by the proper ceremonies, the house was haunted no more." Yet, not only to entreat the rites of sepulture, the phantom will walk according to some law of those beings remote from the fellowship of human nature — it may be to obtain readmission to that earth from which it was, by some fairy spell, in exile. In the wilds of Rob Roy's country, there is many a Highlander believing still the traditions of the Daoine Shi, or Men of Peace ; and among the le- gends of Aberfoyle there is one phantom tale that is apropos to my illustrations. There was one Master Robert Kirke. He was one evening taking his night walk on a fairy hill, or dunshi, in the vicinity of his manse. On a sud- den he fell to the ground, struck, as it appeared to many, by apoplexy ; the seers, however, believed it to be a trance inflicted on him by the fairy peo- ple for thus invading the sacred bounds of their kingdom. After the interment, the phantom of the minister appeared to one of his relatives, and de- sired him to go to Grahame of Duchray, his cousin, and assure him that he was not dead, but was at that time a prisoner in elf land, and the only mo- ment in which the fairy charm could be dissolved was at the christening of his posthumous child. The counter-spell was this : that Grahame should be present at the baptism, holding a dish in his hand, and that when the infant was brought, he should PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 23 throw the dish over the phantom, the appearance of which at that moment was faithfully promised. When the child was at the font, and while the guests were seated, the apparition sat with them at the table ; but fear came upon the Graeme at this strange glamourie : he forgot the solemn injunc- tion, and it is believed that Mr. Kirke, to this day, " drees his weird in fairy land." PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 11 I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound." — Hamlet. Ev. These are very meager spectres, Astrophel, or accomplices, as the lawyer would say, after the fact. Ast. I have reserved prophecies for this evening. In the earliest profane records of our globe, we read of the frequent visitations of prophetic phan- toms. Listen, Evelyn, to a story of your own Pliny — the legend of Curtius Rufus. When he was in low circumstances, and unknown in the world, he attended the governor of Africa into that province. One evening, as he was walking in the public por- tico, he was extremely surprised with the appari- tion of a woman, whose figure and beauty were more than human. She told him she was the tu- telar power who presided over Africa, and was come to inform him of the future events of his life : that he should go back to Rome, where he should be raised to the highest honours, should return to that province invested with the proconsular dignity, and there should die. Upon his arrival at Carthage, as he was coming out of the ship, the same figure accosted him upon the shore. It is certain, at least, that being seized with a fit of illness, though there were no symptoms in his case that led his attend- 24 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. ants to despair, he instantly gave up all hope of re- covery, and this prediction was in all its points ac- complished. The shade of Romulus appeared to Julius Procu- lus, a patrician, foretelling the splendour of Rome. The fate of the battle of Philippi was shown to Brutus in his tent by the evil spirit of Caesar ; and Cassius also saw the phantom of Julius on his horse, prepared to strike him, shortly before his suicide. In the Talmud we read of the announce- ment of the Rabbi Samuel's death to two of his friends six hundred miles off. Then, the host of le- gends in that " treasure-booke" of mystery, " Wan- ley's Wonders ;" the visions of Dion ; of Alexan- der; of Crescentius ; of the Pope's legate at the Council of Trent; of Cassius Severus of Parma; and myriads of analogies to these ; nay, may we not believe that the Grecian bards wrote fragments of real history when Patroclus foretels the death of Hector, Hector that of Achilles, and Mezentius of Orodes, or when GEdipus predicts the lofty fate of his family to Theseus % But leave we the olden classics for the proofs ol later ages. In the pine forests of Germany, and in wild Caledonia, the legends of spirits and shad- ows abound in the gossip of the old crones, both in the hut of the jager and the sheiling of the Highland peasant. The Taisch (like the Bodacli Glas of Fergus Maclvor) murmurs the prophecy of death, in the voice of the Taishtar, to one about to die ; and the Wraith, Swarthy Waft, or Death-Fetch , ap- pears in the Eidolon, or likeness of the person so early doomed, to some loved friend of the party, or sounds of wailing and prophetic voices scream and murmur in the mountain blast. The wild romances of Ossian, and the shadowy mysteries so PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 25 brightly illustrated in the poesy of the " Lay," the " Lady of the Lake," and " Marmion," prove how deeply the common mind of Scotland leans to her mysteries ; how devoutly her seers foretel a doom. The evidence of Martin, the historian of the West- ern Isles, is clear and decisive testimony of the possession of a faculty of foresight; and in the re fleeting minds of many sages, who seek not to ex- plain it by the term coincidence, or to impute the vision to mere national superstition. Indeed, in their records we have rules noted down by which the seer may overcome the imperfections of his vision. If this be filmy or indistinct, the cloak or plaid must be turned, and the sight is clear ; but then the fated seer is often presented with his own wraith. In -Aubrey's "Miscellanies" we read how Sir Richard Napier, immediately before his death, was journeying from Bedfordshire to Berks, and saw his own apparition lying stark and stiff on the bed; how Lady Diana Rich, the Earl of Holland's daughter, was met by her death-fetch in the garden at Kensington a month ere she died of smallpox; and listen to this legend of Aventine : " The Emperor Henry went down through the Strudel : in another vessel was Bruno, bishop of Wurtzberg, the emperor's kinsman. There sat upon a rock, that projected out of the water, a man blacker than a Moor, of a horrible aspect, ter- rible to all who beheld it, who cried out, and said to Bishop Bruno, ' Hear ! hear ! bishop : I am thine evil spirit ; thou art mine own ; go where thou wilt, thou shalt be mine : yet now will I do nought to thee, but soon shalt thou see me again.' The bishop crossed and blessed himself, but the holy sign was powerless. At Posenbeis, where dwelt die Lady Richlita of Ebersberg, the floor 26 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. of the banqueting-room fell in the evening : it was the death-fall of the bishop." As the Protector Seymour was walking with his duchess at their country seat, they perceived a spectral bloody hand thrust forth from a wall, and he was soon after beheaded. It is recorded that, like Julius Caesar, James of Scotland had three warnings. The saintly man in Lithgow palace, and another phantom, in Jedburgh, warned King James of his fate : the latter wrote a Latin couplet on the mantel-piece in the hall: had he read it wisely, he had not died at Flodden. The demon, or the guardian angel of Socrates, was also a prophetic Mentor — not only to the sage himself, but even to his companions in his pres- ence ; and the slighting of its counsel often brought regret to those who were the subjects of its warning. In the minds of Xenophon and Plato its influ- ence was devoutly believed, and from the hive of the Attic bee I steal this honeyed morsel : " One Timarchus, a noble Athenian, being at dinner in company with Socrates, he rose up to go away, which Socrates observing, bade him sit down again, for, said he, the demon has just now given me the accustomed sign. Some little time after, Timarchus offered again to be gone, and Socrates once more Stopped him, saying he had the same sign repeat- ed to him. At length, when Socrates was earnest in discourse, and did not mind him, Timarchus stole away, and in a few minutes after committed a murder, for which, being carried to execution, his last words were, ' That he had come to that un- timely end for not obeying the demon df Socrates.' " When Ben Jonson was sojourning at Hawthorn- den, he told Mr. Drummond of his own prophetic vision, that, " about the time of the plague in Lon- don, being in the country at Sir Robert Cotton's PROPHECY OP SPECTRES. 27 house, with old Camden, he saw, in a vision, his eldest son, then a young child, and at London, ap- pear unto him, with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cut with a sword ; at which, amazed, he prayed unto God ; and in the morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an appre- hension, at which he should not be dejected. In the mean time, there came letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appear- ed to him of a manly shape, and of that growth he thinks he shall be at the resurrection." From Walton's Lives I select the following fragment : it is a vision of Dr. Donne, the meta- physician, whose wife died after the birth of a dead child : " Sir Robert (Drury) returned about an hour afterward. He found his friend in a state of ecstasy, and so altered in his countenance that he could not look upon him without amazement. The doctor was not able for some time to answer the question what had befallen him ; but, after a long and perplexed pause, at last said, ' I have seen a dreadful vision since I last saw you. I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms : this I have seen since I saw you.' To which Sir Robert answered, ' Sure, sir, you have slept since I went out, and this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake.' Donne replied, ' I cannot be more sure that I now live, than that I have not slept since I saw you ; and am as sure that, at her second appearing, she stopped,- looked me in the face, and vanished.' " There was a promise by Lord Tyrone to Lady Beresford of a visitation from the tomb. Even when the phantom appeared to her in the night, 28 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. the lady expressed her diffidence in its reality ; but it placed a mark upon her wrist, and adjusted her bed-curtains in some supernatural fashion, and even wrote something in her pocket-book ; so that with earnestness she related to her husband in the morning this impressive vision ; and it was not long ere missives came which, by announcing the death of Lord Tyrone, proved the spectre prophetic. The tragedian John Palmer died on the stage at Liverpool. At the same hour and minute, a shop- man in London, sleeping under a counter, saw dis- tinctly his shade glide through the shop, open the door, and pop into the street. This, an hour or two after, he mentioned very coolly, as if Mr. Pal- mer himself had been there. Cardan saw, on the ring-finger on his right hand, the mark of a bloody sword, and heard, at the same time, a voice which bade him go directly to Milan. The redness progressively increased until mid- night; the mark then faded gradually and disap- peared. At that midnight hour his son was be- headed at Milan. It was told by Knowles, the governor of Lord Roscommon when a boy, that young Wentworth Dillon was one day seized with a mood of the wild- est eccentricity, contrary to his usual disposition. On a sudden he exclaimed, " My father is dead !" And soon after missives came from Ireland to an- nounce the fact. The father of Dr. Blomberg, clerk of the closet to George IV., was captain in an army serving in America. We are told by Dr. Rudge that six of- ficers, three hundred miles from his position, were visited after dinner by this modern Banquo, who sat down in a vacant chair. One said to him, " Blomberg, are you mad ]" He rose in silence, and slowly glided out at the door. He was slain on that day and hour. PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 29 In the " Diary of a Physician" (an embellished record of facts) we read the story of the spectre- smitten Mr. M , whose leisure hours were pass- ed in the perusal of legends of diablerie and witch- craft. One evening, when his brain was excited by Champagne, he returned to his rooms, and saw a dear friend in his chair ; and this friend had died suddenly, and was at that moment laid out in his chamber ; a combination of horrors so unexpected and intense, that monomania was the result. May I also recount to you this vision from Moore's Life of Byron ] " Lord Byron used sometimes to mention a strange story which the commander of the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the passage. This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his berth, he was awakened by the press- ure of something heavy on his limbs, and, there be- ing a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought, distinctly the figure of his brother, who was at that time in the same service in the East Indies, dress- ed in his uniform, and stretched across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion of the senses, he shut his eyes and made an effort to sleep. But still the same pressure continued, and still, as often as he ventured to take another look, he saw the figure lying across him in the same position. To add to the wonder, on pulling his hand forth to touch this form, he found the uniform in which it appeared to be dressed dripping wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished ; but in a few months after he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian Seas. Of the supernatural character of this appearance Captain Kidd himself did not ap- pear to have the slightest doubt." From Dr. Pritchard I quote this fragment: "A C 2 30 PROPHECY OP SPECTRES. maidservant, who lived in the house of an elderly- lady, some years since deceased, had risen early on a winter's morning, and was employed in washing by candlelight the entry of the house, when she was greatly surprised at seeing her mistress, who was then in a precarious state of health, coming down stairs in her night dress. The passage be- ing narrow, she rose up to let her mistress pass, which the latter did with a hasty step, and walked into the street, appearing, to the terrified imagina- tion of the girl, to pass through the door without opening it. The servant related the circumstance to the son and daughter of the lady as soon as they came down stairs, who desired her to conceal it from their mother, and anxiously waited for her appearance. The old lady entered the room while they were talking of the incident, but appeared languid and unwell, and complained of having been disturbed by an alarming dream. She had dream- ed that a dog had pursued her from her chamber down the staircase and along the entry, and that she teas obliged to take refuge in the streets." In the manuscripts of Lady Fanshawe, how evi- dent is the fact of spectral prophecy ! Sir Richard Fanshawe and his lady were sleeping in a baro- nial castle in Ireland, surrounded by a moat. At midnight she was awoke by a ghostly and fearful screaming, and gleaming before the window in the pale moonlight a female spectre hovered, her light auburn hair dishevelled over her shoulders. "While the lady looked in mute astonishment, the spectre vanished, uttering two distinct shrieks. Her terrific story was told in the morning to her host, who evinced no wonder at the mystery: " In- deed," quoth he, " I expected this. This was the prophetic phantom of our house, the spectre of a lady wedded to an ancestor, and drowned hy him PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 31 in the moat from false notions of dignity, because she was not of noble blood. Since this expiation, the phantom appears before every death of my near relations, and one of these died last night in my castle." Here may be the prototype of the " White Lady of Avenel." Among the most exalted families we have other confident records of the recurrence of prophetic phantoms, antecedent to great events. A spectre of this kind formed a part of the household estab- lishment of the Macleans. During the Peninsular war, at the moment that the head of the clan died at Lisbon, this wraith was seen to ride, screaming, along the shore in Scotland. Arise Evans, in a 12mo tract, " sold at his house in Long Alley in Blackfriars in 1653," entitled " An Echo from Heaven," foretold the restoration of Charles II. ; and his true prophecy was based on the vision of a young face with a crown on, appear- ing after the shades of Fairfax and of Cromwell. There is an incident in Roman history so im- pressive in its catastrophe, so exact in its periods, that few, I think, will deny the inspiration. At the moment that Stephanus stabbed Domitian in his palace at Rome, the philosopher Apollonius Ty- aneus, in his school at Ephesus, exclaimed, " Cour- age, Stephanus ! strike the tyrant home !" and a minute after, tvhen Parthenius completed this hom- icide, he added, " He suffers for his crimes — he dies." I have slightly sketched these illustrations, and I presume to term them prophecies. There are others so complex, yet so complete in every part, as to convert, I might hope, even the unbelief of Evelyn. To the relations of Sir Walter and Dr. Abercrom- bie, I will add one from Moreton, in his " Essay on Apparitions :" " The Reverend D. Scott, of 32 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. Broad-street, was sitting alone in his study. On a sudden the phantom of an old gentleman, dressed in a black velvet gown, and full bottom wig, enter- ed, and sat himself down in a chair opposite to the doctor. The visiter informed him of a dilemma in which his grandson, who lived in the west country, was placed, by the suit of his nephew for the re- covery of an estate. This suit would be successful unless a deed of conveyance was found, which had been hidden in an old chest in a loft of the house. On his arrival at this house, he learned that his grandson had dreamed of this visit, and that his grandfather was coming to aid him in the search. The deed was found in a false bottom of the old chest, as the vision had promised." In a letter of Philip, the second Earl of Chester- field, is told the following strange story, which, although not a prophecy, cannot be within the pale of our philosophy. " On a morning in 1652, the earl saw a thing in white, like a standing sheet, within a yard of his bedside. He attempted to catch it, but it slid to the foot of the bed, and he saw it no more. His thoughts turned to his lady, who was then at Networth with her father, the Earl of Northumberland. On his arrival at Net- worth, a footman met him on the stairs with a packet directed to him from his wife, whom he found with Lady Essex her sister, and Mrs. Ram- sey. He was asked why he returned so suddenly. He told his motive ; and, on perusing the letters in the packet, he found that his lady had written to him requesting his return, for she had seen a thing in white, with a black face, by her bedside. These apparitions were seen by the earl and countess at the same moment, when they were forty miles asunder." Tho miraculous spirit which the influence of PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. S3 Joan of Arc infused into the desponding hearts of the French army is written on the page of history. Before her proposition for the inauguration of Charles VII. at Rheims, she heard a celestial voice in her prayer, " Fille, va, va ! je seray a ton ayde — va !" and her revelation of secrets to the king which he thought were locked within his own bo- som, raised in the court implicit belief in her in- spiration. And now, Evelyn, I ask you, " Can such things be, And overcome us like a summer cloud, Without our special wonder ?" Ere you smile at my fantasie, and overwhelm me with doubts and solutions, I pr'ythee let me coun- sel your philosophy. Dig to a certain depth in the field of science, and you may find the roots and the gold-dust of knowledge ; penetrate deeper, and you will strike against the granite rock, on which rest the cold and profitless reasonings of the skeptic. Cast. You look on me, Astrophel, as on a bend- ing proselyte. Yet, sooth to tell, it may be diffi- cult to convert me, although I am half won to romance already by the witch-thoughts of him who gilded the science of the heart and mind with all the iridescent charm of poesy — an unprofessing philosopher, yet with marvellous insight of human hearts — my own loved Shakspeare. An you listen to my Lord Lyttleton, he will tell you, in his " Di alogues of the Dead," that " in the annihilation of our globe, were Shakspeare's works preserved, the whole science of man's nature might still be read therein." And so beautifully are his sketches of the heart and the fancy blended withal, that we hang with equal delight on the mystic philosophy of Hamlet, the witchcraft of Mab, and Ariel, and 3 34 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. Oberon, with their golden wreaths of gay blossoms, as on the dying visions of Katherine, as pure and holy as the vesper-breathings of a novice. Yet the shade of superstition never darkened the brow of Shakspeare. Therefore, plume not yourself on your hope of conquest, Astrophel ; Evelyn may win me yet. Philosophy may frown on the visions of an enthusiast, while she doth grace her pages with a poet's dream. But you will not wear the willow, Astrophel ; there is a beam of pity for you in the eyes of yon pensive Ida. Ida. You are a witch, Castaly. Yet I have as little faith in the quaint stories of Astrophel. A mystery must be purified and chastened by sacred solemnity ere it may be blended with the contem- plation of holy study. And yet there is an arch voluptuary, Boccacio, the coryphaeus of a loose band of novelists, who has stained a volume by his profane union of holiness and passion. The scenes of his Decameron are played amid the raging of the plague, by flaunting youths and maidens, but that moment arisen from the solemnity of a Ca- thedral prayer ! Astr. You will call up the shade of Valdarfar, Ida, that idol of the Roxburghe Club, and printer of the Decameron — Ida. If he appear, he shall vanish at a word, Astrophel. Yet we may not lightly yield the in- fluence of special visitations, even in our own days, when solemn belief is chastened by holy motives, and becomes the spring of living waters. Even the taint of superstition may be almost sanctified on such a plea ; and Baxter may be forgiven half his credulity when he wrote his "Saints' Rest" and the " Essay on Apparitions," to convert the skeptics of London, who, in the dearth of signs and wonders, expressed their willingness to believe PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 35 the soul's immortality if they had proofs of ghostly visitations. I will myself even quote a mystery (I believe recorded in Sandys's Ovid) for the sake of the moral which it bears. It is the legend of " The Room of the Ladye's Figure." Whether it be a tale of Bavaria, or a mere paraphrase from the Saxon Sabinus, I know not. This is the story of Otto, a Bavarian gentleman of passionate nature, mourning for his wife. On one of his visits to her tomb, a mournful voice, which murmured, " A blessed evening, sir!" came o'er his ear ; and while his eyes fell on the form of a young chorister, he placed a letter in his hands and vanished. His wonder was extreme while he read this mysterious despatch, which was addressed " To my dear husband, who sorrows for his wife," and signed, " This, with a warm hand, from the living Bertha," and appointing an interview in the public walk. Thither, on a beautiful evening, sped the Bavarian, and there, among the crowd, sat a lady covered by a veil. With a trembling voice he whispered " Bertha," when she arose, and, with her warm and living arm on his, returned to his once desolate home. There were odd thoughts, surmises, and wonderings passing among the friends of Otto, and suspicions of a mock funeral and a solemn cheat ; but all subsided as time stole over, and their wedded life was without a cloud, until a paroxysm of his rage, one fatal day, was vented on the lady, who cried, " This to me ! what if the world knew all !" With this broken sentence she vanished from the room. In her chamber, whither the search led, erect, as it were gazing on the fire, her form stood ; but when they looked on it in front, there was a headless hood, and the clothes were standing as if enveloping a form, but no body 4 36 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. was there ! Need I say that a thrill of horror crept through all at the mystery, and a fear at the approach of Otto, who, though deeply penitent, was deserted by all but a graceless reprobate, his companion, and his almoner to many a stranger, who knew not the unhallowed source of bounty % That belief cannot be an error which associates divine thoughts with the events of human life. I remember, as I was roaming over the wild region of Snowdonia, we sat above the valley and the lakes of Nant Grwinant, on which the red ridge of Clwd Coch threw a broad and purple shadow, while over Moel Elion and Myneth Mawr the sun was bathed in a flood of crimson light. The Welch guide was looking down in deep thought on Llyn Grwinant, and, with a tear in his eye, he told us a pathetic story of two young pedestrians who were benighted among the mountains on their ascent from Beddgelert. They had parted company in the gloom of the evening, and each was alone in a desert. On a sudden the voice of one of them was distinctly heard by the other, in the direction of the gorge which bounds the pass of Llanberis, as if encouraging him to proceed. The wanderer followed its sound, and at length escaped from this labyrinth of rocks, and arrived safely at Capel Currig. In the morning, his friend's body was found lying far behind the spot where the phantom voice was first heard, and away from the course of their route. Was this a special spirit, a solemn in- stance of friendship after death, as if the phantom had been endowed with supernatural power, and become the guardian angel of his friend, or the special whisper of the Deity in the ear of the liv- ing 1 A belief in this spiritual visitation is often the consolation of pure Christianity, |for "the shad- ow of God is light I" With some the hope of PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 37 heaven rests on it ; and holy men have thought that the presence of a spirit may even sanctify the being which it approaches with an emanation of its own holiness. Nay, do we not witness a blessing like this in the common walks of life, as in that beauti- ful story (told by the Bishop of Gloucester) of the vision of her dead mother by the daughter of Sir James Lee in 1662 1 Is not the effect of these visitations, to a chasten- ed mind, ever fraught with good ] It may be merely a wisdom or a virtue in decision, as when my Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, prayed to God to declare whether he should publish his book " De Veritate," he heard a gentle voice from heaven, which answered his prayer with a solemn approval of his design. It may be the checking of our pride of life, or our self-glory for success ; a divine les- son that may counsel us against worldly wisdom in this golden precept, "Seek to be admired by angels rather than by men." So that complete conversion may follow the vision of a spirit. Dodd- ridge has given us the stories of Colonel Gardiner and the Rev. Vincent Perronet ; and in the " Baronii Annales" we read of Ticinus, a departed friend of Michael Mercator, then a profane student in philosophy, who, according to a preconcerted prom- ise, appeared to him at the moment that he died, afar off in Florence. The vision so alarmed his conscience that he at once became a devout stu- dent in divinity. In the city of Nantes, as we see it written by William of Malmsbury, in the twelfth century, dwelt two young ecclesiastics. Between them was a solemn compact, that within thirty days after the death of either, his shade should appear, sleeping or waking, to the surviver, to declare if the true psychology was the doctrine of Plato or of the D 38 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. Epicureans ; if the soul survived the body, or van- ished into air. The shade appeared like one dy- ing, while the spirit passeth away; and discoursing, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, of the pains of infernal punishments, stretched forth his ulcerous arm, and asked if " it seemed as light ;" then, dropping the caustic humour from his arm on the temples of the living witness, which were corroded by the drop, he warned him of the same penalties if he entered not into holy orders in the city of Rennes. This solemn warning worked his con- version, and he became a pious and exemplary devotee, under the holy wings of Saint Melanius. In these instances, is not the special influence of the Deity evident % and why will our profane wisdom still draw us from our leaning to this holy creed, causing us to " forsake the fountains of liv- ing water, and hew out unto ourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water V How awfully beautiful is the Mosaic picture of the first mortal communion with the Creator, when the vision of God was heard by Adam and Eve, walking in the garden in the cool of the day ; or when the Deity appeared to Abraham and to Mo- ses, and his word came to Manoah and to Noah, with the blessings of a promise ; or when his angels of light descended to console, and to relieve from chains and from fire ; or when the angel of the Lord first appears in the vision to Cornelius ; and the trance, or, rather, the counterpart of the vision, comes over St. Peter at Joppa, and the arrival of the men sent by the centurion confirms the mira- cle ; and then, the last sublime revealings of the Apocalypse ! You will not call it presumption, Evelyn, that I adduce these holy records to con- firm our modern faith, and ask you why philos- ophy will yet chain our thoughts to earth, and affirm our visions to be a meanless fantasy 1 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 39 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. " More strange than true. I never may believe These antique fables."— Midsummer Night's Dream. Ev. Your holy thoughts, fair Ida, are but an echo of my own. The grand causes and awful judgments of the inspired aeras of the world prove the truth by the necessity of the miracles, not only in answer to the Pharisees and Sadducees, who required a sign, but even before the eyes of the early disciples, whose apathetic hearts soon forgot the miracles, and their divine Master himself; for, as he was walking on the sea, " at the fourth watch, they thought he was a spirit." I would fain, however, adopt the precept of Lord Bacon, to waive theology in my discussions and my illustrations, because I am unwilling to blend the sacred truths of spiritual futurity with argu- ments on the imperfection of material existence. / In the abstract spiritual evidence of all modern superstition I have little faith. These records are scarcely more to be confided in than fairy tales, or fictions like those of many antique sages : as the rabbins, that " the cherubim are the wisest, the seraphim the most amiable, of angels ;" or of the visionary Jew of Burgundy, whom, in 1641, John Evelyn spoke with in Holland : " He told me that, when the Messias came, all the ships, barkes, and vessels of Holland should, by the powere of cer- taine strange whirle winds, be loosed from their ankers, to convey their brethren and tribes to the holy citty ;" or even that of Melancthon, that his sable majesty once appeared to his own aunt in the shape of her husband, and grasping her hand, so scorched and shrivelled it that it remained black ever after. These are fair samples of credulity. You will call me presumptuous, but, believe me, 40 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. Astrophel, it is superstition which is presumptuous and positive, and not philosophy ; for credulity be- lieves on profane tradition, or the mere assertion of a mortal. But the glory of philosophy is humili- ty ; for they who, like Newton, and Playfair, and Wollaston, and Davy, look deeply into the wonder and beauty of creation, will be ever humbled by the contemplation of their own being, an atom of the universe. A philosopher cannot be proud; for, like Socrates, he confesses his ignorance, be- cause he is ever searching for truth. He cannot be a skeptic ; for when he has dived into the deeps of science, his thoughts will ascend the more to- wards the Deity : he has grasped all that science can afford him, and there is nothing left for his mighty mind but divine things and holy hopes. Philosophy is not confident either, because she ever waits for more experience and more weight of testimony. How often, Astrophel, must we be deceived, like children, by distance, until experience teaches us truth. By this we know that the turrets of dis- tant towers are high, yet they dwindle in our sight to the mere vanishing point, as the child believes them. Such is the power of demonstration. The ancient polytheists could not be other than idolaters and believers in prophecy. The rabbins were schooled, in addition to the books of Moses, \^ in those of Zoroaster, in the Talmud, which was the magic volume of the Jews, and the Takurni, or Persian Almanac, the annual expositor of natu- ral and judicial astrology in the clime of the sun. The sages who lived immediately after the light of Christianity had been shed over the Holy Land had not forgotten- the miracles wrought in the holy city, but they profaned Omnipotence by making them purposeless. Superstition then formed a part of the national ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 41 creed : even a mere word, as " Epidamnum," they dreaded to pronounce, as it was of such awful im- port ; and credulity and blind faith in the prophetic truth of omens and oracles prevailed. We read in Montfaucon that twelve hundred believed in this miracle of Virgil : " Captus a Romanis invisibiliter exiit, ivitque Neapolim :" that he rendered himself invisible to the Romans and escaped to Naples. The influence of this blind infatuation was the spring of many actions, which, like the daring of the Indian fatalist in battle, were vaunted as deeds of heroic self-martyrdom. Marcus Curtius, the trembling of the earth hav- ing opened a chasm in the Roman forum, leaped into it on horseback, when the soothsayers declared it would not close until the most valuable thing in the city was flung into it. And the two Decii offered themselves as the willing sacrifice to en- sure a victory for their country, one in the war with the Latins, the other in that of the Etrurians and Umbrians. Aristotle and Galen were exceptions. It is true that Socrates believed himself under the influence of a demon, a sort of delegate from the Deity — in- deed, that God willed his death ; for when his friend pressed him on his trial to compose his de- fence, he answered thus : " The truth is, I was twice going about to make my apology, but was twice withheld by my demon." But remember, Astrophel, the Greek word which the philosopher employed, to daifiovLOV, and you will rather confess that it implies the Deity, as if some divine inspira- tion taught him ; or perchance, as some of his com- mentators believe, this invisible monitor was mere- ly the impersonation of the faculty of judgment, and of that deep knowledge and forethought with which his mind was fraught. D2 42 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. Cicero, too, is said to have written arguments to prove the divine origin of the oracle of Delphi ; but it is well believed by classics that Addison has, in his letter in the Spectator, mistaken Cicero for Cato. Recollect, Astrophel, this is an old point with us, when we were reading the subject of Auguries in his book, " De Divinatione," in which he won- ders " that one soothsayer can look another in the face without laughing ;" and you remember Lu- cian ridicules ghost-seeing as the whim of imagina- tion. You have cited Pliny. True, Pliny is an in- teresting story-teller, although he warps somewhat the phantoms of his dreams. But what is the first sentence of his letter to Sura 1 "I am very desi- rous to know your opinion concerning spectres ; whether you believe them to have a real existence, and are a sort of divinities, or are only the vision- ary impressions of a terrified imagination." And what did Johnson confess % That " this is a question which, after five thousand years, is still undecided ; a question, whether in theology or philosophy, one of the most important that can come before the human understanding." So you see the vaunted creed of Johnson was at least, like the coffin of Mohammed, poised between the af- firmative and negative of the proposition. The sage was a strict spiritualist, and, as Boswell says, " wished for more evidence of spirit in opposition to materialism." On some points he was also mighty superstitious, and constantly affirmed his conviction that he should himself run mad. This augury failed, and therefore the prophetic nature of second sight needs more convincing proof than the creed of Johnson. In his own words, " Fore- sight is not prescience." As to the second sight of Caledon, he confesses ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 43 that, although in his journey he searched diligently, he saw but one seer, and he was grossly ignorant, as indeed they usually are. " He came away only willing to believe," the learned and literary even in the far Hebrides, especially the clergy, being altogether skeptics. In the consideration of this question in the study of psychology, it has been an error to conclude that, because in some certain works arguments are adduced by imaginary characters in support of the appearance of departed spirits, such was the posi- tive belief of their authors. If, then, for instance, the arguments of Imlac, in Rasselas, which aim at the proof of spectral reality, or, rather, the appear- ance of departed beings, be adduced as an evi- dence of Johnson's own belief, I might observe that it were equally rational to identify the minds or dispositions of Massinger and Sir Giles Over- reach, of Shakspeare and Iago. Like the Catholic priesthood, who rule the igno- rant by the force of superstition, leaders have been induced to profess the possession of this faculty to overawe their proselytes by their own deeper knowledge, as Numa vaunted his intimacy with the nymph Egeria at her fountain. For this purpose even the Corsican general, Pascal Paoli, assumed the profession of a seer, and the mystery of his prescience was on the lips of every Corsican. When Boswell asked if the fulfilments of his prophecies were frequent, a Cor- sican grasped a bundle of his hair, and whispered, " Tante, tante, signore !" But I will not play the dullard, Astrophel, while you, with your legendary romance, charm the lis- tening ears of ladyes fayre. I will have my turn of story-telling (avoiding the myriads of queer tales told by superstitious and unlettered visiona- 44 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. ries on the look-out for marvels, by servant-maids, and rustics, and silly people, the chief actors in ghost stories), and therefore, in the face of these negative conclusions, even of Johnson, hear one unparalleled story, culled from the rich treasury of Master Aubrey's " Miscellanies." It was of an Earl of Caithness, who, desirous of ascertaining the distance of a vessel which was laden with wine for his cellars, proposed a question to a seer. The answer was, " At the distance of four hours' sail." It may be some doubt was expressed of the truth of this oracle ; for, to prove his gift of clairvoyance, he laid before the earl the cap of a seaman in the ship, which he had that moment taken off his head. The vessel duly arrived, and lo ! a sailor claimed the cap in the seer's hand, affirming that, four hours before, it had been blown from his head by the gale. Is not this the very acme of effrontery % Carolan, the inspired bard of Erin, confessed he could not compose a planxty for a certain lady of Sligo, even when he made an effort to celebrate her wondrous beauty ; and one day, in despair, he threw away his harp, and fell into a lament that some evil genius was hovering over him : from his harp strings (in contrast with those of Anacreon) he could sweep only a mournful music, and he thence prophesied, and that truly, the death of the lady within the year. Dubuisson, a dentist of Edinburgh, on the day preceding the death of President Blair, met him in the street, and was addressed by the president with a peculiar expression. On the day before the death of Lord Melville, the dentist was met by him ex- actly in the same spot, and accosted by my lord in the very same words. On the death of Lord Mel- ville, Dubuisson exclaimed that he should be the third. He became immediately indisposed, and died within an hour. ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 45 In the " Miscellanies" of Aubrey we read, that John Evelyn related to the Royal Society the case of the curate of Deptford, Mr. Smith, who, in No- vember, 1679, was sick of an ague. To this rever- end clerk appeared the phantom of a master of arts, with a white wand in his hand, who promised that if he lay on his back three hours, from ten to one, his ague would leave him. And this prophecy was also, to the very letter, fulfilled. Napoleon, when he was marching upon Acre, had a djerme, or Nile boat, with some of his troops, destroyed ; the boat's name was L'ltalie ; and from this he said, " Italy is lost to France." And so it was. During the siege of Jerusalem, for seven days a man paraded round the walls, exclaiming, with a solemn voice, " Wo to Jerusalem !" and on the seventh day he added, " Wo to Jerusalem and myself/ 1 ' when, at the moment of this anathema, a missile from the enemy destroyed him. Do you wonder that the prophecy of Monsieur Cazotte of his own decapitation, recorded in his " CEuvres de M. de la Harpe," should have been fulfilled ] for in 1788, when this prophecy was ut- tered, the guillotine was daily reeking with patri- cian blood, and the Duchess of Grammont, Vicq d'Azyr, Condorcet, and Cazotte himself, among a host of others, were dragged to the scaffold. When dark events were overclouding Poland, to Sorvenski the warrior, a convert to magnetism, it was imparted in a vision that Warsaw should be deluged in blood, and that he should fall in battle. In two years these forebodings were fulfilled. It is known that Lord Falkland and Archbishop Williams both warned Charles I. of his fate ; but it required no ghost to tell him that. And I have known many deeply interested in the fate of absent 46 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. friends, and knowing their circumstances and lo- cality, so prophesy that they seemed to have all the faculty of clairvoyance. The young ladies of Britain, during the Peninsular war, were often dreaming of the apparitions of their lovers, perhaps at the hour of their expiring on the field of battle : coincidences that must make a deep impression on sensitive minds. Were I justified in divulging se- crets and confessions, I might relate some curious stories of these inauspicious dreams. At the moment of the duel between Mr. Pitt and Mr. Tierney, on Wimbledon Common, a lady of fashion in London exclaimed, " This is the impor- tant moment 1" Oliver Cromwell had reclined on his couch, and extreme fatigue forbade the coming on of sleep. On a sudden his curtains opened, and a gigantic female form imparted to him that he should be the greatest man in England. The puritanical faith and ambition of Cromwell might have raised, du- ring the distracted state of the kingdom, something even beyond this ; and who may decide, if the spec- tre had whispered, " Thou shalt be king hereafter," that the Protector would have refused the crown, as, on the feast of Lupercal, it had been refused by Caesar 1 " General Oglethorpe," writes Boswell, " told us that Prendergast, an officer in the Duke of Marl- borough's army, had mentioned to many of his friends that he should die on a particular day. Upon that day a battle took place with the French ; and after it was over, and Prendergast was still alive, his brother officers, while they were yet in the field, jestingly asked him where was his proph- ecy now. Prendergast gravely answered, ' I shall die, notwithstanding what you see.' Soon after- ward there came a shot from a French battery, to ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 47 which the orders for a cessation of arms had not yet reached, and he was killed upon the spot I" But can these shallow stories be cited as 'proph- ecies ? The links in the chain of causation are ev- ident and the veriest skeptic cannot doubt their sequence, where there was so strong a probability. lit is merely by reflecting on the past, and judging \$he future by analogy. J Natural events of human actions have laws to govern them, and there is sel- dom foresight without the reflection on these laws. Lord Mansfield, when asked how the French rev- olution would end, replied, t£ It is an event with- | out a precedent, and therefore without a proph- ecy." Astr. Then you do not believe where you can- not develop the causes of events. Like all rational philosophers, you must have demonstrative proof. In which class of skeptics shall I enrol you, Eve- lyn ] As a proselyte of Aristotle, who will deny not only the existence of spirits, but affirm heaven and hell to be a fable, and that the world is self- existent ; or with the Epicureans, who believed the impious doctrine of blind chance — that the sun and stars were vapours, and the soul perishable ; or with the modern lights of reason — Sir Isaac New- ton, who confessed the Paradise Lost to be a fine poem, though it proved nothing; or the Abbe Lau- guerne, who, for the self-same reason, despised the brilliancy of Racine and Comeille ; or with the Sadducees themselves, who denied both prophecy \^jmd spirit ] Ev. Perhaps the Sadducees might have referred visions to the right cause, for phantoms differ little from Locke's " substance which thinks." But the mere metaphysician blinks the question (as Lord Bacon does that of experimental chemistry — " Vix unum experimentum adduci potest quod ad homi- 48 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. num statum levandum et juvandum spectat"), thus wofully depreciating the progress of chemical sci- ence, as if the discoveries of Woilaston, of Davy, of Dal ton, and of Faraday were fruitless. Re- member, modern philosophers are not like Xeno- phon, who (says Socrates) called all fools who dif- fered from his opinion. Even Baxter confesses the frequency of impos- ture in ghost stories, yet leans to the belief of all which he cannot account for. Now if philosophy had not doubted, science would be stationary. : We might still believe, with Heraclitus, that the sun was only a foot in breadth; or with Copernicus, that it revolved in its orbit, while the earth was at rest. Remember, Astro- phel, the way to the temple of Science is through the portals of doubt : it is a mark of weakness, "ju- rare in verba magistri." Even the prince philoso- pher of Denmark doubted the prophetic truth of his father's ghost on its mere appearance — (" The spirit I have seen maybe a devil") — until the scene of the play, and the stricken conscience of the king, and then only he believed that " it was an honest ghost." " It is true," as Lord Chesterfield wrote in 1653, " I know that God can make any such things to ap- pear, but because he can, therefore to conclude that ' he doth is ill argued ; and although divers books are full of such stories, yet the soberest sort of men in all ages have doubted the truth of them." I might add to these the visions which have been so strange- ly warped to interpret a subsequent event. Those of ■William Rufus, and Innocent the Fourth, and Henry the Second of France, and a thousand oth- ers from ancient history, between the assumed prophecy and fulfilment of which there is about as much truth as when Lady Seymour dreamed of hav- ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 49 ing found a nest of nine finches, and soon after was married to Finch, earl of Winchelsea, and was blessed with a brood of nine children. With the coincidences of life we have all been struck; the ignorant, and timid, and superstitious among us with wonder ; but how comparatively- trivial are these tiny drops in the wide ocean of events, and what myriads of dreams and visions from which there are no results ! A simple incident occurred to me in the autumn of last year, which was so complete in its associa- tion as to be for a moment startling to myself. Influenced by a sort of veneration for the mem- ory of the good Gilbert White, of Selborne, I made a pilgrimage to that calm and rustic village, so ex- quisitely imbosomed among green meads, and beech-crowned chalk-hills, and forests imbrowned with heath and fern. On my entrance to the village, I was reflecting on the " idiot boy" who fed on honey which he pressed from the bees he caught, when lo ! at the first door a figure, which grinned at me, and mow- ed and muttered, but without the slightest verbal utterance. He was an idiot, but not White's idiot ; yet a visionary mind might readily, for a moment, believe it to be a phantom of the foolish boy, im- mortalized, as it were, in the " Natural History of Selborne." There was an imposing occurrence, also, during the funeral procession of Sir Walter Scott to Dry- burgh. A halt took place for many minutes (in consequence of an accident) precisely on the sum- mit of the hill at Bemerside, where a beautiful pros- pect opens, to contemplate which Sir Walter was ever wont to rein up his horse. " In 1811," writes Lord Byron, in a letter to Mr. Murray, " my old school and form fellow Peel, the 4 E 50 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. Irish secretary, told me he saw me in St. James's- street : I was then in Turkey. A day or two af- terward he pointed out to his brother a person across the way, and said, ' There is the man I took for Byron ;' his brother answered, ' Why, it is By- ron, and no one else.' I was at this time seen to write my name in the Palace Book. I was then ill of a malaria fever. If I had died, here would have been a ghost story." While Lord Byron was at Colonna, his dervish Tahiri, as we read in his notes to the " Giaour," who professed the faculty of second hearing, proph- esied an attack of the Mainotes as they passed a certain perilous defile, but nothing came of it : the attack was not made ; and it is probable that some ringing in the ears of the dervish, and a knowledge that the defile was a haunt of brigands, were the springs of this notion. And there are events, too, which have all the in- tensity of romance, and seem involved in the deep- est mystery, and which, like Washington Irving's tale of the " Spectre Bridegroom," assume all the air of the supernatural until the enigma is solved, and then we cry, " How clear the solution !" Among the myriads of explained mysteries in the North, I will cite that of the farmer of Teviot- dale, who, in the gloom of evening, saw on the wall of a cemetery a pale form throwing about her arms, and mowing and chattering to the moon. With not a little terror he spurred his horse, but as he passed the phantom it dropped from its perch, and, like Tam o' Shanter's Nannie, fixing itself on the croup, clasped him tightly round the waist with arms of icy coldness. He arrived at home ; with a thrill of horror exclaimed, " Tak affthe ghaist!" and was carried shivering to bed. And what was the phantom ? A maniac widow, on her distracted ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 51 pilgrimage to the grave of her husband, for whom she had indeed mistaken the ill-fated farmer. The president of a literary club at Plymouth being very ill during its session, the chair, out of respect, was left vacant. While they were sitting, his apparition, in a white dress, glided in and took formal possession of the chair. His face was "wan like the cauliflower;" he bowed in silence to the company, carried his empty glass to his lips, and solemnly retired. They went to his house, and learned that he had just expired ! The strange event was kept a profound secret, until the nurse confessed on her deathbed that she had fallen asleep, that the patient had stolen out, and, having the pass-key of the garden, had returned to his bed by a short path before the deputation, and had died a few seconds after. In the records of his life by Taylor, we read of a trick of the great actor, who, like Brinsley Sher- idan, had an inkling for practical jokes. It was on a professional visit of Dr. Moncey. " Garrick was announced for Kins: Lear on that night, and when Moncey saw him in bed he expressed his surprise, and asked him if the play was to be changed. Garrick was dressed, but had his night- cap on, and the quilt was drawn over him to give him the appearance of being too ill to rise. Dr. M. expressed his surprise, as it was time for Gar- rick to be at the theatre to dress for King Lear. Garrick, in a languid and whining tone, told him that he was too much indisposed to perform him- self, but that there was an actor named Marr, so like him in figure, face, and voice, and so admira- ble a mimic, that he had ventured to trust the part to him, and was sure the audience would not per- ceive the difference. Pretending- that he began to feel worse, he requested Moncey to leave the room 52 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. in order that he might get a little sleep, but de- sired him to attend the theatre, and let him know the result. As soon as the doctor quitted the room, Garrick jumped out of bed and hastened to the theatre. Moncey attended the performance. Hav- ing left Garrick in bed, he was bewildered by the scene before him, sometimes doubting, and some- times being astonished at the resemblance between Garrick and Marr. At length, finding that the au- dience were convinced of Garrick's identity, Mon- cey began to suspect a trick had been practised upon him, and instantly hurried to Garrick's house at the end of the play ; but Garrick was too quick for him, and was found by Moncey in the same 6tate of illness." These are truths which are in- deed stranger than fiction. Were a miracle once authenticated, our skepti- cism might cease ; but we cannot be convinced of supernatural agency till something be done or known which could not be so by common means, Or which, through the medium of deception or con- trivance, imposes on the mind such belief, of which impression Alston the painter once told Coleridge a melancholy story. 'Twas of a youth at Cambridge, who dressed himself up in white as a ghost to fright- en his companion, having first drawn the bullets from pistols which he kept at the head of his bed. As the apparition glided by his bed, the youth laughed and cried out, " Vanish ! I fear you not." The ghost did not obey him, and at length he reach- ed a pistol and fired at it, when, seeing the ghost immovable, and invulnerable as he supposed, a be- lief in a spirit instantly came over his mind, and convulsions succeeding, his extreme terror was soon followed by his death. I have read (I believe in Clarendon) that the decapitation of Charles I. was augured (after death J ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 53 from his coronation robes being of white velvet in- stead of purple ; and this, it was remembered, was the colour of a victim's death-garment ; and in Blennerhasset's history of James II., that the crown at his coronation tottered on his head, and at the same moment the royal arms fell from the altar of some London church. All this is too childish to be spoken of seriously, and reminds me of the Gen- eral Montecuculi, who on some saint's day had or- dered bacon in his omelette. At the moment it was served a peal of thunder shook his house, when he exclaimed, " Voila bien du bruit pour une omelette !" We wonder not to find Lily, into whose moth- eaten tomes I have sometimes peeped for amuse- ment, prating thus of consequences. There is an old paper of his graced with " the effigies of Mas ter Praise God Barebones," where, among othei judgments, the blindness of Milton is recorded as a penal infliction of the Deity for " that he writ two books against the kings, and Salmasius his de- fence of kings." But we do wonder at such a weakness in Sir Walter Raleigh that he should thus write in his History of the World, " The strangest thing I have read of in this kind being certainly true was, that the night before the battle of Novara, all the dogs which followed the French army ran from them to the Switzers ; and lo ! next morning the Switzers were beaten by the French." And yet a greater wonder is that so many sol- emn stories should have crept into our national le- gends in which there is no truth ; in which philos ophers and divines have very innocently combined to bewilder us. There is an assumed incident associated with a melancholy event in the noble family of Lans- downe most illustrative of my observation. Id E2 54 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. the " Literary Recollections" of the Rev. Richard Warner is recorded the interesting story of the apparition of Lord William Petty, at Bowood, re- lated to Mr. Warner by the Rev. Joseph Town- send, rector of Pewsey in Wiltshire, and " confirm- ed by the dying declaration of Dr. Alsop, of Came." It is affirmed that Lord William Petty, who was under the care of Dr. Priestley, the librarian, and the Rev. Mr. Jervis, his tutor, was attacked, at the age of seven, with inflammation of the lungs, for which Mr. Alsop was summoned to Bowood. Af- ter a few days, the young nobleman seemed to be out of danger; but, on a sudden relapse, the sur- geon was again sent for in the evening. " It was night before this gentleman reached Bowood, but an unclouded moon showed every ob- iect in unequivocal distinctness. Mr. Alsop had passed through the lodge gate, and was proceeding to the house, when, to his astonishment, he saw Lord William coming towards him, in all the buoy- ancy of childhood, restored, apparently, to health and vigour. ' I am delighted, my dear lord,' he exclaimed, ' to see you, but, for Heaven's sake, go immediately within doors ; it is death to you to be here at this time of night.' The child made no re- ply, but, turning round, was quickly out of sight. Mr. Alsop, unspeakably surprised, hurried to the house. Here all was distress and confusion, for Lord William had expired a few minutes before he reached the portico. " This sad event being with all speed announced to the Marquis of Lansdowne, in London, orders were soon received at Bowood for the interment of the corpse and the arrangement of the funeral procession. The former was directed to take place at High Wickham, in the vault which contained the remains of Lord William's mother ; the latter ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 55 was appointed to halt at two specified places during the two nights on which it would be on the road. Mr. Jervis and Dr. Priestley attended the body. On the first day of the melancholy journey, the lat- ter gentleman, who had hitherto said little on the subject of the appearance to Mr. Alsop, suddenly addressed his companion with considerable emotion in nearly these words : ' There are some very sin- gular circumstances connected with this event, Mr. Jervis, and a most remarkable coincidence between a dream of the late Lord William and our present mournful engagement. A few weeks ago, as I was passing by his room door one morning, he called me to his bedside : " Doctor," said he, " what is your Christian name ?" ' Surely,' said I, ' you know it is Joseph.' " Well, then," replied he, in a lively manner, " if you are a Josejyh, you can in- terpret a dream for me, which I had last night. I dreamed, doctor, that I set out upon a long jour- ney ; that 1 stopped the first night at Hungerford y whither I went without touching the ground ; that I flew from thence to Salt Hill, where I remained the next night, and arrived at High Wickham on the third day, where my dear mamma, beautiful as an angel, stretched out her arms and caught me within them." ' Now,' continued the doctor, ' these are precisely the places where the dear child's corpse will remain on this and the succeeding night before we reach his mother's vault, which is finally to receive it.'" Now here is a tissue of events as strange as they are circumstantial ; and I mght set myself to illus- trate the apparition by the agitated state of Mr. Alsop's mind, were it not for the utter fallacy of mis mysterious story, on which the late Rev. Mr. Jervis, of Brompton, whom I knew and esteemed, leemed it essential to publish "Remarks" in the 56 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. year 1831. From these you will learn that Mr. Warner is in error regarding the " address, desig- nation, and age of the Hon. William Granville Petty, the nature and duration of his disorder, and the name of the place of interment." And then it comes out that neither Dr. Priestley nor Mr. Jer- vis attended the funeral, nor conversed at any time on the circumstance ; and, regarding Mr. Alsop's deathbed declaration, Mr. Jervis, who was in his intimate confidence, never heard of such a thing until Mr. Warner's volume was pointed out to him. This strange story, believed by good and wise men, involved a seeming mystery, until we read in Mr. Jervis's " Remarks" one simple sentence in reference to the gentleman by whom it was first told — that " the enthusiasm of his nature predis- posed him to entertain some visionary and roman- tic notions of supernatural appearances." FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIA- TION. " This is the very coinage of your brain : This bodiless creation, ecstasy Is very cunning in." — Hamlet. Cast. How delightful to wander thus among the reliques of that age, when her citizens, the colonists of Britain, migrated from imperial Rome, and built their Venta Silurum, or Caerwent, from the ruins of which these now mouldering walls were formed. As we trod those pictured pave- ments of Caerwent beneath the blue sky of yester- noon, I felt all the inspiration of Astrophel, and a pageantry of Roman patricians seemed to sweep along the fragments of those painted tesselae. " Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain ; Awake but one, and lo ! what myriads rise, Each stamps his image as the other flies." FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 57 There is a happy combination of antiquity and simplicity in this land of G-went. Almost within the shadow of the Roman Caerleon, the Monmouth- shire peasants, at Easter and Whitsuntide, assem- ble to plant fresh flowers on the graves of their relatives. How I love these old customs ! the chanting of the carol at Christmas ; its very home- liness, so redolent of love and friendship ; and that quaint old Moresco dance which was introduced to England by the noble Katherine of Arragon. Then the pastimes of Halloween and Hogmany in Scot- land, and the Walpurgis night of Germany, and the May-day in Ireland, the festival of their patron saint, and the Midsummer night when the bealfires cast a universal lumination over the fells of the green isle, and the still more sacred fire, lighted up in November, in worship of their social deity, Samhuin, whose potent influence charms the warm hearts of all the maids of Erin around the winter hearth of their homes. I listen unto these pleasures as if they were mine own, as children associate all the legends of their school histories with themselves and their own time. In every spot of this land of Wales the very names of the olden time are before us : the romaunt of Prince Arthur and his knights is ever present to our fancy, for he hath, as on the crag that towers over Edinburgh, a seat on many a mountain rock in Wales ; as the Cadair Arthur over Crickhowel, and the semicircle on Little Doward, and Maen Arthur on the moors of Cardigan. Astr. I never look on scenes like this without the echo of that beautiful apostrophe of Johnson, among the ruins of tona, whispering in my ear. Inspired by such an influence, I have roamed over the Isle of Elephanta, and gazed on its gor- geous pagoda hewn from the rock, and adorned by 58 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. gigantic statues and mysterious symbols of the same eternal granite ; on the beauteous excava- tions of Salsette ; on the wonders of Elora, and on the classic reliques of Persepolis ; on the beautiful columns of Palmyra, the Tadmor in the wilderness, where Solomon built his "fenced city;" as well as those arabesque and Gothic temples, the abbeys and cathedrals of our own island. I, too, have al- most dared to think that superstition and idolatry might be forgiven for the splendours of its archi- tecture, even for the elevation of those giant blocks of Stonehenge and Abury, the mouldering altars of the Druidical priesthood, in the city consecrated to their god. So do I feel in this courtyard of Chepstow Cas- tle, whilom the Est-brig-hoel of Doomsday e Booke, and in later times so blended with English history. See you not the conqueror and his knights in panoply on prancing steeds before you ] See you not Fitz Osborne and Warren, its former lords, loom out upon your sight ] And, lo ! the portal opens, and the dungeon of Henry Martin, the regi- cide, yawns like a bottomless pit before us. The shade of Charles Stewart rises ; and again the phantom of Cromwell, uttering his epithets of scorn, as if the wanton Puritan were about to dash the ink in the face of his colleague as he signed the death-warrant of the king. And now the scene changes, and behold the doomed one is chained to those massive rings of iron, and there with groan- ing dies. Ev. I am most willing that you should thus in- dulge in your wild rhapsody, Astrophel, for it is the happy illustration of one potent cause of spec- tral illusion — association. There are few whose minds are not excited in some degree when they tread the localities of interesting events. By mem- FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 59 ory and its combinations something like an inspired vision may often seem to come over us — a day- dream ; or, if we have been brooding over a sub- ject, or gazing on the relics of departed or absent love and friendship, or while we stand on a spot consecrated by genius, or when we have passed the scene of a murder, still will association fling around us its visionary shadows. Shortly after the death of Maupertuis, the presi- dent of the Academy of Berlin, Mr. Gleditsch, the curator of natural history, was traversing the hall in solitude, when he saw the phantom of the presi- dent standing in an angle of the room, with his eyes intensely fixed on him : an effect perfectly explica- ble by the association of intense impression of memory in the very arena of the president's former dignity. You will remember the story of a rich libertine told by Sir Walter Scott. Whenever he was alone in his drawing-room, he was so haunted by a spec- tral corps de ballet, that the very furniture was, as it were, converted into phantoms. To release him- self from this unwelcome intrusion, he retired to his country house, and here, for a while, he obtained the quiet which he sought. But it chanced that the furniture of his town house was sent to him in the country, and on the instant that his eyes fell on his drawing-room chairs and tables, the illusion came afresh on his mind. By the influence of as- sociation, the green figurantes came frisking and capering into his room, shouting in his unwilling ears, " Here we are ! here we are \" It is not, however, essential that there be sub- stance at all to excite these spectres. Idea alone is sufficient. Do you think it strange that a ghost should ap- pear fleshless and shadowy without some super- GO FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. natural influence 1 Be assured that the only influ- ence exists in the sublime and intricate workings of that mind which in its pure state was itself an emanation from the Deity, which is only shadowed by illusion while in its earthly union with the brain, and which, on the dissolution of that brain, will again live uncombined, a changeless and eternal spirit. It is as easy to believe the power of mind in conjuring up a spectre as in entertaining a simple thought ; it is not strange that this thought may ap- pear imboclied, especially if the external senses be shut. If we think of a distant friend, do we not see a form in our mind's eye, and, if this idea be intensely defined, does it not become a phantom % " Phantasma est sentiendi actus, neque differt a sensione aliter quam fieri differt a factum esse." " A phantom is an act of thinking," &c. You have dipped deeply into Hobbes, Astrophel, and will correct me if I misquote this philosopher of Malmsbury. It was in Paris, at the soiree of Mons. Bellart, and a few days after the death of Marshal Ney, the servant, ushering in the Mareschal Aine, an- nounced Mons. Le Mareschal Ney. We were startled ; and may I confess to you that the eidolon of the Prince of Moskwa was, for a moment, as perfect to my sight as reality ? Now it is as easy to imagine a fairy infinitely small as a giant infinitely large. Between an idea and a phantom, then, there is only a difference in degree ; their essence is the same as between the simple and transient thought of a child and the in- tense and beautiful ideas of a Shakspeare, a Mil- ton, or a Dante. " Consider your own conceptions," said Imlac, " you will find substance without extension. An FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 61 ideal form is no less real than material, but yet it has no extension." You hear I adopt the word idea as referring to the organ of vision, but sight is not the only sense subject to illusion. Hearing, taste, smell, touch, may be thus perverted, because the original im- pression was on the focus of all the senses, the brain. Indeed, two of these illusions are often synchro- nous ; as when a deep, sepulchral voice is uttered by a thin, filmy spectre, like the ghosts of Ossian, through which the moonbeams and the stars were seen to glimmer. But the illusion of the eye is by far the most common, and hence our adopted terms refer chiefly to the sight, as spectre, phantom, phan- tasm, apparition, eidolon, ghost, shadow, shade. The ghost, then, is nothing more than an intense idea. And as I have caught the mood of story- telling, listen to some analogies of those deep im- pressions on the mind which are the spring of all this fantasy. That destructive brainworm, Demonomania, is often excited in the mind of a proselyte by design- ing religious fanatics. Let the life of the selected person be ever so virtuous and exemplary, she (for it is usually on the softer sex that these impostures are practised) becomes convinced of the influence of the demon over her, and she is thus criminally taught the necessity of" conversion — is won over to the erroneous doctrine of capricious and unquali- fied election. These miseries do not always spring from self- interested impostors. The parent and the nurse, in addition to the nursery tales of fairies and of genii, too often inspire the minds of children with these diabolical phantoms. The effect is always detrimental — too often permanently destructive. I F 62 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. will quote one case from the fourth volume of the Psychological Magazine, related by a student of the University of Jena. " A young girl, about nine or ten years old, had spent her birthday, with sev- eral companions of her own age, in all the gayety of youthful amusement. Her parents were of a rigorous devout sect, and had filled the child's head with a number of strange and horrid notions about the devil, hell, and eternal damnation. In the evening, as she was retiring to rest, the devil appeared to her and threatened to devour her. She gave a loud shriek, fled to the apartment where her parents were, and fell down, apparently dead, at their feet. A physician was called in, and she began to recover herself in a few hours. She then related what had happened, adding that she was sure she was to be damned. This accident was immediately followed by a severe and tedious nervous complaint." The ghost will not appear to tell us what will happen, but it may rise, and with awful solemnity, too, to tell us that which has happened. Such is the phantom of remorse — the shadow of conscience — which is, indeed, a natural penalty — a crime that carries with it its own consecutive punishment. Were the lattice of Momus fixed in the bosom, that window through which the springs of passion could be seen, there would be, I fear, a dark spot on almost every heart, as there is, to quote the Italian proverb, " a skeleton in every house." Of these pangs of memory, the pages both of history and fiction are teeming. Not in the visions of sleep alone, but in the glare of noonday, the appa- rition of a victim comes upon the guilty mind — "As when a gryphon through the wilderness, With winged course, o'er hill and moory dale, Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth, Had from his wakeful custody purloined The guarded gold " FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 63 Brutus, and Richard Plantagenet, and Clarence, and Macbeth, and Manfred, and Lorenzo, and Wallace, and Marmion, are but the archetypes of a very numerous family in real life, for Shakspeare, and Byron, and Schiller, and Scott have painted in high relief these portraits from the life. Many a real Manfred has trembled as he called up the phantom of Astarte ; many a modern Bru- tus has gazed at midnight on the evil spirit of his Caesar ; many a modern Macbeth points to the vacant chair of his Banquo, the ghost in his seat, and he mentally exclaims, " Hence, horrible shad- ow ! unreal mockery, hence !" Ida. Ay, and many a false heart, like Marmion, hears, as his life ebbs on the battle-field, the phan- tom voice of Constance Beverly: " The monk, with unavailing cares, Exhausted all the church's prayers. Ever he said, that, close and near, A lady's voice was in his ear, And that the priest he could not hear, For that she ever sung : ' In the lost battle, borne down by the flying, Where mingles war's rattle with groans of the dying' — So the notes rung." We read in Moreton an exquisite story of the trial of a murderer, who had with firmness pleaded " not guilty." On a sudden, casting his eyes on the witness-box, he exclaimed, " This is not fair; no one is allowed to be witness in his own case." The box was empty, as you may suppose, but the eye of his conscience saw his bleeding victim gla- ring on him, and ready to swear to his murder. He felt that his fate was sealed, and pleaded guilty to the crime. " Deeds are done on earth. Which have their punishment ere the earth closes Upon the perpetrators. Be it the working Of the remorse-stained fancy, or the vision Distinct and real of unearthly being ; 64 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. AH ages witness that, beside the couch Of the fell homicide, oft stalks the ghost Of him he slew, or shows his shadowy wound." It is this utter humiliation of the spirit, and the conviction of our polluted nature, that rankle so in- tensely in the wounded heart; and thence the re- pentant sinner feels so deeply that awful truth, that there is a Being infinitely more pure and god- like than himself. Ev. A very fertile source of spectral illusion is the devotion to peculiar studies and deep reflection on interesting subjects. Mons. Esquirol records the hallucination of a lady who had been reading a terrific account of the execution of a criminal. Ever after, in all her waking hours, and in every place, she saw above her left eye the phantom of a bloody head, wrapped in black crape — a thing so horrible to her, that she repeatedly attempted the commission of suicide. And of another lady, who had dipped so deeply into a history of witches, that she became convinced of her having, like Tarn O'Shanter's lady of the " cutty sark," been initiated into their mysteries, and officiated at their "sab- bath" ceremonies. Monsieur Andral, in his youth, saw in La Pitie the putrid body of a child covered with larvce, and during the next morning, the spectre of this corpse lying on his table was as perfect as reality. We have known mathematicians whose ghosts even appeared in the shape of coloured circles and squares, and Justus Martyr was haunted by the phantoms of flowers. Nay, our own Sir Joshua, after he had been painting portraits, sometimes believed the trees, and flowers, and posts to be men and women. I knew myself a bombardier, whose brain had been wounded in a battle. To this man a post was FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 65 an enemy, and he would, when a sudden phrensy came on him, attack it in the street with his cane, and not leave it until he believed that his foeman was beaten or lay prostrate at his feet. Intense feeling, especially if combined with ap- prehension, often raises a phantom. The unhappy Sir R C , on being summoned to attend the Princess Charlotte of Wales, saw her form robed in white distinctly glide along before him as he sat in his carriage : a parallel, nay, an explana- tion to the interesting stories of Astrophel. Then the sting of conscience may warp a common object thus. Theodric, the Gothic king, unjustly condemned and put to death Boethius and Symrna- chus. It chanced at that time that a large fish was served to him at dinner, when his imagination di- rectly changed the fish's head into the ghastly face of Symmachus, upbraiding him with the murder of innocence ; and such was the effect of the phan- tom, that in a few days he died. But these spec- tral forms were seen, like the dagger of Macbeth, and the hand-writing on the wall, by none but the conscience-stricken, a proof of their being ideal, and not real. Not long after the death of Byron, Sir Walter Scott was engaged in his study, during the darken- ing twilight of an autumnal evening, in reading a sketch of his form and habits, his manners and opin- ions. On a sudden he saw, as he laid down his book and passed into his hall, the eidolon of his de- parted friend before him. He remained for some time impressed by the intensity of the illusion, which had thus created a phantom out of skins, and scarfs, and plaids, hanging on a screen in the Gothic hall of Abbotsford. I learn from Dr. T. that a certain lady was on the eve of her marriage, but her lover was killed 5 F2 66 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. as he was on his way to join her. An acute fevei immediately followed this impression; and on each subsequent day, when the same hour struck on the clock, she fell into a state of ecstasy, and believed that the phantom of her lover wafted her to the skies ; then followed a swoon of two or three hours' duration, and her diurnal recovery ensued. Cast. I know not if it will make me happier, Evelyn, but I have learned from your lips to believe that many of those legends which I held as poetic fictions may be the stories of minds in which, un- der the influence of devoted affection, the slightest semblance to an object so beloved may work up the phantom of far distant or departed forms. You may have read the romantic devotion of Henry Howard to the fair Geraldine, the flower of Eng- land's court, and the chivalrous challenge of her beauty to the knights of France. During his trav- els on the Continent he fell in with the alchymist Cornelius Agrippa, who, by his sleight cunning, showed in a magic mirror (as he said) to the doting mind of the earl his absent beauty reclining on a couch, and reading by the light of a waxen taper the homage of his pen to her exquisite beauty. Then there was an archbishop of the Euchaites, a professor of magic in the ninth century. The Em- peror Basil besought this pseudo-magus Santaba- ran for a sight of his long-lost and beloved son. He appeared before the emperor in a costume of splendour and mounted on a charger, and sinking into his arms, instantly vanished. This fantasy, and the glamourie of the witch of Falsehope over Mi- chael Scott, and the vision of the wondrous tale of Vatheck, and the legend of the Duke of Anjou in Froissart, might be the rude shadows of some slight phantasmagoria working on a sensitive or impas- sioned mind, may they not 1 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 67 Ev. I am proud of my proselyte, lady. Ida. I presume these illusions may be wrought without the outlines of distinct shapes. I have ever thought the vision of Eliphaz the Tomanite more solemn, because an undefined shadow : " A vision is before our face, but we cannot discern the form thereof." And where the -profane poets have writ- ten thus mystically, they have risen in sublimity. Such is Milton's portraiture of death : " The other shape, If shape it could be called, which shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb ; Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed neither." And in the splendid vision of Manfred, whose thoughts were, alas ! so polluted by passion — " I see The steady aspect of a clear, large star, But nothing more. Spirit. We have no form beyond the elements, Of which we are the mind and principle." And the idolaters profanely adopted this mystic metaphor when they inscribed their Temple of Isis at Sais — " I am whatever has been, is, and shall be, and no one hath ta- ken off" my veil." Ev. The phantom is often described as destitute of form. When Johnson was asked to define the ghost which appeared to old Cave, he answered, " Why, sir, something of a shadowy being." And there is a sublimity and a mystery in that which is indefinite. Two very deep philosophers have, however, differed in opinion regarding the effect ot darkness and obscurity on the mind. Burke al- ludes to darkness as a cause of the sublime and ter- rific (and he is supported by Tacitus — " Omne ig- notum pro magnifico est") ; Locke, as not natural- C8 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. ly a cause of terror, but as it is associated by nurses and old crones with ghosts and goblins. I will not split this difference, but I believe Burke is in the right. Obscurity is doubtless deep- ly influential in raising phantoms : that which is indefinable becomes almost of necessity a ghost. If the ghosts of Shakspeare did not appear, the il- lusion would be more impressive. In darkness and night, therefore, the ghosts burst their cere- ments, the spirits walk abroad, and the ghost-seers revel in all their superstitious glory. The Druids, those arch impostors, acted their mysteries in the depth of shadowy groves ; and the heathen idols are half hidden both in the hut of the American In- dian and the temples of Indostan. It is true, chil- dren shut their eyes when frightened, but this is in- stinctive, and because they think it real ; but, in truth, they ever dread the notion of darkness. By the fancy of a timid mind, in the deepening gloom of twilight, a withered oak has been fashioned into a living monster ; and I might occupy our evening in recounting the tales of terror to which a decay- ed trunk once gave birth among some village gos- sips in the weald of Sussex. There are few who " revisit the glimpses of the moon," whose romantic humour leads them abroad about nightfall, who have not sometimes been in- fluenced by feeling somewhat like fantasy during the indistinct vision of twilight ; the dim emana- tions of the crescent, or the more deceptive illusion of an artificial luminous point irradiating a circum- ambient vapour. Through the magnifying power of this floating medium the image may be fashion- ed into all the fancied forms of poetical creation. At a midnight hour, by a blue taper light, and in a ruined castle, a simple tale will become a ro- mance of terror. FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. G9 I have spoken thus to introduce an incident which occurred years ago, and yet my mind's eye shows it to me as if it were of yesterday. It was in the year , on the eve of my pre- senting myself at the college for my diploma. I had been deeply engaged during the day in tracing, with some fellow-students, the distribution of the nervous ganglia. The shades of evening had closed over us as our studies were nearly completed, and one by one my companions gave me good-night, until, about ten o'clock, I was left alone, still po- ring over the subject of my study by the dim light of a solitary taper. On a sudden I was startled by the loud pealing of a clock, which, striking twelve, warned me most unexpectedly of the solemn hour of midnight ; for I was not otherwise conscious of this lapse of time. For a moment I seemed in ut- ter darkness, until, straining my eyes, a blue and lurid glimmer floated around me. A chilliness crept over me, and I had a strange indefinable con- sciousness of utter desolation — of being immured in some Tartarean cavern, or pent among icy rocks, for the cold night- wind was sweeping in hollow murmurs through the vaults. In the blue half-twi- light I was at length sensible that I was not alone, but in the presence of indistinct shadowy forms, si- lent and motionless as the grave ; and by that aw- ful sensation of the sublime which springs from obscurity, I conceived that I had suffered transmi- gration, or had glided unconsciously through the gates of Hades, and that these were the unbodied spirits — the manes of the departed, in sleep ; and then I thought the sounds were not those of the wind, but the hollow moaning of those restless spirits that could not sleep. By some species of glamourie which I could not comprehend, the gloom appeared to brighten by slow degrees, and 70 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. the forms became more distinct. When we are in- volved in mystery, the sense of touch is instinctive- ly brought to its analysis. I put forth my hand, and found that my eyes were not mocked with a mere vision ; for it came in contact with something icy, cold, and death-like — it was an arm clammy and cadaverous that fell across my own ; and as the smell of death came over me, a corpse rolled into my lap. The moaning of the breeze increased, and the screech-owl shrieked as she flitted unseen around me. At this moment a scream of agony was heard in the distance, as of some mortal frame writhing in indescribable anguish, while a hoarse and wiz- ard voice cried, "Endure! endure!" It ceased; and then I heard a pattering and flutter, and then a shrill squeaking, as of some tiny creatures that were playing their gambols in the darkness which again came round me. On a sudden all was hush- ed, and there was a glimmer of cold twilight, as when a horn of the moon, as Astrophel would say, comes out from an eclipse ; and then a brighter gleam of bluer light burst through the gloom, at which I confess I started, and my hand dropped into a pool of blood. Like the astonished Tarn O'Shanter, it seemed that I was alone in the cham- ber of death, or the solitary spectator of some de- mon incantation, or of some wholesale murder. There were some forms blue and livid, some ca- daverous, of '* span-long, wee, unchristened bairns,'* and others, deluged in blood and impurity, lay around me ; one pale and attenuated form, that more than mocked the delicate beauty of the Me- dicean Venus, lay naked on the ground. On the athletic form of another the moonbeam fell in a glory, as if the fabled legend of Endymion was re- alized before my eyes. FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 71 Astr. And Ev. Ay, now for the secret — the materiel of this wild vision. The truth was, I had dropped asleep in the dissecting-room ; the candle had burned out ; and thus, with a copious supply of dead bodies, the howling of the tempest, the purple storm-clouds, the blue gleams of moonshine, and bats, and screech-owls, and the screams of patients in the surgical wards, and, withal, the hoarse voices of those croaking comforters, the night-nurses, I have placed before you a harmony of horrors that might not shame a legend of Lewis or a Radcliff- ian romance. Simple as this will be the explanation of many and many a tale of mystery, although fraught with accumulated horrors, like those of the " Castle of Udolpho ;" and if, putting aside that ultra-roman- tic appetite for the marvellous, we have courage to attempt their analysis, the pages of demonology will be shorn of half their terrors, the gulf of super- stition will be illumined by the light of philosophy, and creation stand forth in all its harmonious and beautiful nature. FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITE- MENT. "■ A false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain." Macbeth. Astr, I will grant the influence of all these in- spiring causes, Evelyn, but it is not under adventi- tious circumstances alone that the gifted seer is pre- sented with his visions, but also in the clear day- light, in the desert, or in a mountain hut ; surround- ed, too, by those who are content with the common faculties of man. 72 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. Among many of the Gothic nations especially, women were the peculiar professors of divination and magic. The Volva-Seidkona, the Fiolkyngi, the Visindakona, and the Nornir were the oracu- lar priestesses, the chief of whom was the Hexa. These had the faculty of insight into skulda, or the future, and foreknew the doom of mortals : either to the niflheiner, or hell, over which presided the half blue and half flesh-tinted Hela, the goddess of Death, who, as the Cimbric peasants believed, dif- fused pestilence and plague as she rode over the earth on her three-footed horse Hellhest ; or to the Valhalla, or paradise of Odin. And this we read in the " Edda." Ev. Gramercy, Astrophel, you run up the cata- logue of these weird women as you were involved in their unholy league. Have a care, or we must have you caged. There was once a Dr. Fordage, a divine of Berkshire (as it is recorded in a strange book, " Demonium Meridianum, or Satan at Noon- day"), accused of seeing spectres, such as " drag- ons with tails eight yards long, with four formida- ble tusks, and spouting fire from their nostrils." Remember the peril, and beware. Astr. Oh, sir, you must impeach by wholesale, for clairvoyance or second sight prevails in some regions as a national faculty. The courses of my travel have shown to me this inspiration, especially among the elevated parts of the globe. The Hartz and other forests in Germa- ny, the Alps and Pyrenees, the Highlands of Scot- land, the hills of Ireland, the mountains of the Isle of Man, and the frozen fields of Iceland and Nor- way, abound in ghostly legends. Among the passes of the Spanish Sierras, also, it is believed that the Saludadores and the Covenanters saw angels on the hill side during their wanderings and persecutions. FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 73 Ev. And how clear is the natural reason of this. As in the wide desert, so on the mountain, nature assumes her wildest form. Of the awful sublimity of clouds, and vapours, and lightnings, among the gorges of the giant rocks, of the Alps, and the Ap- ennines, and the deep and dreadful howling of a storm in the icy bosom of a glacier, or bellowing among the crumbling walls of ruined castles, the lowland er can form no idea. The mind both of the Bedouin Arab, and espe- cially of the mountaineer, is thus cradled in ro- mance. If that mind be rude and uncultivated, cre- dulity and superstition are its inmates ; ignorance being the common stamp of the seers, except in rare instances of deep reflectors or melancholy book- worms, whose abstractions, like those of Allan Bane, and Brian, and MacAulay, assume the prophetic faculty ; the seer by its power perceiving, as he declares, things distant or future as if they were before his eye. The superstitious legends of Martin, the historian of the Western Isles, and the precepts for the prac- tice and governance of this clairvoyance, prove a deep interest and impression, but not a mystery. Among the defiles of Snsefel, in Man, the belief is prevalent : " A Manksman amid his lonely mount- ains reclines by some romantic stream, the mur- murings of which lull him into a pleasing torpor ; half slumbering, he sees a variety of imaginary be- ings, which he believes to be real. Sometimes they resemble his traditionary idea of fairies, and sometimes they assume the appearance of his friends and neighbours. Presuming on these dreams, the Manks enthusiast predicts some future event." Here is a local reason, as among the icy mountains of the North. Cheffer writes that, thus influenced, the melancholy of the Laplanders ren- G 74 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. ders them ghost-seers, and the dream and the vision are ever believed by them to be prophetic. Cast. It is the contemplation of these Alpine glories that gilds with so bright a splendour of im- agery the romances of mountain poets, the wild le- gends of Ossian, and those which spangle, as with sparkling jewels, the pages of the " Lay," the " Lady of the Lake," and " Marmion." It may excite the jealousy of a classic, but the ghosts and heroes of Ossian, as very acute critics decide, are cast in a finer mould than the gods of Homer. You smile at me, most learned clerks of Oxen- ford, yet I believe the critics are correct. When I was prowling in the king's private library in Paris, M. Barbier placed in my hands two of the most precious tomes, the folio " Evangelistarium," or prayer-book of Charlemagne, and the 4to edition of Ossian. The one is sanctified by its subject, and rich beyond compare in illuminations of gold and colours, and priceless in the eyes of the biblioma- niac. The other was the favourite hook of Napoleon, Fancy that you hear him in the solitude of St. Cloud, poring in deep admiration over passages like this : " Fingal drew his sword, the blade of dark-brown Luno. The gleaming path of the steel winds through the gloomy ghost. The form fell shape- less into air, like a column of smoke as it rises from the half-extinguished furnace. The spirit of Loda shrieked, as, rolled into himself, he rose on the wind. Inistore shook at the sound. The waves heard it on the deep, and stopped in their course w T ith fear." And yet these beauties, like the pictures of Tur- ner, are looked upon with a smile of wondering pity or of scorn, simply because these home-keep- ing critics have never scaled the mountain, or breasted the storm for its wild and purple glory. FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 75 Among the mountains of Wales it was my for- tune to light on many a wild spot, where the poetry of nature fell like the sun-light on the heart of the peasant. In the beautiful vale of Neath there is tne tiny hamlet of Pont-Neath-Vechan. I shall ever remember how fair and beautiful it seemed as I descended from the mountain rocks of Pen y Craig, the loftiest of the Alps of Glamorgan, which enclose Ystrad-Vodwg, the " village of the green valley." Around its humble cottages is spread the most romantic scenery of Brecknockshire. The tributaries of its rolling river there blend their wa- ters — those torrent streams which Drayton has im- personated in the Polyolbion as " Her handmaids Melte sweet, clear Hepste, and Tragath." On the Melte is the wondrous cavern of Porth- Mawr, through which, in Stygian darkness, flows this Acherontic river. And on the clear Hepste is that glittering waterfall which, in the midst of leafy woods and bosky glens, throws itself, like a min- iature Niagara, from the rock, forming an arch of crystal, beneath which the traveller and the peas- ant cross the river's bed on the moss-green and slip- pery limestone. Oh ! for the pencil of a Salvator, the pen of Torquato, to picture the wild vision which was before my eyes when I sought shelter be- neath this crystal canopy from the deluge of a thun- der cloud. The lightning flash gleamed through the waterfall, forming a prismatic rainbow of trans- cendent beauty, while the deep peal swept through the echoing dingles, and the crimson-spotted trout leaped in sportive summersets over the water-ousel that was walking quietly on the gravel, deep in the water. In this wilderness of nature, no wonder that le- gends should prevail : that fairies are seen sporting in 'he Hepste cascades, and that in the dark cavern 76 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. of Cwm-Rhyd y Rhesg, the ghosts of headless la- dies so often affright the romantic skirls of these wild valleys. No wonder that they believe the giant Idris, enthroned on his mountain chair, shook the three pebbles from his shoe into that pool which bears the name of the Lake of Three Grains ; or that the shrieks of Prince Idwal are to this day heard by the peasants of Snowdonia amid the storm which bursts over the purple crag of the Twll-dhu, and thunder clouds cast a deeper and a darker shade over the black water of Lyn Idwal. Nay, I myself may confess, that as I have stood on the peaks of Y Wyddfa, while the white and crim- son clouds rolled beneath me in fleecy masses, whirling around the cone of Snowdon, I have for a moment believed that I was something more than earthly. And when enveloped in the mysterious cloud which rests on the head of Mount Pilate in Lucern, I gave half my faith to the legend of the guide, that storm and human trouble, and the perils of flocks in the vicinity of its triple peak, were the result of the self-immersion of Pontius Pilate in its lake, an act of remorse at his impious adjudication. This unhallowed water was regarded with dismay, and not a pebble might be cast to make a ripple on its surface and disturb the quiet of the traitor. But lo ! in the sixteenth century the spell was proved to be a fable by an assemblage of bold Switzers, who hurled rocks into the lake, and swam across its water without the slightest indication of displeasure from this kelpie of the Brundeln Alp. Ev. The truth is sweeter on your lips than fic- tion, Castaly. Whisper again in the ear of As- trophel the penalties entailed on the indulgence of second sight. Dr. Abercrombie knew a gentleman who could, by his will, call up spirits, and seers have assured me that the sight is, to a certain de- FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 77 gree, voluntary : by fixing the attention on a sub- ject during the dark hour, the power of divination j may be increased, but it cannot be controlled. But those who indulge in those illusions are often driven on to a degree of phrensy equal to the agonizing penalty of Frankenstein ; even as the witch of En- dor trembled when she raised before Saul the sr^irit of Samuel, or the Iberian princess Pyrene, who, like Sin, fled from the child-serpent which was born from her dalliance with Hercules. The effort of the seers, nay, the mysterious or- deal to which they submit themselves, are often so painful, that they gaze with strained eyeballs, and fainting occurs as the vision appears. When the dark hour is over, they will exclaim with MacAulay, " Thank God, the mist hath passed from my spirit !" Indeed, Sir Walter Scott observed in those who presumed to this faculty, " shades of mental aber- ration which caused him to feel alarmed for those who assumed the sight." Archibald, duke of Ar- gyle, was a seer, and it is written that he was haunted by blue phantoms, the origin, I believe, of our epithet for melancholy — " blue devils." At the foot of yonder purple mountains in Mor- gany once lived Colonel Bowen, a doer of evil works, whose spectral visitations fill so many pages of Baxter's " Essay on the Reality of Apparitions." This deep historian of the realm of shadows tells that the wizard was worn down by the phantoms of his evil conscience ; that he imprisoned himself and his boy, who was, I presume, a sort offa?nulus, in a small castle ; that he walked and talked of di- ablerie, and I know not what miseries, in his sleep. I have myself known those who see spectres when they shut their eyes, before an attack of de- lirium, which vanish on the readmission of light ; and in imaginative minds, under peculiar condi- 78 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. tions, intense reading may so shut out the real world, that an effort is required to re-establish vision. In Polydori's " Vampyre" it is recorded that they had been reading phantasmagoria and ghost stories in Germany, thereby highly exciting the sensitive mind of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Anon, on Byron's reading some lines of Christabel, Shelley ran from the room, and was found leaning on a mantel-piece bedewed with cold and clammy perspiration ; and it is enough to read of the gloom which marked the minds of those geister-sehers, the proselytes of Swedenborg (among whom he ranked the King of Prussia), to reclaim all the converts to his strange religion. Astr. There is a bright side, Evelyn. In Ger- many, those children which are born on a Sunday are termed " Sontag's kind," and are believed to be endowed with the faculty of seeing spirits; these are gifted with a life of hajipiness. Ev. And you believe it. Well, for a moment I grant its truth ; but it is the reverse in Scotland ; the vision is almost ever cheerless, and prophetic of wo. " Does the sight come gloomy o'er your spirit ]" asks MacAulay. " As dark as the shadow of the moon when she is darkened in her course in heaven, and prophets foretel of future times." And the anathema of Roderich Dhu's prophet Brian is dark and gloomy as the legend of his mysterious birth, or its prototype, the impure fable of Atys, and the loves of Jupiter and Sangaris. Cast. If I am the sylph to charm this moody gentleman from his reveries, I will warn him in the words of a canzonet, even of the 17th century : " Yet, rash astrologer, refrain ; Too dearly would be won The prescience of another's pain, If purchased by thine own." And I will tell him what Collins writes on the FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 79 perils of the seer, in his " Ode on Highland Super- stition :" " How they whose sight such dreary dreams engross, With their own vision oft astonished droop, When o'er the wat'ry strath or quaggy moss They see the gliding ghosts imbodied troop. They know what spirit brews the stormful day, And, heartless, oft like moody madness stare To see the phantom train their secret work prepare." He listens not to me. Nay, then, I will try the virtue of a spell that has oft shed a ray of light over the dark hour of the ghost-seer. I will whisper music in thine ear, Astrophel. The fiend of Saul was chased away by the harp of David ; the gloomy shadows of Allan MacAulay were brightened by the melody of Annot Lyle ; and the illusion of Philip of Spain, that he was dead and in his grave, was dispelled by the exquisite lute of the Rose of the Alhambra. Astr. My thanks, fair Castaly; yet wherefore should I claim your syren spells \ My visions are delightful as the inspiration of the improvisatore, and cany not the penalty of the monomaniac. But say, if there be (in vulgar words) a crack in this cranium of mine, may not this crack, as saith the learned Samuel Parr, " let in the light V If prophetic visions in the early ages came over the dying, why not in ours ] The last solemn speech of Jacob was an inspired prophecy of the miraculous advent : " The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and to him shall the gathering of the people be." And is it profanation to ask, why may not the departing sjDirit of holiness, even now, prophesy to us ? As we see the stars from the deep well, so may such spirits look into futurity from the dark abyss of dissolution. In some cases of little children, I 80 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. have learned that this unearthly feeling has caused them to anticipate their dying. How pathetically does John Evelyn, in his Diary, allude to the an- ticipation of his little boy — " an angel in body and in mind, who died of a quartan ague, in his fifth year. The day before he died he called to me, and told me that, for all I loved him so dearly, I should give my house, lands, and all my fine things to his brother." The dying seem indeed themselves to feel that they are scarcely of this world. Holcroft, a short time before his death, hearing his children on the stairs, said to his wife, " Are those your children, Louisa?" as if he were already in another exist- ence — as if the human mind itself were perusing the celestial volume of the recording angel, the awful book of fate. When the northern Indian is stretched on the torture, even amid his agonies, an inspired combi- nation of belief and hope presents him with vivid pictures of the blessed regions of the Kitchi Mani- tou. The faithful Mussulman, in the agonies of death, feels assured that his enchanted sight is blessed by the beautiful houris in Mohammed's pa adise. The Runic warriors, also, as the Ice- landic chronicles record in their epitaphs, when mortally wounded in battle, " fall, laugh, and ex- pire ;" and in this expiration, like the dying war- riors of Homer, predict the fate of their enemies. As the venom of the serpent curdled the blood in the veins of Regner Lodbrog, the Danish king, he exclaimed, with ecstasy, " What new joys arise within me ! I am dying ! I hear Odin's voice ; the gates of his palace are already opened, and half-naked maidens advance to meet me. A blue scarf heightens the dazzling whiteness of their bo- soms ; they approach, and present me with the FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 81 soul-exhilarating beverage in the bloody sculls of my enemies.' ' Ev. In that awful moment, when the spirit is " Soon from his cell of clay- To burst a seraph in the blaze of day," the mind is prone to yield to those feelings which it might perhaps, in the turmoil of the busy world and at another period, deem superstition. There is something in the approach of death of so holy and so solemn a nature, something so unlike life in the feeling of the dying, that in this transition, although we cannot compass the mystery, some vision of another world may steal over the retiring spirit, imparting to it a proof of its immortality. I do not fear to yield, for once, my approval of this devout passage of Sir Thomas Brown : " It is ob- served that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves ; for then the soul begins to be freed from the liga- ments of the body, and to discourse in a strain above mortality." It is on the verge of eternity, and the laws and principles of vitality may be al- ready repealed by the Being who conferred them. The arguments, then, regarding the phenomena of life may fail when life has all but ceased. With this admission, I may counsel Astrophel as to the danger of adducing heathen history or fiction in proof of this solemn question. Cast. And yet Shakspeare, for one, with a poet's license, brings before us, as you do, the dying hour as the cause of prophetic vision. John of Gaunt, on his deathbed, mutters, " Methinks I am a prophet new inspired, And thus expiring do foretel of him," and then predicts the fate of Richard. And remember, the dying Hotspur says, 6 82 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. " Now could I prophesy, But that the icy hand of death," &c. Ev. Well, I will not controvert your creed, As- trophel ; rather let me illustrate some of your ap- parent mysteries by simple analogy. As in these extreme moments of life, so in the hour of extreme danger, when an awful fate is im- pending, and the world and our sacred friendships are about to be lost to us, a vision of our absent friends will pass before us. with all the light of real- ity. We read in the writings of Dr. Conolly of a person who, in danger of being swamped on the Eddystone Rock, saw the phantoms of his family passing distinctly before him ; and these are the words of the English Opium-eater : "I was once told by a near relative of mine, that, having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life in its minutest incidents arrayed before her simulta- neously, as in a mirror, and she had a faculty de- veloped as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part." Now, although the coming on of death is often attended by that slight delirium indicated by the babbling of green fields, and the playing with flow- ers, and the picking of the bedclothes, and the smiling on the fingers' ends, yet in others some op- pressive or morbid cause of insanity may be re- moved by the moribund condition. In the words of Aretseus, " The system has thrown off many of its impurities, and the soul, left naked, was free to ex- ercise such energies as it still possessed." I will glance in illustration at these interesting cases : from Zimmerman, of an insane woman of Zurich, who " a few hours before her death be- came perfectly sensible, and wonderfully elo- Q FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 83 quent;" from Dr. Perceval, of a female idiot, who, as she was dying of consumption, evinced the highest powers of intellect ; from Dr. Marshall, of the maniac who became completely rational some hours previous to his dissolution ; and from Dr. Hancock, of the Quaker, who, from the condition of a drivelling idiot, became, shortly before his death, so completely rational as to call his family together, and, as his spirit was passing from him, bestow on them with pathetic solemnity his last benediction." Thus your impressive records are clearly ex- plained by pathology; and, perhaps, unconscious of this, Mrs. Opie has a fine illustration in her "Fa- ther and Daughter," the mind of the maniac pa- rent being illumined before his death by a beam of reason. But in the languid brain of an idiot excitement may even produce rationality. Samuel Tuke tells us of a domestic servant who lapsed into a state of complete idiocy. Some time after she fell into typhus fever, and as this pro- gressed, there was a real development of mental power. At that stage, when delirium lighted up the minds of others, she was rational, because the excitement merely brought up the nervous energy to its proper point. As the fever abated, however, she sunk into her idiot apathy, and thus continued until she died. It was but the transient gleam of reason. 84 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION". FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGES- TION.— OPIUM. " Have we eaten of the insane root, That takes the reason prisoner '(" — Macbeth. Ev. The contrasts to these phantoms of blind superstition are those of the overstrained condition of the mind. The Creator has ordained the brain to be the soil in which the mind is implanted or developed. This brain, like the cornfield, must have its fallow, or it is exhausted and reduced in the degree of its high qualities. In our intellect- ual government, therefore, we should ever adopt that happy medium, equally remote from the big- otry of the untutored and the ultra-refinement of the too highly-cultivated mind. It is not essential that I should now offer you more than a hint, that the essence of the gloomy ghosts of deep study, like the melancholy phan- toms and oppressive demons of the nightmare, con- sists in the accumulation of black blood about the brain and the heart ; and a glance at phrenology would explain to you how the influence of that blood on the various divisions of the brain will call up in the mind these " Hydras, and Grorgons, and Chimeras dire." The learned Pascal constantly saw a gulf yawn- ing at his side, but he was aware of his illusion. He was, however, always strapped in his chair, lest he should fall into this gulf, especially while he was working the celebrated problem of the cy- cloid al curve. A distinguished nobleman, who but lately guided the helm of state in England, was often annoyed by the spectre of a bloody head ; a strange coinci- dence with the phantom of the Count Duke d'Oli- varez, the minister of Philip of Spain. FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION. 85 From Dr. Conolly we learn the curious illusion of a student of anatomy, who, during his ardent de- votion to his study, confidently believed that there was a town in his deltoid muscle. And, from Dr. Abercrombie, the case of a gen- tleman of high literary attainments, who, when closely reading in his study, was repeatedly annoy- ed by the intrusive visits of a little old woman in a black bonnet and mantle, with a basket on her arm. So filmy, however, was this phantom, that the door-lock was seen through her. Supposing she had mistaken her way, he politely showed her the door, and she instantly vanished. It was the change of posture which effected this disappear- ance, by altering the circulation of the brain-blood, then in a state of partial stagnation. My friend, Dr. Johnson, has told me of a gentle- man of great science, who conceived that he was honoured by the frequent visits of spectres. They were at first refined and elegant, both in manners and in conversation, which, on one occasion, as- sumed a witty turn, and quips, and puns, and satire were the order of the evening ; so that he was charmed with his ghostly visiters, and sought no relief. On a sudden, however, they changed into demoniac fiends, uttering expressions of the most degraded and unholy nature. He became alarm- ed, and depletion soon cured him of his fantasy. A Scotch lawyer had long laboured under this kind of monomania, which at length proved fatal. His physician had long seen that some secret griei was gnawing the heart and sucking the life-blood of his patient, and he at last extorted the confes- sion that a skeleton was ever watching him from the foot of his bed. The physician tried various modes to dispel the illusion, and once placed him- self in the field of the vision, and was not a little H 86 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION. terrified when the patient exclaimed that he saw the scull peering at him over his left shoulder. The " Martyr Philosopher," too, in the " Diary of a Physician," saw, shortly preceding his death, a figure in black deliberately putting away the books in his study, throwing his pens and ink into the fire, and folding up his telescope, as if they were now useless. The truth is, he himself had been engaged in that occupation, but it was his own disordered imagination that raised the spectre. You will believe from these illustrations, Astro- phel, that Seneca is right in his aphorism, " Nullum fit magnum ingenium sine mistura dementise." And Pope, also, in his unconscious imitation, " Great wits to madness nearly are allied." Lord Castlereagh, when commanding in early life a militia regiment in Ireland, was stationed one night in a large, desolate country house, and his bed was at one end of a long, dilapidated room, while at the other extremity a great fire of wood and turf had been prepared within a huge, gaping, oldfashioned chimney. Waking in the middle of the night, he lay watching from his pillow the grad- ual darkening of the embers on the hearth, when suddenly they blazed up, and a naked child step- ped from among them upon the floor. The figure advanced slowly towards Lord Castlereagh, rising in stature at every step, until, on coming within two or three paces of his bed, it had assumed the appearance of a ghastly giant, pale as death, with a bleeding wound on the brow, and eyes glaring with rage and despair. Lord Castlereagh leaped from his bed and confronted the figure in an atti- tude of defiance. It retreated before him, dimin- ishing as it withdrew in the same manner that it had previously shot up and expanded ; he follow- FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION. 87 ed it, pace by pace, until the original childlike form disappeared among the embers. He then went back to his bed, and was disturbed no more. The melancholy story of the Requiem of Mo- zart is an apt and sublime illustration of this influ- ence. It was written by desire of a solemn person- age, who repeatedly, he affirmed, called on him du- ring its composition, and disappeared on its com- pletion. The requiem was soon chanted over Ms oivn grave ; and the man in black was, I believe, but a phantom of his own creation. A step beyond this, and we have the spectres of the delirium of fever : the wanderings of typhus, in which the victim either revels with delight in the regions of fancy, a midsummer madness, or is influenced by gloom and despair, in which, with a consciousness of right and wrong, he is driven head- long to acts of ruin and devastation. Ida. In this illusive condition of the intellect con- sists even the monomania of suicide, and the phre- nologist will declare that torpor or excitement of the " organ of the love of life" will incite or deter from such an act. But surely this is error ; it is certain that there was a fashion among the Stoics for this crime ; and even in the early history of Marseilles, suicide was sanctioned, not only by cus- tom, but by authority. Ev. It is a truth of history, but the essence of the crime is the predisposition in the brain. You will think to confute my position, Astrophel, by addu- cing Brutus and Cassius, and Antony and Cato, and a host of Roman heroes, in proof of the sanity of these suicides ; but even in the case of Cato, if we read Plutarch, and not Addison, who, with Rous- seau, Montaigne, and Shaftesbury, leaned towards a sanction, we shall believe that Cato was a mono- maniac. I speak this in charity. 88 FANTASY FROM OPIUM. And to all these morbid states we may still offer analogies. Such are the effects of opium. The brilliancy of thought may be artificially in- duced, also, by various other narcotics, such as the juice of the American manioc, the fumes of tobacco, or the yupa of the Othomacoes on the Orinoco. To this end we learn from a learned lord, that even ladies of quality are wont to " light up their minds with opium, as they do their houses with wax or oil." Indeed, a kind of inspiration seems for a time to follow the use of these narcotics. The Cumean sibyl swallowed the juice of the cherry laurel ere she sat on the divining tripod ; and from this may have arisen those superstitious fancies of the an- cients regarding the virtues of the laurel, and the influence of other trees, of which I remember an allusion of the excellent author of the " Sylva." " Here we may not omit what learned men have observed concerning the custom of prophets and persons inspired of old to sleep upon the boughs and branches of trees, on mattresses and beds made of leaves, ad consulendum, to ask advice of God. Naturalists tell us that the Laurus and Agnus Cas- tus were trees which greatly composed thephrensy, and did facilitate true vision, and that the first was specifically efficacious, npog rove evdvaiao/iovc, to inspire a poetical fury; and Cardan, I remember, in his book de Fato, insists very much on the dreams of trees for portents and presages, and that the use of some of them do dispose men to visions." During the revery of the opium-eater (not the deep sleep of a full dose, but the first and second stage ere coma be induced), he is indeed a poet, so far as brilliant imagination is concerned, but his scribbling is mere " midsummer madness," the phantoms of which are as wild as those of intoxica- FANTASY FROM OPIUM. 89 tion, dreaming, or insanity. But the philosophy, the metaphysics of poetry, are not the product of mere excitement: " Poeta nascitur, non fit." A poet's genius is born with him. The influence of opium on the philosopher or the orator is the same, but in them it does not usually elevate the force of imagination beyond that of judgment. The pow- er of the faculties has been, in fact, exhausted by thought or study ; the stimulus of opium, then, re- stores that depressed energy to its proper level, leaving the judgment perfect, and not overbalanced. The celebrated Thomas Brown, during the compo- sition of his Essay on the Mind, kept his intellect on the stretch by opium for several successive nights. Sir James Mackintosh (one of his favourite pupils) informed us that, on entering the doctor's library one morning somewhat abruptly, he over- heard the following command addressed to his daughter : " Effie, bring me the moderate stimulus of a hundred drops of laudanum." So that the ex- citement be obtained, it matters not how, whether by the use of opium, or other " drowsy sirups of the East, poppy or mandragora," as in the case of some of our modern statesmen ; or the free libation of brandy in certain orators, who were wont to stag- ger down to the House from White's or Brookes's, with those clubhouse laurels, wet towels, round their brows, and overwhelm St. Stephen's by the thunders of their eloquence ; unless, indeed, this be earned to excess, and then we have two very interesting states of vision, as you may gather from the following witticism on two of these departed legislators, which was founded on a truth : " I cannot see the speaker, Bill, can you? Not see him, Harry — d e, I see two !" for the effects of alcohol and opium are alike : the first degree is excitement ; the second, re very ; the H 2 90 FANTASY FROM OPIUM. third, sleep or stupor. " Ben Jonson," writes Aubrey, " would many times exceede in drink ; Canarie was his beloved liquor; then he would tumble home to bed, and when he had thoroughly perspired, then to studie." The second visions of that moral delinquent, the practised opium-eater, like the cordial julep of Co- mus, " Will bathe the drooping spirits in delignt, Beyond the bliss of dreams." The phantoms of the third stage are often of un- utterable anguish : visions of bright forms dabbled in blood, and scenes of crime and horror which are at once loathed and revelled in. The awful curse of Lord Byron's infidel — a vampyre — who, haunt- ing the graveyard with gouls and afrits, sucks the blood of his race : " 'Till they with horror shrink away From spectre more accursed than they." Thus, for a moment of delirious joy, he yields up his mind to the agonies of remorse, his body to a slow poison, perhaps to a sinful dissolution. Ida. The scenes which I gazed on among the opium-houses of Constantinople ever excited my wonder and my pity. These slaves of pleasure, when they assemble and take their seats, are the perfect pictures of either apathetic melancholy or despair. As the potent poison creeps through the blood, they are lighted with unholy fires, until, these being exhausted, the vulture of Prometheus again gnaws their vitals, although the fire is not stolen from heaven. Listen to the confessions of such a slave : " At last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were all the world to me, and clasped hands, and heart-breaking part- FANTASY FROM OPIUM. 91 ings, and then everlasting farewells, and with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed, when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated — Everlasting farewells." " Whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness, im- mediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye ; and by a process no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colours, they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my dreams with insufferable splendour that fretted my heart." Is there any earthly pleasure which will com? pensate the victim of this voluntary' condemnation] Ev. And yet a visionary once thought of renting the Hummums in Covent Garden, and purchasing a large stock of opium, for the purpose of supply- ing us with visions. He would have succeeded, perhaps, if he had hired a second Helen to serve up this nepenthe to the guests. The intense effect of opium is insensibility or death. Thus, the Natchez give narcotics to their victims, and the Brahmins to the suttee women, ere they ascend the pile, for the purpose of producing insensibility. Its mildest effects will be, if long continued, especially in early life, idiocy ; and Op- penheim states that it is sometimes administered to adults by design, to substantiate a statute of lu- nacy. Astr. I cannot disprove your facts, Evelyn, nor do they yet disprove the rationality of my own faith. And is there not one illusion from opium-eating which seems to reverse your laws 1 From the tales of the Opium-eater we learn, that the healthy thoughts of the mind seem to be frozen up in the brain, like the notes in the frozen horn of Munchau- 92 FANTASY FROM OPIUM. sen, or the Irish echo, which was so long in giving its answers, that if you had a concert, you should play and sing the airs the day before the assemblage of your company. And then, when the effect was wearing off, these thoughts followed so copiously and fast as that not one in a hundred could be re- corded. Is this true 1 Ev. It is a slight fact embellished. The action of opium, however, is not uniform : it may produce deep sleep, or insensible stupor; or it may quiet some of the faculties ; and when it does so, it ex- cites a dream of irregular associations. The salts of morphia exert an especial influence over the organ of language, so that the orator, in the fluency of his power of speech, finds it diffi- cult to stop. The muriate is the best preparation to induce fluency and confidence in speaking, or the mind to luxuriate throughout a night in de- lightful revery ; and in the morning, after this fan- tasy, the body will even rise refreshed. In some cases, however, morphia will create a very strange illusion, a spectral language ; so that, in reading or listening, we may feel or think that the words have lost their true meaning. This ef- fect is, I am told, attended with severe headache. The poem of " Kubla Khan," which Coleridge has termed a psychological curiosity, had its origin in the excitement of opium, a spinning out of a theme in " Purchas's Pilgrim," which he had been reading : it is an effort of the poet in recording the wild images which had been before presented to the mind's eye of the enthusiast — the impression, indeed, of the pleasures and the pains of memory. POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 93 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. " The poet's eye, in a fine phrensy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth — from earth to heaven. And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings A local habitation and a name." — Midsummer Night's Dream. Astr. Is there so potent a charm in poppies, Evelyn] You will make us believe, soon, that opium can make a Shakspeare — that genius can be imparted by a drug. The ghosts of fairy land, those bright emana- tions of a poet's fancy, which are wafted through the air on the thistle-down, or swing to and fro on the filmy thread of the gossamer, sprang from a deeper source than this. The fairy mythology of Shakspeare, the beautiful creations of the " Tem- pest" and the "Midsummer Night's Dream," are the very offspring of that innate genius that ** ex- hausted worlds, and then imagined new" Those exquisite and tricksy spirits, the mis- chievous Puck and the delicate Ariel — indeed, the whole train of ghosts which appeared to Macbeth, and Richard, and Clarence, and Brutus, and Ham- let, and the spirits of the " Midsummer Night," the " Tempest," and " Macbeth," of Bolingbroke and Joan of Arc, could not have been so painted, unless they had stood before the mind of Shaks- peare as palpable as reality. Look, too, on those splendid illustrations of the G-othic poets by the eccentric, or, as Evelyn would call him, the half-mad Fuseli. Look on the wild pencillings of Blake, another poet-painter, and you will be assured that they were ghost-seers. An intimate friend of Blake, himself a reader of the stars, has told .me the strangest tales of his visions. In one of his reveries he witnessed the whole cer- 94 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. emony of a fairy's funeral, which he peopled with mourners and mutes, and described with high po- etic beauty. He was engaged, in one of these moods, in painting King Edward L, who was sit- ting to him for his picture. While they were con- versing, Wallace suddenly presented himself on the field, and, by this uncourteous intrusion, marred the studies of the painter for that day. Ev. A most unhappy comparison, Astrophel. The difference between Shakspeare and Blake is antipodean. Blake was a visionary, and thought his fancies real : he was mad. Shakspeare was a philosopher, and knew all his fancy was but imagi- nation, however real might be the facts he wrought from. Ben Jonson told Drummond that he lay awake one whole night, gazing in mute admira- tion on his great toe, surrounding which, in minia- ture, appeared the inhabitants of Rome, and Car- thage, and Tartary, and Turkey ; but he, also, was aware of the illusion. Cast. My most gracious smile is yours, Evelyn, for this honour to my sweet Shakspeare. I pray you accord the same to the spectral visions of a poet, in whose beautiful Aminta each line is a breath of inspiration— the day-dreams of the ele- gant Tasso. Listen : " At Bisaccio, Manso had an opportunity to ex- amine the singular effects of Tasso's melancholy, and often disputed with him concerning a familiar spirit which he pretended to converse with. Manso endeavoured in vain to persuade his friend that the whole was the illusion of a disturbed imagina- tion ; but the latter was strenuous in maintaining the reality of what he asserted, and, to convince Manso, desired him to be present at one of these mysterious conversations. Manso had the com- plaisance to meet him the next day, and while POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 95 they were engaged in discourse, on a sudden he observed that Tasso kept his eyes fixed upon a window, and remained in a manner immovable ; he called him by his name several times, but re- ceived no answer. At last Tasso cried out, ' There is the friendly spirit who Is come to converse with me : look, and you will be convinced of the truth of all that I have said.' Manso heard him with surprise. He looked, but saw nothing except the sunbeams darting through the window ; he cast his eyes all over the room, but could perceive nothing, and was just going to ask where the pre- tended spirit was, when he heard Tasso speak with great earnestness, sometimes putting ques- tions to the spirit, snd sometimes giving answers, delivering the whole in such a pleasing manner, and with such elevated expressions, that he listen- ed with admiration, and had not the least inclina- tion to interrupt him. At last this uncommon con- versation ended with the departure of the spirit, as appeared by Tasso's words, who, turning to- wards Manso, asked him if his doubts were re- moved. Manso was more amazed than ever ; he scarce knew what to think of his friend's situation, and waved any farther conversation on the subject." Ev. I shall forfeit your smile, sweet Castaly, or change it, alas ! for a frown. I have ever thought Tasso a monomaniac, for he yielded to his illusion. I can give you, in a fragment from Lorry, the counterpart of Tasso's fantasy in a far different mind. " During these paroxysms she would talk, and was accustomed to address herself to some one individual present, with whom she conversed at first in an obscure voice, but afterward in a dis- tinct and audible manner. She evidently per- ceived him, and observed all his gestures ; but all Bhe said to him bore a reference to one idea, on 96 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. which she was intent. In the mean time she ap peared not to see or hear any other person, even if he exerted his voice to the utmost to make him- self heard. This fact I witnessed with the great- est astonishment, but many other persons are liv- ing who can attest it. The mother of this female died unexpectedly, after which the daughter used to hold conversations with her as if she was pres- ent. She would answer questions as if interroga- ted by her mother ; would entreat her to take care of her health, and recommend some physician as more able to restore her than others. Moreover, she would talk to her mother of her destined mar- riage, although it had already been some time com- pleted, in a manner perfectly like that of a sane and modest young woman, making some objections to it, and replying to others, and appeared to be revealing all her secret wishes ; in a word, she seemed perfectly collected and rational, excepting the error respecting time and the supposed pres- ence of her mother. This woman had in other respects good health, but was afraid of the small- est noise, and was easily affected by anything she saw or heard. At length she fell into a consump- tion." In other cases, especially in accomplished minds, the fantasy is usually combined with derangement of health. A very ingenuous and elegant young lady, about the age of seventeen, was suddenly seized with catalepsy. It commenced with violent convulsions of almost every muscle of her body, and the most distressing hiccoughs. In about an hour came on a fixed spasm, one hand being placed against her head, and the other to support it. In about half an hour more the spasm subsided, and then began the revery in a moment, her eyes and expression indicating a fixed attention. She then POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 97 conversed with imaginary persons, her eyes being wide open, and during this ecstasy she was com- pletely insensible to the most irritating, and, in- deed, the most violent stimuli. Sir Henry Halford related to us that, on a visit to a person of exalted rank in his chamber, he heard him, with great energy, request Garrick to play a scene in " Hamlet," reminding him of the lines in Horace's Epistles : " Haud ignobilis Argis, Qui se oredebat miros audire tragoedos, In vacuo igetus sessor plausorque theatre" In Dr. Darwin, too, we read of an epileptic girl, who, during a fit of re very, when insensible to all external stimuli, conversed fluently with imaginary people, and was surprised to hear of her illusions when fully awake. And in Andral, of a gentleman of distinguished ability, who believed that an absent friend was sitting among his guests, welcoming him to his ta- ble, and, with great courtesy, handing him a chair. You remember how pathetically Crabbe has illus- trated this illusion in his poem of " Sir Eustace Gray." Cast. Hark to the profane philosopher who as- sociates poetry with madness ! Tell me, Master Evelyn, while you wandered in the Water walks of Magdalene, with the balmy breezes of heaven around your brow, and the mellow sunbeam stream- ing through the green leaves upon your cheek, with the inspired volumes of Virgil, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus breathing nature in all the lines of their beautiful idyls — while Astrophel, per- chance, was mushier among cobwebs in Friar Ba- con's study- — tell me, felt you not the sublimity and truth of poesy % You remind me of the quaint tradition among the shepherds of Snowdonia, that 7 I 98 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. if two persons lie down, on Midsummer eve, to sleep upon a certain rock on Snowdon, one will wake a poet, the other a maniac. I pr'ythee, think otherwise of Tasso, whose reveries were an ecstasy of bright thoughts. Even when the light of day is eclipsed, as when the senseless orbs of Homer and Milton were merged in " ever-during dark," the thoughts of a poet may be deeper and clearer for the gloom. Ida. And so pure and holy withal. In the " De- fensio Secunda," I remember this gem of senti- ments : " Involved in darkness, not so much from the imperfection of our optic powers as from the shadow of the Creator's wings — a darkness which he frequently irradiates with an inner and far su- perior light." Never did poet feel more intensely than Milton the truth of that divine thought, that " the shadow of God is light." Cast. And call up that glory of the Elizabethan age, Philip Sidney, whose life, in the words of Campbell, was " a poetry in action," and who more than imbodied the brightest pictures of Tasso and Ariosto, and eclipsed the glory of that Cheva- lier Bayard, like himself, "sans peur et sans re- proche." Ev. I cry you mercy, fairest ladies, I speak not of the light of poetry, but of its shadows. Chcro- mania is the first form of ?nonomania, or the mad- ness of one idea; and this is marked by cheerful- ness and splendid ideas, which, indeed, often tend to mitigate the melancholy scenes of derangement, as if " the light that led astray was light from heaven." I will illustrate this by repeating to you the letter to his brother of a young officer, whose progressive changes of mind, from excitement to confirmed mania, it was my duty to watch over. POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 99 " December 4th, 1832. " To , Esq. " I am Lord President of the Counsil, a most honorable situation, and the richest gift of the Crown, which brings me in seven thousand pounds every year. The Counsil consists of Three Secre- taries of State, of which I am one, and the Pay- master of the Forces. When the King William the forth shall die, then shall be crowned King of England, and be crowned in Westermister Abbey, By The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. I shall, on the occasion of my coronation, have placed in the different street of London one thousand pipes of wine for my people, and at night in the of Hyde the Park a magnificent display of Fireworks, and one hundred pieces of Artillery shall fire three rounds for the amusement, of my people and sub- jects. I have only now to give you a list of my titles and honors : " King of England. First Heir Presumptive to the Crown. Major-general and Field-martial. Duke of Leitzep. Prince of Denmark. Lord -president of the Counsil. Knight Banneret. Lord-treasurer of the Exchequer. Lieutenant-colonel , Lord and Baronet. Aid-de-Camp to the King. Champion of England. " Dear , I wish to acquaint you that Wind- sor Castle belongs to me, that the palace of Brigh- ton also belongs to me, also I purchased from the Duke of Wellington the splendid park and Palace of Stratfieldsea, wherein there are very extensive Forests of Oak and of Pine trees, together with a 100 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. magnificent sheet of Water containing Ells and Salmon Trout. " Dear , I have to beg that you give my love and duty to your wife — and give this letter to read, I pray you, according to my desire and wish." I may tell you that the very onset of phrensy is often but an elevated spirit of poesy, in which brilliancy and judgment shall be companions ; but, like iEsop's bow, the mind shall be warped and wrung by being constantly bent on its subject ; and thus the source of brilliancy and wit may be the source of madness. A change of subject will \ often do much to unbend such a mind, as a change I of posture will relieve muscular fatigue, or as a i sudden impression of fear or fright has thwarted \ a suicide on the moment of his self-attempt. In- deed mania will often appear to induce an almost inspired talent, which, I may hint to you, may be ex- plained by the oxygenizing of the blood in the brain. In Van Swieten, we read of a working female who, during fits of insanity, displayed the faculty of rhyming, or poetic talent ; and (as I am fond of analogy) in Pinel, of one who, during his insane moments, argued (as if from concentrated memory) in an acute and intelligent manner on the events of the Revolution. Then Haller tells us of an idiot who was wound- ed on the head, and, during its healing, the intel- lect became lucid (and this on the principle of a counteraction) ; but, on the healing being com- pleted, again the creature was an idiot. When we are roaming over the flowery fields of poesy, we are seldom inclined to reflect on the mental labour by which they are embellished. We may satpj^ose that whatever is born of the brain is ushered inby an easy birth ; but poesy is often at- POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 101 tended by a pang of parturition, and one single line may rankle in the brain for hours ere it struggle into light, and perhaps require a frontal blow as violent as that which cleft the scull of Jupiter and gave birth to Pallas. There are some minds which can support the effort of composition with impunity ; but when we recollect the diseases which are entailed on genius, the melancholy of Cowper, and the distraction of the amiable Collins, who " Passed in madd'ning pain life's feverish dream, While rays of genius only served to show The thick 'ning horror, and exalt his wo ;" when we remember the gloomy setting of the brill- iant sun of Scott, during the period of his apoplec- tic tendency, when his letter " filled the minds of his publishers with dismay," and he sunk into the delusive hope that his debts were liquidated to the full ; when we are told that Ariosto was never seen to laugh, and rarely to smile ; that Rousseau was ever restless, and on the verge of mania ; when we reflect on the premature decay of unhappy White— " When science self-destroyed her fav'rite son ;" on the painful conflicts of Byron, when his dark hour was on him ; on Chatterton, " the sleepless boy who perished in his pride ;" we are incited, almost unconsciously, to echo the apostrophe of Wordsworth : " We poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." Ida. The laurel, then, contains more poison than that of prussic acid in its leaf. The perils of ro- mance are not ever in these extremes ; yet the mere indulgence of poetic thoughts may so raise the beau ideal of beauty in the sensitive and youth- I 2 102 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. fal mind as to unfit it for the common duties of life. Like Narcissus, the heart perishes for love of its own shadow. It becomes so acutely sensitive as to " die of a rose in aromatic pain ;" or like the Sybarite, it cannot sleep, because a crumpled rose- leaf lay beneath the pillow. / I have often thought that the secret of happiness may lie in this precept : " Take the good of life as it is, a divine gift, and not an agreeable deception;" when evil is in your path, search its cause, analyze its nature, and if you discover not that you have yourself to thank for it, at least you may prove that the evil itself is made up of mere trifles, and thus you will learn to be resigned. And with the beauty and treasures of earth — if you possess them, enjoy them with a prudent and a grateful heart. If they belong to others, sigh not — pine not for them, but analyze them also, and you may find that the hope of their enjoyment was a phantom; for aggregated beauties are often made up of deformed or unlovely atoms. I might illustrate my remarks by relating to you an episode of the life of my young friend Stanmore ; from which I learned, with sorrow, that the heart may droop beneath its own excess of sensibility (a mystery to those who were strangers to its secret), and that the bosom of love may be self-blighted : His existence was a withered hope, that, like the icicle in the cup of the early flower, freezes the life-spring in which it is so deeply imbosomed. In his mind was lighted a vision of Elysium, beyond what earth, with all its virtue and beauty, could give him : a spectral Utopia. His life was a blank. He found not happiness, because he knew not con- tentment. He was the leader of many a forlorn hope in Spain, and fell in a midnight enterprise among the guerillas in the Sierra Morena. POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 103 Ev. And had the sword spared him, he would have died a moral suicide. What folly, thus to chase a butterfly, instead of yielding to the virtuous influence of woman, which beyond aught else softens and ennobles man's heart, entrancing it in floods of human passion, which, with all its pains, yields happiness a thousand fold more than the maudlin sentiments of Rousseau, that, reducing love to a mere phantom, leave the lone heart to prey on its own sensibility. Such was the romantic poet of Endymion, who for the phantom of his waking dreams gave up the study of that science which might have nursed and fortified a mind so soon chilled to death by the icy fingers of criticism. Erato was the mistress of John Keats ; but while he wooed, he perished : like the Rosicrucian, who, to save the life of his lady, took the oath of celibacy, and thus lost her love forever. Even in the lecture-room of Saint Thom- as's I have seen Keats in a deep poetic dream : his mind was on Parnassus with the Muses. And here is a quaint fragment which he one evening scribbled in our presence, while the precepts of Sir Astley Cooper fell unheeded on his ear : " Whenne Alexandre the Conqueroure was way- fayringe in y e londe of Inde, there mette hym a damoselle of marveillouse beautie slepynge uponne the herbys and flourys. He colde ne loke uponne her withouten grete plesance, and he was welle nighe loste in wondrement. Her forme was ev- ery jhe whytte lyke y e fayrest carvynge of Quene Cy there, onlie thatte y 1 was s welly d and blushyd wyth warmthe and lyffe wythalle. " Her forhed was as whytte as ys the snow whyche y e talle hed of a Norwegian pyne stelythe from y e northerne wynde. One of her fayre hondes was yplaced thereonne, and thus whytte wyth 104 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. whytte was ymyngld as y e gode Arthure saythe, lyke whytest lylys yspredde on whyttest snowe ; and her bryghte eyne whenne she them oped, sparklyd lyke Hesperus through an evenynge cloude. " Theye were yclosed yn slepe, save that two slauntynge raies shotte to her mouthe, and were theyre bathyd yn swetenesse, as whenne bye chaunce y e moone f\ndeth abanke of violettes and droppethe thereonne y e sylverie dewe. " The authoure was goynge onne withouthen de- scrybynge y e ladye's breste, whenne lo, a genyus appearyd — ' Cuthberte,' sayeth he, ' an thou canst not descrybe y e ladye's breste, and fynde a simile thereunto, I forbyde thee to proceede yn thy ro- maunt.' Thys, I kennd fulle welle, far surpassyd my feble powres, and forthwythe I was fayne to droppe my quille." FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. " My eyes are made the fools o' the other senses." — Macbeth Astr. I marvel not, lady, that those pencilled brows do frown upon the ruthless scholar who thus dares to dismantle the fair realm of poesy, and bind the poppy, and the cypress, and the dead- ly nightshade with the myrtle and the laurel. We shall have, ere long, a statute of lunacy against the poet and the seer ; : or, hapless, he will imprison thee, fair creature, within a cloven pine ; and, like Prospero, I must break my wand and bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and, deeper than ever plummet sounded, drown my books. The pages of Ptolemy, and Haly, and Agrippa, and Lily will be but by-gone fables, and the meta- FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 105 physics of the mighty mind will be controverted by the slicing of the brain and marrow with the knife of these anatomists. Nay, we must devoutly be- lieve what they so learnedly give out, that frontal headaches in the locality of form, colour, and mem- ber, and, forsooth, in the organ of wonder too, often accompany spectral illusions, and that white or gray ghosts result from excited form and deficient colour ! ! Martin Luther, who was a believer in special in- fluence, quarrelled with the physician who referred its mystic signs to natural causes. I am not so un- courteous, yet express my wonder, Evelyn, at the confidence with which you presume to the discov- ery of a material reason and a cause for all the phenomena of our mysterious intellect. Ev. And why should I not, dear Astrophel, if I search for and discover it in the studies of that sublime science, the meditation on which inspired Galen with this pious sentiment : " Compono hie profecto canticum in Creatoris nostri laudem." Is it more profane to think that the Deity should speak to us through the medium of our senses than by the agency of a spirit 1 Recollect, I have pre- sumed neither to enter deeply into metaphysical reasoning, nor to describe minutely the condition of the brain ; and I have alluded but slightly to the supposed function of its varied structures. Lord Bacon has observed, " He who would philosophize in a due and proper manner must dissect nature, but not abstract her, as they are obliged to do who will not dissect her." Dissection, however, in its anatomical sense, has not, perhaps cannot, elucidate the coincidence of symptom and pathology in cases which so seldom prove fatal, and the causes of which may be so evanescent. Still, it is only by a combination of metaphysical argument and ana- 106 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. tomical research, with the essential aid of analogy, that the phenomena and disease of mind can be fairly investigated. In the important question of insanity, there is an error among the mere metaphysicians that is fraught with extreme danger — the abstract notion of moral causes being the chief excitement of mania. This error has led to that melancholy abuse of the coer- cive treatment and excitement of fear in a maniac, as if a savage keeper possessed the wondrous power of frightening him into his wits. ) Hear what the magniloquent Reil writes on this point : " The re- ception of a lunatic should be amid the thunder of cannon ; he should be introduced by night over a drawbridge, be laid hold of by Moors, thrust into a subterranean dungeon, and put into a bath with eels and other beasts !" And Lichtenberg, another moral philanthropist, sanctioned by the divine axiom, " the rod helps God," urges the employment of coercion and cruel- ty for this sublime psychological reason : that under the infliction of the lash and the cane " the soul is forced to knit itself once more to that world from which the cudgels come !" Think ye that these moralists, if not hoodwinked by false metaphysics, would have so closely copied the malevolence of an inquisitor or a devil % W*e must believe that each illusive representa- tion is marked by some change in some certain por- tion of the brain, the function of which bears a reference to the subject or nature of the illusion ; it may be so minute as not to be recognised by our vision. Indeed, if the bodily sensations of every human passion be faithfully analyzed, it will be proved that there is an unusual feeling in some part, when even a thought passes through the mind, under these definitions : a thrill, a creeping, a glow, FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 107 a flush, a chill, a tremor — nay, even fainting, con- vulsion, death. Now the brain feels, and thinks, and wills ; but the blood is also essential to these faculties. If part of the brain is changed, or its circulation de- ranged, in that instant an effect unlike health is pro- duced : and such is the illusion of the ghost-seer. Or if the substance of the organ of sense, as the eye, be altered, its function is deranged, and an illusive spectrum appears to float before it. Nay, we are assured by Tiedeman and Gall (opinions of high value) that they have known patients who (smile as you please) were mad only on one side of the brain, and perceived their madness with the other ; and /may assure you, too, that there have been persons who really thought with half the brain only. I will again claim the courtesy of these fair dames while I offer another glimpse of the dull, cold region of physiology. Recollect the illustrations I have adduced in al- lusion to those classes, on whose privacy the ghost has the privilege of intrusion. I will now offer illus- trations of those remote influences which work these seeming mysteries in the sensitive or diseased brain. A patient of Dr. Gregory, at the hour of six, one hour after dinner, was daily visited by a hag, or in- cubus, which confronted him, and appeared to strike him with a crutch. Immediately on this he would fall from his chair in a swoon. This gentle- man was relieved by bleeding and abstinence. The Abbe Pilori, in Florence, invariably saw the phantom of scorpions around him after he had partaken of luncheon. There was a gentleman in Edinburgh, learned in fourteen languages, of the age of seventy-six. In 1819 he began to see strange faces, in old dresses, 108 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. like paintings, and his own face changing from young to old ; and these phantoms came at his call. Wine-drinking increased especially these spectres during the twelve years that the illusion continued, yet his mental faculties were not much impaired. When eighty years old, he came to London to dine with the Knights of the Bath, and went back at the rate of a hundred miles a day. His language latterly was a patois of fourteen. One night he saw his dead wife's shadow, and jumped after her out of the window, and ran after her through the conservatory; yet he remembered when told that his wife was dead, and was then quiet. Disordered digestion aggravated his case extremely. Mr. Cragg's opinion was, that " his thinking was cor- rect, but the expression of thought wrong." On ex- amination, the dura mater was found adherent to the scull ; in parts there was a thick effusion and vascularity over the brain, and the carotids were partially ossified. In a mind excited or exhausted, the natural sympathy between the brain and the stomach is wrought up to an extreme ; and in the two most interesting cases of spectral illusion on record, this instance is beautifully illustrated. The bookseller of Berlin, Nicolai (whose phantasms are, become so hackneyed a tale in the records of Psychology), had been thus mentally excited. It were long to repeat the circumstantial and scientific detail of his waking visions ; of his ghosts of departed friends and of strangers to him, and of the groups of shad- owy figures which glided through his chamber at these spectral levees ; and how his philosophic mind distinguished the intrusion of the spectre at the door and the real friend to whom its opening- gave admittance ; and how they disappeared when he shut his eyes, and came again as he opened his FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 109 lids ; or how he was at last amused by his analy- sis of all these illusive spectra. But the sympathy to which I have alluded will be efficiently proved by one quotation from the Prussian's recital. Du- ring the time leeches were applied to his temples his chamber was crowded with phantoms. " This continued uninterruptedly till about half past four o'clock, when my digestion commenced. I then fancied that they began to move more slowly ; soon after their colour began to fade, and at seven o'clock they were entirely white ; then they seemed to dissolve in the air, while fragments of some of them continued visible a considerable time." On other occasions they attempted to reappear, and changed to white more and more faintly as his health improved. There is equal interest, both for science and cu- riosity, in the illusion of Mrs. A. (as told by Brew- ster in his "Natural Magic"), and which sprung from the like causes. The sympathetic sensitive- ness of this lady was so acute, that an expression of pain in another produced it in the corresponding part of herself. And she, too, was intruded on by spectres of men and women, and cats and carria- ges, and by corpses in shrouds peering over her shoulder at her toilet-glass, and ghastly likenesses of gentlemen in grave-clothes sitting unceremoni- ously in arm-chairs in her drawing-room. And yet the perfect restoration of the lady's health was coincident with her complete freedom from these spectral visitations. You will read in the Anatomie of Melancholy that " Eremites and anchorites have frequently such absurd visions and revelations, by reason of much fasting." In exhaustion, too, or on the approach of vertigo, if we shut our eyes, we seem as if turn- ing round ourselves ; and if we open them, then K 110 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. this whimsical movement is referred to the chairs and tables in our chamber. These, then, are the remote sympathies with the organs of digestion, and this chiefly by the de- rangement of the circulation of the blood between the brain and the heart. In the case of an enlarged heart, Dr. Kelly dis- covered that a dark spectrum was perceived syn- chronous with the systole, or contraction of its ven- tricles, so that the patient could count his pulse merely by watching the motion of this illusive shade on the white ceiling of his room. The study of these false perceptions, which re- sult from derangement or disease of the eye, are replete with interest. You are aware that the func- tion of a nerve of sensation is so deranged by dis- ease, that, in some cases of paralysis, cold, bodies will appear heated. So, by analogy, is the func- tion of a nerve of sense deranged if its fibrillce, be disordered. We have Myopia, or short sight ; Presbyopia, or long sight ; Chrupsia, or coloured vision. We have night-blindness, or dim vision ; and day-blindness, or intolerance of light, as in the albino or owl. I had, and I have now, a second relative, whose vision is insensible to certain colours ; and the chemist Dalton, we know, could not distinguish blue from pink. In a Glasgow Medical Journal I read this state- ment by a patient : " No colour contrasts to me so forcibly with black as azure blue, and as you know that the shadows of all objects are composed of black, the forms or objects which have acquired more or less of this blue hue, from, being distant, become defined and marked by the possession of shadows, which are invisible to me in the high- coloured objects in a foreground, and which are FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. Ill thus left comparatively confined and shapeless masses of colour." The eye may be curtailed of half its object. Mr. Abernethy and Dr. Wollaston were both often in this dilemma of a sense, so that only one half of a person or a name, on which they were looking, was visible to them. Mr. Abernethy, in his face- tious way, referring to his own name, told us he could see as far as the ne, but could not see a bit of the thy. This illusion is at once explained by anatomy. The optic nerve, at one point, interlaces some and crosses other of its fibres ; thus one nerve chiefly supplies one half of hoth eyes. Disease of nerve may thus paralyze one half of each retina, the other half only perceiving half the object or word. In many cases of disordered sensibility of the retina, it is influenced by the minute villi or vessels in the tunics of the eye. In the case of exhausted energy of this retina, usually accompanied by ni^ht-blindness, where there is no vision but in a strong light, floating specks, termed muscat volitan- tes, often become so numerous as to impart a notion of films floating in the watery humour of the eye, or before the cornea. It is a curious question in what portion of the retina the spectra of muscat vo- litantes are excited. They appear in or near the axis of vision ; but, as they do not interrupt the visual rays from material objects, it is possible they may arise on that spot considered to be destitute of vision with regard to external impression ; or they may be produced by detached parts only of the objects which impinge on the retina reaching the brain. If the integrity of certain of its fibres, which, by converging, form the optic nerve, be de- stroyed, distorted or imperfect objects will be pre- sented. This speck may be a musca volitans. 112 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. Astr. The original impressions in all cases are, I presume, from without. How is the internally excited idea presented as a prominent image be- fore the eye % Ev. That form of disordered vision to which I allude, occurring so often in nervous persons, or resulting from close application to study, does not often appear to depend on a turgid condition of the vessels of the choroid coat or retina. It is usu- ally relieved more by tonics than by depletion ; and very strange illusions of sight will sometimes be produced merely by depressing medicines, espe- cially the preparations of antimony. Yet these dark specks appear to be floating before, and often at some distance ivithoutside the eye : therefore we may*believe that excited images or more perfect forms may also appear before the retina palpable. Between the first impression and its recurrence a long period may have passed (memory being un- limited), and it is sufficient that one sole idea be excited to produce a succession, as a spark of fire will ignite a train of gunpowder, or as an electric spark will discharge a whole battery. In the curious case of photopsia, or suffusio scin- tillans, we have a series of illusive spectra in the forms of " lucid points," and " yellow flames," and " fiery veils," and " rings of light." In some cases of ophthalmia, and in acute inflammation of the brain, the candles and other bright objects in the chamber will look like blood. Beguelin, as we read in the " Berlin Memoirs," by straining his eyes on a book, always saw the letters red. There is a story in Voltaire that the Duke of Florence threw the dice with a field-officer of his enemy. The spots on the dice seemed, to his ex- cited brain, like drops of blood : he instantly or- . dered a retreat of his army. And this is not won- FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 113 derful ; it is but excited sensibility, of which many- analogies indeed may be artificially produced, as the flash of light from the pricking of the retina with a fine needle, and the beautiful iris which is formed by pressure on the globe of the eye. In the very interesting history of the prisoner in the dungeon of the Chatelet at Paris, the phosphores- cence of the eye was itself the source of light, in this instance so powerful as to enable the prisoner to iiscern the mice that came around him to pick up the crumbs, although the cell was pitchy dark to others. There are many curious illusions resulting from overstraining or over-excitement of the eye. Dr. Brewster, in the Edinburgh Journal of Sci- ence, vol. iii., says, " If in a fine dark night we un- expectedly obtain a glimpse of any object, either in motion or at rest, we are naturally anxious to ascertain what it is, and our curiosity calls forth all our powers of vision. Excited by a feeble illumi- nation, the retina is not capable of affording a per- manent vision of the object, and, while we are straining our eye to discover its nature, it will en- tirely disapoear, and afterward reappear and vanish alternately. A friend of Buffon had been watching the prog- ress of an eclipse through a very minute aper- ture. For three weeks after this there was a per- fect spectrum of the lucid spot marked on every object on which he fixed his eyes. Dr. Brewster had been making protracted ex- periments on some brilliant object, and for several hours after this, a dark spectrum, associated with intense pain, floated constantly before his eye. In the third volume of his Physiology, Dr. Bos- tock thus concludes the account of his own ocular spectra : " It appeared as if a number of objects, 8 K2 114 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. principally human faces or figures, on a small scale, were placed before me, and gradually re- moved, like a succession of medallions. They were all of the same size, and appeared to be all situa- ted at the same distance from the face. After one had been seen for a few minutes it became fainter, and then another, which was more vivid, seemed to be laid upon it, or substituted in its place, which in its turn was superseded by a new appearance." Coloured vision may arise from permanent de- fect or from acute disorder ; from some peculiar re- fraction of a ray of light on the lens of the eye, or by the optical laws of the accidental colours. The ray of white light consists of the three pris- matic or primitive colours. Now if the eye is fatigued by one of these colours, or it be lost, me- chanically or physiologically, the impression of two only will remain, and this accidental or comple- mentary colour is composed of the two remaining constituents of the white ray. Thus, if the eye has been strained on a red colour, it is insensible to this, but perceives the blue and the yellow, the com- bination of which is green. So, if we look long on a green spot, and then fix the eye on white paper, the spectrum will be of light red. A violet spot will become yellow ; a blue spot orange-red ; a black spot will entirely disappear on a white ground, for it has no complementary colour, but it appears white on a dark ground, as a white spot will change to black. By this law I may explain the impression made by black letters on the red ground of a play-bill, which appeared blue. The accidental colour of orange-red is blue ; that of black is white. By looking on this, the black letter first becomes white, and the accidental colour of the red — blue, is trans- ferred to the white ground of the letters. FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 115 Astr. Then, as D'Agessau recommended the Parliament of Paris to leave the demoniac of our times to the physicia n, and not the di vine, y ou would delegate the management of all those to whom the mysterious world of shadows is unfolded to the sapient leech with his vials and his lancet. Ev. Nay, I presume not to so potent a faculty. Many of the slight imperfections of vision are, as I have confessed, merely exaggerations of romantic ideas floating in the memory ; and this is not a novel notion, for Plato and other philosophers held it long before our time. Muscat volitantes are usually, though not always, substantial ; i. e., depending on points or Jib res in the axis of vision, on congestions, or varicose states of the vessels of the choroid or retina, or of atoms floating in the humours. These specks, which do not appear alike in the eyes of all, and the brilliant beams in the suffusio scintillans, so varied and so whimsical, might be readily moulded into human form by the imagination of an enthusiast or the feelings of the ghost-seer, who is usually morose and melancholy, in a state of longing for a ghost or a mystery. But when many of the more confirmed illusions are depending on structural disease in the mem- branes and humours of the eye, I am confident in the resources of our science to relieve, if not to re- move. Coleridge, indeed, has expressed his be- lief that by some convulsion of the eye it may see projected before it part of its own body, easily mag- nified into the whole by slight imagination. If this be true, the whole mystery of the Deathfetch is un- ravelled. The nerves and their ganglia are often diseased when we least suspect ; and calcareous and scrofu- lous tumours, pressing on the optic axis, in the brain, 116 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. or on the pneumogastric nerve above its recurrent branch, and disease in the bronchial glands around the cardiac plexus, may exist, with the very slight- est sensations of pain. Even in extreme disorgan- ization of the brain, there may be remissions of painless repose ; and in other cases, where pain is synchronous with illusion, the illusion may subside, although the pain remains ; an indication or proof; indeed, of structural cause for the fantasy. And this discrimination, Astrophel, of the line of dis- tinction between sanity and derangement is often of a hair's breadth ; "and the law c&n'fesses here the high value of pathology, seeing that, in cases of suicide or of idiocy, and other states which involve the right of sepulture, the conveyance of entailed estates, or personal responsibility, the judgment of the physician is held to be oracular. MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. "Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds In ranks, and squadrons, and right form of war, Which drizzled blood upon the capitol : The noise of battle hurtled in the air." — Julius Cmsar. Astr. Methinks you claim too much homage from our courtesy to your philosophy, Evelyn. Can we believe that all these wondrous forms and shadows are but an illusion of the eye, or of the mind's eye % And, if I grant this truth in regard to the eye of one mind, can we so easily libel the evidence of a multitude, to whom the world of shadows is unlocked'? We are now wandering in the very land of omens ; and will this cold philosophy of thine pre- sume to draw aside the veil of mystery which hangs over the mountain and the cataract of yon wild principality ? MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 117 E'en now the legends of many climes crowd on my memory ; and, while this purple cloud is o'er the sun, listen, I pr'ythee, to the traditions which I have gathered : muse on the sequences of these strange appearances, and you will a.t length confess, with the Benedictine Calmet, " Realite des appa- ritions est prouvee par l'evenement des choses pre- dites." The Tan-we or Tan- wed are streams of lucid fire, rolling along the lands of a freeholder, who, warn- ed of his coming fate, immediately makes his will, and shortly after dies. Among the gloomy gorges of Preselle, in Pem- brokeshire, comes dancing on that blue wildfire the " Canwyl y Cyrph," or " Corpse-candle." As the shades of evening are approaching, the spectre of the doomed comes flitting before us, with a light- ed taper in its hand, and with a solemn step halts not until it rests on its destined grave in the church- yard ground. If dignities and fortune have been the earthly lot of this doomed mortal, then is there shadowed forth an awful pageantry of hearse and ghostly steeds, and mute mourners, all gliding away to the place of the tomb, and, like the phantoms of the Aensprecker in Holland (a funeral procession of no less fatality), they foretel the doom of some ill-fated friend. Among the dingles of the Bachwy, in Radnor- shire, amid scenery of wild and lonely beauty, a few rugged stones denote the site of an ancient cas- tle of a Welsh prince : it is the ruin of the " Black Rock." The opposing masses of this eternal rock, tapestried with deep green moss and lichen, fold in upon the stream directly over its matchless cataract, which falls abruptly from the upper to the lower valley into this gloomy gorge ; the sunbeam play- ing on the upper ledge of the waterfall, while its 118 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. deep basin is shrouded in Stygian darkness. Into this gulf it was the pleasure of the prince to hurl from his castle walls those whom fate had made his prisoners. Often since the era of these cruel- ties (as I learned from the oral legends of the peas- ants), before a death, a strange unearthly groaning is heard, the " Kyhirraeth," becoming fainter and fainter until the last gasp of the mortal whose doom it forebodes. There is the dead-bell, which the Scottish peas- ants believe to foretel the death of a friend ; and the death-cart of Lancashire, which is heard rat- tling along the streets like a whirlwind ; and the Owke Mouraske, a demon of Norway, which never enters a house but some one of the family dies with- in the year. We are assured also by the Saxon Cranmer, that, ere one of the electral house of Brandenburgh dies, a woman in white appears to many throughout the dominions of Prussia. The wild mountains that surround us are prolific in the " Anderyn y Corff," or "Corpse-bird," and the " Cwm Anion," or " Dogs of Hell," which are believed to be demons of death, in the shape of hounds, and, like the mongrel of Faust, marked by a train of fire. These howl forth their awful warn- ing, while the death-peal rings in the ears of the nearest kin of one about to die. There is the legend of the " Ellyllon," a proto- type of the Scotch and Irish " Banshie," which ap- pears as an old crone, with streaming hair and a coat of blue, with her boding scream of death. The " Gwrach y Rhibyn," or " Hag of the Drib- ble," whose pastime is to carry stones in her apron across the mountains, and then to loosen her apron- string, and by the shower of stones to make a " drib- ble." This hag, at twilight, flaps her raven wing against the chamber window of a doomed creature, and with a howl, cries out, "A a a ui ui Anni." MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 119 In the wilderness of Zin, which stretches between Palestine and the Red Sea, both the Bedouin Arab and the traveller are greeted by the sound of matin bells, like the convent peal which calls the nuns tc their devotion ; and this, according to tradition, has been heard ever since the Crusades. Then there is a fatal spirit of the desert, which, like an ignis fatuus, lures men to destruction by " Airy tongues that syllable men's names." The Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, writes of those who, wandering unwarily from the track of the caravans in Tartary, hear the phantom voice of some dear friend (who, indeed, sometimes appears in person), which entices them from the route, and they perish in the desert. And Lord Lindsay, in his travels through Egypt and the denies of Edom, tells us one circumstantial story from Vincent de Blanc, of a man decoyed away from the caravan of an Arabian merchant by the entreaties of a phantom voice. Before an heir of Clifton of Clifton sleeps in death, a sturgeon is always, it is affirmed, taken in the river Trent. This incident, like many others, becomes important from its consequence. The park of Chartley is a wild and romantic spot, in its primitive state, untouched by the hand of the agriculturist, and was formerly attached to the royal forest of Needwood, and the honour of Tutbury, of the whole of which the ancient family of De Ferrars were once the puissant lords. Their im- mense possessions, now forming part of the duchy of Lancaster, were forfeited by the attainder of Earl Ferrars, after his defeat at Burton Bridge, where he led the rebellious barons against Henry III. The Chartley estate, being settled in dower, was alone reserved, and handed down to its pres- ent possessor. In the park is preserved, in its 120 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. primitive purity, the indigenous Staffordshire cow, small in stature, of a sand- white colour, with black ears, muzzle, and tips at the hoofs. In the year of the battle of Burton Bridge a black calf was born, and the downfall of the great house of Fer- rars happening at the same period, gave rise to the tradition, which to this day has been held in venera- tion by the common people, that the birth of a parti- coloured calf from the wild breed in Chartley Park is a sure omen of death, within the same year, to a member of the lord's family. A calf of this descrip- tion has been born whenever a death has happened in the family of late years. The decease of the last earl and his countess, of his son Lord Tam- worth, of his daughter Mrs. William Jolliffe, as well as the deaths of the son and heir of the pres- ent nobleman and his daughter, Lady Frances Shirley, have each been forewarned by the ominous birth of a spotted calf. In the spring of a late year an animal perfectly black was calved by one of this weird tribe in the park of Chartley, and this birth also has been followed by the death of the countess. In the beautiful chapel of Rosslinne, founded by William Saint Clair, prince of Orkney, there is a legend of the spectral light which illumined its Gothic beauty on the eve of a death among his descendants. And my sweet Castaly will remem- ber how pathetically Harold sings the fate of Rosa- belle Saint Clair. In other districts, on the coming of such an event, these lights are seen of various colours, and are termed " Dr' Eug" — " the Death of the Druid" — and they also marshal the funeral procession to the very verge of the grave. Dr. Caldicot solemnly writes that, when a Chris- tian is drowned in the Dee, a light appears over MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 121 the spot, by which the body is easily discovered; and hence the river is called " Holy" Dee. The mysteries of the " Skibbereen Lights" are recorded by an honourable gentleman of Ireland, and ladies and philosophers journeyed far to be- hold them, and believed. In a cottage in a marshy flat near Bantry lived a man named Harrington, a perfect anatomie vivante, and bedridden, his heart devout, his books all of a religious kind. In his chamber strange lights soon appeared, at first like the dim moonlight on the wall, deepening often into yellow light, and flickering round the room. There was often a group of literati and fashion assembled there, on whom the light danced, and displayed all the various emotions of the parties. Once at noon, but mostly at midnight, the light appeared ; and on all occasions Harrington seemed to anticipate be- fore others beheld them. Science has searched for causes ; but neither in the arts of an impostor or the natural exhalation of luminous gases has been yet discovered a solution of this mystery. In the wild country around Dolgelly, where Cader Idris frowns upon the floods and fells of Merioneth, where the Mawddach, after its magnif- icent fall, rolls its waters through the brown and purple valley to join the Wonion, and then expand into the mountain estuary of Abermaw, the wan- derer will hear from many lips this current story : On a dark evening a few winters ago, some per- sons were returning to Barmouth, on the south or opposite side of the river. As they approached the ferry-house at Penthryn, which is directly op- posite Barmouth, they observed a light near the house, which they conjectured to be produced by a bonfire, and greatly puzzled they were to dis- cover the reason why it should have been lighted. As they came nearer, however, it vanished ; and L 122 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. when they inquired at the house respecting it, they were surprised to learn that not only had the peo- ple there displayed no light, but they had not even seen one, nor could they perceive any signs of it on the sands. On reaching Barmouth the circum- stance was mentioned, and the fact corroborated by some of the people there, who had also plainly and distinctly seen the light. It was settled, therefore, by some of the old fishermen, that this was a " death token;" and, sure enough, the man who kept the ferry at that time was drowned, at high water, a few nights afterward, on the very spot where the light was seen. He was landing from the boat, when he fell into the water, and so perished. The same winter the Barmouth people, as well as the inhabitants of the opposite banks, were struck by the appearance of a number of small lights which were seen dancing in the air at a place called Borthwyn, about half a mile from the town. A great number of people came out to see these lights, and after a while they all but one dis- appeared, and this one proceeded slowly towards the water's edge to a little bay, where some boats were moored. The men in a sloop, which was an- chored near the spot, saw the light advancing ; they saw it also hover for a few seconds over one par- ticular boat, and then totally disappear. Two or three days afterward the man to whom that partic- ular boat belonged was drowned in the river, while he was sailing about Barmouth harbour in that very boat. On a lofty mountain rising over Marbach, in Austria, stands the church of Maria-Taferl, and miracles on miracles are related of this sacred spot since the time when the " Vesperbild," an image of the Virgin, was fixed on its oak. Even angels have visited the shrine. In the 17th century these MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 123 angelic visitants appeared in processions, bearing a red cross, while stars shone around the head of the Virgin. On one occasion a red cross was borne along and a taper was lighted, by no mortal hand, at the feet of the Vesperbild ; and this is recorded and attested by the crowd who gazed in wonder on the miracle. The trials of the two divines, John Huss and Wickliffe, were marked by awful and impressive phenomena. While the tribunal was sitting in judgment on Wickliffe, the monastery in which the English monks had assembled was nearly over- whelmed by an earthquake. And it chanced that while the council were in high assembly at Con- stance, which condemned Huss to the stake, the eclipse, which over that city was nearly total, oc- curred, and the consternation of the people, at that time prone to the belief of miracles, was extreme. " The night had waned ; but darkness and dismay- Rose with the dawn, and blotted out the day. The council's warder, struck with sudden fear, Dropp'd from his palsied hand th' uplifted spear. Aghast each gazer saw the mystic power, That robed in midnight's pall the matin hour ; While hurrying feet, and wailings to and fro, Spread the wild panic of impending wo. The prince and prelates shudder'd at the sign : The monk stood dumb before the darken'd shrine : With faltering hand upraised the cross on high, To chase that dismal omen from the sky." The wonders told me by one of my reverend ancestors of the " Aurora," years ago, are so cir- cumstantial, and withal so prophetic, that well might she, like the Lady of Branxholme, believe that " spirits were riding the northern blast." Speed repeats a record in the " Ypodigma Neus- triae" of " Walsingham," that the rebellion of the Percies was preceded by spectral battles in Bed- fordshire, " sundry monsters of divers colours and shapes issuing from woods," &c. 124 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. Remember, it is a matter of history that phan- tasms were seen by numbers in Whitehall during the Commonwealth ; and the wondrous narrative of The Just Devil of Woodstock, which was written in 1649, by Master Widows, the learned clerk of Woodstock, " who each day put in writing what he heard from the mouths of the commissioners, and such things as they told to have befallen them the night before, therein keeping to their own words." The coney-stealers were so alarmed that they left their ferrets beyond Rosamond's Well. And this he saith also, that " at Saint James's the Devil so joaled the centinals against the sides of the Queen's Chappell doors that some of them fell sick upon it, and others, not taking warning by it, killed one outright ; and all other such dreadful things those that inhabited the royal houses have been affrighted with." I remember not the source from which I gleaned some mysteries of " The Lyffe of Virgilius," a pro- fessor of the occult sciences, alluded to, I believe, in Gower's " Confessio Amantis," and identified with the Mantuan poet — a magus, who " dyd many marvayles in hys lyfe tyme by whychcrafte and nygramancye thorowgh the helpe of the devyls of hell." One of these marvels I well recollect. This Virgil was cut up, salted and pickled, at his own request, in a barrel ; and when the emperor dis- covered him, he slew Virgilius's man, and " then sawe the emperoure and all his folke a nakyd chylde, three tymes rennynge aboute the barell, sayinge the wordes, ' Cursed be the tyme that ye cam ever here ;' and with those wordes vanyshed the chylde away." Then, in the associations of lucky days and in- fluential colours, is there not often a striking truth '? Sir Kenelm Digby,Avrites Master Aubrey, among MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 125 other wonders of his " Miscellanies, " was born, fought, and conquered at Scanderoon, and died on the eleventh day of June. In a book printed in 1687, we learn that the fourteenth of October was a lucky day for the princes of England. On it William the Conqueror won the crown, Edward III. landed, and James II. was born. In the eventful life of Napoleon, the number eighteen was associated with so many important events, that you will scarce deny something more than casualty. Such were, the engagement from which he assumed the consulate ; that of Torlina on the river Beresina ; the battles of Leipsic and of Waterloo, which were all fought on the eigh- teenth of the month. On that day, also, his corpse was landed on St. Helena, and on the eighteenth, also, the " Belle Poule" sailed with his remains for France. As of the Emir of the East, green was the fa- vourite colour of the " Daoine Shi," or men of peace, in Scotland ; and the Druids waved a green standard, as we read in the Scandana, when they fought with the Fingallians. From some cause, perchance from their adoption of it, this colour was fatal to the clan " Grahame." The Highlanders believe to this day that the field of Killicrankie was lost because Dundee was habited in green uniform ; and an old Gragme, when his horse stum- bled at a foxchase, referred his disaster to his green whipcord. Do not so many sequences prove a consequence ] Ev. You do not mince the matter, Astrophel ; indeed, from the boldness of your display, I might think you had kissed the blarney -stone, by which charm the Irish believe you will ever after be free from bashfulness. L2 126 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION But coincidence, and the natural leaning of the mind to superstition, will unfold all your myster ies £ and these your illustrations (I cannot term them arguments) are even weaker than the former. Re- member that the mind of some beings is impressi- ble as the yielding wax, and especially if under the constant influence of other minds, which, as continual dropping will wear away a stone, first tends to bewilder, and at length to convince. And as to the special trifles to which you allude, al- though it is certain a sparrow falls not to the ground without a Providence, and the hairs of our head are all numbered, I cannot believe that the Crea- tor will thus alter a gigantic law for an atom. ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. " The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them." — Macbeth. Ev. You are a most industrious gleaner among the sheaves of history, Astrophel. But why, in all these seeming prophecies, seek to thwart the har- monious course of nature ] Leave superstition to the heathen and the savage : be assured, in the words of Principal Robertson, that a vain desire of prying into futurity is the error of the infancy of a people, and a proof of its weakness. From this weakness proceeded the faith of the Americans in dreams, their observation of omens, their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries of animals, all which they supposed to be indica- tions of future events. And if any one of these prognostics was deemed unfavourable, they instant- ly abandoned the pursuit of those measures on which they were most eagerly bent. OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 127 I wonder you brought not some classic proofs of this credulity, for such were all-prevalent in Judaea and the Eternal City. Thus, on February the thirteenth, the Romans were conquered by the Gauls ; henceforward im- portant acts were never undertaken on its anniver- sary ; nor on August the tenth by the Jews, be- cause their first temple was destroyed by Nebu- chadnezzar, and the other by Titus, long afterward, on that day of the month. I am not, however, without some curious stories of very modem date ; one anecdote may be rec- ognised on the Stock Exchange. A wealthy He- brew, who was wont to fling his gold even into the lap of kings, was once standing on a certain stone, at the postoffice, when he received a letter, on which he speculated, and lost 6620,000. On this he cau- tioned his friends never to stand on that stone, lest a similar ill fortune should attend them. The mind of this man was a storehouse of super- stition — an omen was his leading star. A drove of pigs would check the completion of a mighty bar- gain, and a flock of sheep would prompt him to sign his name to a million. The three brothers of his great house were once on their way to Lord Liverpool, in order to the completion of a loan to the treasury ; when, lo ! an army of swine met them on their way. There was no more progress to Downing-street that day ; but they retired to Stamford Hill, and the lord- treasurer waited twenty-four hours for the He- brew's gold. With Brinsley Sheridan, Friday was a sort of holyday ; neither journeys were undertaken, nor new plays allowed to be produced on that day. I presume you were ashamed to adduce orni- thoscopy, or the divination by birds, as an illustra- 128 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION tion. Do you forget the mystic influence of three crows on man's destiny ] But I will tell you an Oriental fable — how an accomplished Jew, named Mosollam, puzzled an augur, by shooting a beau- tiful bird, from which the augur was about to proph- esy on the fate of an expedition. " "Why," said Mosollam, " did not the bird foreknow the fate which awaited it ] why did it not fly away, or why come at all]" Astr. I believe the augur did or might answer, that " a prophet may be ordained to tell the fate of nations, but not his ownP Ev. Another vague supposition, Astrophel : there is much virtue in these may he's. I have listened to your legends, and you will now listen to me, while I presume to illustrate my own proofs, searching for my causes in the beauti- ful eccentricities of nature alone ; and a scholar like yourself, Astrophel, with whom I have so often chopped Oxford logic, will grant it is a precept in philosophy not to seek for more causes than the ex- planation of the fact requires. On this scroll I have sketched an arrangement of phantoms or ghosts, in two grand classes. GHOSTS OP THE MIND'S EYE, OR PHANTASMA. Illusive perception, or ( Conversion of natural ob« ocular spectra. ( jects into phantoms. Illusive exception, or ) ^^ of hantoms< spectral illusion. ) r GHOSTS OF THE EYE, OR OPTICAL ILLUSION. A . , . f Refraction. Atmosphenc. j Reflection. Gases. Lenses and mirrors. Disease of the eye. OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 129 In the first class there is no real or palpable ob- ject, or, if there be, it is not what it appears ; the illusion is but the reality of romance, depending altogether on excited or disordered conditions of the mind : the source, therefore, either of bright or gloomy phantoms, as the mood may be. On this scroll I have recorded those moods of mind, which, excited by memory or association, or influenced by such casualties as solitude, moonlight darkness, or localities of interest, or the poring over tales of horror at midnight, may be considered the predisposing causes of illusion. Such are : Temperament. . .Credulity, Enthusiasm, Superstition, Timidity, Imagination, Poetic phrensy. Excitement. . . . Sympathy, Exalted joy, Deep grief, Love, Hatred, Protracted anxiety, Delirium of fever, Delirium of alcohol, Delirium of narcotics, Exhaustion, Disease of the brain. The second class, which are spectres or ghosts of the eye, may be scientifically explained by the laws which govern the material world. These are the only substantial ghosts which I can grant to my friend. The objects themselves exist, and are exactly as they appear. The philosopher regards them as interesting exceptions to general rules, from peculiar combinations of natural causes. The 9 130 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION unlearned will term them preternatural phenomena, simply because they are of uncommon occurrence. But which among the works of Divine creation is not a phenomenon ] We may think we know a law of nature, but can we analyze it ] Novelty and magnitude astonish, but that which is familiar excites not our surprise. We gaze with delight on the progress of an eclipse ; we watch with won- der the eccentric course of the comet ; but we look on the sun in its meridian glory with a cold and apathetic indifference. Yet do they all alike dis- play Divine Omnipotence, and the expansion of a vegetable germ, the bursting of a flower, is as great a miracle as the overwhelming of a deluge, the an- nihilation of a mighty world. To discriminate between these classes is not dif- ficult; we may prove their nature by simple ex- periment. Optical illusions will be doubled by a straining or altering of the axes of the eyes ; and by turning round, as they are removed from the axis of vision, they will disappear. So, indeed, will those of the second class, which are real objects converted into phantoms by mental excitement or disorder. But in the purely metaphysical gliost or phantom, the change of position or locality will not essential- ly dispel the illusion (the spectrum following, as it were, the motion of the eye) ; because it exists in the mind itself, either as a faint or transient idea, or a mere outline, fading perhaps in a brighter light, or as the more permanent and confirmed impres- sion of insanity (unchanged even by " brilliant glare"), or from the day-dream of the castle-build- er to the deep and dreadful delusion of the maniac. Among the mute productions of nature, there are eccentricities and rarities, which, in default of analysis or explanation, would not fail of being re- OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 131 ferred to some supernatural agency; as Leo Afer, according to Burton, accounts for the swarms of lo- custs once descending at Fez, in Barbary, and at Aries, in France, in 1553. " It could not be from natural causes ; they cannot imagine whence they come, but from heaven. Are these and such crea- tures, corn, wood, stones, worms, wool, blood, &c., lifted up into the middle region by the sunbeams, as Baracellus the physician disputes, and thence let fall with showers, or there engendered ? Cor- nelius Gemma is of that opinion, they are there conceived by celestial influences ; others suppose they are immediately from God, or prodigies raised by arts and illusions of spirits which are princes of the ayre." Over Lansruedoc there once burst an awful and o supernatural cloud, from which fell immense snow- flakes like glittering stars. There is nothing strange in this, for the shape of the snow-flake is ever that of an asteroid. But then there came pouring down gigantic hail-stones, with their glassy surface im- pressed with the figures of helmets, and swords, and scutcheons. This, too, may be the effect of very sudden and irregular congelation ; but this law was not known, and, therefore, its result was a mystery. Among the wonders seen by the great traveller, Pietro della Valla, was the bleeding cypress-tree, which shadows the tomb of Cyrus, in Italy. Under the hollow of its boughs, in his day, it was lighted with lamps, and was consecrated as an oratory. To this shrine resorted many a devout pilgrim, im- pressed with a holy belief in the miracle. And what was this but the glutinous crimson fluid ex- uding from the diseased alburnum of a tree, which the woodmen indeed term bleeding, but which the ancient Turks affirmed or believed to be convert- ed on every Friday into drops of real blood 1 ? 132 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION The red snow, which is not uncommon in the Arctic regions, is thus tinted by very minute cryp- togamic plants ; and the fairy ring is but a circle of herbage poisoned by a fungus. In Denbighshire (I may add) the prevalent be- lief is, that the shivering of the aspen is from sym- pathy with that tree in Palestine, which was hewn into the true cross. The simple stratification of vapours, especially during sudden transitions of temperature, may pro- duce very interesting optical phenomena; not by refraction or reflection, but merely by partial ob- scuration of an object. We have examples of these illusive spectra in the gigantic icebergs seen by Captain Scoresby and other Arctic voyagers, which assumed the shape of towers, and spires, and cathe- drals, and obelisks, that were constantly displacing each other in whimsical confusion and endless va- riety, like the figures of a kaleidoscope. Phipps thus describes their majestic beauty : " The ice that had parted from the main body they had now time to admire, as it no longer obstructed their course ; the various shapes in which the broken fragments appeared were indeed very curious and amusing. One remarkable piece described a magnificent arch, so large and completely formed that a sloop of considerable burden might have sailed through it without lowering her masts. Another represent- ed a church, with windows, pillars, and domes." We may scarcely wonder at the mystifications of nature when she assumes these gorgeous eccen- tricities, a,s have been witnessed also in the barren steppes of the Caraccas, on the Orinoko, where the palm-groves appear to be cut asunder; in the Llanos, where chains of hills appear suspended in the air, and rivers and lakes to flow on arid sand ; in the Lake of the Gazelles, seen by the Arabs and OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 133 the African traveller; and the lakes seen by Cap- tain Munday during his tour in India. The very clearness of the atmosphere, like that which floats around the Rhine, renders distance especially distinct ; but mountainous regions, from the attraction of electric clouds, afford the highest examples of atmospheric beauty and effect. Lon- don and other cities, however crowded with lofty buildings, are not deficient in these aerial illusions. Even from the bridge of Blackfriars I have seen a cumulo stratus cloud so strangely intersect the steeples and the giant chimneys of London, as dis- tinctly to represent a seaport, with its vessels and distant mountains. We have among us several minor illusions, which are only less imposing because more familiar ; and though often occurring, few are recorded with sci- entific accuracy. The phosphorescence of the marshes, the ignis fatuus, Will o' Wisp, Jack o' the Lantern, or Friar Rush, and the corpse-can- dles, are mere luminous exhalations, strained into the marvellous by the vulgar, and thus set down as heralds of mortality. The dancing light of lumi- nous flies has been termed the green light of Death; and if you wish for more, Astrophel, read the " Ar- morican Magazine" of John Wesley, or the quaint volume of Burton, and thereabouts where he writes in this fashion : " The thickness of the aire may cause such effects, or any object not well discerned in the dark, fear and fantasie will suspect to be a ghost or devil. Glowwormes, firedrakes, meteors, ignis fatuus, which Plinius calls Castor and Pol- lux, with many such that appear in moorish grounds, about churchyards, moist valleys, or where battles have been fought, the causes of which read in Go- clenius, Velcurius, Finkius," &c. The Parhelia, or mock suns, are produced by M 134 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION the reflection of the sun's light on a frozen cloud. How readily these phenomena are magnified you may learn from ancient and modern records. In 1223, four suns were seen of crimson, enclosed in a wide circle of crystal colour. This is natural : but then comes the miracle. In the same year two giant dragons were seen in the air, flapping their mon- strous wings and engaging in single combat, until they both fell into the sea and were drowned ! Then, in 1104, there were seen four white circles rolled around the sun ; and in 1688, two suns and a reversed rainbow appeared at Bishop's Lavington, in Wiltshire ; and in February, 1647, there is an ac- count and sketch of three suns, and an inverted rainbow, which Baxter terms " Binorum Parelio- rum Qaivofievov." And because there were two lunar and one solar eclipses in 1652, it was called, as Lily records, " Annus tenebrum," or " the dark year." fhe corona, or halo around the sun, moon, and stars, is easily illustrated by the zone formed by placing, during a frost, a lighted candle in a cloud of steam or vapour. The Aurora Borealis is arctic electricity, and is beautifully imitated by the passage of an electric flash through an exhausted glass cylinder. The rainbow is a combination of natural prisms breaking the light into colours ; and it may be seen in the cloud, or in the spray of the ocean, or in the beautiful cascades of Schaffhausen, Niagara, or Terni, or, indeed, in any foaming spray on which the meridian sunbeams fall, or even in the dewy grass, lying, as it were, on the ground. When the sun shines on a cloud there is always a bow produced visible to all who are placed at the proper angle. The lunar rainbow is achro- matic, or destitute of colour, because reflected light OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 135 is not easily refracted into colour. In a brilliant sunset the floods of light around him often indicate the gradation of prismatic colouring. Cast. In some waterfalls I have seen the iris form a complete circle, as in the Velino at Terni, and in others, especially in Ionia and Italy. A perfect illusion is produced, for the bow seems to approach the spectator and then recede, as if Juno were sending her messenger on some special mis- sion. There are many minds which would yield with delight to this conviction, and such probably was the illusion of Benvenuto Cellini, was it not 1 " This resplendent light is to be seen over my shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and it ap- pears to the greatest advantage when the grass is moist with dew. It is likewise visible in the even- ing at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of when I was at Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where the moists are much more frequent," &c. A consciousness of superior talent, and probably the homage which was paid him even by the members of the holy conclave, were the springs of this flattering vision. Ida. The beauty of these must light up even the fancy of a child, yet a holier feeling will ever in- spire a Christian philosopher when the bow is seen in the cloud, for it was the sign of the covenant. There is, indeed, something in the glories of the firmament which never fails to elevate my own thoughts, and I can readily sympathize with the Spanish religionists of the fifteenth century, and with the North Americans, who gaze upon the beautiful constellation of the " Southern Cross," insulated as it is from all other stars in its own dark space, in solemn belief that it is the great symbol- ical banner held out by the Deity in approval of their faith. 136 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION Ev. The " Fata Morgana," in the Straits of Reggio, presents a perfect scene of enchantment, when the shouts of " Morgana, Morgana," echo from rock and mountain, as the wondering people flock in crowds to the shore. During this splendid illusion, gigantic columns, and cloud-capped tow- ers, and gorgeous palaces, and solemn temples are floating on the verge of the horizon, and sometimes beneath this picture of a city, on the very bosom of the water, a fainter spectrum may be seen, which is a reflected image of the other. These spectra are usually colourless, but if certain watery vapours are floating in the air, they are beautifully fringed with the three primitive colours of the prism. Such, also, is the illusion of the calenture, or sylvan scenes of the ocean. Cast. Let us seek these wonders of the waters, Astrophel ; perchance we might, in some enchant- ed hour, see even beneath yon Severn flood the grotto of Sabrina, with its green and silver weeds, its purple shells and arborescent corallines ; and, if we dive into the depths of the sea, might we not light on the palace of Amphitrite, and, while the Nereids and Tritons were mourning over the deso- lation of a shipwreck, hear the echo of some Ariel's song, " full fathom five," undulating through the water, or realize the overwhelming of Maha-Veli- poor, in the curse of Kehama : " Their golden summits in the noontide ray Shone o'er the dark, green deep, that roll'd between; For domes, and pinnacles, and spires were seen Peering above the sea." Or the legend of Thierna Na Oge, in Lough Neagh, in Ireland ; for Moore has sung, " On Lough Neagh's banks, when the fisherman strays, He sees the round towers of other days ;" and why may not we ? OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 137 Who that has wandered among the dark mount- ains of Brecon remembers not the blue pool of Lynsavaddon, and has not listened to the tales of the mountaineers of the city over which, to this day, its waves are rolling 1 and in the beautiful Vale of Eidournion, in Merioneth — but listen to a fragment of a romance of this valley which, from memory, I quote : " There was a proud and wealthy prince in Gwyneth, when the beautiful isle was under the rule of the Cymri. At his palace-gate a voice was once heard echoing among the mountains these words : ' Edivar a ddau' — Repentance will come. The prince demanded ' When]' and in the rolling thunder the voice was again heard, ' At the third generation.' " Nothing daunted, the wicked lord lived on, com- mitting plunder and all evil excesses, and laughing to scorn the holy hymns in the churches. A son and heir was born to him, and there was a gor- geous assemblage in the hall of beautiful ladies and highborn nobles to celebrate the festival of his birth. " It was midnight, when, in the ear of an old harp- er, a shrill voice whispered, ' Edivar, Edivar ;' and a little bird hovered over him, and flew out of the palace in the pale moonshine, and the harper and the little bird went together into the mountains. The bird flitted before him in the centre of the moon's disk, and warbled its mournful cry of ' Edi- var' so plaintively, that the old man thought of the shriek of his little child Gwenhwyvar as she sunk beneath the waters of Glaslyn. " On the top of the mountain he sank down with weariness, and the little bird was not with him ; all was silent save the cataract and the sheep-bells on the mountain side. In alarm at the wild soli- M2 138 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION tude around him, he turned towards the castle, but its lordly towers had vanished, and in the place of its woods and turrets there was a waste of rolling waters, with his lone harp floating on their sur- face." Ev. I am unwilling to check your flight, fair Castaly, but my illustrations are not yet exhausted. The " Spectre of the Brocken" is a mere shadow of the spectator on a gigantic scale. This phan- tom, the " Schattenmann," according to vulgar tra- dition, haunts the lofty range of the Hartz Mount- ains in Hanover. It is usually observed when the sun's rays are thrown horizontally on thin, fleecy clouds, or vapour of highly reflective power, as- suming the shape of a gigantic shade on the cloud. The romantic region of the Hartz was the grand temple of Saxon idolatry — the very hotbed of ter- rible shadows — the first of May, especially, being the grand annual rendezvous of unearthly forms. Even now, it is affirmed, Woden, known in Bruns- wick as the Hunter of Hackelburgh (whose sepul- chre, an immense rough stone, is shown to the traveller), is still influential in the Oden Wald and among the ruins of "Rodenstein ; even as in our own Lancashire, a dark, gigantic horseman rushes on a giant steed, in stormy nights, over " Horrock Moor ;" indeed, a spot or tomb is still shown where he used to disappear. Thus are the " Spectres of the Brocken" invest- ed with supernatural dignity in the minds of cre- dulity and ignorance. And no wonder; for, al- though the discoverer of this gigantic illusion, Mr. Jordan, might convince the Germans of the nature of this shadow, how could the credulous believe, when they beheld a second figure, a faint refracted spectrum of the shadow, that it was any other than the shadow king of the Brocken himself, frowning defiance on intruders. OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 139 And this reminds me of the confession of Gaffarel, in his " Unheard-of Curiosities" of the seventeenth century, in his quaint chapter on the " readynge of the cloudes and whatever else is seene in the air, and of hieroglyphicks in the cloudes." Among other miraculous illusions, as recorded by Cardanus, '* An angel once wafted on the cloudes above Millane, and great was the consternation at its appearance, until Pellicanus, a philosopher, made it plainly appear that this angel was nothing else but the reflection of an image of stone that was on the top of the church of Saint Godart, which was represented in the thick cloudes as in a looking-glasse." While I was in South Wales in 1836, I con- versed with a labourer in the Cyfarthfa works at Merthyr Tydvil, an illiterate seer, who saw three times appearing before him an unsubstantial tram- road, and on it a train drawn by a horse, and in this the dead body of a man. Twice this shadoiv emerged from the earth, and on the third ascent he looked on it and recognised the well-known face of a comrade. The man was horror-struck, but his friend lived to laugh at him. When my friend, Mr. David Taylor, ascended the mountain that rises over Chamouni, on the op- posite side of the valley to Mont Blanc, his magni- fied shadow was distinctly seen by him on the va- poury cloud that floated between these giant rocks. In February, 1837, two gentlemen, on whom I confidently trust, were standing on Calton Hill while a murky cloud hung over Edinburgh. Above this veil Arthur's Seat peeped out like a rocky isl- and beneath two white arches, like the lunar bows ; and on the cloud itself, each gentleman saw the shadow of his companion magnified to gigantic proportions. 140 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION The aeronaut, among other glories of 'his ascent, may by chance be gratified by the shadow of his balloon on the face of a cumulus cloud ; thus did the Duke of Brunswick, who ascended with Mrs. Graham, in August, 1836. And this is the analo- gous recital of Prince Puckler Muskau, in his " Tutti Frutti." " We dipped insensibly into the sea of clouds which enveloped us like a thick veil, and through which the sun appeared like the moon in Ossian. This illumination produced a singular effect, and continued for some time, till the clouds separated, and we remained swimming about beneath the once more clear azure heavens. Shortly after we beheld, to our great astonishment, a species of ' Fata Morgana,' seated upon an immense mount- ain of clouds, the colossal picture of the balloon and ourselves surrounded by myriads of variegated rainbow tints. A full half hour the spectral re- flected picture hovered constantly by our side. Each slender thread of the network appeared dis- tended to the size of a ship's cable, and we our- selves two tremendous giants enthroned on the clouds." The phantom which rode side by side with Tur- pin might be a mere reflected shadow in the mist; indeed, Burton writes that " Vitellio hath such an- other instance of a familiar acquaintance of his, that, after the want of three or four nights' sleep, as he was riding by a river side, saw another riding with him, and using all such gestures as he did, but when more light appeared it vanished" The principles of refraction are the sources of many an illusion, which is startling even to those who are aware of them. The sea, the vessels floating on its surface, the rocks and buildings on its shores, often appear elevated far beyond their OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 141 usual position ; things are thus presented to the eye which, in the direct course of the rays, would be completely out of sight ; and the praises bestow- ed on the Irish telescope may not have been a bull, although we are assured that we may see through it round the corner. Baron Humboldt, Mr. Huddart, Professor Vince, Captain Scoresby, and others, will entertain you with these natural eccentricities, if you read the learned letter of Sir David Brewster on " Natural Magic;" and he will teach you how easy is the solution of all these marvels on the principles of atmospheric reflection. Yet how many are there who are not contented with the light of our phi- losophy, though it may fall like a sunbeam on the mind. Like the recorder of the " Unheard-of Cu- riosities," they at one time confess the optical il- lusion, as when the Romans " saw their navy in the clouds ;" at another, as when Constantine profess- ed to see the " Crosse shining most gloriously in the aire," marked with the motto, " In hoc signo vinces :" philosophy was silent, and they believed it might be divine. But a mind in its state of nature, cannot know all this. If a savage looked on the two white horses cut on the chalk hills of Berkshire and of Wiltshire, on the white cross of the Saxons on the Bledlow Ridge in Buckinghamshire, and on the white-leaf cross near Princes Risborough, would he not deem them deities, or the work of a magician or a devil? When the sailors of Lord Nelson saw the bloat- ed corpse of the murdered Prince Caraccioli float- ing erect in the water directly towards their ship, can we wonder they should deem it a supernatural visitation 1 When Franklin set his bells a ringing by draw- ing down the electric fluid from the thunder- cloud* 142 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION and when Columbus told to the hour the sun's eclipse, can we wonder that the transatlantic In- dians listened as to one endued with preternatu- ral knowledge, or that the other might be thought superhuman ] And when the King of Siam was assured that water could be congealed into ice on which the sounding skate could glide, can we won- der that he smiled in absolute disbelief of such a change, and called the tale a lie. Thus, when the peasants of Cardigan, who were not versed in Pontine architecture, looked on the bridge which the monks of Yspitty Cen Vacn had thrown across the torrent of the Mo?iac7i, they could not believe it a work of human, but of infernal hands, and called it the " Devil's Bridge." On my ascent of the Vann mountain in Brecon, there often came a mass of limestone rolling down the precipice. " Ah, sure," said the old shepherd, Who was watching his fold on the mountain-side, il the fairies are at their gambols, master, for they sometimes do play at bowls with these chalk fitones." Such was his explanation ; but, on my gaining another ridge of the Brecon Beacon, I start- led a whole herd of these fairies, who scudded off as fast as their legs could carry them, having first changed themselves into a flock of sheep. There was once a caravan journeying from Nu- bia to Cairo, which met the savans attending on the expedition of Napoleon into Egypt, among whom was Rigo the painter. Struck with the deep character of expression in the face of one of the Nubians, Rigo induced him, with gold, to sit for his portrait. The African sat calmly perusing its prog- ress until the laying on of the colours, when, with a cry of terror, he rushed from the house, and to his awe-struck companions affirmed that his head and half his body had been cut off by an enchanter. OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 143 And this impression was not solitary, for an assem- blage of the Nubians were equally terror-struck, and (somewhat like those monomaniacs who refuse to drink water which reflects their faces, believing that they are sivallowing their friends), could never be dispossessed of the notion that the picture was formed of the loppings and toppings of the human frame. We believe these influences the more, because we see that, even to some few men wiser than they, a leaning to superstition will warp a single fact into a wonder ; and that mere sensitiveness of mind may work as great a fear. Suetonius tells us that Caligula and Augustus were the most abject cowards in a thunder-storm ; and the Bishop of Langres, D'Escaro, fell in a faint- ing-fit whenever an eclipse took place, a weakness which at length proved his death. There was an old house in Angouleme, the " Cha- teau du Diable," on the spot where the sable fiend was wont to repair to enjoy his moonlight walk. The house was never finished, for the devil, jealous of his usurpation, like Michael Scott's spirit, de- stroyed every night the walls which had been erect- ed during the day. At length the men abandoned their work in despair. On the twenty-fifth night in May (1840) the ruined windows seemed on an instant in brilliant illumination, which struck the inhabitants of the little village of " Petit-Rochford" with wonder and dismay. Some dauntless heroes, however, sallied forth with weapons to storm the enchanted castle. In an upper room, lighted by eight blood-red wax candles, they discovered a man of a strange and melancholy aspect tracing cab- alistic figures on the sanded floor. He was convey- ed to the maire, and was proved to be a poor sawyer named Favreau, who, bound by a superstitious oath, 144 ILLUSIONS OP ART. self administered, had thus created a sensation of terror throughout a whole community. In the records of the Harleian Miscellany, the curious reader may discover one which might im- press his mind with some terrific ideas of the natu- ral history of the south of England in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. It is styled " The True and Wonderful." The portion of the MSS. to which I allude is the " Legend of the Serpent of St. Leonard's Forest." This terrific legend of my own native town was a favourite of my boyish days : it has moulted some feather of its once aw- ful interest, and is now but the shadow of a mem- ory ; and those who were once converts to its real- ity now laugh the legend to scorn. ILLUSIONS OF ART. " If in Naples I should report this now, would they believe me?" — Tempest. Ev. The science of chemistry has unfolded most of the secrets of material miracles, as Psychology those of the intellect and senses. Not that I would attempt thus to explain your wonders of Palingenesy, Astrophel ; I will rather favour you with another batch, for I was once fond of unkennelling these sly foxes. It is solemnly attested by the noble secretary of a Duke of Guise, that, in company with many sci- entific men, he saw the face of a person in his blood, which had been given by a bishop, for ex- periment, to La Pierre, the chemist of Le Temple, near Paris. There is an old book of one Dr. Garmann, " De Miraculis Mortuorum," and thus he writes : ''When human salt, extracted and depurated from the scull ILLUSIONS OF ART. 145 of a man, was placed in a water-dish, there ap- peared next morning in the mass figures of men fixed to a cross;" and "when human sculls, on which mosses had vegetated, were pounded, the family of the apothecary who pounded them were alarmed in the night by strange and terrific noises from the chamber." The body of the Cid, Ruy Diaz, as we read in Heywood's " Hierarchie," sat in state at the altar of the Cathedral at Toledo for ten years. A Jew one day attempted, in derision, to pull him by the beard ; but on the first touch the Cid started up, and, in high resentment, scared the Israelite away by the unsheathing of his mighty sword. And Master Planche has brought you legends from the church of Maria Taferl in Lower Austria, and other noted spots on the Danube. When Bernini's bust of Charles I. was being con- veyed in a barge on the Thames, from a strange bird there descended a drop of blood on the bust, which could never he effaced. This is nothing but a fact in nature mystified, and (like the growth of the Christmas flowering- thorn of Glastonbury from the walking-staff of Joseph of Arimathea) is too glaring to be miscon- strued. Other of these blood miracles are still more easy of solution. The blood spots from David Rizzio are shown to this day in Holyrood ; and it was be- lieved that after the Irish massacre, the blood of the victims then slain on Portnedown Bridge has indelibly stained its battlements. But these spots are nothing but the brown vegetative stains which geology has discovered on many fossils. Now listen to Father Gregory of Tours : "A thief was committing sacrilege at the tomb of Saint Helius, when the saint caught him by the skirt, 9 N 146 ILLUSIONS OF ART. and held him fast." Probably his garment hitched on a nail. Another old man, while removing a stone from the grave of a saint, was in a moment struck blind, dumb, and deaf. Probably the me- phitic gases exhaling from the tomb were the source of all this mystery. Then, as to the impositions of the priesthood : In Naples was the blood of Saint Januarius concealed in a vial, and on certain solemn days this so-called blood really became liquefied ; but it was effected secretly by chemical means ; and, I remember, the archbishop who confessed the secret to the French general Championet was exiled by the Vatican. In the reign of Henry VIII., too (I quote from Hume), other bloody secrets of this sort were un- folded. " At Hales, in the county of Gloucester, there had been shown during several ages the blood of Christ brought from Jerusalem ; and it is easy to imagine the veneration with which such a relic was regarded. A miraculous circumstance also attended this relic. The sacred blood was not visible to any one in mortal sin, even when set before him ; and, till he had performed good works sufficient for his absolution, it would not deign to discover itself to him. At the dissolution of the monastery the whole contrivance was detected. Two of the monks, who were let into the secret, had taken the blood of a duck, which they re- newed every week ; they put it iu a vial, one side of which consisted of thin and transparent crystal, the other of thick and opaque. When any rich pilgrim arrived, they were sure to show him the dark side of the vial till masses and offerings had expiated his offences, and then, finding his money, or patience, or faith nearly exhausted, they made him happy by turning the vial." But there is no end to relics in Italy. Even two ILLUSIONS OF ART. 147 hundred years ago, John Evelyn makes out this catalogue of those he saw in St. Mark's at Venice : " Divers heads of saints, enchased in gold ; a small ampulla, or glass, with our Saviour's blood ; a great morsel of the real cross ; one of the nails ; a thorn ; a fragment of the column to which our Lord was bound when scourged; a piece of St. Luke's arm ; a rib of St. Stephen ; and a finger of Mary Magdalen!" Among the more innocent illusions of art, I may remind you of concave and cylindrical mirrors and lenses, the magic lantern, " les ombres Chinoises," and the phantasmagoria of Cagliostro, by which daggers appear to strike the breast of the specta- tor, and images of objects in other rooms are thrown on the walls of that in which we are sitting. A mirror thus accidentally placed has afforded the evidence of murder within our own time. The duration of impressions on the eye is an- other source of illusion. An image remains on the retina, I believe, about the eighth of a second ; as it departs, if another object supplies its place in quick succession, the two images form, as it were, a union, and become blended. A knowledge of this law, in the ages of blind superstition, would have placed an overwhelming weapon in the hands of priestcraft ; in our day it is the source of ra- tional and innocent pleasure, by the invention of optical toys. The whisking of an ignited stick produces a fiery circle. Why ] Because from excessive rapid- ity the rays from one point remain impressed on the retina until the revolution completes the circle. The thaumatrope, or wonder-turner, and the phantasmascope, are ingenious illustrations of this law of impression ; so also is the whirling machine, which so beautifully evinces the fact of white being 148 ILLUSIONS OF ART. compounded of all the prismatic colours, blended in certain proportions. The jjrismatic iris is paint- ed on a revolving circle : by excessive rapidity of revolution, the colours are actually blended (as if mixed in a vessel) on the retina, and the surface of the machine is white to the eye. To these maybe added the combustion of phos- phorus and other substances in oxygen : red, green, and blue lights, which change the angel face of beauty into the visage of a demon ; and the inhalation of noxious fumes and gases, creating altogether a new train of phantoms in the world of experimental magic, and developing the for- merly occult mysteries of the art of incantation. Chance may also involve a seeming mystery of very awful import. Some years ago the town of Reading was thus bewildered. On the loaves were seen the most mysterious signs : on one, a skele- ton's head and cross-bones ; on another, the word " resurgam ;" on another, a date of death was marked in deep impressions. The loaves of course were, by some mysterious influence, the vehicles of solemn warning from the Deity. The baker was churchwarden of St. Giles's : his oven needed flooring, and, winking at the sacri- lege, he stole the flat, inscribed tombstones from the churchyard, and therewith floored his oven. From the inscriptions of these stones the loaves took their mystic impressions. In the reign of Edward the Martyr, during one of the synods assembled by Dunstan, the floor of the chamber suddenly gave way, involving the death of many of its members. It chanced that Dunstan had on that day warned the king not to attend the synod, and the only beam which did not give way was that on which his own chair was placed. This might be coincidence merely, al- ( ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 149 though I believe it was discovered that it was a concerted trick ;t but the preservation of the king and the priest was, of course, attributed to special interference of the Deity;, But there is one phenomenon in animal chem- istry so rare, and, indeed, so wonderful, that there are few, even among philosophers, who can give it credence. This is " spontaneous combustion," the result of an evolution of phosphorated hydrogen from the blood, the remote cause of which may be traced, in some cases, to the free use of alcohol. The records of these cases are very circumstantial, especially the two most remarkable, that of the Contessa Cornelia Bandi, of Cerena, and of Don Bertholi, an ecclesiastic of Mount Valerius. But I check my wanderings into this maze of mystery in pity to your patience, fair ladies ; for I perceive Astrophel is again out of our sphere, and, envel- oped in the cloud of his own mystic meditations, will not know that this spontaneous combustion is almost as wondrous a tale as his " Lady of the Ashes." ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. " The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments "Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices." Tempest. Ev. So, you see, the effect of novelty is never more powerfully displayed than by unusual im- pressions on the finer senses ; that appearances which the eye perceives, and which the mind can- not explain, become phantoms, involving some spe- cial motive of wonder or dismay. N 2 150 ILLUSTRAT ON OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. So eccentric impressions on the mechanism of the internal ear may be equally illusive. ] We have ghosts of the ear as well as of the eye. As ignorance has often warped the optical phe- nomena which certain atmospheric changes may produce, so peculiar and unusual sounds may be accounted for on equally erroneous principles, es- pecially if they chance to resemble sounds which are the effects of daily or common causes. As the Hebrew bards hung their harps by the waters of Babylon, the Irish were wont, during their mourning for the death of a chief, to loosen their harp-strings and hang them on the trees; and while the wind swept the strings, they ever believ- ed that the harp itself sympathized in their sorrow. Thus, when the lament, or " ullaloo" of these wild Milesians boomed along the mountain glens, mingled with the coione, or funeral song, and the poetical cadence blended with the winds, how easy to impart to it a more than human source ; and thus the dismal coronach among the Scottish High- lands may be mystified into the " boding scream of the banshee." It is a classical question whether the rebel giant Typhosus was crushed by Jupiter beneath the isl- and of Inarime or Mount jEtna ; but it might readily be believed by the Sicilian, who had read this my- thological tale, that the volcanic convulsions arose from the vain struggles for freedom of this monster, who sent forth flames from his mouth and eyes. Within a mountain of Stony Arabia, to the north of Tor, very strange noises are often heard, as of the striking of an harmonic hammer, or the sound of a humming-top, which completely infuriate the camels on the mountain when they hear it. The Arabs believe these sounds to proceed from a sub- terranean convent of monks, the priest of which, to ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 151 assemble them to prayer, strikes with a hammer on the nakous, a metallic rod suspended in the air. /M. Teetzen, who visited the spot, assures us that \the cause of all this is the mere rolling of volumes lof sand from the summit and sides of the mountain. I In the last century, I remember there was a le- gend current in the west of England of the " Buc- ca," a demon whose howling was heard amid the blast that swept along the shore. It was a sure foreboding of shipwreck. The prophecy was often but too fully verified, but the voice of the demon was merely the premonitory gale from one certain quarter, which is always the av ant-courier of a tem- pest. I remember, when I was a child, the prevalent belief in Horsham, that, at a certain hour of the night, the ghost of Mrs. Hamel was heard groaning in her vault, beneath the great eastern window, and it required some self-possession to walk at midnight around this haunted tomb ; for few would believe that the noises were nothing more than the wind sweeping along the vaulted aisles of the church. Those very extraordinary impositions on the sense of hearing at Woodstock, in the truth of which, Astrophel, your faith was so firm, were resorted to to create terror and effect a political purpose. In " the genuine History of the good Devil of Wood- stock," written in 1649, we are told of the pealing of cannon, the barking of do^s, and neighing" of horses, and other mysterious sounds, which certain- ly created the greatest wonder and anxiety, until " funny Joe Collins" explained and demonstrated all the mechanical process of this imposture. You will find, also, the account of these gems of marvel- lous history in Sinclair and Plott, and the chron- icles of those days, which eclipse the haunted house of Athenodorus in Pliny. 152 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. In the sixteenth century, Master Samuel Stryck discussed the whole question regarding these haunt- ed houses, and warnings of ghosts, and belief in the reality of apparitions, in his work published at Francofurt, " De Jure Spectrorum," and thus he runs up the question of damages : " If the house be haunted, the tenant might bring in a set-off against his rent, thus : l Deduct for spectres in bed and bedroom, and elsewhere, <£5 10s.' " The drama of the Drummer, by Addison, I be- lieve was founded on the mystery of the " Demon of Tedworth," which beat the drum in the house of Mr. Mompesson. This also was the source of extreme wonder, until the drummer was tried and convicted, and Mr. Mompesson confessed that the mystery was the effect of contrivance. The author of the Pandemonium, or Devil's Cloy- ster, garnished his book with tales of this nature. In 1667, when he slept in "my Lady chamber," in the house of a nobleman, he was waited on by a succession of spectral visiters ; the explanation of which Ferriar and Hibbert, and others, have wrought for you, if you deign to turn over the leaves of their natural philosophy. The impostures of the Stockwell miracles of 1772 are recorded, with other curiosities, in the " Every-day Book" of Hone, the skilful and un- wearied collector of our ancient mysteries. The Cock-lane ghost is another instance of illu- sion in the ears of the credulous. Although Dr. Johnson, the Bishop of Salisbury, and other learn- ed Thebans, sat in solemn judgment to develop its mystery, I believe many were so in love with the marvellous that they regretted the unravelling of the plot, and still believed, as Commodore Trun- nion, in despite of evidence as to the fluttering in his chimney, swore that he knew a devil from a jackdaw as well as any man in the kingdom. / ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 153 Astr. I wonder, Evelyn, at your veneration for the classics ; for are they not replete with stories, which, if true (and I believe them so), will under- mine all your philosophy ! When Pausanias writes of the ghosts at Marathon, of horses and men who were heard rushing on to battle four hundred years after they were slain, and Plutarch of the spec- tres and supernatural sounds in the baths at Chse- ronea, the scene of bloodshed and murder, what may be their motives but the record of acknowl- edged incidents ? Ev. The classics, if they might rise up and listen, would believe me, dear Astrophel, so clear and simple is the source of these illusions. Of the credulity of the Romans I have spoken ; but, even in minds not prone to superstition, deep mental impression, or constant dwelling on a sub- ject of interest, will effect this illusion of a sense. In Holy Island, near the ruins of the convent (in the dungeons of which romance has decided the fate of Constance Beverley), was a small fortress of invalid soldiers. One of them once conducted a visiter to a steep rock, under which, he said, there must be a profound cavern, as the sound of a bell was distinctly heard every night at twelve o'clock, deep in the bowels of the earth. The traveller soon discovered that the mysterious sound had nev~ er been heard by the oldest inmates until the poem of " Marmion" appeared, in which the condemna- tion and the death of Constance in the dungeons of the Cathedral are so forcibly described. This is, however, a metaphysical source of mystery. In volcanic regions, as in that of the Solfatara, near Naples, these strange and subterranean sounds are not unfrequently heard ; and in the rocky and caverned coasts of our own island also, where dwell the unlettered and the superstitious, by whose wild 154 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. and romantic fancy these noises are readily magni- fied into the supernatural. Camden, in his " Britannia," informs us, "In a rock in the island of Barry, in Glamorganshire, there is a narrow chink or cleft, to which, if you put your ear, you shall perceive all such sorts of noises as you may fancy smiths at work under ground, strokes of hammers, blowing of bellows, grinding of tools." At Worm's Head, in the pen- insula of Gower, in Glamorganshire, these sounds are, even now, often heard ; and it requires but a moderate stretch of imagination to create all this cyclopean imagery, when the sea is rolling in cav- ities under our feet, and the tone of its voice is magnified by confinement and repercussion. From some such source probably sprung the fable of " the syrens," two solitary maidens, who, by their dulcet voices, so enchanted the navigators who sailed by their rocks, that they forgot home and the purpose of their voyage, and died of starvation. Ulysses, instructed by his mother Circe, broke the spell, and the ladies threw themselves into the sea with vexation. This fable, like many of the classic mysteries, may be thus topographically explained. In the Grand-duchy of Baden, near Friburg, is a very curious example of an iEolian lyre, con- structed, as the traditions of the mountains will have it, by the very genius loci himself. In a romantic chasm of these mountains most melodious sounds are sometimes heard from the top of fir-trees overhanging a waterfall. The cur- rent of air, ascending and descending through the chasm, receives a counter impulse from an abrupt angle of the rock, and, acting on the tops of the string-like branches of the trees, produces the soft tones of the iEolian harp, the effect of which is much enhanced by the gushing of the waterfall. ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 155 There may be in these natural sounds the source of many fables of the ancients ; the moaning of the wind among the branches of a pine-grove might be the wailing of a hamadryad. Baron Humboldt heard the strangest subterrane- an sounds among the granite rocks on the Orinoco ; and at the palace of Carnac, some of Napoleon's savans heard noises exactly resembling the break- ing of a string. It is curious that Pausanias ap- plies exactly this expression to the sounds of the Memnonian granite, the colossal head of Memnon, which was believed to speak at sunrise. He writes : " It emits sounds every morning at sunrise which can be compared only to that of the breaking of the string of a lyre." Juvenal has the same notion, but he has multi- plied the sounds. The mystery of Memnon may be readily ex- plained by the temperature and density of the external air differing from that within the crevices, and the effort of the current to promote an equilib- rium ; yet these simple sounds were, in course of time, warped into articulate syllables, and at length obtained the dignity of an oracular voice. And in these illustrations, fair Castaly, you have the clew to all the mysteries of demonia and fairy land. To these natural illusions let me add the tri- umphs of phonic mechanism and the peculiar fac- ulty of the ventriloquist, the secrets of which the science of Sir David Brewster has so clearly de- veloped. The wondrous heads of Memnon, and Orpheus, and iEsculapius, the machines of Al- bertus Magnus and Sylvester, are now held but as curious specimens of art, and are, indeed, eclipsed by the- speaking toys of Kratzenstein, and Kem- pelin, and Willis, and Savart, and the ingenious instruments of Wheatstone, 156 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS, Of ventriloquism it is not my purpose to speak ; but there is a wonder of our time in the person of young Richmond, which, with many distinguished physiologists, I examined at the conversazione of Dr. E , in C street. When Richmond sat himself to perform, we heard a subdued murmur in his throat for about half a minute, when suddenly a sound issued of the most exquisite and perfect melody, closely re- sembling, but exceeding in delicacy, the finest musical box. The mouth was widely open, and the performance was one of considerable effort. The sounds were a mystery to us at the time, for they were perfectly unique, and are yet not satis- factorily explained. It is decided, however, by some, that the upper opening of the windpipe may be considered as a Jew's-harp, or iEolina, of very exquisite power, behind the cavity of the mouth, instead of being placed between the teeth. Astr. And thus concludes our lecture on spe- cial mechanics. Ev. I professed no more, Astrophel. It may be the privilege of the sacred poet to soar beyond the confines of our own planetary system : " Into the heav'n of heav'ns he has presumed, An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air." - But the study of philosophy is nature and nature's hnoum laws. If we lean for one moment to the credence of a modern miracle, there is an end to our philosophy. Revealed truth, and the immate- rial nature of the mystical essence within us, we may not lightly discourse on. The sacred histo- ries of Holy "Writ, and the miracles recorded in its pages, the hand- writing in the hall of Belshaz- zar, the budding of Aaron's rod, the standing still of the sun upon Gibeon, and, above all, the mira- cles of the Redeemer, are of too holy a nature to FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 157 be submitted to the test of philosophical specula- tion ; they rest on the conviction of conscience and the heart, a proof far more sublime than may ever be elicited by the ingenuity of man, or the workings of his sovereign reason. FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. " I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee." Midsummer Night's Dream. Astr. Why so thoughtful, fair Castaly % I fear Evelyn has clipped your sylphid wings, and made a mortal of you. Cast. Your finger on your lips, Astrophel ; for the world, not a syllable of confession to Evelyn. I could think I heard the murmurs of a host of fairies streaming up to earth from elf-land, in fear of libels on their own imperial sovereignty by this matter-of-fact scholar. Astr. Why did we listen to his philosophy 1 why not still believe the volumes of our antique legends, that those which tell the influence of fairies and demons on man's life have their source in the real history of a little world of creatures more ethe- real than ourselves % Perhaps even the bright thoughts of a poet's fancy are not his own creation. Cast. We must hear no more, although Evelyn will still convert syrens into rocks and trees, and make a monster out of a mist or a thunder-cloud. The sunlight is sleeping on Wyndcliff, and the breeze, creeping among the leaves, seems to me a symphony meet to conjure the phantoms of ro- mantic creatures. Evelyn is far away among the rocks ; let us steal the moment to revel in our dreams of faery. Even now, are we not in a realm of Peristan 1 Yon mossy carpet of emerald velvet, O 158 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. strewed with pearls and gold, may be the presence- chamber of Titania, and fays are dancing within their ring, which the silvery beech o'ercanopies so shadily ; and the chanting of their viral ays, or green-songs, comes like the humming of a zeph- yr's wing flitting o'er the mouth of a lily. Ariel is lying asleep in her cinque-spotted cowslip bell, and the fays are feeding on their fairy-bread, made of the pollen of the jasmine ; and Oberon quaffs to his queen the drops that hang on the purple lip of the violet, or glitter in the honeyed bell of the hyacinth, or that purest crystal of the lotus, that brings life to the fainting Indian in the desert, or the liquid treasure of the nepenthe. We pray you, Astrophel, recount to us, now we are in the humour, the infancy of bright and dark spirits, for you have dipped deep, I know, into the Samothracian mysteries. Astr. Know, then, that the birthtime of my- thology and romance was in the primeval ages of man. The ancient heathens believed in the legends of their deities, as we have credence in modem history and biography ; indeed, the rornance of the moderns was with the ancients truth. They had implicit faith in the presence of their gods, and that they might perchance meet them in the groves and hills, which were consecrated to their worship, and adorned with sculpture and idols in honour of the deities. Hence the profusion of their names and nature, recorded in the pages of the olden time, when the scribe traced his reed letter on the papyrus. From the climes of the sun came the Orient tales of genie, and deeves, and peris ; and of naiad, and nereid, and dryad, and hamadryad from Greece and Rome. In the Koran shone forth the prom- ised houris of Mohammed's paradise, and its mys- FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 159 teries were echoed to us from the lips and tables of pilgrims and crusaders, who had blazoned their red cross in the holy wars. Thus was romance cradled and bosomed in religion. From the legends of the East spring the fairy- romances of our own days. The Peri of Persia was the denizen of Peristan, as the Ginn of Ara- bia was of Ginnistan, and the Fairy of England of Fairy land ; and we have their synonymes in the Fata of Italy and the Daerga of northern Europe. These spirits of romance are almost innumer- able, for thus saith the " Golden Legend:" that " the air is full of sprites as the sonnebeams ben full of small motes, which is small dust or poudre." The alchymist Paracelsus asserts that the ele- ments were peopled with life, the air with sylphs and sylvains, the water with ondines, the earth with gnomes, and the fire with salamanders. And Mar- tin Luther coincides with these assertions ; nay, hath not Master Cross, of Bristol, illustrated the creed, and shown, by his galvanic power, an ani- mated atom starting forth, as if by magic, from a flint, a seeming inorganic mass ] The sagas, or historical records of Scandinavia, of the Celtic, Scaldic, and Runic mythology, assert that the duergas or dwarfs, which are the Runic fairies, sprang from the worms in the body of the giant Ymor, slain, according to the Edda, by Odin and his brother ; and Spenser has left a very inter- esting genealogical record of the faery brood in that romantic allegory of the Elizabethan age, the "Faery Queen." Elf, the man fashioned and in- spired by Prometheus, was wandering over the earth alone, and in the bosky groves of Adonis he discovered a lady of marvellous beauty — Fay. From this romantic pair sprang the mighty race of the fairies, and we have wondrous tales of the prow- 160 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. ess of their heroic princes. Elfiline threw a golden wall round the city of Cleopolis ; Elfine conquered the G-obbelines ; Elfant built Panthea of purest crystal ; Elfan slew the giant twins ; and Elfinor spanned the sea with a bridge of glass. Cast. Spenser, I presume, borrowed Ms ro- mance from Italy. We read that the rage and party spirit of the potent Guelphs and Ghibellines rankled even in their nurseries. The nurses were wont to frighten the children into obedience with these hated names, which, corrupted to the epithets of elf and goblin, were henceforth applied to fairies and phantoms. Astr. This story is itself a mere fiction. Ere the period of these feuds of party, the term Elfen (and Dance identifies this with the Teutonic Helfen) was a common epithet of the Saxon spirits ; Weld- elfen were their dryads, and Zeld-elfen their field fairies, &c. The American Indians, to this day, have faith in the presidencies of spirits over those lakes, trees, and mountains, and even fishes, birds, and beasts, which excel in magnitude. The Orient Indian, too, at this hour, peoples the forest with his gods ; and peacocks, and squirrels, and other wild creatures are thus profanely deified. The legends of later days have quaintly blended the classic with the fairy mythology. Hassenet tells us that Mercurius was called the Prince of Fairies, and Chaucer sings of Pluto, the King of Fayrie ; and, in the romance of the Nine Champions, Pro- serpine sits crowned among the fairies. The great zoologist, Pliny, writes, in his Natural History, that " you often encounter fairies that vanish away like fantasies." And Baxter believed that " fairies and goblins might be as common in the air as fishes in the sea." FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 161 As the Peri could not enter paradise in conse- quence of the errors of her "recreant race," so the elves could not enjoy eternity without marrying a Christian ; and on this plea they came up to the daughters of men : and we read in the tenets of the Cabala that by these earthly weddings they could enjoy the privileges and happiness of each other's nature. But these unnatural unions were not always happy. There is, in our old chronicles, a tradition of a marriage between one of the counts of Anjou and a fair demonia, which entailed mis- ery and commission of crime on the noble house of Plantagenet. Now there are appointed times when the influ- ence of the spirit fades for a season. It was the moment of the eclipse among the American In- dians and the African blacks ; in Ireland it is the feast of the Beltane ; in Scotland this immunity came over the mortal life on Hogmany, or New- year's Eve, and during the general assemblies of these mystic spirits of the world. In Britain it was on the eve of the first of May, the second of November, and on All- Souls' Day. At these times, indeed, they might be induced to divulge the secrets of their mysterious freema- sonry. In Germany on May-day, when the unearthly rendezvous was on the dark mountain of the Hartz, and on Halloween, in Caledonia, even the secrets of time and futurity were unfolded by the spirits to a mortal, if one were found so bold as to repair on these festivals to their unhallowed haunts. If a mortal enters the secret abodes of the Daoine Shi in Scotland, and anoints his eyes with their charmed ointment, the sfift of seeing that which is to all others invisible is imparted ; but this must be kept secret, for the Men of Peace will blind n 02 162 ' FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. the second-sighted eye if once they are recognised on earth by a mortal. In the gloomy forests of Germany rose the le- gends of Kobolds, and Umbriels, and Wehrwolves, the Holts Konig, the Waldebach, the Reiberzahl, and the Sc7iattenman, the Hudekin, the Erl Konig, and the beautiful naiad, the Nixa. The devil him- self was believed to be a gnome king ; for when the Elector of Saxony offered Martin Luther the profit of a mine, he refused it, " lest, by accepting it, he should tempt the devil, who is lord of those subterraneous treasures, to tempt him." Then we have the Putseet, or Puck of the Sa- mogitae, on the Baltic ; the Biergen Trold, or Skoiv, of Iceland ; and those mermaids which gambol around the Faroe Islands. We read in the Danske Folksaga that these " merrows" cast their skins like the boa, and in that condition are changed into human beings till their scales are restored to them. And the Shetlanders implicitly believe that awful storms instantly aiise on the murder of one of these sea-maids. There was the Norse goddess Freya, which, like the Dragon of Wantley and the Caliban of the " still vexed Bermoothes," blasted the fair face of nature, and far eclipsed the giant serpent off Cape Saint Anne, or the kraken of Norway, and even that monstrous sea-snake, the jor?nungandz (so conspicuous among the wild romances of the Edda), whose coils entwined the globe. Thor an- gled for this snake with a bull's head, but it was not to be caught, being reserved for some splendid achievement in the grand conflict which is to her- ald the Ragnarockr, the twilight of the gods. Among the mountains of our own island we have a profuse legion. In Wales, the Tylwth Tag and the Pooka j and many a hollow in the mount- FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 163 ain, where these strange animals resort, is called Ctom Pooka ; and the wondrous cavern of the Melte\ in Breconshire, was believed to be haunted by this little pony. In Ireland they have a Mcrrow, the Runic Sea, or oigh-maid ; the Banshee, or fairy prophet ; the Fear-Dcarg, the Irish Puck ; the Clurricane, a sottish pigmy ; and the Pooke, the wild pony. Cast. These must have been a prolific as well as a wandering brood, for I also have seen many cav- erns in the rocky districts, called Poola Phouka, in which these mischievous little creatures concealed themselves. Astr. In Man there is a hill called the " Fairy Hill," a tumulus of the Danes, which is thought to be a nocturnal revel-place for the Man fairies which preside over their fisheries. Scotland was a fertile mother of monsters : the Ourisks or JJriskin, the goblin-satyrs or shaggy men ; the Broicnies ; the Kelpies, or river-demons ; the Bargheists ; the Red-cap ; the Daolne Shi, or Men of Peace ; the Glaslic, or noontide-hag, which haunted the district of Knoidart ; and the Lham- Dearg, or red hand, in the forests of Glenmore and Kothiemurchus ; the Bodach-Glas ; and the Pixies y or small gray men. Cast. There is an islet among the Scottish Heb- rides which is called the Isle of Pigmies ; and I remember a chapel there, in which very minute human bones were some time ago discovered. Think you, Astrophel, that these were the skele- tons of pixies 1 Astr. I cannot think the notion irrational ; there are dwarfs and giants even in our days. The Bos- gis-men of the Cape, and the Patagonians of South America, prove the existence of beings of another stature, and, perchance, of another nature, in days 164 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. long agone. The Laplander and Bushman of the Cape are little more than three feet high ; and that there were giants, too, is proved by the fossil bones which have been found in the strata of our earth. Cast. Then we have really dwindled in our growth, and Adam was really a hundred and twenty-three feet nine inches high, and Eve a hundred and eighteen feet nine inches and three quarters, as we are solemnly informed by our pro- fane chronicles % Nay, even the story may be true of the Pict, who bit off the end of the mattock with which some slave of science was opening his coffin, and thundered forth this exclamation : "I see the degeneracy of your race by the smallness of your little finger." Ida. If Evelyn were here, he would ask why we have no skeletons of giants, as of lizards, in our secondary rocks ; and he would tell this learned Theban, Castaly, that Cuvier decided these fossils, which seemed to be the debris of a giant race, to be the bones of elephants. The legends of Athe- naeus are probably a fable, and the fossils of the pigmies were, I dare say, the petrified skeletons of " span-long, wee unchristen'd bairns." Your allusion to the brownies reminds me of the monstrous errors which have crept into our legends from the mingling of two stories, or the warping of plain facts in natural history. And, indeed, I interrupt you to recount, in proof of this, some fragments from " Surtees's Durham." " Every castle, tower, or manor-house has its visionary inhabitants. ' The Cauld Lad of Hilton' belongs to a very common and numerous class, the brownie or domestic spirit, and seems to have pos- sessed no very distinctive attributes. He was sel- dom seen, but was heard nightly by the servants FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 165 who slept in the great hall. If the kitchen had been left in perfect order, they heard him amusing himself by breaking plates and dishes, hurling the pewter in all directions, and throwing everything into confusion. If, on the contrary, the apartment had been left in disarray (a practice which the servants found it most prudent to adopt), the in- defatigable goblin arranged everything with the greatest precision. This poor esprit Jblet, whose pranks were at all times perfectly harmless, was at length banished from his haunts by the usual expedient of presenting him with a suit of clothes. A green cloak and hood were laid before the kitchen fire, and the domestics sat up watching at a prudent distance. At twelve o'clock the spirit glided gently in, stood by the glowing embers, and surveyed the garments provided for him very at- tentively, tried them on, and seemed delighted with his appearance, frisking about for some time, and cutting several summersets and gamba- dos, till, on hearing the first cock, he twitched his mantle tight about him, and disappeared with the usual valediction : " ' Here's a cloak, and here's a hood, The cauld lad of Hilton will do no more good/ " The genuine brownie, however, is supposed to be, ab origine, an unimbodied spirit ; but the boy of Hilton has, with an admixture of English super- stition, been identified with the apparition of an unfortunate domestic, whom one of the old chiefs of Hilton slew at some very distant period, in a moment of wrath or intemperance. The baron had, it seems, on an important occasion, ordered his horse, which was not brought out so soon as he expected. He went to the stable, found the boy loitering, and, seizing a hayfork, struck him, though not intentionally, a mortal blow. The story adds, 166 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. that he covered his victim with straw till night, and then threw him into a pond, where the skeleton of a boy was (in confirmation of the tale) discovered in the last baron's time. I am by no means clear that the story may not have its foundation in the fact recorded in the fol- lowing inquest : " Coram Johannem King, coron., Wardae de Ches- trae, apud Hilton, 3 Jul. 7 Jac. 1609." (And here follows a report in Latin.) Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that the un- housel'd spirit of Roger Skelton, whom in the hay- field the good Hilton ghosted, took the liberty of playing a few of those pranks which are said by writers of grave authority to be the peculiar priv- ilege of those spirits only who are shouldered un- timely by violence from their mortal tenements. " Lingering in anguish o'er his mangled clay, The melancholy shadow turned away, And follow'd through the twilight gray." A free pardon for the above manslaughter ap- pears on the rolls of Bishop James, dated the 6th of September, 1609. I will only add that, among the Harleian MSS., the same legend is told with some variations, in which this " cauld lad" is termed the " Pale Boy of Hilton." This confusion of our mythology is as conclusive of the fiction of all the mysterious legends of the moderns as the jumble which the classic poets have made of their monsters. If we read Lempriere, the genealogy of the classic monster is involved in a maze of impious confusion ; and the mythology of Chimera, and Echidna, and Typhon, Geryon, and Cerberus, and the Hydra and Bellerophon, and Ortha and the Sphinx, and the Nemcean Lion, and the Minotaur, and the demoniac records of their ori- gin, it is almost profanation even to reflect on. FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 167 But when Martianus Capella tells us that devils have aerial bodies, that they live and die, and yet, if cut asunder, soon reunite ; and when Bodine as- serts, in his " Solution of Natural Theology," that spirits and angels are globular, as being of the most perfect shape, I confess I feel more disposed to smile at their imposture than to frown, were it not for their utter worthlessness. Yet all the allegories which adorn our legends are not so remote from truth or nature. The vam- pires are said to have gloated over the sacrifices of human life, while the gouls and afrits, the hye- nas in human shape, not only fed on dead carcasses, but, by a special transmigration, took possession of a corpse. On this fable is founded the monstrous legend of " Assuet and Ajut." I confess it mon- strous ; but indeed there is little exaggeration even in these tales of horror, if we may believe for once Master Edmund Spenser, in that part of his record of the rebellion of Desmond, in Ireland, which treats of the Munster massacre : " Out of every corner of the woodes and glennes they came creep- ing forth upon their handes, for their legges could not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of death ; they spake like ghostes crying out of their graves ; they eat the dead carrions — happy were they could they find them — yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves." That episode, also, in the " Inferno" of Dante, in which Count Ugolino wears out days and nights in gnawing the scull of an enemy, may well seem a fiction ; but even this hellish repast is but a prototype of the savage rage* for scalping and cannibalism among the Indian hordes of America. 168 DEMONOLOGY. DEMONOLOGY. " Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape — " — Hamlet. Astr. Now from the holy records, from the creed of the Magus Zoroaster, from the Greek, and Ro- man, and other legends, how clear is the influence of ethereal beings, of angels and demons, on man's life, and of the imparted power of exorcism ! In allusion to this divine gift to Solomon, Josephus has the following story : " God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. And this meth- od is of great force unto this day, for I have seen a certain man of my own country, whose name was Eleazer, releasing people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this : he put a ring, that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils ; and when the man fell down immediately, he adjured him to return into him no more, making still men- tion of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazer would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left the man." The gods of the Greeks and the Latins, the lares and lemures, or hearth- spirits, the pagan and the Christian elves, were ever held as delegated agents of the Deity, who worked, not by a fiat, but by an instrument. Such were the Cemies of the Ameri- can islanders, and the Kitchi and Matchi Manitou DEMONOLOGY. 169 of the Indians ; and, if we consult Father Borri, we shall learn that in Cochin China Lucifer him- self promenaded the streets in human shape. Psellus records six kinds of devils ; and the ar- rangements of Agrippa and other theologians enu- merate nine sorts of evil spirits, as you may read in one of old Burton's eccentric chapters. The mythology of the Baghvat Geeta, the sa- cred record of the Hindoo theists, is based on the notion of good and evil spirits, the emblems of vir- tue and of vice under the will and power of Brah- ma. Indeed, the Hindoo mythology is but that of the classic in other words. Agnee, the god of fire ; Varoon, the god of the ocean ; Vayoo, the god of the wind ; and Cama, the god of love, are but other names for Jupiter, and Neptune, and iEolus, and Cupid. The creed of Zoroaster asserts a perpetual con- flict between the good and evil deity, the types of / religious knowledge and ignorance. The southern Asiatics are people of good principle, and the North- ern nations people of evil principle. And why may not the Persian thus coincide with Bacon himself, who, in his book " De Dignitate," confesses his be- lief in good and bad spirits, in charms, and proph- ecies, and the varieties of natural magic. Or is it inconsistent that the Hindoos should incarnate the malignant disease, smallpox, in the person of the deity Mah-ry-umma^ of whose lethal influence they lived in abject fear. Ida. In the holy records, it is true, we read that demons were even permitted to enter the bodies of other beings, and that when they had so established a possession, by divine command they went out of those possessed, as, for sacred example, into the herd of the Gadarenes ; that they were also commission- ed, for the fulfilment of the inscrutable will of the P 170 DEMONOLOGY. Creator, to try the endurance of Job, and even to tempt the divinity of the Saviour, and that they were the immediate cause of madness and other sad afflictions. I do fear, Astrophel, that there is much danger, now, in this imbodying of a demon, and that we too often model our modern principles on the proud presumption of still possessing that miraculous pow- er of exorcism. With sorrow may I confess, that the holy truths of Scripture, so clearly evincing a special purpose, should have been ever warped, by worse than inquisitorial bigotry, into the motive for cruelties unparalleled. From the Scripture histo- ries of demoniac possession have arisen the coercion and cruelties which once marked with an indelible stain the records of our own madhouses ; where chains and lashes, inflicted by the demons of sci- ence, have driven the moody wretch into a raving maniac, when a light hand and a smile would have brought back the angel reason to the mind. Impersonation is the grand source of many sim- ilar errors. The demon which, since the light of the Christian dispensation, has brooded in man's heart and mind, is his own base passion, which in- cites him to shut his eyes to this holy light, and fol- low deeds of evil, to be a slavish worshipper in the hall of Arimanes. With this profane homage, we court our evil passions to betray and destroy the soul. And this is the interpretation of an allegory in the profane legends of the Talmud, that Lilis, the wife of Adam, ere the creation of Eve, brought forth none but demons ; the origin, indeed, of moral evil. There are many popular stories which bear a moral to this end, that the evil spirit is powerless over the heart if it be not encouraged and invited ; and, alas! the alluring mask under which evil looks DEMONOLOGY. 171 on us is often but too certain to charm us to its influence, or we are too thoughtless to beware the danger. Thus the disguised enchanter enters into the palace of the Sultan Mesnar (in " The Tales of the Genii"), and thus the gentle Christa- bel of Coleridge leads the false Geraldine over that threshold which she could not cross without the help of confiding and unsuspecting innocence. Cast. The crones of retired villages have not yet yielded their belief in fairy influence. Among the low Irish it is believed that (as the nympholepts of old who had looked upon Pan seal- ed an early doom) the paralytic is fairy-struck ; and superstition has inspired them with a belief in the influence of the evil eye or glamour ie, especially in the vicinity of Blackwater. I remember, when our wanderings among the Wicklow mountains led us through the dark glen of the I)argle, the implicit faith of the Irish women in the charm of amulets and talismans. Like the fabled glance of the basilisk, the evil eye is bestow- ed on some unhappy beings from their very birth ; nay, the spell infests the cabin in which they herd. To avert this fatal influence from the children, a charm is suspended around their necks, which, when blessed by the priest, is called a " gospel." When a happy or evil star shines at a birth, it is the eye of a cherub or a demon, smiling or frown- ing on the destiny of the babe ; and when happi- ness or misery predominates in a life, it is a min- ister of good or ill that blesses or inflicts. There is one beautiful scrap of this mythology — the thrill of holy joy which the Irish mother feels when her infant smiles in its sleep ; for she knows it is a holy angel whispering in its ear. In our own island they are often celebrated as the very pinks of hospitality. 172 DEMONOLOGY, In Cornish history, we read how Anne Jeffries was fed for six months by the small green people. And in yonder forest of Dean (as writeth Gervase, the imperial chancellor, in his " Otia Imperialia"), " In a grovy lawn there is a little mount, rising in a point to the height of a man, on which knights and other hunters are used to ascend, when fatigued with heat and thirst, to seek some relief for their wants. The nature of the place and of the busi- ness is, however, such, that whoever ascends the mount must leave his companions and go quite alone. When alone, he was to say, as if speaking to some other person, ' I thirst,' and immediately there would appear a cup-bearer in an elegant dress, with a cheerful countenance, bearing in his outstretched hand a large horn, adorned with gold and gems, as was the custom among the most an- cient English. In the cup, nectar of an unknown but most delicious flavour was presented; and when it was drunk, all heat and weariness fled from the glowing body, so that one would be thought ready to undertake toil instead of having toiled. More- over, when the nectar was taken, the servant pre- sented a towel to the drinker to wipe his mouth with, and then, having performed his office, he wait- ed neither for recompense for his services, nor for questions, nor inquiry." This frequent and daily action had, for a very long period, of old times taken place among the ancient people, till one day a knight of that city, when out hunting, went thither^ and having called for drink, and gotten the horn, did not, as was the custom, and as in good manners he should have done, return it to the cup-bearer, but kept it for his own use. But the illustrious Earl of Glouces- ter, when he learned the truth of the matter, con- demned the robber to death, and presented the horn DEMONOLOGY. 173 to the most excellent king, Henry the Elder, lest he should be thought to have approved of such wickedness if he had added the rapine of another to the store of his private property. But the fairies might rue their kindness if you frowned so darkly on them, Astrophel. They would fear the influence of your spells, for there is blight and mildew in that glance. At the banquet of the fairies, if the eye of the seer but look on them, the romance is instantly at an end : the nymphs of beauty are changed into withered carles and crones, and the splendour of elfin-land is turned to dust and ashes. Ida. As a set-off against the virtues of your fair- ies, Castaly, you forget there was a propensity to mischief. They were rather fond, like the Daoine Shi, of stealing unchristened babes, and of chop- ping and changing these innocents, thence called changelings. On this fable your own Shakspeare has wrought the quarrel of Oberon and Titania : " A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king ; She never had so sweet a changeling." I am willing, dearest, that the poet shall make a good market of these fictions ; but superstitious ig- norance may make a sad and cruel work of it, even among your romantic Irish peasantry. A few months since, on the demesne of Hey wood (as we learn from the " Tipperary Constitution"), the death of a child, six years old, was accomplish- ed with a wantonness of purpose almost incredible. Little Mahony was afflicted with spinal disease, and, like many other deformed children, possessed the gift — in this case the fatal gift — of acute intel- lect. For this quality, it was decided that he was not the son of his reputed father, but a fairy change- ling. After a solemn convocation, it was decreed that the elfin should be scared away ; and the mode P2 174 POETRY OF NATURE. of effecting this was by holding the child on a hot shovel, and then pumping cold water on his head ! This had the effect of extorting a confession of his imposture, and a promise to send back the real Johnny Mahony ; but, ere he could return to elf- land and perform this promise, he died. But who is he sitting at your ear, Castaly % Cast. Sir, is this fair 1 ? You have played the eavesdropper. Why come you here ] Ev. To counsel you to silence on these myster- ies, sweetest Castaly : remember the fate of Mas- ter Kirke of Aberfoyle for his dabbling in elfin matters, which you may read in Sir Walter's " De- monology." Yet I will not flout all your fairy legends ; there may be innocent illusions, that carry with them somewhat of morality and retribution — seeing that there are good and bad spirits, which reward and punish mortality. But, in sooth, I never think of fairy land without remembering that good Sir Walter, as sheriff of Selkirkshire, once took the deposition of a shepherd, who affirmed that he saw the good neighbours sitting under a hill-side, when, lo ! it was proved that these were the puppets of a showman, stolen and left there by some Scotch mechanics. And, better still, the story of the Mermaid of Caithness, as related to Sir Humphrey Davy, and recorded in his " Salmonia;" the mermaids, as I take it, being nearly allied to the Nereid, or Sea-fairy, and the reality of one about as true as that of the other. Nature is wild and beautiful enough without these false creations. Read her truth, fair lady, and leave the fables to the fairies. There is not a ripple or a stone that is not replete with scientific interest, and yields not a study that both ennobles and delights the mind. The doublings, or horseshoes^ of this Wye, or POETRY OF NATURE. 175 Vaga, as the Romans named it, within its circle of rocks, so exquisitely fringed with green and purple lichens (like the Danube round the castle of Hay- enbach, in the gloomy gorge of Schlagen, or the Crook of Lime in Westmoreland, and many others), illustrate at once the nature of the stratification on the earth's surface ; even the varied tints of these mountain streams may read the student a practic lesson in geology. From the lime-rock springs the azure blue, as the Glaslyn stream at Beddgelert, the Rhone, and the Traun in Styria ; from the chalk ripples the gray water of the Dee and the Arve ; from the clay hills the stream comes down yellow, as " the Derwent's amber wave ;" and where the peat- mosses abound, especially in the autumnal flood, the stream is of a rich and dark sienna brown, as the Conway, and the Mawddach, in Merioneth ; or even of transparent black, as the Elain, which 'flows down through the white schist rocks of Car- diganshire. Cast. And is there wisdom, Evelyn, in thus " Flying from Nature to study her laws, And dulling delight by exploring the cause ?" I do fear that this analytic study of nature destroys the romance of life which flings around us its rain- bow beauty. Oh for those halcyon days of infancy, when every thought was a promise ; when hope, the dream of waking men, was lost in its fulfilment; and even fear itself was a thrill of romance ! Behold yon silver moon ! it is to the poet's eye an orb of unsullied beauty, and the planets and their satellites glitter like diamond studs in the firmament. Yet shift but the lens of the star-gazer, and lo ! dark and murky spots instantly shadow over its purity ; nay, have I not read that one deep 176 POETRY OF NATURE. astronomer, Fraiienhofer, has discovered mountains and cities ; and another, Sir John Herschel, the laying down of railroads in the moon ] So the optics of Gulliver magnified the court beauties of Brobdignag into monsters, and the auburn tresses of a maid of honour into a coil of dusty ropes ! Ev. A truce, fair Castaly. If science discovers defects, does it not unfold new beauties, a new world of animated atoms, endowed with faculties and passions as influential as our own ? Nay, science has thrown even a poetry around the blue mould of a cheese-crust ; and in the bloom of the peach the microscope has shown forth a treasury of flowers and gigantic forests, in the depths of which the roving animalcule finds as secure an ambush as the lion and the tiger within the gloomy jungles of Hindostan. In a drop of liquid crystal the water- wolf chases his wounded victim till it is changed to crimson with its blood. Ehrenberg has seen monads in fluid the 24,000th part of an inch in size, and in one drop of water 500,000,000 crea- tures — the population of the globe ! I hope, Cas- taly, you will not, like the Brahmin, break your microscope because it unfolds to you these won- ders of the water. Then, by the power of the telescope, we roam into other systems, " World beyond world in infinite extent, Profusely scattered o'er the blue expanse," and orbs so remote as to reduce to a mere span the distance between us and the Georgium Sidus, and revel in all the gorgeous splendour of rings, and moons, and nebulas, the poetry of heaven. Is there not an exquisite romance in the closing of the barometrical blossoms ; of the white convol- vulus, and the anagallis or scarlet pimpernel ; of the sunflower, and the leaves of the Dionoza and mimosa ? POETRY OF NATURE. 177 Is there not poetry in the delicate nautilus, with its arms dropped for oars ; in the velella and pur- ple pliysalia, expanding their membranous sails ; and the beautiful fish-lizard, the Proteus of trans- parent alabaster, found in the wondrous cavern of Maddalena, among the Styrian mountains ; and even in the stalactites of Antiparos, as glittering as the gems and crystal pillars of Aladdin's palace % Are not these more beautiful because they are true, and better to be read than all the impersonations of mythology, or that voluptuous romance which would endow a flower with the fervour of sense and passion ] Ida. I have ever wondered that a scholar like Darwin should have so wasted time with his V Loves of the Plants ;" for the study of nature and the discoveries of science are ever vain if they lift not the heart in adoration. The insect, that fans the sunbeam with its golden wing, or even the flower that opes its dewy eyes to the light, are un- conscious worshippers of the Divine Being. The Epicurean, who weeps for a decaying body, but mourns not for a lost soul, will enjoy these beauties of nature with a heart faithful to his creed, that pleasure is the only good; but the Christian feels that, when he chips a stone or culls a flower, he touches that which comes fresh from the hand of its Creator. How full is nature, too, of mute instruction ! the simplest incident is a lesson, if we will but learn it. You see that fading blossom floating on the surface of the stream. That inanimate type of decaying beauty shows, to the reflective mind, that even in the summer of life the flower of existence will lose its youthful lustre, and float down the stream of time into the depths of eternity. But tell me, Evelyn, may not the influence of 12 178 POETRY OF NATURE. that science that magnifies the lights of heaven (created to rule day and night) into habitable worlds, weaken the influence of faith in holy writ 1 May we not fear that, like the Promethean Pre- adamites of Shelley, the Cain of Byron, the fabled beings of Ovid, and the mythology of Milton, will be the vaunted discoveries of the geologist, in con- troversion of the Mosaic records, of the creation, and the deluge ; proving the wisdom of Bacon, that to associate natural philosophy with sacred cosmogony will lead to heretical opinions ] In- deed, I remember in the Zendavesta of Zoroaster, the chronicle of the Magian religion (supposed to be a piracy from the book of Genesis), the sun is created hefore light. Ev. Fear not this, fair Ida. Rather believe, with Bouget, that philosophy and natural theology mutually confirm each other. The latter teaches us that which it is our duty to believe ; the former, to believe more firmly. And Lord Bacon himself, in his " Cogitata et Visa," deems natural philosophy "the surest antidote of superstition, and the food of religious faith." The belief in existence of a preadamite world presumes not to controvert the Mosaic record of the development of the globe, the creation of Adam, or the fall of man. Modern geology has peopled this preadamite world with saurians, or lizards, a race of beings not concerned in the punishment of that delinquency. Of the existence of these crea- tures there is no doubt ; the discovery of their fossil remains, without a vestige of the human skeleton, marks the period of their destruction, and that the crust of the globe enveloping these relics might have been reduced to that chaos when " the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep," and from which our beauti- ful world was fashioned by a fiat. NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 179 The truth of holy Scripture is too clear even to be disturbed by a sophist. You may recollect that Julian the apostate contemplated the reconstruc- tion of the Temple of Jerusalem, in order to con- fute the prophecies ; but Julian failed, and misfor- tune was the lot of all who were leagued in the impiety. As to natural laws, think me not so profane as to cite such as the superstitious alchymist, Paracelsus, in proof of their use in the working of a miracle ; who says that " devils and witches raise storms by throwing up alum and saltpetre into the air, which comes down as rain-drops !" And it were reversing this solemn argument were I to confess the doctrines of the Illuminaten, who, taught by Jacob Boehmen, and the mysticisms of his " Theosophia Revelata," explained all na- ture's laws by warping texts of Scripture to their purpose. Yet it is clear that even the miracles of the prophets may have been sometimes influenced by established laws. Elisha raised the Shunamite's son by placing mouth to mouth, as if by inhalation. Believe not, then, fair Ida, that philosophy is set in array against religion when the student of nature endeavours to explain her phenomena by physical laws, for those laws the great Creator himself hath made NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. " And for my soul, what can it do for that, Being a thing immortal 1" — Hamlet. Cast. We have risen with the lark to salute you, Astrophel. And you have really slept in Tintern Abbey 1 Yet not alone ; " I see Queen Mab hath been with you," and brushed you with her wing as you lay asleep. 180 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. Astr. Throughout the livelong night, sweet Castaly, I have revelled in a world of dreams. My couch, and pillow were the green grass turf. No wonder that tales of the times of old should crowd on my memory, that elfin lips should whis- per in my ear — Cast. " The soft, exquisite music of a dream." Ida. Talk not of dreams so lightly, dear Castaly; the visions of sleep are among the most divine mys- teries of our nature : these transient flights of the spirit in a dream, unfettered as they seem by the will, are, to my own mind, among the most exalted proofs of its immortality. Is it not so, Evelyn 1 Ev. The mystery which you have glanced at, Ida, Is the most sublime subject in metaphysics. Yet, in our analysis of the phenomena of intellect, it is our duty to discard, with reverential awe, many of the notions of the pseudo psychologists in allusion to that self-evident truth, that requires not the support of such arguments. In tracing the mystery of a dream to its associ- ation with our immortal essence, reason will at length be involved in a maze of conjecture. True philosophy will never presume to explain the mys- tical union of spirit and of flesh ; she would be be- wildered even in their definitions, and would in- cur some peril of forming unhallowed conclusions. Even the nature of the rational soul will involve him in endless conjecture, whether it be fire, as Zeno believed ; or number, according to Xenocra- tes ; or harmony, according to Aristoxenus ; or the lucid fire — the Creator of all things of the Chalde- an astrologers. He who aspires to a solution of the mystery may wear out his brain in the struggle, as Philetas work- ed himself to death in a vain attempt to solve the celebrated " Pseudoraenos," the paradox of the NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 181 Stoics ; or, like the gloomy students of the German school, he might conclude his researches with a question like this rhapsody — unanswerable. " But thou, my spirit, thou that knowest this, that speakest to thyself, what art thou 1 what wast thou ere this clay coat was cut for thee ] and what wilt thou be when this rain-coat, this sleeping-frock, fall off thee like a garment torn to pieces 1 Whence comest thou] where goest thou] Ah! where from and to, where darkness is before and behind thee 1 ? Oh ye unclothed, ye naked spirits, hear this solilo- quy, this soul-speech. Know ye that ye be 1 Know ye that, ye were, that ye are as we are or otherwise, in eternity ] Do ye work within us when a holy thrilling darts through us like lightning, where not the skin trembles, but the soul within us] Tell us, oh tell us, what, then, is death]" Now, if we reflect on the psychology of the Greeks, can we discern their distinctions of vovc, Ttvevfia, ipvx?], oojfia, of soul or spirit — of spiritual body, or of idol and of earthly body ; or of dvfioc, ipvX 7 ], and vovc, ipvx 7 ], and so forth ] This fine distinction may be reduced to one sim- ple proposition : that soul and mind are the same, under different combinations : mind is soul evin- ced through the medium of the brain ; soul is mind emancipated from matter. This principle, if es- tablished, might associate the anomalies of many sophists ; the existence of two minds, the sensitive and intellectual, taught by the Alexandrian philos- ophers, or the tenets of Bishop Horsley, in his ser- mon before the Humane Society, the separation of the life of intellect from animal life ; and it might reconcile the abstract reasoning of medical philos- ophy with the pure but misdirected arguments of the theological critic. We believe the spirit to be the essence of life Q 182 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. and immortality ; and it signifies not whether our words are those of Stahl, that it presided over the animal body ; or those of Galen and Aristotle, that it directed the function of life. It is enough that we recognise the ttvotj ^(orjc, or that breath of life which the Creator breathed into none but man; and the eifC(*)v Qsov 1 the image of God, in which he was created. In this one proposition all the points of this awful question are comprehended. And it is on this combined nature that we must reason ere we discourse on sleep and dreams. Cast. I condole with you, Astrophel ; you must forget the splendour of your dreams, and listen to their dull philosophy. Astr. we may, indeed, sympathize with each other, Castaly ; we are threatened with another abstruse exposition of the mind, although we are already sated with the contrasted hypotheses of our deepest philosophers : the cogitation or self-reason- ing of Descartes (the essence of whose " Princip- ia" was " Cogito, ergo sum ;" and it is an adoption of Milton's Adam, " That I am, I know, because 1 think ; forgetting that the very ego which thinks is a proof of prior existence) and of Malebranche, who believed they existed because they thought; the ab- stract spiritualism of Berkley, who believed he ex- isted merely because others thought of him ; the consciousness of Locke ; the idealism of Hume ; the material psychology of Paley ; the mental corpo- reality of Priestley; and the absolute nonentity of Pyrrho. Ev. I leave these hypotheses to speak for them- selves, Astrophel ; my own discourse will be wea- rying enough without them. Over the intricate philosophy of mind Creative Wisdom has thrown a veil, which we can never hope to draw aside. True, the beautiful mecha- NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 183 nism of its organ, the brain, is apparent ; and we can draw some analogies from inspection of the brain of a brute, and its progressive development in fcetal life, in reference to comparative simplicity and complexity ; but its phenomena are not, like most of the organic functions of the body, demon- strable. Now, although we know not the ?node of this mutual influence, the seat of mind is a subject of almost universal belief; not that Aristotle, and iEtius, and John Locke are our oracles on this point, although they have even identified the spot, terming the ventricles the mind's presence-cham- ber, while Descartes decided on the pineal gland. It is, however, into the brain that the nerves of all the senses enter, or from which they emanate : the senses constitute the media by which the mind gains its knowledge of the world, and therefore we regard the brain as its seat. We believe that the mind may possess Jive fac- ulties — perception, association, memory, imagina- tion, and judgment, and their focus, or concentra- tion, is in the brain. We may argue long on the earthly nature of mind contrasted with that of mat- ter, yet, in the end, we commonly thus define it : a combination of faculties, and their sympathy with the senses. That to different parts of this organ are allotted different functions, cannot be doubted, when we look at its varied structure, its intricate divisions, its eccentric yet uniform cavities, its delicate and almost invisible membranes ; and, indeed, physio- logical experiments are proof of it. Astr. Then there is some truth in the whimsi- cal localities in the " Anatomy of Melancholy," and the pictures of the tenants and apartments of the brain in the ingenious romance of the " Purple Island" of Fletcher. 184 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. Ev. Although I grant that these eccentric wri- ters evince much reading, I am not sure that their impersonations (like the " Polyolbion" of Drayton) do not tend to confuse rather than elucidate a nat- ural subject. Of a plurality of organs in the brain I have been convinced, even from my own knowledge and dis- sections. I have seen that very considerable por- tions of the cerebrum may be removed, the individ- ual still existing. The vital functions may con- tinue, the animal functions are deranged or lost. The most extensive injuries of the brain, too, are often discovered, which were not even suspected ; and the converse of this is often observed, the dis- eases of the brain being commonly found in an in- verse ratio to the severity of the symptoms. When chronic tumours and cysts of water are gradually formed, the extreme danger is averted by the bal- ancing power of the circulation of the brain's blood, without which its incompressibility would subject it to constant injury. In tubercles of the brain it is curious that memory is the faculty chiefly influenced ; it is sometimes rendered dull, while the fancy is vivid — often more perfect and retentive. Brain, however, can no more be considered as mind itself than retina sight, or than the sealing- wax can be identical with the electricity residing in it ; for if we look at the brain of a brute, we see how closely it resembles our own ; then, if we reflect on human intellect and brute instinct, we must all believe at once that there is some diviner thing breathed into us than the anima brutorum of Aristotle — something more than the mere vitality, " Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem." Brain is therefore the habitat of mind, the work- NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 185 ings of which cannot be indicated without it ; for as the material world would be intact without a sense, so there can be no mortal evidence of mind without a brain, which is, indeed, the sense of the spirit. Thus, without adopting the creed of the Hyloist, the moderate materialist — that the mind cannot have, during the life of the body, even a momentary existence independent of matter — I believe that, when this matter is in a state of re- pose, mind is perfectly passive to our cognizance. Ida. It is with diffidence, Evelyn, that I enter this arena with a physician learned in the body ; but is there no danger in this doctrine ] does it not imply the office of a gland, that brain is the origin of soul, and that its function was the secretion of thought ? Ev. Such is the timid error of the mere meta- physician, Ida. There is no such danger ; for, remember, if there be secretion, it is the soul which directs. Many a thought is referred to things which we cannot bring into consciousness, except by the brain. Dr. Gall writes of a gentleman whose forehead was far more elevated on the right side than the left, and he deeply regretted that with this left side he could never think ; and Spurzheim of an Irish gentleman, who has the left side of the fore- head the least developed by four lines ; he, also, could not think with that side, as, indeed, I have before hinted. I may tell you the brain is double, and one healthy hemisphere is sufficient as the organ of mind, if pain or encroachment of the opposite, when dis- eased, does not destroy life, and this especially when it is a chronic change, or exists from birth ; so that I have often seen one hemisphere of the brain a pulpy bag of water, and yet vitality and 0,2 186 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. many signs of intellect may still exist ; nay, even if the ivholc brain be reduced to one medullary bag, animal life shall for some time be preserved. To oppose this blending of mind and matter, Lord Brougham (in his Natural Theology) likens the marble statue hewn into beauty to the perfect arrangement of organization in a being. While I admire the idea, I may observe that he forgets this truth — that the maker of the one was a mere stat- uary, without even the fabulous power of Prome- theus, or Pygmalion, or Frankenstein ; the other, the Creator of all things, who breathed a breath of life into the shape he had made fitted to receive it. My lord thus halts at the threshold of discovery : mind is not the product of organization, but it works by and through it; and therefore, for its earthly uses, cannot be independent of the qualities of matter. We may as well agree with Plato in en- dowing the soul with " a plastic power to fashion a body for itself, to enter a shape and make it a body living." I remember Plutarch (in his Quaest. Platon.) makes him say that the soul is older than the body, and the source of its existence, and that the intellect is in this soul. But where is the sa- cred evidence of this ] for, even in our antenatal state, we live, and yet there is probably no con- sciousness ; there is vitality, at least, without the consciousness of an intellect. Astr. As the creation of light was before that of the sun, its reservoir, so the creation of the soul might be before the brain, in which the Creator sub- sequently placed it. Ev. For this there is sacred evidence, Astrophel. There was light ere the sun was created as its res- ervoir ; but the soul was breathed into the body, which was already then created. Astr. This is a specimen of your special plead- NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 187 ing, Evelyn, allied to that perilous error of Priest- ley, that supposed function and structure to be iden- tical, because they are influenced by the same dis- ease, and seem to live and die, and flourish and decay together. Democritus also has written his belief that, " as the smell of a rose exists in the bloom, and fades as that dies, so the soul of an ani- mal is born with its birth, and dies with its death." You have conceded to me (and we must all be con- scious of) the great difficulty of conceiving the na- ture of spirit ; but if we are required to prove its existence, we may answer, by analogy, that we cannot always palpably prove the existence of mat- ter, although we know it to exist. The electric fluid may remain for an indefinite period invisible, nay, may never meet the sight; it may even traverse a space without any evidence but that of its won- derful influence, and at length be collected in a jar. As light, existing in remote stars, has not yet reached our earth, so the electricity is now residing in myriads of bodies which will never be elicited ; and thus (if I may extend the simile) the principle of life, whatever it be, may have an independent existence during life, may leave the body and yet not perish. Is not this a fine illustration of the liv- ing of the soul without the body ] for here even a grosser matter, yet invisible, is evinced by its pas- sage from one thing to another, although it is inert when involved in the substance. Ida. May I not fear that the errors of philosophy, grounded on the difficulty of conceiving the nature of a self-existent spirit, will not stop until they lapse into the belief of annihilation 1 For there are many suspicious sentiments even in the pages of well-meaning writers ; such are the dangerous sentiments which Boswell has ascribed to Miss Seward : " There is one mode of the fear 188 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. of death which is certainly absurd, and that is the dread of annihilation, which is only a pleasing sleep without a dream." There may be nothing terrible in the condition of annihilation, yet the moral effect is deplorable ; indeed, to doubt the eternal existence is to argue that man's life is but a plaything of the Deity. The notion of annihilation is so abhorrent, that he who believes it dooms himself, indeed, to a miser- able existence ; for the crowning solace of a Chris- tian life is holy hope, and belief in the priceless gift of immortality. " Know'st thou th' importance of a soul immmortal ? Behold this midnight glory — worlds on worlds ! Amazing pomp : redouble this amaze ! Ten thousand add ; and twice ten thousand more ; Then weigh the whole ; one soul outweighs them all, And calls th' astonishing magnificence Of unintelligent creation poor." Would that Priestley had read wisely that pro- phetic truth in Ecclesiastes : " Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." Ev. I do not approve his latitude of thought, yet it were severe to think this, even of Priestley, mere- ly because he disbelieved separate spiritual exist- ence; for Aristotle also asserts that "the soul could not exist without the body^ and yet that it was not the body, but a part of it." Zeno and the Stoics termed that which was called a spirit material ; and not only Ray and Derham, but even Paley and Johnson, disbelieved the separate existence. The archdeacon's opinion that we should have a sub* stantial resurrection is founded on New Testa- ment evidence, and expressed in his discourse on a future state. The apostle's simile of the wheat implies a death of the grain : it dies, but there is no remodelling, for it is the germ that lives and NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 189 grows ; so, although the body may not be restored, j there is a development of its germ in the transit or / resurrection of its spirit. The sage thought also / the simile of St. Paul should be taken literally, and not figuratively ; and yet he qualifies it thus: "We see that it is not to be the same body, for the Scrip- ture uses the illustration of grain sown (which in its exact sense implies an offspring, and not a res- urrection), and we know that the grain which grows is not the same with what is sown. You cannot suppose that we shall rise with a diseased body ; it is enough if there be such a sameness as to distin- guish identity of person." Blumenbach believed that when the soul revived after death, the brain would equally revive ; and there is, indeed, nothing irrational in all this, for death is, even to our senses, not an annihilation, but only a new combination of matter. The Greek skeptics thought that the teeth would remain per- fect, if all else was decomposed and lost ; and the rabbins conferred this perpetuity on one bone of the spinal column, which they called LUZ. These strange notions of the mystic union may explain to us that diversity of custom, in various nations, as to the disposal of the dead. While the Irish papists, with a superstitious reverence for inanimate clay, celebrate their wakes with rites often as licentious as they are profane, the cannibal Calatice thought it more respectful to eat the bodies of their depart- ed friends — at least so writes Herodotus ; and the filial love of other Indian tribes invites the children to strangle their aged parents as they sit in their fresh-made graves. f It is certainly more consolatory to associate our thoughts with the immortal part of a lost friend ; to believe the spirit to be in celestial keeping, and that it still hovers around us. The collapse and 190 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. change of features prove that the body is then but as the dust from which it was first formed. I would not wish, like Socrates, to have my limbs scattered over the earth, because " Coelo tegitur qui non habet urnam ;" but, as the body must be consumed, were it not better and safer, as the Greeks did, to burn the dead — to resolve the corpse, as soon as possible, into its constituent elements. I shall ever remember with horror the scenes which I witnessed in Na- ples, when a pile of bodies, collected from the chap- els by the dead-carts, which go round the city at night, was thrown by irreverent hands into the pub- lic cemetery of the Campo Santo. The fiat of the Creator may at once produce a reconstruction of the body, however widely scatter- ed its particles, and the return of the soul to the brain, from which it had once departed ; but is it not somewhat irrational to think that we should again be endowed with organs, without the func- tions and passions to which they are subservient ? Ida. It may be a bliss to gaze even on the shad ows of those we love. There is a beautiful alle gory of this solemn question told in the " Specta- tor/' which, as Addison approves, it cannot be profanation to admire. It is the Indian legend ot " Marraton and Yaratilda," in which the devoted husband comes unawares on Paradise, and sees the shadowy forms of his wife and children without their substance. The story exquisitely blends the fond wish of Marraton to die, that he may be again admitted to the holy communion of those so fondly loved ; for Paradise is painted in the mind's eye even of the heathen, although, in his dearth of rev- elation, he associates the joys of his elysium with the sensual pleasures of terrestrial life. The In- NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 191 dian dreams of his dogs, believing that the greatest hunters shall be in the highest favour with Brah- ma ; the proselytes of the Prophet die in a vision of their houri's beauty ; and the warriors of Odin already drink the honey-water from the sculls of their enemies, served up to them by the beautiful " Valkhas" of the "Valhalla." Thus even the creed of infidels is not atheism. What thinks Ev- elyn ] Ev. As you do, Ida. As to the atheist, one, perchance, may have lived, if we rightly interpret the sentiments of Diogenes, and Bion, and Lucian, and Voltaire, but I believe one never died. My solemn duty has summoned me to the deathbed of more than one reputed infidel, who have in health reasoned with fluency and splendour, and have penned abstruse theses on life and the world's cre- ation. But when danger lay in their path of life, their stoic heroism fled, and left them abject cow- ards. They looked not even on the lightning's flash without trembling, and the vision of death was a sting to the conscience. I have seen many a deathbed like that of Beaufort, who made " no signal of his hope," not because he disbelieved a God, but because a conviction of his sin left him without a hope and faith in the promises. Of course there cannot be a Euthanasia where irreligion has marked a life, but, believe me, there would be no fear of death in an atheist. Astr. The mythologist and pagan may cite their tables, and worship their idols in the recesses of their pagodas and choultries, but some idea of the Deity has been unfolded to the mind of all. Even the Eastern princes have had some glimpses of the true faith, and shahs and caliphs were once engaged in building their Nestorine or Christian churches. 192 NATURE OP SOUL AND MIND. The profane Chinese has, it is true, called his realm the celestial empire; Fohi, who is believed to have reigned three thousand years before Christ, established his " Iconolatria," or "idolatry," and Si Lao Kiun struck at the establishment of polythe- ism, but the purer theology of Confucius prevailed over his rival. The Deity, indeed, is the essence of every creed, for all believe in a great spirit as well as an im- mortal mind and a paradise. Like the reasonings of natural philosophy, our notions and epithets of the great Creator certainly differ, but in all there is faith in his perfection. Xam Ti is the great spirit of the Chinese, as Woden is the god of the Gothic races, and Brahma, or Alia, or the Kitchi Manitou, or even the sun, the source of light, and heat, and joy to the creation, are the deities of other nations. Nor may we wonder more that the Ghebir, and the Peruvian, and the Natchez should worship their orb of fire, than that the Irish should, on the morning of their Beltane, light their peat- fires to the sun. The doctrines of the Brahmins all attest their creed of theism, if we interpret aright the evidence of the learned Pundits of Benares, especially in the Gentoo code, and the records of AbulFazel in the " Baghvat Geeta," an episode in the poem of the " Mahabarat," written to prove the unity. The devout Christian will deem this creed a woful er- ror, but he will confess his admiration of their sub- lime notion of the divine attribute, which Colonel Dow has thus imparted to us : " As God is imma- terial, he is above all conception ; as he is invisi- ble, he can have no form ; but, from what we be- hold of his works, we may conclude that he is eternal, omnipotent, knowing all things, and pres- ent everywhere." NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 193 I will grant that the Oriental notions of cosmog- ony, or the creation of the world, are a blot on their scripture page : because the pagan theolo- gians were shorn of the light of Christianity, they were prone to refer creation to natural causes within their own comprehension, and their ideas were fabulous and impure. Thus, among the Hin- doos and Egyptians, there is a mass of obscenity adduced to account for the development of the globe, in the associations of Vishnu, and Siva, and Osiris, and Isis ; and the temples of Elephanta and Elora are adorned with symbolic paintings of this incarnation of Vishnu. Yet, with all this error, there is in the " Vedas," or Hindoo scriptures, a not re'mote analogy to the Bible itself ; and, grant- ing that the cosmogony of Phoenicia is little more than a mysterious romance, yet whether the great cause be the demiurgic spirit uniting with desire, or the being " That" of the Hindoos, the essence of all these mysteries still combines the grand scheme of the creation — the formation of a beauti- ful world from a chaos of wide and dark waters. Ida. You are wandering very far eastward, As- trophel : I will propose this question to Evelyn. If it is so evident that the brain and mind, al- though not identical, exist in a most intimate union, may we not undervalue their relative influence by adducing the energy of intellect and brilliancy of conception possessed by many in advanced life ? Remember the green old age of Plato, and Cicero, and Newton, and Johnson, and, above all, Goethe, whose last work was brilliant as his first. And all this coincident with that love of Infinite Wisdom that exists (as we read in the " Consolations of a Philosopher"), "even in the imperfect life which belongs to the earth, increases with age, outlives the perfection of the corporeal faculties, and, at the mo- 13 R 194 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. ment of death, is felt by the conscious being." Does this imply decay 1 Ev. The retentive powers of old age are the ex- ception to a rule which the ultra spiritualist as- sumes as a general rule, in attempting to disprove the growth and decay of mind, according to the age of the body. But as lives are of different du- ration, and constitutions vary, so may mental poivers indicate different degrees of vigour. If mind in- creases, no doubt it decreases ; and I have known many who retain every faculty but memory, which is the first to decay and indicate failing power ; and so also is it with idiots, in whose memory, usually, the greatest defects appear ; the faculty of counting numbers reaches only to three, and of letters to C, the third letter in the alphabet. Ida will grant that there is no more impressive lesson of humility than the dwindling and decay of genius, when, in the words of the Athenian mis- anthrope, " Nature, as it grows again towards earth, Is fashion'd for the journey, dull and heavy." Reflect on the painful end of Sheridan and other brilliant wits of their day ; that " From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show ;" and we may almost wish that biography should begin at each end, and finish in the middle, or ze- nith of a life. Ida. If the fact be so, I grant the lesson to our pride, Evelyn ; and we may dwell with fervent admiration on the divinity of that mind which can ennoble and consecrate our body, so fraught as it is with basest passions, and so decayable withal. NATURE OF SLEEP. 195 NATURE OF SLEEP. "Sleep, gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse." — Henry IV., Part ii. Ida. I begin to perceive the importance of this digression on the nature of mind. You wish us to believe there is a temporary desertion of the spirit from the body, and therefore the body sleeps ] Ev. Not absolute desertion, but a limit to its in- fluence. Many have thought in conformity to your question ; and indeed, Ida, it is a belief so holy, that I may feel it to be almost an impiety to differ. From the time of Aristotle to Haller, the term " Sleep" expresses that condition which is marked by a cessation of certain mental manifestations, co- incident with the degree of oppression ; for it is an error to say that the body sleeps : it is the brain only, perhaps I may say the cerebrum, or the fore lobes ; for I believe the lower part of it (that which imparts an energy to the process of breathing and of blood circulation) is never in a complete sleep, but merely in a state of languor, or, rather, of re- pose, sufficient for its restoration ; if it were to sleep, death would be the result. This repose is in contrast with a state of waiting, that activity of mind in which ideas are constantly chasing each other like the waves of ocean ; the mode of displacing one idea being by the excite- ment of another in its place. In that state of sound sleep which overcomes children, whose tender brains are soon tired, or old persons whose brains are worn, and in persons of little reflection, the mind is perfectly passive, and its manifestations cease. So writes Professor Stewart, that there was a total suspension of volition during sleep, as regards its influence over mental or corporeal faculties ; and 196 NATURE OF SLEEP. I may even adduce a scrap from Burton, although I am an admirer of the quaint old compiler for lit- tle else than his measureless industry : " Sleep is a rest or binding of the outward senses, and of the common sense, for the preservation of body and soul. Illigation of senses proceeds from an inhibition of spirits, the way being stopped by which they should come ; this stopping is caused by vapours arising out of the stomach, filling the nerves by which the spirits should be conveyed. When these vapours are spent, the passage is open, and the spirits perform their accustomed duties ; so that waking is the action and motion of the senses, which the spirits, dispersed over all parts, cause." Astr. But is volition always suspended even in sound sleep ] Was it not the opinion of Berkley, that the mind even then was percipient ? How else can we account for the waking exactly at one pre- determined hour? If we retire to sleep at the latest hour, or oppressed with fatigue, so strong an im- pression is produced in our mind, that the break- ing of our sleep is almost at the given moment. Ev. I will answer you at present, Astrophel, only by analysis ; it is not yet time to explain. I may grant that there is some latent effect — pass- ive memory, if you will — for we do not count the hours in sleep, and calculate our time by the clock; but we wake, and soon the bell strikes. We have on record some very curious instances of the periodical recurrence of ideas in a waking state, the measurement of time being referrible to mental impression, mechanically established by con- stant habit. There was an idiot once, who was in the habit of amusing himself constantly by counting the hours as they were struck on the clock. It chanced, af- ter some time, that the works of the clock were in- NATURE OF BLEEP. 197 jured, so that the striking for a time had ceased. The idiot, notwithstanding, continued to measure the day with perfect correctness, by counting and beating the hour. This is a story of Dr. Plott's, in his History of Staffordshire. There is one of more modern date, somewhat analogous to this. I may quote Holy Writ in support of this passive condition of true sleep — nay, even its similitude to death. How often do we find allusions to sleep and death as synonymous ! Sir Thomas Brown was impressed so deeply with this likeness, that he " did not dare to trust it without his prayers." And the Macedonian, who wished for more worlds to conquer, confessed his sleep proved to him his mortality. I may quote ancient poetry also in my support. Homer and Virgil describe sleep as the " Brother of Death;" and, among the profane poets of later times, the same sublime association is traced of this " Mortis imago — et simulacrum." Among the ancient allegories, sleep is portrayed as a female, with black, unfolded wings ; in her left hand a white child, the image of Sleep ; in her right, a black child, the image of Death. On the tomb of Cypselus, according to Pausani- as, night is thus personified. Cast. How true, then, was the thought of the first deep sleeper on the sensation of slumber : " There gentle sleep First found me, and with soft oppression seized My drowned sense, untroubled ; though I thought I then was passing to my former state, Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve." But how fearful is this resemblance which changes " tired nature's sweet restorer" into a type of death ! Pr'ythee, Evelyn, do not affright me thus by cloth- II 2 198 NATURE OF SLEEP. ing sleep with terror, as if it were disease and dan- ger. Ev. Why tremble for the mortal sleep of the just and good, who will feel, with William Hunter, on their deathbed, " how pleasant and easy it is to die ;" and with another moralist, " Oh what a wonder seems the fear of death, Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep ; Night following night !" Fear not, Castaly ; I do not term slumber and gentle sleep disease, but signs of health. Not so, however, many a profound sleep, and its advances towards coma; those results of exhaustion from ex- cess, or from intense and direct narcotics, as opium sleep, and the paralyzing senselessness from ex- treme cold, as in the story of Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander in the antarctic regions. You are aware that many remedies in medicine may be so intense as to cause fatality ; inflamma- tion, too, is the restorative process of wounds, but if in excess it is fatal. Appetite also, to a certain degree, is healthy ; but craving and thirst, its ex- tremes, are proved, by suffering, to be morbid. If the mind is composed to perfect rest, it is lulled to senselessness ; then, metaphysically, we are said to sleep : the mind is not excited by thought, and, in consequence, its supply of arterial blood is less, the more rapid flow of which would be the cause of waking. Within certain limits sleep is a remedy, but it becomes perilous when intense, or too much in- dulged. One eccentric physician, as we read in the learned Boerhaave, even fancied sleep the natu- ral condition of man, and was wont to yield to its influence during eighteen of the twenty-four hours ; but apoplexy soon finished his experiment. This negative quiescence (for sleep is not a posi~ NATURE OF SLEEP. 199 tive state) allows the restoration of energy, and then we wake. Even the senses accumulate their power in sleep ; the eye is dazzled by the light when we wake, from the sensitiveness imparted by this ac- cumulation. The conceits regarding the cause of sleep are so various, that if I were to discuss their merits I should only weary your patience, as I perceive I have already done. Some have thought that sleep arose from certain conditions of the blood in the vessels and nerves of the brain, its congestion in the sinuses, or a reflux of a great portion of it towards the heart ; the re- sult of depressed nervous energy, exhaustion, fa- tigue, cold, and the influence of powerful narcotics, or the combustion of charcoal. Others, that sleep arises from the deposition of fresh matter on the brain, and its sudden pressure. Then we have the cerebral collapse of Cullen and of Richerand ; the deficiency of animal spirits of Haller ; the dimin- ished afflux of blood to the brain of Blumenbach, and the exhausted irritability of the Brunonian theo- ry adopted by Darwin. Where the truth lies I presume not to decide, but it is clear there is a necessity for the occasional repose of the mental organ : " Non semper arcum Tendit Apollo." Watchfulness invariably reduces, even in the brute : the wild elephant is tamed by the perse- verance of the hunter in keeping it constantly awake. ) The mind, then, as it is manifested to us (for deeply important is it that we confound not the perfect and pure, because unimbodied essence of the soul, with its combined existence in the brain — that union from which a thought is bom), the mind 200 NATURE OF SLEEP. cannot exert itself beyond a certain period without a sensation of fatigue in the brain, as palpable as the exhaustion from excessive muscular exertion. And this depends on a natural law, that organs, after acting a certain given period, flag and lose their energy. Thus the first harbinger of sleep is the closing of the lids from languor, and relaxation of the muscles. Muscular fibre will, however, re- gain its expenditure by simple rest, requiring a certain period for this reaccumulation, like the charging of an electrical jar. Sleep, however, is not always a sequence of exhausted irritability of muscle ; we may be too tired to sleep ; and thought and memory also will keep the mind awake, and prevent nervous energy from renewing corporeal vigour. The excitement of thought beyond certain limits is both painful and destructive, evincing its effects by various grades of mental disorder, from simple headache to confirmed mania. Our first ray of hope, in fever, is often the coming on of a quiet sleep, and in the sad cases of delirium tremens we must either sleep or die ; the effort of philosophical determination to overcome the depression only adding to its intensity, as in the case of a person worn out by labour in attempting to labour on. This conflict cannot be more pertinently exempli- fied than by some passages in the life of Collins, by one who knew him well : " He languished some years under that depres- sion of mind which unchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it. These clouds, which he perceived gathering on his intel- lects, he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France ; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned. His dis>Qrder NATURE OF SLEEP. 201 was no alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than in- tellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit, but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch till a short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk with his former vigour." y I believe that sensibility and fatigue of mind, by / inducing sleeplessness, may often be the source v even of mania. The sleep of animals is usually liglit, especially that of birds, and they are easily startled when at roost. The cackling of the geese on their awaking, you know, saved the Roman capitol. Yet sleep is altogether very nearly balanced with waking. Some animals sleep often, like the cats, but they are long awake, and prowling in the night. The python and the boa are also long awake, and then sleep for many days during the process of diges- tion. Indeed, all the ferce fall into sound sleep after feeding, while the ruminants scarcely sleep at all ; nor do they crouch like the ferce, with the head between the legs : but, then, their whole life is one scene of quiet — rumination is a mindless revery. The West Indian slaves and the Hotten- tots, or woolly bipeds, resemble the brute animal in this, that they fall asleep as soon as their labour is concluded. That activity of mind in excess may induce even mania, I may offer two impressive, although nega- tive proofs, from the records of Dr. Rush. " In despotic countries, and where the public passions are torpid, and where life and property are secured only by the extinction of domestic affections, mad- ness is a rare disease. Dr. Scott informed me that he heard of but one single instance of madness in China." 202 NATURE OF SLEEP. "After much inquiry, I have not been able to find a single instance of fatuity among the Indians, and but few instances of melancholy and madness." I may add, that Baron Humboldt assures us of this immunity among the wild Indians of South America. Ida. And may not this melancholy effect be averted by caution and rule 1 We have a saying in Herefordshire, that " Six hours are enough for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool." Ev. There cannot be a fixed rule on that point except the prevailing law of nature — the feeling of necessity ; but this may often lead astray. It is calculated that one half of a child's life is passed in sleep, and one quarter to one sixth of the adult existence ; but for old age there is no essen- tial period or limit. Old Parr slept almost con- stantly about the close of his life, while Dr. Gooch records the case of one whose period of sleep was only one quarter of an hour in the twenty-four. It is well to inure an infant to a gradual diminu- tion of its time to sleep, so that at ten years old its period should be about eight hours. The strength or energy of brain will, when aid- ed by custom, modify the faculty of controlling the disposition to slumber. Frederic the Great, and our own Hunter, slept only five hours in the twen- ty-four, while Napoleon seemed to exert a des- potic power over sleep and waking, even amid the roaring of artillery. Sir J. Sinclair slept eight hours, and Jeremy Taylor three. As a general precept, however, for the regulation of sleep in en- ergetic constitutions, I might propose the wise dis- tribution which Alfred made of his own time into three equal periods — one being passed in sleep, diet, and exercise, one in despatch of business, and one in study and devotion. Careful habit will often NATURE OF SLEEP. 203 produce sleep at regular and stated periods, as it will render the sleeper insensible or undisturbed by loud noises ; the gunner will fall asleep on the carriage amid the incessant discharge of the can- non ; and, if I remember right, the slumbers of the bell-ringer of Notre Dame were not broken by the striking of the quarters and the hour close to his ear. Ida. And at what seasons should we wake and sleep '? It seems to me that the Creator himself has written his precepts in the diurnal changes of this world, that are still so healthfully observed by the peasant, but so strangely perverted by the ca- pricious laws of fashion, and even by the romantic " Sons of night, And maids that love the moon," always excepting Astrophel and Castaly. It moves my wonder that they who have looked upon the beauty of a sunrise from the mountain or the main can be caught sleeping, when such a flood of glory, beyond all the glare of peace-rejoicings and birth- lights, bursts upon the world. Ev. The wisest have thought with you, Ida, al- though there was one idle poet, even Thomson, who confessed he had " noe motive for rising early." It was the custom of Jewel and Burnet to rise at four ; and Buffon, we are told, rewarded his valet with a crown if he succeeded in getting him up before six. It is to slight the creation not to enjoy the beau- ties of daylight, and it is the natural time for sleep when the dews of night are on the earth. The proof of this : There were two French colonels who were marching their troops, one by day, the other by night, and the loss in men and horses was very far greater among the night-marchers. Cast. I believe it was Panza who " never de- 204 NATURE OF SLEEP. sired a second sleep, because the first lasted from night till morning" — that immortal Sancho Panza, whose quaint rhapsody we must all echo so grate- fully, " Blessed is he that first invented sleep." The eulogies of this blissful state and the wailings of a sleepless spirit have ever been a favourite theme of the poet and our own ancient dramatists, as Beaumont and Fletcher in the play of " Valen- tinian," and Shakspeare from the lips of Henry IV., in" his beautiful invocation, and Young, and many others. Ev. Sleeplessness is one of the severest penal- ties of our nature. In the darkness and silence of night the wakeful mind preys on itself ; the pulse is rapid — it is a throb of anguish ; to the wearied thought there is no conclusion, and the parched tongue prays in vain for the morning light. In the Curse of Kehama, I think the sleepless lid is one of the most cruel inflictions ; and in the severe disorder which we term 7ie??iicrania, this curse is, to a degree, realized. The sleeplessness of Caligula is related by Sue- tonius. In Bartholinus we read of one who slept not for three months, and he became a melancholy hypochondriac ; and Boerhaave,from intense study, was constantly awake during six weeks. Ida. We are happy in our quiet minds, are we not, dear Castaly ] yet if we are ever summoned to the couch of one wearied by night- watching, Evelyn will tell us how we may soothe the pillow of a sleepless mind, to which the secret of indu- cing slumber would be a priceless treasure. Ev. Study the causes of insomnia, or sleepless- ness, Ida, as those which excite nervous irritabil- ity — coffee, green tea, small doses of opium, the protracted use of antimony, &c, and believe not in the virtues of vulgar remedies, often as danger- NATURE OF SLEEP, 205 ous as they are ridiculous. There is a batch of these which Burton has gleaned from various au- thors ; as a sample — nutmegs, mandrakes, worm- wood ; and from Cardan and Miraldus — the anoint- ing the soles of the feet with the fat of y a dormouse, and the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog, swine's galls, hares' ears, &c. I might offer to you many plain precepts for the alleviation of the light causes of sleeplessness, and while I dole them out to you in very dulness, you will fancy my gold-headed cane to my chin, and other essential symbols of an Esculapius of the olden time. Adopt, then, a free ventilation in summer, and airing in winter, of the chamber. This should never be a mere closet, always above the ground floor, neither very light nor dark, the window not being close to the bed, and, above all, not in the vicinity of stoves, ovens, and large kitch- en fires. Do not allow the windows to be open throughout the nio;ht to admit the cold dew or air, and in winter the basket-fire should be placed there for an hour before you enter your chamber. A slight acceleration of the circulation may be produced by gentle exercise before rest, and two or three wafer-biscuits or spring-water to prevent the wakeful effects of both chilliness and hun- ger. A light woollen sock may be worn, which is unconsciously displaced when sleep comes on, and the nightcap should be little more than a net, ex- cept during the very cold months. The position of the body should be that which is the easiest, except the supine, which induces congestion and often " nightmare," and if there be much sensitive- ness of the surface, the hydrostatic bed should be employed, but that not too long, as it will become heated by protracted pressure. Children should not be enveloped in clothes nor crowded in bed, S 206 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION nor should infants be shaken, or tossed, or patted, as foolish nurses too often do. There are many simple modes of inducing slum- ber : I allude not to poppy and henbane, nor to the pillow of hops, which, in the case of our third George, was the charm that sealed up the lids of the king, but to other modes, such as a tedious re- cital (something like my own dull prosing), the gentle motion of a swing, a cot, or cradle, the rip- ple of a stream, and the dashing of a waterfall, the waving of a fan, the caw of rooks, the hum of bees, the murmur of an iEolian harp — Cast. So gracefully wound up in that quaint morceau, the " Fairy Queen," when Archimago sends the spirit to fetch a dream from Morpheus : " Cynthia still doth steepe In silver dew his ever-drooping head, Whiles sad night over him her mantle black doth spred. And more to lull him in his slumber soft, A trickling stream, from high rocke tumbling downe, And ever-dringling rain upon the loft, Mix'd with a murmuring winde, much like the soune Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoune." SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION OF DREAMING. " We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded by a sleep." — Tempest. Ev. In the transition to andjfrom the repose of sleep, the mind is sinking into oblivion, and thought is fading, and the senses and sensation are over- shadowed in their regress to insensibility ; even instinct is wellnigh a blank. This is the state of slumber. Then, I believe, and only then, are we ever wandering in the ideal labyrinth of DREAMS. There is a curious calculation of Cabanis, that OF DREAMING. 207 certain organs or senses of the body fall asleep at regular progressive periods ; some, therefore, may- be active, while others are passive ; and in this in- teresting state, I may hint to you, consists the es- sence of a dream. It seems that in dreamless sleep the senses fall asleep altogether, as in the case of Plutarch's friends Thrasymenes and Cleon, and others who never dreamed. Astr. So there is some truth in the fanciful con- ceit of Cardanus, that " Sleep is the rest of the spirits, waking their vehement motion, and dream- ing their tremulous motion." Cast. And philosophy plumes herself on her wondrous intuition for this discovery. Let her blush and kneel before the shrine of poesy. The poets, even of a ruder age than ours, have thought and written before you, Evelyn, and have unfolded these arcana. How doth Chaucer usher in his " Dreme V* " Halfe in dede sclepe, not fully revyved ;" and again : " For on this wyse, upon a night, As ye have heard, withouten light, Not all wakyng ne full on slepe, About such hour as lovirs wepe ;" and in "La Belle Dame sans Mercy" there is the same thought : " Halfe in a dreme, not fully well awaked ;" and in Sir Walter's "Antiquary:" "Eh, sirs, sic weary dreams as folk hae between sleeping and waking, before they win to the long sleep and the sound." So will your philosophy dwindle some- what in its consequence, Sir Clerke. Ev. We are not jealous of these glimpses of a poet, Castaly ; they impart a value to their rhymes : we enrol such poets in the rank of philosophers. Ida. Solve me this question, Evelyn: is there 208 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION any relative difference between the subjects of dreams before and after sleep % Ev. It has been thought that there is more ref- erence to reality in the first, and more confusion and wandering of imagination in the second; but as nature is often excited rather than exhausted at night, there may be equal brightness with the morning dream, occurring after the recreation arid refreshment of sleep. Cast. We may concede, then, some wisdom to the Sybarites, who destroyed their morning her- alds, the cocks, that they might enjoy their matin dreams undisturbed. And I remember one of Pope's allusions to the virtues of this vnap, or morning dream : " What time the morn mysterious visions brings, While purer slumbers spread their golden wings." Astr. We have often discoursed on the psy- chology of Locke, Evelyn, and we are now involved in one of its most interesting points — innate idea. Is the dreamer conscious of his dream 1 It has been asserted, especially by two profound metaphysi- cians, Beattie and Reid, that they persuaded them- selves in their dreams that they were dreaming, and would then attempt to throw themselves off a precipice ; this awoke them, and proved the im- pression a fiction. Were there not present in this, volition and consciousness ; and is it not an evi- dence of an innate idea without sensation % Ev. No. A train of thought and passive mem- ory may take place without volition, even in a waking mind ; a train of reasoning cannot ; so feel- ing and passive thought may in the mere dream, but not a conscious acting on it. The phenomena, and the expressions used to describe these impres- sions, are precisely illustrative of another condition of sleep, to which we have not yet pointed. This OF DREAMING. 209 notion of Beattie was but an echo of Aristotle The Stagyrite himself was subject to dreams of danger, and, after a while, he used to whisper to himself, " Don't be frightened — this is only a dream :" the glaring proof that it was not ; and yet psychologists still talk of the management oi a dream The fairest explanation is, that there has been a predetermination on some point, and unconscious ideas on the same point are elicited, or may be the first to present themselves to the mind in the morn- ing, at the moment we awaken, and thus it is the first which the judgment acts on in its revery ; that is, the line between dreaming and being awake. If there be many organs asleep, there is still some clouding of this judgment ; but if that be asleep also, there is an absolute dream. If we know that we are dreaming, the faculty of judgment cannot be inert, and the dream would be known to be a fallacy. We might, by thinking, render our dream what we pleased, and be sure we should never wish for devils or dangers. The essence of the dream is that it is uncontrolled: other states are not dreaming. Above all, if judg- ment influenced the dream of Beattie, who was not a madman, would he have wished to have toppled down headlong from a rock 1 Listen to Johnson on this point. He related that he had once, in a dream, a contest of wit with some other person, and that he was very much mortified by imagining that his opponent had the better of him. " Now," said he, " one may mark here the effect of sleep in weakening the power of reflection ; for, had not my judgment failed me, I should have seen that the wit of this supposed antagonist, by whose superiority I felt myself depressed, was as much furnished by me as that which I thought I had been uttering in my own character." 14 S 2 210 SUBLIMITY AND LMPERFECTION Nay, in the words of Beattie himself, in his " Essay on Truth," " Sleep has a wonderful power over all our faculties. Sometimes we seem to have lost our moral faculty, as when we dream of doing that without scruple or remorse which, when awake, we could not bear to think of. Sometimes mem- ory is extinguished, as when we dream of con- versing with our departed friends, without remem- bering anything of their death, though it was, per- haps, one of the most striking incidents we had ever experienced, and is seldom or never out of our thoughts when we are awake." Even the most sensitive and amiable girls will dream of committing murder, or the most awful crimes, without any sense of compunction. We feel no surprise at the working of our own mira- cles ; and we know not how to avoid danger. I have myself dreamed of occurrences long past as if they were of to-day ; have fretted in my sleep on ideal events, and on waking was for a moment wretched. But I have reflected, awake, on these very events, and have not only felt resigned, but deemed them benefits. There was in the University of Gottingen the physician Walderstein. He was a constant dream- er, and this is his account of one of these illusions. " I dreamed that I was condemned to the stake, and during my execution I was perfectly com- posed, and, indeed, reasoned calmly on the mode in which it was conducted ; whispering to myself, ' Now I am burning, and presently I shall be con- verted into a cinder.'" It seems that he was dis- satisfied with his dream on account of this apa- thetic calmness ; and he concludes, " I was fearful I should become all thought and no feeling." 1 would say, he was all illusion and no judgment. OF DREAMING. 211 It is but lately that I dreamed I was reciting a metaphysical poem, which my vanity whispered me possessed a deal of merit. During the recita- tion I thought there was a turning up of noses, and of tongues into cheeks — a very expressive sign of incredulity and satire. At length a general mur- mur ran through the assembly that it was a com- plete " boggle." Nothing daunted, I assured them that it was a very abstruse passage, and the fault was in the shallow comprehension of my audience. Need I add that I should blush at such an evasion in my waking judgment ] How different, also, is our dream from a waking thought, in which we can control the fancy ! If in the dream the chain be abruptly broken, the waking mind does not then carry on the train ; and if anything occur in waking, associating with the dream, to join the broken link, the dream is not completed, but the ideas revert, or are re- traced to their source ; and if any idea at the ori- gin of the dream be re-excited, there will be no consistent continuance of it beyond the dream it- self, or if there be, it will bear the stamp of rea- soning, losing all connexion with the illusion. On the contrary, if we read as we are falling asleep, we continue in the dream the subject of our study, but erroneously ; and if we then start and wake, we shall find that at the moment of slumber we had changed the integrity of our thinking. Be as- sured, then, that Virgil is correct in this : " She seems alone To wander in her sleep, through ways unknown, Guidcless and dark." Cast. And now, Sir Knight, deign to look on the other side of the shield. Answer me with sincerity : if your words be true, is not this a high privilege of imaginative minds to lift themselves 212 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION out of the gloomy atmosphere of this world of wo; to soar with fancy, not to drudge with fact 1 How do I envy a romantic dreamer, like him of whom Master Edmund Spenser writes : " At length some wonted slepe doth crowne His new falne lids, dreames straight, tenne pound to one, Out steps some faery with quick motion, And tells him wonders of some flourie vale." Sleep is, indeed, the reality of another existence. Astr. So breathed the thought of Heraclitus in words like these, that " all men, while they are awake, are in one common world ; but that each, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own." The fairies are his boon and chosen compeers, and the sylphs are as much his handmaidens as those around the toilet of Belinda. We are, indeed, the happy children, and, like them, our existence is a dream of felicity — one long and happy thought of the present, with no reflection or forethought to mar its blisses. Then the shades and memory of departed friends and lovers, are they not around us as true and as beautiful as when they lived % The common sen- timent of enamoured dreamers is, " I hear thy voice in dreams upon me softly call ; I see thy form as when thou wert a living thing." In the dream, ambition is lifted to the loftiest pinnacle of her high aspirings, and power and riches are showered in profusion in the path of their vo- taries from the cornucopia of fancy ; and all this with a depth and intensity that gilds for a time the moments of waking life. And I agree with Saint Augustine, that if we sleep and dream in Paradise, our existence will be perfectly felicitous. But then, alas ! the cruel waking from this world of pleasure. I have breathed many a sigh of sym- pathy with Milton's dream of his dead wife, and with Crabbe in his " World of Dreams." OF DREAMING. 213 You remember, Evelyn, how oft you have won- dered at my absence from our college ccena. You thought not that I was then deeply studying how I might gain a victory over my thoughts in sleep. As my waking memory would, from some indefi- nite cause, be re-excited after it had seemed to fade and die, so the subject of my dreams has been re- sumed after many months, without any chain of rel- ative thoughts in the interval. I believed then that this might be a dream ; that I had dreamed the same before ; but on the morning of the second dream, reflection assured me that on the morning, of the first I had known and thought on it. I was waiting for a golden hour of inspiration, and it was granted me. One night came o'er my slumber a dream of beauty : there was an innocent happiness, a sense of purest pleasure, that might be the beati- tude of a peri ere she lost her place in Eden. In the morning, the dream was a part of my being ; I nursed it throughout the livelong day, and at night lay me down to slumber, and again with the sleep came the dream. I was thus the monarch of an ideal world : the dream was my life, so long as my thoughts were on it concentrated, and even study was a liemhrandt shadow on its brightness. In a moment of rapture I cried, " We forget how superior, to mortals below, Js the fiction they dream to the truth which they know." I opened the leaf of a volume in which an accom- plished pen had traced an episode so like my own as to make me wonder at its truth. It was of a visionary German, who, like myself, commanded the phantasie of sleep's own world, bringing one night thus in connexion with another. He fashioned, like Pygmalion, his idol, Love, and nightly met and wooed till he won her to his heart, and then he cried, " What if this glorious sleep be 214 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION, ETC. a real life, and this dull waking the true repose V At length his ideal of beauty, his dream, died, stung by a serpent. And then the order of the vision was reversed ; the dream lay again before him, dead and withered ; he saw his idol only when he was awake, and this was to him a dream. He pined in thought, and died — sleeping. Was not the sleep of this man his real life, and a scene of happiness 1 Could he wish for reality who had enjoyed such a dream'? For if in life there were equal sleep and waking, and the sleep were all a happy dream, this would indeed be a happy life. May I tell you, Evelyn, that I enjoyed a deep sublimity of feeling, a consciousness of that mental emancipation which devout philosophers have more than glanced at % Ida. Although you have again rather run wild, Astrophel, I agree with you in thinking that, under this influence, the dream may be an illustration of Plato's notion regarding the existence of eternal forms independent of matter — an emanation of the divine mind imparted to that of human beings ; that innate idea, if you will, by which the mind views at large " The uncreated images of things." And I therefore revere the opinion of Sir Thomas Brown, the ingenious author of the " Religio Med- ici" (with whom believed Sir Henry Wotton, Bos- suet, and other good men), " That we are some- what more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the legation of sense, but the liberty of reason ; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps." And also the sentiment of Addison, that " there seems something in this consideration that intimates to us a natural gran- deur and perfection of the soul." PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 215 Cast. In your temple of transcendental philos- ophy you will leave a niche for Shakspeare, dear- est Ida, who, even in one of his lightest characters, forgets not this perfection of our emancipated spirit. Lorenzo whispers to the fair Jewess, in the garden at Belmont, " Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heav'n Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ! There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, But in his motion, like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubims. Such harmony is in immortal souls ; But, while this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." PROPHECY OF DREAMS. " I have heard the spirits of the dead May walk again : if such things be, thy mother Appear'd to me last night ; for ne'er was dream So like a waking." — Winter's Tale. Astr. Evelyn, you have argued fluently on the nature of mind contrasted with that of matter ; but, if desired to define it, how will you answer 1 Ev. That it is a combination of faculties, and their sympathy with the senses. But this definition pre- sumes not to decide in what intimate part or tex- ture of the brain is seated the essence itself, as we may imagine, of the mind — the principle of con- sciousness ; whether this be the " elementary prin- ciple" of Stewart, or the " momentaiy impression of sense or sensation" of Brown, or the " something differing from sensation" of Reid, cr the " power of feeling that we differ from the matter around us" of some one else. Astr. Yet on this point (if, indeed, such point be more than imaginary) the whole phenomena of intellect must turn. But, even if you can ever hope to determine this locality, it will be long, very long, 216 PROPHECY OF DREAMS. ere the student of psychology will rise from his studies with the triumphant exclamation, " TeAoc I" ere he conclude his deepest researches without the humiliating confession that his philosophy wears fetters. Yet you consider our visions as one tissue of morbid phenomena, although there are myriads even of profane visions and warning legends which bear the certain impress of a prophecy. I never listen to those who laugh at our interpretations without remembering that melancholy story of a youth of Brescia, by Boccaccio, where Andreana, I think, is relating to her betrothed Gabriello an ominous dream of the stars, and of a shadowy de- mon, which had made her sad and spiritless, and for which she had exiled her lover for a whole night from her bosom. The youth smiled in scorn of such a presage ; but, in relating a dream of his own to illustrate their fallacy, fell dead from her enfolding arms. For once I will grant you, merely for the sake of argument, that there may be exaggeration in many a legend. I will even yield to your immo- lation the host of specious dreams in " Wanley's Wonders ;" you may pass your anathema on the volumes of Gianville, and Moreton, and Aubrey, and Mather, and Berthogge, and Beaumont, as a tissue of imposture ; call them, if you will, " A prophet's or a poet's dream, The priestcraft of a lying world." I will ensconce myself snugly behind the classic shields, and ask you if the pages of Pliny, of Cice- ro, of Socrates are mere legends of fiction or cre- dulity ; nay, if the books of mythology and Orient- al legends are not, many of them, founded on real events ] It is clear that there was ever implicit and ex- PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 217 tensive faith in the East ; the definition of ov sipo, J speak ike truth, implies faith in a dream. The office of the oneirocritic was a profession. Amphic- tyon was the first (according to Pliny) of the pro- fane expositors, Hieronymus the most profuse in- terpreter, and Lysimachus, the grandson of Aris- tides, expounded dreams, for money, at the corners of the streets of Athens. The doors of Junianus Majus, the tutor of Sanagorius, and Alexander ab Alexandro, were besieged with dreamers in quest of expositions. The Romans worshipped with divine honours Brizo, the goddess of dreams ; and the Galeotae, so named from Galei, a Hebrew word signifying to reveal, nourished in Sicily. So impressed were the Jews with the importance of the dream, that they convoked a tryad of friends, and went through certain ceremonies (as writes Josephus in his twelfth book), which they called the benefaction of a dream. The Orientals, the Greeks, and the Romans, then, were all confident in the truth of these omens. When Nestor urges his army to battle because Agamemnon had dreamed of such a course, it is but a picture of the common mind of Greece. In- deed, on great emergencies, it was the custom to solicit the inspiration of the dream by first per- forming religious rites, and then in the temple (it may be of Esculapius or Serapis) to lie down on the reeking skins of oxen or goats, sacrificed by the priests. I may not hope, Evelyn, to convert or alarm you, or I would warn you of the penalty incurred by the slighting of a vision. You may read in Livy that Jupiter imparted his displeasure at the punishment of a slave, during a solemn procession in the forum, to Titus Antinius ; but Titus scorned the vision ; T 218 PROPHECY OF DREAMS. when, lo ! his son was struck dead at his feet, and his own limbs were at once paralyzed. In a mood of penitence, he was borne on a couch to the sen- ate, and after a public confession of his crime, his limbs began to recover their energy, and he walk- ed to his house unassisted, amid the wonder of the people. In Cicero's essay on " Divination" we read the story of two Arcadian travellers. On their arrival at Megara, these two friends slept in different houses. In the night a dream came to one of them : the phantom of his companion appeared to him, and imparted to him that his landlord was about to murder him. He awoke, and feeling as- sured that the idea was but a dream, fell quietly again to sleep ; but then came over him a second dream, and again the phantom was in his cham- ber, and told him that the deed of blood was com- mitted — that he was murdered ; and in the morn- ing he learned that the vision was prophetic, and told him truth. But the records of antiquity teem with tales of fatal prognostics to heroes, kings, and emperors, whose deaths, indeed, seldom took place without a prophecy. From Aristotle we learn that the death of Alexander was foretold in a dream of Eudemius, and that of Caesar by his wife Calphur- nia. The Emperor Marius dreamed that he saw Attila's bow broken, and the Hun king died on the same night ; and Sylla (according to Appian) died on the night succeeding that on which he dreamed of such a fate. Valerius Maximus records the death of Caius Gracchus immediately after a dream of it by his mother. Caracalla (as we learn from Dior Cassius) fore- told his own assassination in a dream. PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 219 Cyrus (writes Xenophon) dreamed of the ex- act moment in which he died. And the death of Socrates was foretold to him in a dream by a white lady, who quoted to him the three hundred sixty-third line of Homer, in the ninth book. Of remarkable events there are many strange forebodings, as the dream of Judas Maccabeus when about to engage the Syrian army ; of Sylla before his engagement with Marius ; of Germani- cus on the night before his victory over Arminius (as Tacitus records) ; and of Masilienus, the gen- eral sent by the Emperor Honorius to oppose Gildo and regain the possession of Africa. To him St. Ambrose, the late bishop of Milan, ap- peared in a dream, and, striking the ground at the scene of the vision thrice with his crosier, said, " Here and in this place ;" and on the same spot, the following morning, Gildo was conquered by Masilienus. Such are a few of the fatal prophe- cies of old. There are others of illustrious births in the olden time, of which I will recount a few. Plutarch writes of the dream of Agariste, an- nouncing the birth of her son Pericles. Sabellus of the dream of Accia, the mother of Augustus. The splendid impostures, as I confess them, of Mohammed were ushered in by a dream of Cadiga, that the sun entered her house, and that his beams illumined every building in Mecca. In later days, the mother of Joan of Arc dreamed that she brought forth a thunderbolt ; and Arlotte, the mother of the Conqueror, that her intestines covered the whole land of Normandy. But I waive a host of ancient dreams, as those of Astyages, the last king of Media, Ertercules, 220 PROPHECY OF DREAMS. and Antigonus, and Simonides, and others, for I study to be brief, and pass to the professors of more modern belief. Of Pascal Paoli, Boswell, in his account of Cor- sica, thus writes : " Having asked him one day, when some of his nobles were present, whether a mind so active as his was employed even in sleep, and if he used to dream much, Signor Casa Bianca said, with an air and tone which implied something of importance, 4 Si, si sogna,' Yes, he dreams ; and upon my ask- ing him to explain his meaning, he told me that the general had often seen in his dreams what af- terward came to pass. Paoli confirmed this by several instances. Said he, ' I can give you no clear explanation of it — I only tell you facts. Some- times I have been mistaken, but in general these visions have proved true. I cannot say what may be the agency of invisible spirits ; they certainly must know more than we do ; and there is nothing absurd in supposing that God should permit them to communicate their knowledge to us.' " In Walton's life of Sir Henry Wotton, we read that his kinsmen, Nicholas and Thomas Wotton (whose family, by-the-by, were celebrated for their dreamings), hadforetold their death most accurately. In the beginning of the 18th century, a person in the west of England dreamed that his friend was on a journey with two men, whose persons were strongly pictured in his dream, and that he was robbed and murdered by these companions. It chanced that in a short time he was about to jour- ney with two men, the very prototypes of his friend's dream. His earnest caution against this expedi- tion so planned was slighted, and on the spot marked in the dream was this traveller robbed and murdered, and by the vivid description of the PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 221 dreamer the two men were identified and exe- cuted. In other cases, the dream has been the means of retribution ; for instance, by the discovery of a murderer. In " Baker's Chronicle" we read of the conviction of Ann Waters for the murder of her husband through the circumstantial dream of a friend. I believe the fate of C order was decided by a dream; and I may add, that Archbishop Laud dreamed himself that in his greatest pomp he should sink down to h — 11. There is a chain of impressive visions, prophetic of the death of Villiers, duke of Buckingham, as if some little spirit were flitting to and fro on a special mission from the realm of shadows. The sister of the duke, the Countess of Denbigh, dreamed she was with him in his coach, when the people gave a loud shout, and she was told it was a cry of joy at the dangerous illness of the duke. She had scarcely related her dream to one of her ladies, when the Bishop of Ely came to tell her her brother was murdered by the dagger of Felton. Shortly before this, a Scotch nobleman asked a seer from the Highlands what he thought of this Villiers, duke of Buckingham, then the court fa- vourite : " He will come to naught," said he, " for I see a dagger in his heart." But the most impressive presage were the visions of an officer of the wardrobe to the king, as related by the Earl of Clarendon and others. Parker had been an old protege of Sir George Villiers, the duke's father. On a certain night, in Windsor Castle, he saw, or dreamed of an apparition of Sir George Villiers, who entreated him to warn his son not to follow the counsels of such and such persons, and to avert in every way the enmity of T 2 222 PROPHECY OF DREAMS. the people, as he valued his life. A second and a third night this vision was repeated, and at the last, the phantom drew a dagger from his gown, and said, " This will end my son, and do you, Parker, prepare for death." On a hunting morn- ing this vision was imparted to Buckingham at Lambeth Bridge, and after the chase the duke was seen to ride, in a pensive mood, to his moth- er's in Whitehall. The lady, at his departure, was found in an agony of tears, and when the story of the murder was told, she listened with an apathetic calmness, as if the brooding over the prophecy had half dulled her heart to the reality. Well, the duke was murdered, and Parker soon after died. On that night when the Treasury of Oxford was broken open, Sir Thomas Wotton, then in Kent, dreamed circumstantially of the event, and, I be- lieve, named and described the burglars. A clergyman, whose name I forget, was once travelling far from his home, when he dreamed his house was on fire. He returned, and found his house a smoking ruin. I may here cite a very curious dreaming, which, though not exactly fulfilled, displayed at least a strange coincidence in three minds. The mother of Mr. Joseph Taylor dreamed of the apparition of her son, who came to take leave as he was going a long journey. She started, and said, " Dear son, thou art dead." On the morrow, a letter came from his father, expressive of anxiety on account of this dream. The son instantly remembered his own dream, at the same hour, of having gone to his mother's room to bid farewell. There are many warning visions, which, being happily regarded, were blessed by the preserva- tion of human life. When our own Harvey was passing through MORAL CAUSES OP DREAMING. 223 Dover, on his Continental travels, he was unex pectedly detained for a night by the order of the governor. On the next day, news came that the packet in which Harvey was to have sailed was lost in a. storm ; and then it came out that his ex- cellency had, on the night before his arrival, a phantom of the doctor passing before him, which besought him to detain his substance in Dover for a day. Alderman Clay, of Newark, dreamed twice that his house was on fire. From the second dream, he was induced to quit with his family ; and, soon afterward, it was burned by the engines of Crom- well, which were bombarding the town. For this providential salvation an annual sermon is preach- ed, and bread given to the poor, in Newark. The lady of Major Griffiths dreamed thrice of her nephew, Mr. D. The first vision imparted his intention of joining a party of his companions on a fishing excursion ; the second, that his boat was sinking ; the third, that it was actually sunk. At her entreaty, this gentleman was induced to remain on land ; and in the evening it was learned that his ill-fated friends had been all drowned by the swamping of the boat. Cast. I pr'ythee, Astrophel, draw not too large- ly on our faith ; reserve yourself for a struggle, for I see in the glance of Evelyn's eye that he has taken up your glove. MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. " I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream." — Midsummer Night's Dream. Ev. Listen — it is my turn to speak. Like confirmed insanity, the essence of the dream 224 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. is usually a want of balance between the representa- tive faculty and the judgment ; being produced, di- rectly or indirectly, by the excitement of a chain of ideas, rational or probable in parts, but render- ed in different degrees extravagant or illusive by imperfect association, as in the dream of the " Opium eater:" " The ladies of Charles I.'s age danced and looked as lovely as the court of George IV. ; yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries." The relative complexity of these combinations includes the two divisions of dreams, the plain, ■8eo)p7)ijiaTiKOL ; and the allegorical, or images pre- sented in their own form or by similitude. If we grant that certain faculties or functions of the mind are the result of nervous influence, we can as readily allow that an iinperfcction of these manifestations shall be the result of derangement of equilibrium in this influence, as the material function of muscle shall be disturbed by primary or secondary disease about the brain, of which we have daily examples among the spasmodic and ner- vous diseases of the body. Referring to the calculation of Cabanis on the falling to sleep of the senses, I can readily carry on this analogy to the faculties of mind. We may suppose that the faculty of judgment, as being the most important, is the first to feel fatigue, and to be influenced in the mode which I have alluded to by slumber. It is evident, then, that the other fac- ulties, which are still awake, will be uncontrolled, and an imperfect association will be the result. Thus the ideas of a dream may be considered as a species of delirium ; for the figures and situations of both are often of the most heterogeneous descrip- tion, and both are ever illusive, being believed to be realities, and not being subject to the control of MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 225 our intellect. Yet, if the most absurd dream be analyzed, its constituent parts may consist either of ideas, in themselves not irrational, or of sensations or incidents which have been individually felt or witnessed. So the remembered faces and forms of our ab- sent friends, faithful though a part of the likeness may be, are associated with the grossest absurdity. lut asgri somnia, vanae Fingentur specie*, ut nee pes nee caput uni Reddatur formae.'' Or, as Dryden has written, " Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes: When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes ; Compounds a medley of disjointed things, A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings. Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad, Both are the reasonable soul run mad ; And many monstrous forms in sleep we see, That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be.'* The little variations in the tissue of a dream arc not rectified by judgment. So the vision may have led us to the very consummation of the highest hopes with love and beauty, and then, if an object even of degradation or deformity shall cross the dream, an association shall be formed imparting a feeling of loathing and horror. You may take Hobbes's illustration, Astrophel, which you will probably prefer to mine. Hobbes says of the compositions of phantoms, " Water, when moved at once by divers movements, receiv- eth one motion compounded of them all ; so it is in the brain, or spirits stirred by divers objects : there is composed an imagination of divers conceptions that appeared single to the sense ; as sense at one time showeth the figure of a mountain, at another of gold, and the imagination afterward composes them into a golden mountain." I believe Parkhurst also will tell you that the 226 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. Hebrew word for dream refers to things erroneous- ly viewed by the senses ; for each may assume, in- dividually, an intimate accordance with another, although the first and last appear perfectly incon- gruous, as the Chinese puzzle will be a chaos if its pieces be wrongly placed ; a faulty rejoining, in fact, of scenes and objects reduced to their constit- uent elements. " I dreamed once," said Professor Maass, of Halle, " that the pope visited me. He command- ed me to open my desk, and he carefully examined all the papers it contained. While he was thus employed, a very sparkling diamond fell out of his triple crown into my desk, of which, however, nei- ther of us took any notice. As soon as the pope had withdrawn, I retired to bed, but was soon obli- ged to rise on account of a thick smoke, the cause of which I had yet to learn. Upon examination, I discovered that the diamond had set fire to the pa- pers in my desk, and burned them to ashes." This dream deserves a short analysis, on account of the peculiar circumstances which occasioned it. " On the preceding evening," continues Professor Maass, " I was visited by a friend, with whom I had a lively conversation upon Joseph II. 's sup- pression of monasteries and convents. With this idea, though I did not become conscious of it in the dream, was associated the visit which the pope publicly paid the Emperor Joseph at Vienna, in consequence of the measures taken against the clergy ; and with this, again, was combined, how- ever faintly, the representation of the visit which had been paid me by my friend. These two events were by the subreasoning faculty compounded into one, according to the established rule, that things which agree in their parts also correspond as to the whole ; hence the pope's visit was changed into a MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 227 visit paid to me. The subreasoning faculty, then, in order to account for this extraordinary visit, fix- ed upon that which, was the most important object in my room, namely, the desk, or, rather, the papers it contained. That a diamond fell out of the triple crown was a collateral association, which was ow- ing merely to the representation of the desk. Some days before, when opening the desk, I had broken the glass of my watch, which I held in my hand, and the fragments fell among the papers ; hence no farther attention was paid to the diamond, being a representation of a collateral series of things But afterward, the representation of the sparkling stone was again excited, and became the prevail- ing idea ; hence it determined the succeeding as- sociation. On account of its similarity, it excited the representation of fire, with which it was con- founded ; hence arose fire and smoke ; but in the event, the writings only were burned, not the desk itself, to which, being of comparatively less value, the attention was not at all directed." Impressions of memory may not, perhaps, appeal consistent with imagination, but, on the principle 1 have advanced, it will be found that, although the idea excited by memory be consistent, these ideas may, by fanciful association, become imagination, appearing, on superficial view, to illustrate the doctrine of innate idea. But is this doctrine pro- ved 1 We may seem to imagine that which we do not remember as a whole; but as a curve is made up of right lines, as a mass is composed of an infinity of atoms, so may it follow that what is termed "innate idea," if minutely divided, may be proved to arise from memory, made up of things, howev- er minute, which we have seen or heard of. Anal- ysis may thus unravel many a " strange, mysterious dream." 228 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. Ida. I have ever believed that there were inci- dents recorded which left no doubt of the truth of innate idealism. Dr. Beattie has observed : " Men born blind, or who have lost all remembrance of light and colours, are as capable of invention, and dream as frequently as those who see." Ev. These, fair lady, are surely very imperfect data. If a person loses remembrance of individual colour, he does not lose the power of comparing or of judging variety of colour. And, again, although he may be congenitally blind, yet if there be any other sense but sight, through which the mind can perceive or receive external impression, the objec- tion must fail. There are very strange communities of the senses, which you may smile at, yet are they perfectly true. Dr. Blacklock (who was very early in life struck blind) expressed his ideas of colour by referring to a peculiar sound, the two being, as it were, synon- ymous to him. And he fancied also, in his dream- ing, that he was connected to other bodies by myr- iads of threads or rays of feeling. I may assure you, too, that on the loss of any one sense, the subsequent dreams, after a lapse of time, will not be referred to that sense. Dr. Darwin will supply you with very illustra- tive instances of this ; from which you will learn that, after blindness had afflicted certain persons, they never dreamed that they saw objects in their sleep ; and a deaf gentleman, who had talked with his fingers for thirty years, invariably dreamed also of finger-speaking, and never alluded to any dream- ing of friends having orally conversed with him. Astr. I believe that a black colour was disa- greeable to Cheselden's blind boy from, the mo- ment he saw it. Ev. Because, from certain laws of refraction, the effect was instantly painful to his eye. MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 229 Astr. I remember that Sir Walter Scott, in his " Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft," informs us that " those experienced in the education of the deaf and dumb find that their pupils, even cut off from all instruction by ordinary means, have been able to form, out of their own unassisted conjec- tures, some ideas of the existence of a Deity, and of the distinction between the soul and body." Ev. And do you not see, dear Astrophel, the dilemma of this argument 1 Before the deaf and dumb pupil can adopt a language by which to make his preceptor sensible of his thoughts or sentiments, he must have had certain facts or knowledge im- parted to him by signs or other modes of instruc- tion. The modes of mutual understanding must first emanate from the tutor, and with these ideas may be excited, which at first sight may seem to be innate or unassisted. Believe not that I deny a moral consciousness of the existence of the Deity and of our immortal- ity ; but how can we prove it in those who have no sense to explain it 1 If it were possible to find a creature so wretch- ed as to be endued with no external sense from his birth, such a being would neither dream nor think ; he would lead the life almost of a zoophyte, ceas- ing, of course, to be a responsible agent ! Caspar Hauser never dreamed till he slept at Professor Daunay's, and had been introduced to intellectual society, and been taught; and then, even, he could not comprehend the nature of his dreams. The arguments in the " Pheedo" of Plato point to this truth/that the germ of all ideas is sown in the mind by the senses. '. So, also, the metaphysics of Kant teach that the senses are feelers or con- ductors, by which we obtain materials of our knovvl- U 230 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. edge, and, indeed, that matter and sensation are synonymous ; that matter exists a priori in the mind. This was the belief of Coleridge, that there can be nothing fancied in our dreams without an antecedent quasi cause, a Roman having written be- fore him the same sentiment : " Nihil in intellectu, quod non prius in sensu." Remember still that this philosophy is apart from revelation. I am aware that among the deaf and dumb high moral sentiments may exist ; but if they can read essays, these sentiments may be imbibed in their reading. And yet a very learned lord has assert- ed that a being doomed to absolute solitude and estrangement from his very birth could discover the principles of algebra ! At this sophism, O shade of Epictetus ! thou mightest rise to vindi- cate the importance of our beautiful senses ; of the eye, beyond all, that achromatic globe of brightest crystal, the contemplation of which first convinced thee of design in the Creator, and prompted thee to pen the first " Bridgewater Treatise." On the opening, or even the restoration of a sense, in this forlorn " plant animal," all his associations would be erroneous. He would, at first, see double; he would, like children, consider all bodies, how- ever distant, within his grasp, and, like the idiot, draw all his figures topsy-turvy, as they are really painted on the retina, until judgment and practice rectified his error. I do not reason hypothetically, for these truths were illustrated in the youth whose pupils were opened by the operation of Cheselden. There are romantic stories, not foreign to this subject, in which the creation of a Caliban is al- most a truth, and which exemplify to us the ac- cordance of nature with habit and circumstance, MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 231 and the dearth of mind when deprived of the light of instruction. I allude to those unhappy creatures who, with the form and organs of man, have run wild in the woods, and fed on husks and berries, and herded with the brute. "We have some very curious his- tories of these beings, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Two were discovered in the For- est of Lithuania ; one in the Forest of Yuary, in the Pyrenees, by M. Le Roy ; two wild girls by a nobleman, near Chalons, in Champagne ; and Peter the wild boy, found by the escort of George I. in the woods of Hertswold, in Hanover. In these cases disease might have been discovered ; yet the effect of partial civilization, even in minute points, indicates some power of acquiring ideas not con- genital. But as to these dreaming flights of the spirit of good Sir Thomas Brown, I may confess, Astrophel, that you have some poets and metaphysicians, and even a few philosophers, on your side. You may read in Plato's " Pheedo" that " the body is the prison of the soul ; that the soul, when it came from God, knew all, but, enclosed in the body, it forgets and leams anew." And in Seneca : " Corpus hoc anirni pondus est." And in Petronius : " Cum prostrata sopore, Urget membra quies, et mens sine pondere ludit." This sentiment Addison has very readily adopt- ed, prating about " the amusements of the soul when she is disencumbered of her machine," and so forth. And yet Addison, I remember, thus qual- ifies his creed : " I do not suppose that the soul, in these instances, is entirely loose and unfettered from the body ; it is sufficient if she is not so far 232 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. sunk and immersed in matter, nor entangled and perplexed in her operations, with such motions of blood and spirits as when she actuates the machine in its waking hours. The corporeal union is slack- ened enough to give the mind more play," &c. In this conceit, deficient both in philosophy and psychology, you perceive the speculator draws in his horns, and concludes with that which means no- thing. It is, indeed, a mere compromise ; an en- deavour to extricate from their perilous dilemma the metaphysical pathologists who talk so fluently of the diseases of the immaterial mind, forgetful, it would seem, of this truth — that which is diseased may die ; a consummation which would undermine the Christian faith, and blight the holiest hope of man — the prospect of immortality. And yet my Astrophel will lean to the vagaries of our pseudo-psychologists, who believed the dream to be the flight of the soul on a visit to other regions, and its observation of their nature and systems from actual survey. Of the fruits of this ethereal voyage, the dreamer, I presume, is made conscious when the soul returns to the brain, its earthly pabulum or home. Were this so, it should enjoy visions of unalloyed beatitude ; and even were there a limit to its excursions, a thing so pure and perfect would select angelic communion only. I do not aver that such things are not, but that we cannot know it here. We have no satisfactory re- membrance of cities and temples thus surveyed more gorgeous than the waking conceptions of the thousand and one nights, or the legends of the genii ; no wonders or eccentricities which eclipse the exploits of Gulliver, Peter Wilkins, Friar Ba- con, or Baron Munchausen. Lavater carries out this caprice by a very fine metaphysical thought, to illustrate the night-appa MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 233 rition — that it is their "transportive or imaginative faculty that causes others to appear to us in our dreams." And I myself was once gravely told by a visionary that he dreamed one night of a cer- tain old woman, and she afterward told him that she dreamed she was, on that very night, in his chamber. So, you perceive, her imago, or mate- rial thought, entered into his mind, and caused his dream. Is not this sublime ] Now it is clear that these illusions cannot tend to advance the dignity of mind. Nothing can be more convincing to prove a suspension of judg- ment. Remember that during this life — the incor- poration of the soul — we are conscious of it only through the brain. It is not yet emancipated ; and it is an error to think, because sometimes we have a brilliant vision, that therefore, if the body were more inactive, the soul would be more ethereal. Astr. And yet we are assured that Alexander, and Voltaire, and La Fontaine, and Condillac, and Tartini, and Franklin, and Mackenzie, and Cole- ridge were wont to compose plans of battles, and problems, and poems in their dreams, with a de- gree of vigour and facility far exceeding their waking studies. Ev. This very facility proves that there was as- sociation from memory, without volition or effort ; the mind being in a state of revery, and the senses quiescent. In this consists the vivid and delight- ful visions lighted up by our memory in slumber, especially when there is darkness and silence, so that there is no perception ; or when the mind is concentrated, and has been reposing, so that its fancy is a novelty. But this identifying, by Sir Thomas Brown, of reason and fancy, is itself a proof of error. The U 2 234 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. energy of the first is exercised on data or facts ; that of the second in mere hypothetic amusement. It were, indeed, much better that we established either the material hypothesis of Priestley, or his antipodes Berkeley, that nature was but a com- pound of spirits, ideas unfettered by matter ; or the visionary scheme of Hume (borrowed, indeed, from the Hindoo philosopher Abul Fazel), that there is naught but impression and idea in nature ; or even the absolute skepticism of Pyrrho, than that we should favour the rhapsody of Brown, that the con- sciousness of waking moments should thus deterio- rate reason, and render the mind incompatible with sublunary duties. Cast. Coleridge, I believe, was so impressed with his own dreaming compositions, that he said " the dullest wight might be a Shakspeare in his dreams." What may he deserve for such pre- sumption 1 Ev. Coleridge was an opium-eater, and the whole intellectual life of this mighty metaphysician was a dream. And you may forget that Coleridge was already a poet, and reasons thus from impressions in his own visions during the elysium of his ano- dyne.. But the contrasted feelings of Coleridge's nights at once confirm the monomania of his dream- ing ; and if you read his " Pains of Sleep," Castaly, you will not deem them a slight penalty even for his libel on your sweet Shakspeare. But the conclusions of three sage grave men on this subject will impress your belief more than mine. The mentor of Rasselas, Johnson himself; speaks by the lips of Imlac : " All power of Fancy over Reason is a degree of insanity. By degrees the reign of Fancy is con- firmed ; she grows first imperious, and in time de- spotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 235 false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish." And so convinced was the learned Boerhaave of this, that he even held imagination and judgment to have different localities, because this influenced the mind asleep, and that awake. And why, Astrophel, dream we of strange things? Because we cannot compare illusion with reality. So we may reverse the doctrine of Pyrrho (who doubted his own existence), and imagine ourselves possessed of ubiquity. We may fancy we are both old and young at the same moment — nay, that we are and are not; possess the hundred eyes of Argus, or the hundred arms of Briareus ; that Zoroaster, and Virgil, and Shakspeare, and ourselves are co- existent. Indeed, our thoughts and actions are all modelled on a principle of paradox, as wild even as the visions in the " Confessions of an Opium- eater." Then turn to the words of Marmontel, which identify the wanderings of a dream with the flit- ting fancies of a mind prostrate from the effect of disorder. These words were written under ex- treme indisposition : " I was reduced so low that I could read no- thing but the Arabian Nights' Entertainments ; and it is extraordinary that often, while every other faculty, judgment, the will, association, perfection, even the memory itself, is in a state of almost to- tal reaction, this volatile thing, imagination, should be the most robust and active ; it seems to rejoice at the release from companionship with its fellows, and darts off on seraph wings, rambles through all space, visits all places, turning, and tossing, and jostling all things in its progress, or conjoining them in the most grotesque shape. The imagina- tion in madmen is often of this description, and there may be 236 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE " A pleasure in madness that none but madmen know." Then we may dream ourselves to be others — an ideal transmigration ; this is error. We wake to a sense of our own reality ; this is truth. Cast. Yet this truth may be often withheld by potent impression, as in the illusion of Rip Van Winkle, and the trances of Nourjahad. I believe the waking mind of Caspar Hauser knew not the difference between dream and reality ; he related his dream as fact. Ev. If there were ever such a being as Caspar Hauser, his life was a dream ; for, without the cul- ture of his mind, he would be reasonless. ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE OF DREAMS. " Rom. I dreamed a dream to-night. Merc. And so did I. Rom. Well, what was yours ? Merc. That dreamers often lie." Romeo and Juliet. Astr. Then we are to learn that the mind is ever imperfect in a dream. But, Evelyn, is not that rather perfection which magnifies space and time a million-fold, completing the labours of years in a second % The time occupied with the dream must be limited, often far short of the seeming duration of a scene. Like the wonderful velocity of atoms of light, the crude and heterogeneous ideas succeed each other with incalculable rapidity. We appear to have travelled over a series of miles, or to have existed for a series of years, during a very minute portion of the night — how minute, it is perhaps im- possible to determine. I believe it is the opium- eater still who thus confesses: "I sometimes seem- ed to have lived for seventy or a hundred years in one night j nay, sometimes, had feelings represent OF DREAMS. 237 ative of a millennium passed in that time, or, how- ever, of a duration far beyond the limits of any hu- man experience." This may be, as your simile implies, the dream of opium madness ; but let this dream of Lavalette also prove some truth in my illustration. The count, daring his confinement, had a fright- ful dream, which he thus relates : " One night, while I was asleep, the clock of the Palais de Jus- tice struck twelve, and awoke me. I heard the gate open to relieve the sentry, but I fell asleep again immediately. In this sleep I dreamed that I was standing in the Rue St. Honore, at the cor- ner of the Rue de l'Echelle. A melancholy dark- ness spread around me ; all was still. Neverthe- less, a low, and uncertain sound soon arose. All of a sudden I perceived, at the bottom of the street, and advancing towards me, a troop of cavalry ; the men and horses, however, all flayed. The men held torches in their hands, the flames of which il- lumined faces without skin, and with bloody mus- cles. Their hollow eyes rolled fearfully in their large sockets ; their mouths opened from ear to ear, and helmets of hanging flesh covered their hideous heads. The horses dragged along their own skins in the kennels, which overflowed with blood on both sides. Pale and dishevelled women appeared and disappeared alternately at the windows in dis- mal silence ; low, inarticulate groans filled the air, and I remained in the street alone, petrified with horror, and deprived of strength sufficient to seek my safety by flight. This horrible troop continued passing in rapid gallop, and casting frightful looks on me. Their march, I thought, continued for five hours, and they were followed by an immense num- ber of artillery wagons, full of bleeding corpses, whose Limbs still quivered. A disgusting smell of 238 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE blood and bitumen almost choked me. At length, the iron gate of the prison, shutting with great force, awoke me again. I made my repeater strike ; it was no more than midnight, so that the horrible phantasmagoria had lasted no more than ten min- utes ; that is to say, the time necessary for reliev- ing the sentry and shutting the gate. The cold was severe and the watchword short. The next day the turnkey confirmed my calculations. I, nev- ertheless, do not remember one single event in my life the duration of which I have been able more exactly to calculate." Cast. You are modest, Astrophel. Think of the wonders of fairy land. Our dainty Ariel will " place a girdle round the world in forty minutes ;" and, even more wonderful still, I have read, in the " Arabian Tales," of a monarch who immersed his head .in a water-bucket, and imagined he had in one minute traversed a space of infinite extent ; and (though perchance I should crave pardon for anything Evelyn may term an imputed miracle or imposture, yet) for a moment listen to the exquis- ite passage in the " Spectator," which Addison pre- tends to have gathered from the Koran, although I believe there is in that book no such story. " The angel Gabriel took Mohammed out of his bed one morning to give him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the prophet took a distant view of, and, after having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed;, All this was trans- acted in so small a space of time, that Mohammed, at his return, found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher, which was thrown down at the very instant that the angel Gabriel earned him away, before the water was all spilt." Ev. If all the circumstances of these dreams OF DREAMS. 239 were rational, I might agree with you, Astrophel ; but the ideas are irrational which so far outstrip the facts of our experience, except in their esti- mation who, like the Hibernian, would value their watch because it went faster than the sun. Now the extent of velocity in the ideas of insane minds is equally extreme ; and, when these anachronisms occur in dreams, the ideas are, I believe, ever false. Deeply interesting, however, are tales of such cu- riosities of dreaming as those which the two Scot- tish physicians, Abercrombie and Gregory, have recorded. " A gentleman dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier; that he had joined his regiment; that he had deserted ; was apprehended, and carried back to his regiment ; that he was tried by a court- martial, condemned to be shot, and was led out for execution. At the moment of the completion of these ceremonies, the guns of the platoon were fired, and at the report he awoke. It was clear that a loud noise in the adjoining room had both produced the dream, and, almost at the moment, awoke the dreamer." There was another gentleman who, for some time, after sleeping in the damp, suffered a sense of suffocation when slumbering in a recumbent po- sition ; and a dream would then come over him, as of a skeleton which grasped him firmly by the throat. This dream became at length so distress- ing, that sleep was to him no blessing, but a state of torture ; and he had a sentinel posted by his couch, with orders to awake his master when slum- ber seemed to be stealing o'er him. One night, ere he was awakened, he was attacked by the skel- eton, and a long and severe conflict ensued. When fully awake, he remonstrated with the watcher for allowing him to remain so long in his dream, and, 240 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE to his astonishment, learned that his dream had been momentary, and that he was awoke on the in- stant that he had begun to slumber. But, granting your notions of dreaming perfec- tions, Astrophel, there are, to a certain extent, even here, analogies. You forget that in our waking moments our ideas are often so fleet as to be profit- less to our judgment ; and why not in a dream % In the estimation of distance, with what velocity the train of reasoning passes through the mind ! Ere we have formed our notions of an object, how in- stantaneous our reflections on all its qualities — its brilliancy of colour, its apparent magnitude, its form, &c, and the angle of inclination in regard to the axis of the eye ; and our conclusions (for judgment is awake) are echoes of the truth. But in the dream is it so % No. We get the idea (as Mr.. Locke has written) of time or duration by reflect- ing on that train of ideas which succeed each other in the mind. In waking hours the judgment clear- ly regulates this ; but in dreams this course of re- flection is impeded, and the measurement of time is imperfect and erroneous, so that it is the com- mon characteristic of a dream that there is no idea of time ; the past and the future are equally pres- ent. Start not if, to strengthen this my illustration, I lead you again into the mad-house; again un- consciously combine a dream with insanity, in quo- ting these expressions of the Rev. Robert Hall (from " Green's Reminiscences") in allusion to his first attack of mania. " All my imagination has been overstretched. You, with the rest of my friends, tell me that I was only seven weeks in con- finement, and the date of the year corresponds, so that I am bound to believe you, but they have ap- peared to me like seven years. My mind was so OF DREAMS. 241 excited, and my imagination so lively and active, that more ideas passed through my mind during those seven weeks than in any seven years of my life. Whatever I had obtained from reading or re- flection was present to me." Ida. The apparent anachronism of such dreams, Evelyn, refers to imperfect function. Yet he will remember we are reasoning as finite beings. True, Malebranche has asserted that " it is possible some creatures may think half an hour as long as we do a thousand years, or look upon that space of dura- tion which we call a minute as an hour, a week, a month, or a whole age. But in regard to the prospect of futurity, of a more perfect state, who of us can decide that this seeming illusion is not one evidence of the divine nature of mind ; a re- mote resemblance, if I may presume so to say, of one attribute of the Creator, to whom a thousand years are as one day]" I have learned from your own theory, Evelyn, that mind is either imperfect or passive in the dream. Does not this passive condition itself imply inspira- tion 1 For is not that, in which are produced re- sults, while itself is inactive, under the special in- fluence of some high power, as were the visions of the holy records 1 Although I may not yield my entire belief in the fallacy of modern inspiration because it is not pro- ved, yet I have not listened to your learning, Ev- elyn, without some leaning to the apparent truth of your dissertations. I might hesitate to confess myself your pupil ; still, the incidents you have ad- duced will make me pause ere I again blend pro- fane arguments with the truths of holy writ. Yet I cannot yield the feeling that the dream is an em- blem, at least, of immortality. As a beautiful illustration of such philosophy, I 16 X 242 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE rememoer (in Fulgosius) a legend told by Saint Austin to Enodius : There was a physician of Carthage, who was a skeptic regarding immortality and the soul's separ- ate existence. It chanced one night that Genadi- us dreamed of a beautiful city. On the second night, the youth who had been his guide reappear- ed, and asked if Genadius remembered him: he answered yes, and also his dream. " And where," said the apparition, " were you then lying 7 ?" " In my bed, sleeping." " And if your mind's eye, Ge- nadius, surveyed a city, even while your body slept, may not this pure and active spirit still live, and observe, and remember, even though the body may be shapeless or decayed within its sepulchre 1" The dreams of Scripture, those " thoughts from the visions of night, when deep sleep came upon men," were associated with the mission of an an- gel, or immediate communion with the Deity ; for He has said, in the twelfth of Numbers, that he would " speak to his prophets in a dream ;" from the first and self-interpreting dream of Abimelech, the visions interpreted by the inspired propounder Joseph, the first dream of the New Testament, the fulfilment of the Annunciation, the impressive trance of Peter, in coincidence with the visions of the cen- turion, even to the holy visions of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the surpassing evidence and truth in all, but especially in the inspired interpretation of Jo- seph of the dream of Pharaoh, and those of the still more inspired oneirocritic, Daniel, cannot be com- pared with aught profane. The prophet not only expounded, but reminded Nebuchadnezzar of his dream when he himself had forgotten it. This was the result of special prayer to the Deity ; and, remember, without this the Chaldeans failed in their efforts. Even Jose- OF DREAMS. 243 phus informs us that Daniel " foretold good things and pleased, so that he was deemed divine." And you have read that Saul also prayed for a dream, but he dreamed not, because he was not holy. And there are holy precepts regarding dreams, which are recorded to curb our superstitious reliance on all. We have assurances of true dreamers in the first chapter of Matthew, the second of the Acts, in Deuteronomy, and the thirty-fourth of Ecclesiasti- cus ; the language of the son of Sirach was, that " common dreams only serve to lift up fools." With these reservations, I do believe that the real inspi- ration of a spirit is the gift only of the holy and the good, so that the presumption of divination and prophecy by profane dreamers is an illusion ; yet I acknowledge, with John Wesley, that many have been converted by a dreaming conscience, as we read of impressive dreams which have effected the conversion of others by the mere recital. Wilmot, earl of Rochester, was a skeptic ; but, as we are informed by Burnet, in his " Life and Death," his mind was first led to the conviction of an immate- rial spirit by the prophetic dream of his mother, the Lady de la Warre, foreboding truly his own death. And I must ever admire the moral wisdom of Zeno, which (according to Plutarch) induced him to regard a dream as the test of virtue ; for, if in his dream his heart did not recoil from vicious sug- gestions, there was an immediate necessity of self- examination and repentance. I cannot forbear add- ing that there is much wisdom in the estimation of his vision by one of the shepherd kings of Egypt, Sabaco. He dreamed that the tutelary deity of Thebes enjoined him to kill the priests of Egypt ; and, for this unmerciful injunction from the gods, that thei/ deemed him u?\fit for the throne, he went into self-exile to ./Ethiopia. 244 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE Ev. The conclusions of these moralists from dreaming impressions were somewhat straight- laced ; yet your reflections, Ida, point to the safest mode by which we may reconcile the conflict of the divine and the physiologist, and, above all, evince our devotion to the Creator, namely, to argue on creation as we see it, and on revelation as we see it recorded. Yet, with a mock solemnity, dreams and appa- ritions have been first adduced as proofs of the soul's immortality ; and then, in the same argu- ment, are themselves proved by this immortality ; the points of the syllogism are reversed, and we have petitio principii, a begging of the question. This hypothesis of dreaming has formed the ba- sis of certain religious impostures, among others, of Dubricius and Comedius; and, above all, the fanatical visions of Emanuel Swedenborg, who founded his especial sect by the declaration of hav- ing visited Paradise. In our analysis of revelation, the conflict of two powerful minds might, on doctrinal points, attack, and, in the end, annihilate the faith of each in their struggle for the victory ; which may remind you of the murders both of Protestants and Papists, es- pecially in Ireland, resulting from the wild excite- ment of fanaticism and bigotry, and the persecu- tions which have, as history records, sprung from debates on holy subjects. Remember the martyr- dom of the amiable and beautiful Anne Ascue, who was burned at the stake for dissenting from the the- ological tenets of Henry VIII. regarding the real presence. On the rack, her silence was a model of heroism, for she might have impeached the queen and her ladies ; and Wriothesly, the chancellor, it is said, in his rage to extort the secret, himself stretched the wheel so as almost to tear her body asunder. OF DREAMS. 245 And then the blasphemy of that convocation, summoned in the reign of Mary Tudor, to renew the discussion on that sacred point of transubstan- tiation between the Protestants and the Roman- ists ; but I leave this topic to the mild theologian, who will confess it would have withheld a stain from the page of history had these mock religion- ists acknowledged, with the pious Pascal, that "the sublime truths of our religion and the essence of the immortal spirit are inexplicable by the deepest research of wisdom, and are unfolded only by the inspired light of revelation." Now it was clear that the dreams of the classic poets were not all truly prophetic ; and in accord- ance with this are their delineations of the house of sleep. Indeed, we may almost fancy, for a mo- ment, that there might be some reality in these po- etical surveyors, until we reflect that the Roman notions were plagiaries from the Greeks. It is true, the locality of this Palace of Somnus, like the site of Troy, is not a little diversified by Homer and the rest ; but, whether it be Lemnos, or ^Ethiopia, or Cimmeria, these are its descrip- tions: First of Homer : " Immured within the silent bower of sleep, Two portals firm the various phantoms keep: Of iv'ry one, whence flit, to mock, the brain, Of winged lies a light fantastic train. The gate opposed, pellucid valves adorn, And columns fair incased with polished horn; Where images of truth for passage wait, With visions manifest of future fate." And Virgil's is a close copy. In the " City of Dreams" of Lucian, the blas- phemer (whose beauties are stained by their im- pieties), these eternal gates are again alluded to. But the dreams in this city are all deceivers ; for when a mortal enters the gates, a circle of domes- X 2 246 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE tic dreams in a moment unfold to him a budget of intelligence, which proves to be a tissue of lies. Tertullian and many others have argued the notion of a special purpose of the Deity in every dream ; and the " New Moral World" of the vis- ionary Owen asserts, that " one chief source of our knowledge is dreams and omens." In the eras of inspiration, few will be skeptical enough to doubt the occurrence of divine media- tions, or not to believe, with Socrates and other sages, in the divine origin of dreams and omens. The evidence of Holy Scripture again proves the occasion, indeed the necessity, for such communica- tion ; but, in our own time, I deem it little less than profaneness to imagine that the Deity should indicate the future occurrence of commonplace and trivial incidents through the medium of an or- gan confessedly in a state of imperfection at the moment when the faculties of mind are returning from a state of temporary suspension — a death-like Even John Wesley believed dreams to be "doubt- ful and disputable ;" and adds, with a half-profa- nation, " they might be from God, or might not." The Emperor Constantine, you know, denoun- ced death to all who dared to look seriously into the secrets of futurity. When we reflect that the proportion of events, seemingly the fulfilment of a dream, is to the myr- iads of forebodings which never come to pass (as the dreams recorded with some solemnity by He- rodotus, of Alcibiades ; of Croesus, regarding his son Atys ; of Asty ages and the vine ; ofCambyses, respecting Smerdis ; and of Hamilcar, at the siege of Syracusa) as a drop in the ocean, the fallacy of the doctrine must be evident. I marvel much that credulity, in this reflecting age, can gain a single proselyte. OF DREAMS. 247 The magi of Persia and the soothsayers of Greece and Rome were constantly in error ; and Artemidorus Miraldus, who in the reign of Anto- ninus wrote his voluminous book " Oneirocriticus," has given us the most ridiculous interpretations. When the pagan priesthood of old lay down on the reeking skins of their victims to rouse the inspi- ration of their dreams, it was to cheat their prose- lytes. Such were the mummeries in the Temple of iEsculapius. The devotees were first purified by the " lustral water," and then divine visions came over them, and priestesses in snowy robes, and a venerable priest in the habit of iEsculapius, paraded round the altar, and the charm was com- plete. You may learn from Martin something about the modern influence of such a charm. " Mr. Alexander Cooper, present minister of Northuist, told me that one John Erach, in the Isle of Lewis, assured him that it was his fate to have been led by his curiosity to some who consulted this oracle, and that he was a night within the hide, as above mentioned, during which time he felt and heard such terrible things that he could not express them ; the impression it made on him was such as could never go off, and he said for a thousand worlds he would never again be concerned in the like performance, for this had disordered him to a high degree. He confessed it ingenuously and with an air of great remorse, and seemed to be very penitent under a just sense of so great a crime ; he declared this about five years since, and is still liv- ing in the Lewis, for anything I know." ' In imitation of this spell for the divine inspiration of a dream, the modern Franciscans, after the cer- emony of mass, throw themselves on mats already consecrated b^ the slumber of some holy visionary, 248 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE and, with all this foolery, they vaunt the divine in- spiration of their dream. Cicero, and Theophrastus, and many other sages were skeptical of these special visitations, and ex- plained rationally dreams and divinations, as Cice- ro his dream at iEtina on his flight from Rome. Then there is this anathema of Ennius : " Augurs and soothsayers, astrologers, diviners, and interpreters of dreams I never consult, and despise their vain pretence to more than human skill." And also this caution bequeathed to you by Epictetus : " Never tell thy dream ; for though thou thyself mayest take a pleasure in telling thy dream, another will take no pleasure in hearing it." Astr. Epictetus was himself a dreamer in this, for the story of a dream is ever listened to with in- terest. And what would Epictetus think were I to tell him that broad lands and mitres have been gained before now by the shrewd putting of a dream ? Ev. I confess, as in the illusion of phantoms, there are records of very strange coincidences in dreaming, which may be startling to many super- ficial minds. Pefeskius, the friend of Gassendi, after a se- vere fever, in 1609, was engaged in the study of ancient coins, weights, and measures. One night he dreamed he met a goldsmith at Nismes, who offered him a coin of Julius Caesar for four car de- cues. The next day this incident was repeated to him in reality ; but lie was a philosopher, and deemed it, as it was, but a rare coincidence. There were two sisters, who (as a learned phy- sician has recorded) were sleeping together during the illness of their brother. One of these ladies dreamed that her watch, an old family relic, had stopped, and, on waking her sister to tell of this, OF DREAMS. 249 she was answered by her thus : " Alas ! I have worse to tell you : our brother's breath is also stop- ped." On the following night the same dream was repeated to the young lady. On the morning after this second dream, the lady, on taking out the watch, which had been perfect in its movement, observed that it had indeed stopped, and, at the same moment, she heard her sister screaming ; the brother, who had been till then apparently recover- ing, had just breathed his last. These are sequences, and not consequences ; and I might adduce a mass of these mere coincidences, which have been stretched and warped to make up a prophecy, such as the following legend of Ser- gius G-alba, told by Fulgosius : " Galba had co- queted with two marble ladies, the Fortune at Tusculum, and the Capitoline Venus ; and to adorn the first, he had purchased a brilliant dia- mond necklace. But the charms of the Venus of the Capitol prevailed over her rival, and the neck- lace was at length presented to the goddess of beau- ty. At night the form of Fortune appeared to him in his sleep, upbraiding him with his falsehood, and telling him that he should be deprived of all the gifts she had lavished on him ; and Galba, as the story goes, soon after died." But, if dreams are essentially prophetic, why are they not all fulfilled % and if one is not fulfilled, how know we if all will not be equally fallacious 1 The argument for the prophetic nature is merely a posteriori, the shallow "■ post hoc, ergo propter hoc" of the sophist. On the occurrence of any im- portant event, all the auguries and dreams which bear the slightest semblance to a prophecy are im- mediately adduced, and stretched, and warped to suit the superstition, as the whimsical mother will account for the marks on her child by frights and 250 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE longings. When we know that myriads of enthu- siasts and hypochondriacs have, by the failure of their predictions, deserved the stigma of false proph- ets, we may surely class these fantasies among the popular errors of the time. Yet the fulfilment of a prophecy ?nay he conse- quence, and that without the imputation of false- hood or imposition, or of any special interference. (I am not recanting my opinions, Astrophel.) 1st. Through the effect of an imparted impetus. 2d. Foresight, from the study of events and char- acter. 3d. Constant thinking on one subject. 4th. Impressions of terror or alarm, from spec- tres, sibyls, &c. A> there are dreams from impressions on the body during sleep, so are there diseased tissues in the brain which light up phantoms of terror and death perfectly prophetic. But wherefore so 1 Merely because they are induced by that disease which usually terminates in death. Such were the dreams during the nightmare which preceded, and, I believe, still precede the epidemic fevers in Rome, and in those of Leyden in 1669, when the patient fell asleep, and was attacked by incubus before each exacerbation. The impersonation of death was the prevailing phantom of their dream, and, in reality, death soon followed. Among those heathen tribes where superstition and ignorance form part of a national creed, there is a degree of blindness and inconsistency that may truly be termed mania. It is the doctrine, not of prophecy, but of debased and absolute fatalism. The North American Indians not only regard the dream as prophetic, but often receive it as a sol- emn injunction, and are themselves the active agents in its fulfilment. " In whatever manner," says OF DREAMS. 251 Charlevoix, " the dream la conceived, it is always looked upon as a thing sacred, and as the most or- dinary way in which the gods make known their will to men. Filled with this idea, they cannot con- ceive how we should pay no regard to them ; for the most part, they look upon them either as a desire of the soul, inspired by some genius, or an order from him, and, in consequence of this principle, they hold it a religious duty to obey them. An In- dian having dreamed of the amputation of his fin- ger, had it really cut off as soon as he awoke, first preparing himself for this important action by a feast!" Among more enlightened people there may be an inducement to action from the impression of a dream; here, also, the consequence is the fulfilment of the prophecy. Such, Astrophel, were the dreams of Arlotte and Cadiga; of Judas Maccabseus ; of Sylla ; of Germanicus ; and of Masulenius ; and the dream of the priestess of Proserpine, on the eve of Timoleon's expedition from Corinth to Syracuse, that Ceres volunteered to be his travelling compan- ion into Sicily. The dream of Olympia, that she was with child of a dragon, might both have sug- gested the mode of education and incited the war- like spirit of Alexander. We know that the city of Carthage was rebuilt by Augustus Caesar in consequence of the dream of his uncle Julius. And we read in the travels of Herbert that Can- gius, the blacksmith of Mount Taurus, aspired to, and gained dominion over the Tartars from a sim- ilar influence, and from his name has the title of " Chan" been since conferred on some of the most warlike monarchs of the East.. There was a dream of Ertercules that was warp- ed by Edebales into the interpretation that Oman 252 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE should be bora to him, and become a great con- queror. I have known the dreams of young ladies often prove the inducement to their marriage. I may remind you, too, that even a simple waking incident will impart this power of action. It is a record of history, that Robert Bruce slept, during his wandering, in the barn of a cottage. As he was lying, he saw a spider attempt to climb to the roof; twelve times the insect failed ere it gained its point. This potent lesson of perseverance in- stantly flashed across his mind, and in a few days was won the field of Bannockburn. Be sure the seers termed this an omen. The seduction of Helen was the result of a dream of high promise, made to Paris by the phantom of Venus. Scott (who was executed at Jedburgh, in 1823, for murder) confessed that he had dreamed of such a crime for many years ere its committal. Of the result of constant dwelling on an interest- ing subject, I may add these illustrations. Antigonus, king of Macedonia, anticipated (ac- cording to Plutarch) the flight of his prisoner Mith- ridates to the Euxine. Of such a nature were the dreams of the Emper- or Julian and of Calphurnia, if, indeed, these were more than fable ; and such was the dream of Crom- well, that he should be the greatest man in Eng- land. In all these, and a thousand more, the mere constant thinking excited the dream. The ambi- tious thought of Cromwell was constantly haunting his waking moments, pointing to personal aggran- dizement, and, of consequence, imparted a like character to the dream of his slumbers. Could we have penetrated the privacy of Ireton, and Lam- bert, and other Presbyterian leaders, we should OF DREAMS. 253 discover that such ambitious prepossessions were not confined to the bosom of the Protector. The grandfather of the poet Goethe, on the death of an old counsellor at Frankfort, assured his wife of his confident belief that the golden ball, which elected the vacant counsellor, would be drawn for him,. And this belief arose from a dream, in which he went in full costume to court, when the deceas- ed counsellor rose from his seat and begged him to occupy the chair, and then went out of the door. Goethe was elected. And yet divines, especially, are determined to look beyond nature for causes, and refer all this to divine foreknowledge imparted to the mind of man. There is a solemn letter, written in 1512 by Cardi- nal Bembo to one of the Medici, recounting how he was opposed in a suit against one Simon Goro, by Giusto, and how his mother dreamed that Gius- to wounded him in the right hand, and besought him not to have altercation with him. It chanced that Giusto, who, it seems, was somewhat deranged, snatched Bembo's papers from his hand, and after- ward, by the Rialto, wounded him in the second finger of the right hand. Now is not this a very shallow incident 1 and yet the sapient cardinal deems it essential to confirm his tale by a solemn attestation, thus : " The dream of my mother I look upon as a revelation ; and I declare to you, mag- nificent lord, by that veneration which we owe to God himself, that this recital is the pure and sin- gle truth." The proofs of an apparent prophecy from fore- sight may be seen in those who, by reflection, have attained either a worldly or a weather wisdom. The sea captain, who has looked out upon the sky at night, and has learned the foreboding signs of a storm, will often dream of shipwreck ; and the pol- Y 254 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE itician will dream of events, as well as predicate consequences, from an enlightened reflection on the motives of the human mind, and the general laws which, indeed, influence its actions ; so that, with a little latitude, it were easy enough for us all to construct an almanac column, especially if there be granted to us a liberal allowance of " more or less about this time." Above all, it is our duty to avert the imjiressions of evil from the superstitious mind. The appre- hension of a misfortune or fatality may prove its cause. Ay, and if the intellect were really gifted with prescience, how oft would the happiness of life be blighted] The allegory of the tree of knowledge is a prac- tic precept for our lives. Astr. And yet Virgil has thus alluded to the delight of peeping into futurity : " Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas." Ev. I would rather echo the benevolent precept of Horace to ensure the bliss of ignorance on this point : " Tu ne qusesieris, scire (nefas) quern mihi, quem tibi, Finem Dii dederint ;" in other words, " Seek not to know the destiny that awaits us." And Milton's wisdom, too : " Let no man seek, Henceforth, to be foretold what shall befall Him or his children ; evil, he may be sure, Which neither his foreknowing can prevent ; And he the future evil shall, as less In apprehension than as substance, feel Grievous to bear." Listen to the melancholy influence of the dream and death of Glaphyra, as told by Josephus : " She was married, when she was a virgin, to Alexander, the son of Herod, and brother of Arche- OF DREAMS. 255 laus ; but since it fell out so that Alexander was slain by his father, she was married to Juba, the king of Lydia ; and when he was dead, and she lived in widowhood in Cappadocia with her father, Arche- laus divorced his former wife, Mariamne, and mar- ried her, so great was his affection for this Grlaphyra, who, during her marriage to him, saw the following dream : she thought she saw Alexander standing by her, at which she rejoiced, and embraced him with great affection, but that he complained of her, and said to Glaphyra, ' Thou provest that saying to be true which assures us that women are not to be trusted. Didst not thou pledge thy faith to me'? and wast thou not married to me when thou wast a virgin % and had we not children between us 1 Yet hast thou forgotten the affection I bare to thee out of a desire for a second husband. Nor hast thou been satisfied with that injury thou didst me, but thou hast been so bold as to procure thee a third husband, and hast been married to Archelaus, thy husband and my brother. However, I will not forget my former affection for thee, but will set thee free from every such reproachful action, and cause thee to be mine again, as thou once wast/ When she had related this to her female compan- ions, in a few days' time she departed this life." The fatality which coincided with the prophetic warning of Lord Lyttelton might well be adduced as another illustration, were it not for some impu- tation of suicidal disposition in that nobleman, which would more forcibly invalidate the prophetic dignity of his dream. I may relate another story, not remotely illustra- tive of this influence, from Brand's " Popular An- tiquities." " My friend, the late Captain Mott, R. N., used frequently to repeat an anecdote of a sea- man under his command. This individual, who 256 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE, ETC. Was a good sailor and a brave man, suffered much trouble and anxiety from his superstitious fears. When on the night watch, he would see sights and hear noises, in the rigging and the deep, which kept him in a perpetual fever of alarm. One day the poor fellow reported upon deck that the devil, whom he knew by his horns and cloven feet, stood by the side of his hammock on the preceding night, and told him that he had only three days to live. His messmates endeavoured to remove his de- spondency by ridicule, but without effect. And the next morning he told the tale to Captain Mott, with this addition, that the fiend had paid him a second nocturnal visit, announcing a repetition of the melancholy tidings. The captain in vain ex- postulated with him on the folly of indulging such groundless apprehensions. And the morning of the fatal day being exceedingly stormy, the man, with many others, was ordered to the topmast to perform some duty among the rigging. Before he ascended, he bade his messmates farewell, telling them that he had received a third warning from the devil, and that he was confident he should be dead before night. He went aloft with the foreboding of evil on his mind, and in less than five minutes he lost his hold, fell upon the deck, and was killed upon the spot." Were an aversion to these gloomy fancies in- culcated, it might avert many a fatal foreboding, which, even in our own enlightened era, has closely resembled the fate of the African victims of Obi ; that magic fascination, which its Syriac namesake, Obh, works by spell, until the doomed one pines to death, with the deep conviction that he is under the ban of an enchanter. MATERIAL CAUSES OP DREAMS. 257 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. " Iago. Nay, this was but his dream. Othello. But this denoted a. foregone conclusion ; 'Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream." Othello. Astr. We looked for more from you, Evelyn, than these proofs of a negative. I presume still to think your philosophy is very weak in controversion of the inspiration of a dream, and its supernatural causes. I cannot but believe, with Baxter, that dreams maybe " spirits in com- munion with us." Ev. And you will define these shadowless min- isters in the fashion of Master Richard Burthogge, Medicinae Doctor (in his book, printed by Raven, in the Poultry, in 1694). I have a smack, you see, of medical bibliomania, Astrophel. Burthogge, although one of the most rational interpreters of dreams and spectres, thinks their internal causes purely metaphysical; and then refutes his own opinion point blank by this sophistry, that " there are things incorporated,, but invisible, which we call spirits ;" as who should say, with Shakspeare's fairies, " We have the gift of fern seed ; we are invisible. 1 ' No ; we will account for the causes of dreams, Astrophel, without the ministry of spirits. Analyzing, then, the notions of all, it is clear that the essence of the dream is recurrence of ideas. In the words of Walpole, " The memory retains the colouring of the day." Now memory is the first faculty to fail in age, and you know old people seldom dream : the same objects are applied, but there is little or no associ- ation, for the brain is dull and feeble ; imbecility, indeed, is mad memory. The two common periods associated with the 17 Y2 258 MATERIAL CAUSES OP DREAMS. dream are the past and the future, involving mem- ory and prognostication ; the latter being but the memory of an intention, an image excited in the mind by analogy. Even when present sensations excite the dream, it is ever associated, as you re- member, with something before seen or felt. The waking thought will thus again modify the dream ; and Dr. Abercrombie has a curious illus- tration of this combining of two minds — one wa- king subject, one dream, and one disturbing cause. The French invasion was the universal topic in Edinburgh ; and the city was, indeed, one company of volunteers. It was decided that the tocsin of alarm, on the approach of the enemy, was to be the firing of the castle guns, followed by a chain of signals. At two, an officer was awoke from a vivid dream of guns and signals, and reviews of troops, by his lady, who herself was affrighted by a similar dream, with a few associations of a different nature. And whence all this alarm ] the falling of a pair of tongs on the hearth, the noise of which was quite sufficient for the production of their dreaming as- sociations. Astr. It would seem to me that Evelyn was too anxious to find employment for the brain in thus imputing so much to substantial causes. There is a funny scrap I remember to have read, and of which I may shrewdly suspect my friend to be the scribbler. " Whence we may compare the powers of mind to a court of judicature — the out- ward senses being as the solicitors that bring the causes ; the common sense, as the master of re- quests, who receives all their informations; and fantasy (or imagination), like the lawyers and ad- vocates that bandy the business to and fro in sev- eral forms, with a deal of noise and bustle ; reason, as the judge, that having calmly heard each party's MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 259 pretensions, pronounces an upright sentence ; and memory, as the clerk, lecords the whole proceed- ings." But say, if the dream is but the memory of an impression, are metaphysics to be counted as a cipher in our discussion of the nature of intellect 1 Ev. Nay, the psychologist must ever call meta- physics to his aid, especially when speaking of the health or disorder of mind : there is an intimate blending of metaphysics and philosophy. But be- lieve not, Astrophel, that I presume to develop that mysterious influence which is going on between mind and matter, so essential to the manifestation of the former, during its earthly condition. The mystery will ever be a sealed letter to the intellect. It is enough that we have evidence of its existence without yearning for deeper insight of final causes. I have assured you that I do not believe thought, or reflection, or any act of mind to be material, and speak even with all due courtesy to the abstract metaphysician, and the divine who, doubtless from pure and holy motives, would seek to cut the Gor- dian knot of this sublime enigma. Even Dr. Abercrombie is content with observ- ing that the correction of illusions by the sane mind is by the comparing power of reason, but he leaves the illusion itself unexplained. Indeed, the most luminous of pathologists have ever feared to touch organization ; Sir Humphrey Davy leaves his beau- tiful imaginings vague' and inconclusive, because he stops short of the brain. The mere psychologist will ever persevere in placing even the palpable causes of illusion beyond the reach of our inquiries. Thus the rhapsodies of Lucretius were a series of professed fables, and the theories of Macrobius a tissue of capricious distinctions, as you may learn from his classification. 260 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 1st. oveipoc, somnium, dream. A figurative vis- ion to be interpreted. 2d. opafia, vision. A vision which has afterward been exactly fulfilled. 3d. xPW ariG l i0 Si oraculum. An intimation in sleep of what we ought to do. (I suppose as the shade of Hector appeared to iEneas, warning him, the night before, to escape from the flames of Troy.) 4th. evvTTVtov, insomnium. A sort of nightmare. 5th. (pavTaofMi, visus and incubus. Here is a perfect jumble of classification, the first three only being vaunted as prophetic or inspired ; the fourth, a nightmare ; and the fifth, if it be any- thing, a spectral illusion. Others have deemed themselves mighty wise in discovering dreams to be the " action of intellect on itself." Abercrombie, the most learned analyst of the mind since Reid and Stewart, has four varieties of the dream : 1st.. From wrong association of new events. 2d. Trains of thought from bodily association. 3d. Revival of old associations. 4th. Casual fulfilment of a dream ! You perceive the first and third are merely mem- ory, with right and wrong arrangements ; the sec- ond, excitement of ideas from present sensations ; the fourth, if it be not a mere coincidence, is the result, as I have explained, of imparted impetus, or deep thinking on subjects presented to the mind. The eccentricities of dreaming are not more cu- rious than those of the reminiscent faculty when awake; indeed, memory itself may seem to be sometimes dreaming, and at others e\ en fast asleep. Those who survived the plague in Athens (as we read in Thucydides), lost for a time the recollec- MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 261 tion of names, their own and those of their friends, and did not regain it until their health was re-es- tablished. Mori, during his frequent moods of excitement, quite lost his memory of music, so that, for many minutes, he could neither read a note nor play from memory. There have been persons who have very sudden- ly forgotten their own names, which they were about to announce on a visit to a friend. " Mr. Von B , envoy to Madrid, and after- ward to Petersburgh, a man of a serious turn of mind, yet by no means hypochondriacal, went out one morning to pay a number of visits. Among other houses at which he called, there was one where he suspected the servants did not know him, and where he consequently was under the necessi- ty of giving in his name, but this very name he had at that moment entirely forgotten. Turning round immediately to a gentleman who accompanied him, he said, with much earnestness, ' For God's sake, tell me who I am.' The question excited laughter ; but as Mr. Von B insisted on being answered, adding that he had entirely forgotten his own name, he was told it, upon which he finished his visit." The eccentric impressions of this faculty will be often intermittent, or marked by sudden yet regu- lar remissions. There is a very curious case on record of a lady whose " memory was^ capacious, and well stored with a copious stock of ideas. Unexpectedly, and without any forewarning, she fell into a profound sleep, which continued several hours beyond the ordinary term. On waking, she was discovered to have lost every trait of acquired knowledge ; her memory was a blank. All vestiges, both of words and things, were obliterated and gone; it was 262 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. found necessary for her to learn every thing again. She even acquired by new efforts the art of spell- ing, reading, writing, and calculating, and gradu- ally became acquainted with the persons and ob- jects around, like a being for the first time brought into the world. In these exercises she made con- siderable proficiency ; but, after a few months, an- other fit of somnolency invaded her. On rousing from it, she found herself restored to the state she was in before tfie first paroxysm ; but she was whol- ly ignorant of every event and occurrence that had befallen her afterward. The former condition of her existence she now calls the old state, and the latter the new state ; and she is as unconscious of her double character as two distinct persons are of their respective natures. For example, in her old state she possesses all her original knowledge ; in her new state, only what she acquired since. If a lady or gentleman be introduced to her in the old state, and vice versa (so, indeed, of all other matters), to know them satisfactorily, she must leam them in both states. In the old state she possesses fine powers of penmanship, while in the new she writes a poor, awkward hand, not having had time or means to become expert ! During four years and upward she has had periodical transitions from one of these states to the other. The alterations are always consequent upon a long and sound sleep. Both the lady and her family are now capable of conducting the affair without embarrassment ; by simply knowing whether she is in the old or new state, they regulate the intercourse, and govern themselves accordingly !" Other instances are more protracted, the im- pressions previous to a certain moment only being capable of renewal. Mrs. S , an intelligent lady, belonging to a MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 263 respectable family in the State of New-York, some years ago undertook a piece of fine needlework. She devoted her time to it almost constantly for a number of days ; but, before she had completed it, she became suddenly delirious. In this state, with- out experiencing any material abatement of her disease, she continued for about seven years, when her reason was suddenly restored. One of the first questions which she asked on this convalescence re- lated to her needlework. It is a remarkable fact that, during the long continuance of her delirium, she said nothing, so far as was recollected, about her needlework, nor concerning any such subjects as usually occupied her attention when in health. We read in Dr. Abercrombie of a lady reduced by disease, in whose mind the memory of ten years was lost. " Her ideas were consistent with each other, but they referred to things as they stood be- fore her removal (to Edinburgh)." In these instances it is probable that the fault may be referred to the original impression, some disorder or state of the brain causing it to be only superficially impressed during these ten years of oblivion. There is a curious story in the History of the Royal Academy of Sciences, which Beattie has re- corded in these words : " A nobleman of Lausanne, as he was giving or- ders to a servant, suddenly lost his speech and all his senses. Different remedies were tried, without effect, for six months ; during all which time he appeared to be in a deep sleep or deliquium, with various symptoms at different periods, which are particularly specified in the narration. At last, af- ter some chirurgical operations, at the end of six months his speech and senses were suddenly re- stored. When he recovered, the servant to whom 264 MATERIAL CAUSES OP DREAMS. he had been giving orders when he was first seiz- ed with the distemper, happening to be in the room, he asked whether he had executed his com- mission ; not being sensible, it seems, that any in- terval of time, except, perhaps, a very short one, had elapsed during his illness." Ida. I have read two stories of melancholy ro- mance, which are not mal-a-propos to your argu- ments, Evelyn, in which the memory of one intense impression has " gone into a being," influencing the current of every after thought, and the mind seeming ever after unconscious of all past or pres- ent but the incident of one moment. A gentleman, on the point of marriage, left his intended bride for a short time. He usually trav- elled in the stage-coach to the place of her abode ; but the last journey he took from her was the last of his life. Anxiously expecting his return, she went to meet the vehicle, when an old friend an- nounced to her the death of her lover. She utter- ed an involuntary scream, and one piteous excla- mation, " He is dead !" From this fatal moment, for fifty years, has this unfortunate female daily, in all seasons, traversed the distance of a few miles to the spot where she expected her future husband to alight from the coach, uttering, in a plaintive tone, "He is not come yet; I will return to-mor- row." A young clergyman, on the eve of marriage, re- ceived a severe injury. During his future life of celibacy, which was protracted to the 80th year, this one idea only possessed his mind, that his hour of happiness was approaching, and, to the last mo- ment, he talked of his marriage with all the passion of a devoted lover. Ev. Thanks to your own memory, Ida, for these incidents. That the possession of the faculty of MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 265 this impression of memory can be demonstrated, we might doubt, were verbal description only employ- ed ; but when we see the artist trace the features of a person long lost to us from memory, we know that such ideas existed, and were then re-excited in his mind. The power of the intellect in retaining these impressions is wonderful. Cyrus is said to have remembered the names of all his soldiers, and The- mistocles those of two thousand Athenians. We have records from Seneca and others, that some will remember, after one perusal or hearing, very long poems, and even have repeated, word for word, the unconnected jumble of a newspaper. Pascal, as we are told by Locke, never forgot any- thing. Almost equally retentive was the memory of my excellent teacher, Sir Astley Cooper, and hence his nearly unexampled accumulation of facts. The memory of Ben Jonson was retentive to per- fection until the fortieth year of his age. In his youth he could repeat an entire volume after its perusal ; nay, even the whole of his own works, or, as he quaintly writes, "All that ever I made." We know that Bloomfield composed his "Farmer's Boy" in the bustle of a shoe manufactory, and wrote from his memory. Astr. I have heard that the particles of the body are constantly changing ; if so, how can memory exist in the brain 1 Ev. The answer is easy. Because particles of exact similarity are deposited as others are remo- ved ; the parts thus regenerated, of whatever struc- ture they may be, still being identical and unchan- ged in function. If the dream be an inspiration, Astrophel, it is like " a spirit of the past," and does not " speak like sibyls of the future." Z 266 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. But, ere I offer some analogies of waking mem- ory in illustration of the causes of the dream, I must again fatigue you by a glance at the physiol- ogy of memory; the origin or mode of impression of a sense, and the mode of recurrence of such im- pression, i. e., the excitement of the dream. Aristotle has asserted that senses cannot receive material objects, but only their species, or eiSojXov; and Mr. Locke entertained the same idea; for this effect, however, matter must have touched a sense, and its impression, as Baron Haller thought, must have been mechanical ; for instance, the rays ema- nating from a body, and impinging on the retina, or an undulation of sound on the labyrinth of the ear, stamp an image on the brain, by which (in ac- cordance with a prior observation on illusion) some minute change is inevitably effected, some minute cerebral atoms are displaced. j* If you propose to me that curious physiological question, in what consists the function of a nerve — in oscillation, or in undulation of a fluid, in elec- tricity, or in magnetism ] or how the nerve carries this impression to the brain % or if you desire me to meet the subtle objection which Dr. Reid advan- ced against the opinion of Aristotle and the more modern psychologists, I might weary you with con- jectures like those of Newton and Hartley, that some ethereal fluid was, by the impulse of peculiar stimulus to its nerve, the cause of the senses ; or that the mental phenomena are an imparting, or influence of the immaterial soul by corporeal vibra- tion ; or that dreams are " motions of fibres /" and at length, with humility, confess this to be a mys- tery we cannot yet fathom. And this I do the more willingly, as it may prove my devotion to the proper limits of our study ; moreover, the question itself is not essential to my argument. MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 267 Yet it is certain that external impressions of ev- ery object or subject reach the brain through the medium of a nerve, and when the same fibrils of those nerves, or that spot of brain on which the original image rested, are again irritated by their proper stimulus, or by the same or a similar body, an association is 'produced, and memory is the result. For the ensurance of this sense of touch, and feeling, and perception, it is essential that the im- pression at the end of a nerve shall be perfectly transmitted along its course to the brain, so that the brain shall be conscious, or sensible of this im- pression ; for if a nerve be cut asunder, or a lig- ature be placed on any portion of it between the skin and the brain, the sensation instantly ceases. It is not essential, however, that the contact should take place at the moment of the perception ; and the explanation of this involves one of the most curious phenomena of the body's feeling, and, indeed, the metaphysical mystery of the nature of memory, which is too abstruse a point to be touch- ed by us here. After amputation, the patient may still complain of pain, and heat, and coldira the dis- severed limb ; he experiences the memory of a sensation; he feels, as it were, the ghost of his arm or leg. On the night succeeding the operation, the groaning patient has often cried out to me with pain in the toe or finger of that limb ; and when he is moved or shifts his position, he will attempt to hold his leg, or will beg his nurse to take care that she does not touch or run against it. Nay, I have frequently, on asking a patient how he felt, even after the lapse of many months from the oper- ation, been answered that he was well, but had not lost the pain in his leg ; or that his leg or his arm were lying by his side, when, perhaps, the limb was undergoing the Drocess of maceration in the 268 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. dissecting-room, or the bones were bleached and dangling in the museum. The pain, or common feeling of the limb, has stamped an image or eidolon on the brain which is not easily effaced ; there remains an internal sen- sibility on this point of memory. If the subject be subsequently presented to the mind by a touch at the end of the stump, or even by a thought, the idea of the limb that had lain dormant will be re- excited by that wondrous sympathy of brain and nerve, and the result will be a consciousness of having once possessed, or of having experienced a pain in this leg. And on this principle of the force of memory we may explain many of our excited feelings : those which remain after we have been wafted in a boat, or rolled along in a carriage, or whirled aloft in a swing ; the nervous impression in the brain is re- excited ere it was exhausted. Now an image may be stamped on the brain in a tumult without our cognizance or perception, and then revived in slumber ; we wake in wonder at having seen what we never saw or thought of before. Such is the dream of Lovel, in the " An- tiquary ;" and such the rationale of that tale of mystery respecting the <£6 in the Glasgow Bank, which a dream seems certainly to have developed. And it is evident that these impressions may re- cur the easier in slumber, because there is no fresh impression on the senses to produce confusion. But then all these images may be presented at one time, so that we may have either a chaos or a correct concatenation — an incident, which Hobbes and other early metaphysicians confess to be inex- plicable to tliem. In the words of Spurzheim, " Memory is the re- production of a conception ;" and Gall believed INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 269 that u Remembrance is the faculty of recollecting that we have perceived impressions ; and memory, the recollection of the impressions themselves, ," I read that Esquirol has drawn a distinction be- tween hallucination and illusion; the first is from within, the second from without. The argument I have adduced of memory and impression — the one at the beginning, the other at the end of nerves — will, I think, illustrate this perfectly. Halluci- nation, being internal, is of the past ; illusion, ex- ternal, of the present. Another metaphysician, Bayle, it is clear, was not ignorant of the basis of phrenology, or of this difference, when he alludes to " certain places on the brain on which the image of an object, which has no real existence out of ourselves, might be excited." INTENSE IMPRESSION.— MEMORY. " The dream's here still : even when I wake, it is Without me as within me ; not imagined, felt." Cymbeline Ev. I believe, then, that waking and slumbering association is memory ; and I have interposed the glimpse of metaphysics to break the monotony of my illustrations, for they are not yet exhausted. A gentleman, as we read in Dr. Pritchard's work, was confined, after a severe accident, for several weeks, and the accident was not once, during this period, remembered by him ; but, on his conva- lescence, he rode again over the same ground, and all the circumstances instantly flashed across his mind. In their youth, Dr. Rush escorted a lady, on a holyday, to see an eagle's nest. Many years af- terward, he was called to attend her in the acute Z2 270 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. stage of typhus ; and, on his entrance into her chamber, she instantly screamed out, " Eagle's nest !" and, it is said, from this moment the fever "began to decline. We ourselves have witnessed these flashes of memory more than once during the acuteness of brain fever, where journeys, and stories, and stud- ies have been renewed after they had been long forgotten. There are many romantic incidents in illustra- tion which have been beautifully wrought into a poem, or drama, as that play of Kotzebue, written to illustrate the happy success of the Abbe de l'Epee in France, in imparting knowledge and re- ceiving sentiments from the deaf and dumb. In this, the young Count Solar, by gestures, unfolds, step by step, his birthplace, and at length screams with joy, as he stands before the palace of his an- cestors. Then there is the story of little Montague, who was decoyed by the chimney-sweep. Some time after this, the child was engaged to clean the chim- ney of a mansion, and, descending into a chamber, which had been, indeed, his own nursery, lay down, in his sooty clothes, on the quilt, and by this happy memory discovered his aristocratic birth. This is the incident which still enlivens the pageantry of May-day. These reminiscences will occur sometimes in the most sudden and unexpected manner. In one of the American journals we are told of a clergyman who, at the termination of some depressing malady, had completely lost his memory. His mind was a blank, and he had, in fact, to begin the world ot literature again. Among other of his studies was the Latin language. During his classical readings with his brother, he one day suddenly struck his INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 271 head with his hand, and stated that he had a most peculiar feeling, and was convinced that he had learned all this before. Boerhaave, in his " Prelectiones Academic. In- stitut. Med.," relates the case of a Spanish tragic writer, whose memory, subsequently to an acute febrile disease, was so completely impaired, that not Only the literature of various languages he had studied was lost to him, but also their elements, the alphabets. When even his own poetic com- positions were read to him, he denied himself to be the author. But the most interesting feature of the case is this : that, on becoming again a votary of the Muse, his recent compositions so intimately resembled his original productions in style and sentiment, that he no longer doubted that both were the offspring of his own imagination. Even Priestley's master-mind was sometimes sleeping thus, being subject (to quote his own words) " to humbling failures of recollection ;" so that he lost all ideas of things and persons, and had so forgotten his own writings, that, on the perusal of a work, he sat himself to make experiments on points which lie had already illustrated, but on which his mind was then a " tabula rasa" Above all, the superlative memory of Sir Walter lay in a deep sleep after a severe indisposition. It is recorded by Ballantyne, that when " the Bride of Lammermoor, in its printed form, was submit- ted to his perusal, he did not recognise, as his own, one single incident, character, or conversation it contained ; yet the original tradition was perfect in his mind. When Mrs. Arkwright, too, sung some verses of his, one evening, at Lord Francis Egerton's, the same oblivion was o'er his mind, and he whispered to Lockhart, 'Capital words; whose are they ] Byron's, I suppose ; but I don't remember them.' " 272 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. My friend Dr. Copland informed me (in May, 1839) of a lady of fifteen, Miss D- , who, in consequence of extreme exhaustion from disorder, forgot all her accomplishments, and had to begin her education afresh. The Countess of Laval had, in her childhood, been taught the Armorican of Lower Brittany (which is a dialet of the Welsh), but had, as she believed, forgotten it. On attaining the adult pe- riod, this lady had an acute fever, and, during her delirium, she ceased to speak in her native lan- guage, and chattered fluently in the bastard Welsh. A foreign gentleman, as we were told by Mr. Abernethy, after an accident on the head, spoke French only, and quite forgot the English, which he had before this spoken very fluently. A Welsh patient in St. Thomas's Hospital, some years since, having received an injury, began to speak in Welsh, and ever after continued to do so, although before his accident he constantly convers- ed in English. On the contrary, we learn from Dr. Pritchard of a lady who, after a fit of apoplexy, forgot her original language (the English) and spoke only in French, so that her nurses and servants conversed with her only by interpreters. There may be a partial derangement of memo- ry, one set of impressions only being erased. A friend of Dr. Beattie, in consequence of a blow on the head, lost only his attainments in Greek ; and Professor Scarpa (whose corpus stria- tum was disorganized) lost only the memory of proper names. You may now comprehend how instantaneously material impressions derange and destroy memory, and its converse, the production of memory by mate- rial impressions, will be far less mysterious to you. INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 273 But creatures to which the gift of intellect is not granted, in which innate ideas cannot arise, still evince the faculty of memory. It is, therefore, possible that fish and insects, possessing memory, dream. Of course the doctrines of Pythagoras, and Simonides, and the story of the interpretation of the language of birds by the vizier of Sultan Mahmoud, are mere fables, and the cackling of the Roman geese was accidental; yet the bird does possess the memory of language, and the power of imparting ideas. Nightingales' notes (as Bechstein has beautifully recorded them) seem to me like the Mexican lan- guage, and to express variety of sentiments of ado- ration and love. The parrot, magpie, jackdaw, jay, starling, and bulfinch are prattlers; and the exquisite little canary, the pupil of my friend Mrs. H , the pet, indeed, not only of its mistress, but of statesmen and learned physiologists, warbled its words in purest melody. From Sir "William Temple we learn the faculty of the wonderful par- rot of Prince Maurice of Nassau, at the Hague, that responded almost rationally to promiscuous questions. Granting, then, this faculty of memory, it is clear the bird may dream, and I may add one other quotation from the " Domestic Habits of Birds" in proof of this. " We have, however, heard some of these night- songs which were manifestly uttered while the bird was asleep, in the same way as we sometimes talk during sleep — a circumstance remarked by Dry- den, who says, " ' The little birds in dreams their songs repeat.' " We have even observed this in a wild bird. On the night of the 6th April, 1811, about ten o'clock, a dunncock {accentor modularis) was heard in a garden to go through its usual song more than 18 274 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. a dozen times very faintly, but distinctly enough for the species to be recognised." The night was cold and frosty, but might it not be that the little musician was dreaming of summer and sunshine 1 Aristotle, indeed, proposes the question whether animals hatched from eggs ever dream. Marc- grave, in reply, expressly says that his "parrot, Laura, often rose in the night, and prattled while half asleep." Among quadrupeds, it is probable that those which, by their half-reasoning instinct, approach nearest to the power of comparison, and those which, in contrast to the callous-Tioofed, possess an acuteness of feeling, and therefore the nearest ap- proximate intelligence, are the most prone to dream. Although we know nothing of the dreams of that very learned dog which Leibnitz assures us he saw, and which uttered an articulate language, and often enjoyed a chat with his master, yet of the slumbering visions of the canines I have many illustrations. Vic, a fat terrier, was a somniloquist. She would bark, and laugh, and run round the room, or against tables ; the surest proof of som- nambulism. Indeed, dogs are celebrated by many poets for their dreaming propensities. Ennius writes : " Et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat." And Lucretius has left us a very comprehensive poetical account of the dreams of brutes. Even Chaucer refers to these dreams ; and in the Hall of Branksome, " The stag-hound, weary with the chace, Urged in dreams the forest race." It is probable that the dreams of brutes are very slwrt. From simple, unassociated memory, too, springs INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 275 the dream of the infant, pure and innocent as the thought of a cherub ; for delight is the common feeling of a dreaming child ; and when its lips are touched in sleep, the memory of its mother's bo- som will excite its lips and tongue to the congenial action of suction, though a fright of the previous day will change its slumbers into moments of ter- ror, and it will murmur and cry in its dream. I believe it is Sir H. "Wotton who lays much stress on the adoption of flans of education for a child, grounded on the discovery of its secret thoughts during its simple somniloquent dream. Cast. It is wonderful how vividly are revived in our dream those scenes of our early life which our waking efforts could not recollect. This did not escape Chaucer, as I remember in Dryden's version of a fable : " Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind, Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind. The nurse's legends are for truths receiv'd, And the man dreams but what the boy believ'd. Sometimes we but rehearse a former play, The night restores our actions done by day." Ev. Yet do not associate this brilliancy of infan- tine reminiscence with vigour of the thought. The brain in children is, as it were, like wax, easily impressible. And remember, the ideas of children are more resembling the imperfect associations of our dreams ; the tutorage of our advancing mind fills it with more serious and rational images char- acterized by judgment. The first impressions of childhood are bright as fancy, so that we think in waking more of things present ; but in dreams of things long agone there is, in fact, no complete oblivion in a healthy mind, for any one of our infantile impressions may chance to be brought to us in our dream. But if impression be intense, it may assimilate 27G INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. that of childhood, and become as permanent. My friend, Dr. Uwins, told me of a patient who, in a joke, once amused himself by throwing stones at the gibbeted pirates on the bank of the Thames. An epileptic tendency succeeded; and ever after this, his dreams were of gibbets and chains, and to that degree that his judgment and philosophy were powerless in controlling his fears. And in the book of the Prussian Greding we read of J. C. V., a youth who, in his eighth year, had been attacked by a dog. His future, and, in- deed, nightly dreams, were of this creature, and these so intense as to reduce his health to a very low degree. Now it is easy to believe the period of slumber so limited that the subject of reflection shall not have disappeared, that the thought had scarcely time to cool : " Lateat scintillula forsan." Thus Moses Mendelssohn had all the sounds heard during the day reverberating in his slumbering mind. Or we may suppose that the idea last imprinted on the mind, or by which it had been exclusively occupied, and the thoughts which are so much mod- ified by our temperament, study, and contempla- tion, would be the first to influence as the mind awakened, ere the image of fresh objects had been again perceived. Sir Walter, in his diary, thus writes : " When I had in former times to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me. I am in the nabit of relying upon it, and saying to myself when I am at a loss, ' Never mind, we shall have it all at seven o'clock to-morrow morning.' " Warton, the professor of poetry at Oxford, after INTENSE IMPRESSION MEMORY. 277 partaking of a Sunday dinner with a friend, repair- ed to his service at his church. On his way, he was powerfully saluted with a cry of " Live mack- erel." He slumbered in his pulpit during the singing of the psalm, and, on the organ ceasing, he arose, half awake, and instead of his solemn prayer, cried with a loud voice, " All alive, all alive oh !" I remember the story-tellers in the coffee-houses at Aleppo, as if aware of this last impression, used to run out when they perceived they had excited a deep interest. Ida. It is curious to hear, even by your own quotations, Evelyn, that poets have so revelled in the luxury of dreams, from Homer to Pope, chiefly employing them, however, as the materiel of their poesy. Have they condescended to glance at their causes 1 Ev. Lucretius, Claudian, George Stepney, Dry- den, and a few others. Apropos as to causes. In the " Anatomy of Melancholy" we have the following quaint summary : " As Tully notes, for the most part our speeches in the daytime cause our fantasy to work upon the like in our sleep, so do men dream on such subjects they thought on last: " ' Somnia qua? mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris, Nee delubra deum nee ab aethere numina mittunt, Sed sibi quisque facit,' &c. For that cause, when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had posed the seventy interpreters in order, and asked the nineteenth man what would make one sleep quietly in the night, he told him ' the best way was to have divine and celestial meditations, and to use honest actions in the daytime.' L od. Vives wonders how schoolmen could sleep quietly and were not terrified in the night, they had such mon- strous questions and thought of such terrible mat- A A 278 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. ters all day long. They had need, among the rest, to sacrifice to the god Morpheus, whom Philostra- tus paints in a white and black coat, with a horn, and ivory box full of dreams of the same colours, to signify good and bad." Cast. These are the manufacture, I presume, of two of those sons of sleep, born to him by a beautiful but erring grace, " Phantasus," or Fancy, and " Phobetor," or Terror. With the relations and illustrations of these good and bad dreams, the pages of both fiction and authentic history abound : another poetical batch of causes, Ida. Lucian ex- claims, " Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man, Oh Marcia ! I have seen thy god-like father — A kind, refreshing sleep is fallen upon him. I saw him stretched at ease, his fancy lost In pleasing dreams. As I drew near his couch, He smiled, and cried, ' Caesar, thou cans't not hurt me.' " Another poet writes thus : " But most we mark the wonders of her reign, When sleep has lock'd the senses in her chain : When sober judgment has his throne resign'd, She smiles away the chaos of the mind ; And, as warm fancy's bright elysium glows, From her each image springs, each colour flows. She is the sacred guest, th' immortal friend ; Oft seen o'er sleeping innocence to bend, In that dead hour of night, to silence giv'n, Whispering seraphic visions of her heav'n." Then Richmond exclaims, " My heart is very jocund in the remembrance of so fair a dream;" while the coward conscience of Richard thus speaks, " By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard, Than could the substance of ten thousand soldiers." Aufidius thus recounts his slumbering memory of the prowess of Ooriolanus : 1 This happy Rom this proud Marcius, haunts me. Each troubled ni t . when slaves and captives sleep, INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 279 Forgetful of their chains, I in my dreams Anew am vanquish'd ; and beneath his sword With horror sinking, feel a tenfold death — The death of honour." And yet another : " Though thy slumber may be deep, Yet thy spirit shall not sleep. T'aere are shades that will not vanish, There are thoughts thou canst not banish." And, lastly, Crabbe, in his " World of Dreams :" " That female fiend, why is she there ? Alas ! I know her. Oh, begone ! Why is that tainted bosom bare ? Why fixed on me that eye of stone ? Why have they left us thus alone ? I saw the deed — " Astr. You will drown us in a flood of Helicon, fair lady, if you thus dole out the thoughts of these maudlin poets. The records of national and do- mestic history, the dreams of the conqueror of thousands, and of the midnight assassin, are re- plete with incidents, if we will search for them, more impressive, ay, and more romantic, than all this rhyming ; and from the legends of history alone I could select a legion of dreaming mysteries which would dissolve all these finespun theories of Evelyn regarding the essence, as he terms it, of the dream. He must adopt a clearer course, in showing us his causes, than by harping on this fa- vourite theme of memory ; and We must listen through another moonlight ere we be made wiser by the unfolding of this grand secret of visions. 280 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD IN THE BRAIN. " I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain." Romeo and Juliet. Ev. That I may explain to you the predisposition of a dream — in other words, the state of broken slumber — it is essential that I recur to the physiol- ogy of the brain ; and I must humble our pride by combining some of the debasing conditions of our nature, as influential on the divine mind, through the medium of its chambers of marrow ; for to the intimate condition and function of the brain and its nerves, and its contained blood, we must chiefly look for elucidation of the physical causes of a dream. Yet I may even grant you, for an argument, As- trophel, the flight of an immortal spirit, and all the amiable vagaries of Sir Thomas Brown, reserving to myself to prove at what moment we become con- scious of this flight. In natural actions there are ever three requisites, like the points of a syllogism 1. A susceptibility of influence ; 2. The influence itself; 3. The effect of this influence : And these I call the predisposing, the exciting, and the proximate causes. 1. The brain is brought to this susceptibility by excited temperament, study, intense and undivided thought ; in short, by any intense impression. 2. The influence or excitement is applied ; con- gestion of blood producing impression on the ex- tremities, or origin of a nerve, at the period of de- parting or returning consciousness. At these pe- riods the blood changes, and I believe, as it chan- IN THE BRAIN. 281 geSj the phenomena of mind, as in the waking state, obey these changes : rational and light dreams being the effect of circulation of scarlet blood ; dull and reasonless visions and " nightmare" that of crimson, or black blood. 3. The effect of this influence is recurrence of idea, memory, more or less erroneously associated, as the blood approximates to the black or scarlet state, or as the brain itself is constituted. Now it is essential to the perfect function of the brain not only that it shall have a due supply of blood, but that this blood shall be of that quality we term oxygenated. If there be a simple defi- ciency of this scarlet blood, a state of sound, un disturbed sleep will ensue (slightly analogous to the condition of syncope, or fainting). This may be the consequence of any indirect impression, or the natural indication of that direct debility which we witness in early infancy, and in the " second childishness and mere oblivion" of old age. But this deficiency of arterial blood may be depending on a more positive cause, venous congestion, impe- ding its flow ; for in sleep, the breathing being slower, the blood becomes essentially darker. Even arterial blood itself will become, to a certain degree, carbonized by lentor, or stagnation. Ve- nous congestion and diminution of arterial circu- lation are not incompatible ; indeed, Dr. Aber- crombie reasons very ably on their relative nature, implying the necessity of some remora of venous circulation to supply that want or vacuum which the brain would otherwise experience from the deficiency of the current in the arterial system. Thus will the languid arterial circulation of the brain, which causes sleep in the first instance, pro- duce, secondarily, that congestion of blood in the veins and sinuses which shall reduce it to disturb- Aa2 282 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD ed slumber, and excite the dream. May we not account, on this principle, for the difficulty which many persons experience in falling into a second slumber when they have been disturbed in the first ? Ida. Combe, I believe, observed, through a hole in a fractured scull, that the brain was elevated du- ring an apparent dream. Ev. This is a matter of frequent observation with us. There was, in 1821, at Montpelier, a woman who had lost part of the scull, and the brain and its membranes lay bare. When she was in deep sleep the brain lay in the scull almost mo- tionless ; when she was dreaming it became ele- vated ; and when her dreams (proved by her rela- ting them when awake) were on vivid or animating subjects, but especially when she was awake, the brain was protruded through the cranial aperture. Blumenbach states that he himself witnessed in one person a sinking of the brain whenever he was asleep, and a swelling with blood when he awoke. David Hartley, therefore, may be half right and half wrong when he imputes dreams to an impediment to the flow of blood, a collapse of the ventricles, and a diminished quantity of their contained serum. We thus have not only a deficiency of proper stimulus, but a deleterious condition of the blood, which acts as a poison to the brain. In fatal cases of coma and delirium we observe deep red points, chiefly in the cineritious part of the brain, from this congestion of its vessels. Sound sleep is thus prevented, but the congestion of carbonized blood, acting as a sort of narcotic, depresses the energy of the brain so far as to prevent waking, inducing that middle state, drowsiness or slumber ; so that sleep may thus depend on congestion/>0W exhaus* IN THE BRAIN. 283 tion ; and "spectral illusion" from congestion in that state short of slumber ; and insanity itself from congestion still more copious and permanent. From this results a disturbed condition of the brain ; it is irritated, not excited, by its healthy or proper stimulus ; and it follows that such derange- ment of the manifestations of mind ensues as we term a dream. Waking, however, soon takes place, and the blood is more scarlet, and the facul- ties themselves gradually awake. As this is more perfect, we remember the dream, and are enabled to explain it, and know that it was a dream. The mind is now restored, so that scarlet blood indicates healthy thought, and black blood its reverse. Your pardon for this prolixity and dulness. The healthy or unhealthy crisis of the blood is a most important subject in our argument, and too constantly slight- ed in the question of illusion. Monsieur Denis records the story of a young man of Paris, in the seventeenth century, who was cured of a stubborn and protracted lethargy by the transfusion of the arterial blood of a lamb ; and an- other of a recovery from madness by that of the ar- terial blood of a calf, and these in presence of men both of science and high quality. I do not affirm my implicit faith in this state- ment of the effect of gentle blood, but I am certain of the poisonous influence of that of another qual- ity ; and I will cite a passage from Hoffman, the German poet, whom Monsieur Poupon, in his " Il- lustrations of Phrenology," adduces as a specimen of marvellousness, ere I offer my cases. " Why do my thoughts, whether I am awake or asleep, always tend, in spite of all my efforts, to the gloomy subject of insanity ] It seems to me as if I felt my disordered ideas escaping from my mind like hot blood from a wounded vein." 284 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD This was figurative, but it was true ; for of itself this black blood may be suddenly the cause of fu- rious and fatal mania. When Dionis, in his " Cours d'Operations de Chirurgie," is referring to that operation that has lately, by its revival, occu- pied so much of the attention of the medical world (the process of transfusion), he says, " La fin fu- neste de ces malheureuses victimes de la nouveau- te, detruisit, en un jour, les hautes idees qu'ils avoient concues ; ils devinrent foux, furienx, et moururent ensuite." The relief of the brain, by the escape of this blood, is of deeper interest to science than the mere romancer may imagine. Sir Samuel Romilly was for a moment, I be- lieve, in a state of sanity, when blood had flowed from the divided vessels of his throat ; for he at- tempted, it appeared, to stop its flow by thrusting the towel with some force into the wound. So diseases of the heart, by keeping the black blood in the brain, predispose to dreaming. Du- ring the age of terror in France, organic diseases of the heart and cases of mania were most preva- lent. I may for a moment indulge in analogies regard- ing this arrest of the blood. Cases of inflammation of the ear are often seen in confirmed maniacs (the helix being usually the part most inflamed), and black blood often oozes from the part. M. Calmeil considers chronic phlegmasia of the brain as the cause of insanity, the derangement it- self being, as it were, the moral result or disease, and the organic changes or proximate cause the physical disease ; both being but the sequelee, or consequence of inflammation. A boy, the servant of a medical friend (Mr. A ), was, some years ago, placed under my IN THE BRAIN. 285 care for fever, with delirium. About the acme of his disorder, the impetuosity of the blood in the vessels of the head was such as to project his ears prominently forward, like those of a satyr, or, as the gossips thought, rather of a demon. Yet all this subsided as the fever waned. Yet, believe me, I draw a decided distinction between mania and dreaming, though the phenom- ena may sometimes bear resemblance. In one es- sential point they differ : that the transient illusion is not manifested except during slumber, or a state closely analogous to it, when the senses are lan- guid, or asleep. It is true, however, the maniac will, on his recovery, often dream of the subject of his insanity, yet insanity is more exemplified by action, the dream being usually passive. The predisposition to insanity is often, too, he- reditary, so that the slightest moral influence, im- perceptible, perhaps, to the physician, may incite such a mind to madness ; for where there is no predisposition, that is, a perfect integrity of brain, a right judgment is evinced even under the potent influence of the passions. As the condition of insanity, so the illusive vision does not always primarily depend on medullary disease ; there are primary moral as well as phys- ical causes. But even the exertion of thought, which the ultra spiritualist may term an immaterial faculty, is attended by increased action on the mat- ter of the brain. The organ of mind will, if dis- eased (though not always), produce deranged ac- tions. Yet it is equally true, if even a sound brain be badly instructed, and its passion uncon- trolled, insanity may ensue, not, however, with- out quickly, I believe immediately, inducing struc- tural change. On one point, the dream and insanity are often 286 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD alike; they are mental fulfilments of a wish ; and the dreamer during his slumber, and the madman throughout his derangement, are presented with the spectra of their desires, and their hopes and fears become, for these periods, reality. It was with a reference to the wanderings of the understandiii in dreams that Sir James Mackin- tosh thus writes, in a letter to Robert Hall : " These will familiarize your mind to consider its other aberrations as only more rare than sleep and dreams, and in process of time they will cease to appear to you much more horrible." Astr. And pray, Evelyn, how doth all this pro- found prosing affect the subject of dreams % Ev. By similitude. I may even remind you, with devout veneration, of the dreams of a prophet, to prove the brain highly sensitive when these vis- ions are before it. Listen to the words of Daniel, to whom " God gave knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom." " I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit, in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head troubled me." "And I, Daniel, fainted, and was sick certain days." Even here, may we not believe that the Creator did not alter his law \ It was Dr. Cullen who first drew a parallel be- tween insanity and dreams. As some proof of his insight, we read in Lode of a man who never dreamed until he fell into a fever in the twenty- fifth year; in Beattie, of a young friend who never dreamed unless his health was deranged. And Mr. Locke thus writes : " I once knew a man who was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told me that he had never dreamed in his life until he had fever." IN THE BRAIN. 287 This immunity from dreams is also most marked in savages, unless during disorder, or at the dying moment. Ulloa, Humboldt, and La Condamine all agree as to the character of indolence and ab- sence of thought and fancy in the native Americans, and it is as sure that they seldom dream. Now, whatever influence tends to arrest or de- range the upper circulation of the blood in its return to the heart, or to detain it in the vessels of the brain, or which presses on an important nerve, so as to disturb the function of the brain or spinal cord by continuous sympathy, may be the remote cause of the phenomena of dreaming. Such are the results of repletion, dyspepsia^ the supine position, &c, &c. And here, Astrophel, I meet your metaphysician. Galen, and indeed the ancients generally, attrib- uted dreams chiefly to indigestion, but referred their immediate excitement to fumes and vapours instead of to nervous influence, or cerebral conges- tion from interrupted circulation. Cast. And here, Evelyn, courtesy might have prompted you to meet my poets. Let me see — is it not Dryden who writes of " Rising fumes of undigested food, And noxious humours that disturb the blood ?" And in a poem believed to have been written by Chaucer there is this passage : can I remember his quaintness ] " I supposed yt to have been some noxiall fantasy, As fallyth in dremes, in parties of the nyght, Which cometh of joy or grievous malady ; Or of robuste metes which causeth grete myght ; Overmoche replet obscuryth the syght Of natural reasonne, and causyth idyll thowght, Makyth the body hevy where hyt was lyght." And again, in the tale of the " Nonnes Preest :" " Swevenes (dreams) engendren of repletions, And oft of fume and of complexions, 288 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD When humours ben to habundant in a wight. Of other humours cou'd I telle also, That werken many a man in slepe moch wo," &c. Ev. I sit reproved, fair lady. Herodotus also says, the Atlantes never dream ; which Montaigne refers to their never eating anything which has died of itself. And Burton thus sums up his pre- cepts of prevention : " Against fearful and troublesome dreams, in- cubus, and inconveniences wherewith melancholy men are molested, the best remedy is to eat a light supper and of such meats as are easie of diges- tion, no hare, venison, beef, &c. ; not to lie on his back," &c. Dryden, to ensure his brilliant visions of poesy, ate raw flesh ; and Mrs. Radcliffe, I am told, adopt- ed the same plan. We know that green tea and coffee, if we do sleep, induce dreaming ; and Bap- tista Porta, for procuring quiet rest and pleasing dreams, swallowed horse-tongue after supper. Indigestion, and that condition which is termed a weak or irritable stomach, constitute a most fruit- ful source of visions. The immediate or direct in- fluence of repletion, in totally altering the sensa- tions and the disposition in waking moments, is a proof of its power to derange the circulation of the brain and the mental faculties in sleep. " Somnus ut sit levis, sit tibi ccEna brevis." The influence of the great sympathetic nerve in this respect is very important. With many per- sons, a meal is usually followed by feelings of de- pression, impaired memory, unusual timidity, de- spondency, and other illusive characteristics of hys- teria and hypochondriasis. And events will appear of the greatest moment, which, after the lapse of some hours, will be considered mere trifles ; so that, after all, there is some truth in the idea of IN THE BRAIN. 289 that arcJiceus, or great spirit, asserted by Van Hel- mont to sit at the cardia of the stomach, and regu- late almost all the other organs. The posture of supination will unavoidably in- duce that increased flow of blood to the brain which, under certain states of this fluid, is so essen- tial to the production of brilliant waking thoughts ; an end, indeed, attained so often by another mode — the swallowing of opium. A gentleman of high attainment was constantly haunted by a spectre when he retired to rest, which seemed to attempt his life. When he raised him- self in bed, the phantom vanished, but reappeared as he resumed the recumbent posture. Some persons always retire to bed when they wish to think ; and it is well known that Pope was often wont to ring for pens, ink, and paper in the night, at Lord Bolingbroke's, that he might record, ere it was lost, that most sublime or fanciful poesy which flashed through his brain as he lay in bed. Such, also, was the propensity of Margaret, duch- ess of Newcastle, who (according to Cibber, or, rather, Sheil, the real author of the " Lives of the Poets") "kept a great many young ladies about her person, who occasionally wrote what she dic- tated. Some of them slept in a room contiguous to that in which her grace lay, and were ready, at the call of her bell, to rise any hour of the night to write down her conceptions, lest they should escape her memory." Henricus ab Heeres (in his " Obs. Med.") says that, when he was a professor, he used to rise in the night, open his desk, compose much, shut his desk, and again to bed. On his waking he was conscious of nothing but the happy result of his compositions. The engineer Brindley even retired to bed for 19 Bb 290 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD a day or two when he was reflecting on a grand or scientific project. I deny not that the darkness or stillness of night may have had some influence during this inspira- tion. I may also allow that some few individuals compose best while they are walking ; but this peripatetic exertion is calculated, itself, to produce what we term determination of blood to the head. I have heard of a most remarkable instance of the power of position in influencing mental energy, in a German student, who was accustomed to study and compose with his head on the ground and his feet elevated, and resting against the wall. And this is the fragment of a passage from Tis- sot on the subject of monomania : " Nous avons vu etudier dans cette academie i-1 n'y a pas long-tems, un jeune homme de merite, qui s'etant mis dans la tete, de decouvrir la quad- rature du circle, est mort, fou, a l'hotel Dieu, a Paris." You will smile when I tell you that the tints of the landscape are brighter to our eyes if we reverse the position of the head. And now, with your leave, gentle ladies, I will bring phrenology to my aid. If we assume that there may be distinct portions of the brain, organs of comparison, individuality, causality, &c, we naturally regard them as the source of that combined faculty which we denomi- nate judgment. We might argue that, if these or- gans were permanently deficient, fatuity, or, at least, extreme folly, would be the result. By par- ity of reasoning we might infer, that if the function of such organs were for a time suspended, imagina- tion, having lost its mentor, would, as it were, run wild, and an extravagant dream, granting an ex- citement, would be the result. If the organ of col- IN THE BRAIN. 291 our be excited, and form be asleep, we may have an eccentric drawing. If language and imagination are both awake, a poem or romance ; so it may chance that, if all the proper organs are awake, there may be a rational dream. I yield not to the too finely-spun hypotheses of Gall, and his first whimsical topography of the cranium ; the incipient idea of which, by-the-by, he owes to the Arabian phrenologists, who, even in the olden time, had glimpses, although they deci- ded on a different location. Imagination was in the frontal region, reason in the medial, and mem- ory in the occipital. In Dr. Spurzheim's beautiful demonstration of the brain, he exhibits it almost as one large con- voluted web. While the ultra-phrenologist is un- ravelling these convolutions, it is strange that he sees not the inconsistency of his cranial divisions. Some of the boundary lines of his organs must be drawn across these convolutions. It will ever be impossible to decide the exact course of these, but the lines should be drawn in the direction of their fibres ; for if the faculty be seated in one convolu- tion, that faculty would proceed in the course of its fibres, and not across the fissure from one lobule to another. Now the most frequent coincidence of the possession of great mental power, with full development of the frontal region of the scull, will naturally lead us to believe that it may depend on causation. Indeed a scull, as well as expression, may be phrenologically changed by culture or thought. The scull of William Godwin, in early life, indicated an intellectual development ; then it became sensual, the occipital organs being in ex- cess ; and again, as his mind was subject to more moral culture, the intellectual ox frontal again pre- vailed. I am informed, also, by Miss A , that 292 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD there was observed a progressive development of the intellectual region in the head of her father, an acute and deep thinker. We have analogies to this in physiognomy. Caspar Hauser lost some of the negro fulness about his mouth after he had been introduced to society. Perhaps the contrasted beauty and deformity in the forehead and eye, and in the mouth of Sheri- dan, was a faithful indication of that paradox of mind which was never more perfectly displayed than in the intellectual dignity and moral deficiency of this man. As no function, then, either of brain or gland, can be carried on without a due supply of blood, it will follow that position may materially influence the integrity of these functions. The seat of the organs I have alluded to, if cranial de- velopment supports me, may be determined on the fore part of the head, behind the osfrontis, portions of the cerebral mass which, in the supine position, are usually most elevated above the centre of cir- culation. " The more noble the faculties, the higher are the organs situated." These, conse- quently, may endure a deficiency of stimulus, in comparison with other organs more favourably sit- uated. The phrenologist, then, will endeavour to prove that the supine position generally produces vascular pressure on particular parts or organs of the encephalon ; and he will argue that dreams arise from individual organs abstractedly or uncon- nectedly acting. There is one spot on the cranium, indeed, identified by Dr. Spurzheim as a most im- portant item in the composition of a good dreamer. He tells us that " persons who have the part above and a little behind the organ of ideality developed are much prone to mysticism, to see visions and ghosts, and to dream." It may not be difficult to believe in this partial IN THE BRAIN. 293 function of the brain, when we recollect how often the loss of one faculty will be connected with par- alytic disorders. The faculty of perception may be lost, unless the impression cm the mind is made through a particular sense. Thus patients may be unable to comprehend that name or subject when it was pronounced, or related, which they will im- mediately do if written down and presented to the sight — the optic nerve may transmit while the audi- tory has lost its power. " Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures, Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta ridelibus." Of this axiom there is an illustrative story by Darwin, in his " Zoonomia." A paralytic man could see and hear, but the mind was conscious of vision only. If the hour of breakfast were named to him, he repeated it and was passive ; but if the hour were iwinted out on the watch, he compre- hended at once, and called for breakfast. On the contrary, there may be the same imper- fection of outward transmission ; the lingual nerves , influencing the tongue to sound a name inapplica- ble to the idea, the person often reversing the names of articles which he is continually using. These phenomena regarding nerves of sense, then, are strictly analogous to those which we rec- ognise in those parts of the brain which are inti- mately connected with, or influenced by these nerves of sense : thus, in analogy to waking illu- sions, we have the imperfect associations of a dream when the organs are irregularly acted on. 294 INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. " O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream." Romeo and Juliet. " Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard, And weigh thee down." — King Richard III. Astr. I will no longer hesitate to grant that the dream occurs in the moment of departing or re- turning consciousness. Still, are you not reversing the order of these phenomena % may not the excite- ment of vague ideas in the mind be itself the cause of waking, and not the consequence of slumber, or half sleep % Ev. I believe not, except the sensibility of the body be influenced by touch, or sound, or by op- pressive congestions of blood in the brain, causing that state of disturbance which reduces sound sleep to slumber ; as in the instance of " Nightmare," which is to the mind what sensation is to the body, restoring it to a state of half- consciousness, essential to that sort of dreaming in which we make a pain- ful effort to relieve, and at last awake. Cast. Mara, by my fay ! the night-spectre of Scandinavia ; that evil spirit of the Runic theology, who weighed upon the bosom, and bereaved her victims of speech and motion : that oppressive dream, therefore, termed Hag-ridden, or, in the Anglo-Saxon, Elf-siderme. Is it not she of whom it is written, " We seem to run, and, destitute of force, Our sinking limbs forsake us in the course. In vain we heave for breath, in vain we cry ; The nerves unbraced, their usual strength deny, And on the tongue the faltering accents die." Ev. A very faithful picture. Sound sleep will often be broken by pain or un- easiness occurring in a particular part of the body; the dream will then often bear an instructive refer- INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 295 ence to the seat and nature of such pain. If cramp has attacked any of the limbs, or the head has long been confined back, the dream may be enlivened by some analogous tortures in the dungeon of the Inquisition ; and it is curious that a waking wish for some relief from unpleasant sensations will be re-excited in the dream — a dreamy fulfilment. Captain Back, during one of the Arctic expedi- tions, when nearly in a state of starvation, often dreamed of indulging in a delicious repast. And Professor Stewart thus writes : " I have been told by a friend that, having occasion to apply a bottle of hot water to his feet, he dreamed that he was making a journey to the top of Mount ^Etna, and that he found the heat of the ground insupportable. Another, having a blister applied to the head, dreamed that he was scalped by a party of Indians." If on these occasions we are warm in bed, our dreams will be often pleasing, and the scenes in the tropics ; if cold or chilly, the reverse, and we shall believe ourselves in Zembla. Holcroft had been musing on the probabilities of life and death, and one night went in pain to bed. He dreamed his body was severed above his hips, and again joined in a surprising manner. He was astonished to think he was alive, and afraid of being struck, lest the parts should be dissevered. Tempests heard in a slumber will be often asso- ciated with a dream of shipwreck ; and some per- sons will dream of their having given pain to or in- jured others ; they wake, and find some close an- alogy to their own sensations. It is recorded that Cornelius Rufus dreamed that he was blind, and so, indeed, he awoke. In other cases we have the double touch, as it is termed ; dreams of forcible detention occur, and the sleeper has found that he had with one hand 296 INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. tightly grasped the other. If this hand had been moved in sleep unconsciously, the dream, no doubt, would have been essentially changed. And thus we have all the phenomena realized which Shaks- peare has referred to in the visitations of his in- corrigible Mab. Elliston was always awaked by nightmare when sleeping in a strange bed. As in some persons, by submitting the body to certain impressions during sleep, associated dreams may be produced at pleasure ; so, if the body or legs hang over the side of a bed, we may instantly dream of falling from a precipice ; and it is cu- rious that, under these illusions, we awake when we are past hope, and our despair is at its height; in falling, at the moment we are about to be dashed to atoms ; and in drowning, when the last bubbles are gurgling in the throat. When we read in the Bodleian, Astrophel, I will point you to other curious experiments of this sort by M. de Buzareingries. Sounds, also, may be partly associated with the dream at waking, and with reality when awake. Under this illusive impression, even murder has been innocently committed on one who waked, and stabbed his brother at the moment he was dream- ing of assassins. Cast. And so may be explained, I suppose, this funny anecdote. A young lover was drooping into a day-dream while sitting with his bi others and sisters, and his thought had turned on the cruelty of his mistress. He was for a moment dreaming of her, when pussy, stretching her paws, scratch- ed his leg with a claw : there was an instant asso- ciation, I presume, of the wound with the lady's cruelty, for he started and exclaimed, " Oh, Ara- bella, don't »" INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 297 Ev. Hippocrates quaintly alludes to the dream- ing about seas and lakes as an indication of hydro- thorax, and to others as symptomatic of effusion on the brain ; and it has been asserted that gloomy dreams in fevers indicate danger. But all this is hypothesis ; indeed, the delirious dreams of fever are often bright and cheerful. The " Opium-eater" has a strange fancy regard- ing his dreams of " silvery expanses of water ;" " these haunted me so much, that I feared that some dropsical state or tendency of the brain might thus be making itself objective, and the sentient or- gan project itself as its own object." I hope you understand this, Astrophel ; I do not. In the morbid condition of hypochondriasis, which is a sort of permanent day mare, similar fancies are excited. Esquirol's patient at N6tre Dame thought the pope held council in her belly ; her intestines were found closely adherent together. Another monomaniac thought the devil had stretched a cord across her stomach ; her heart was adherent to its bag. Another believed that her body was stolen by the devil ; she was in reality paralytic, and in- sensible to blows or pricking. To explain some of these illusions, Jason Pra- tensis very gravely asserts that, " the devil being a slender, incomprehensible spirit, can easily insinu- ate and wind himself into human bodies, and, cun- ningly couched in our bowels, terrify our souls with fearful dreams." I may add that we see, in some, a delirious trans- migration of sensation. Parkinson relates these cases. One referred his own sensation to others, telling his nurse that his visiters were hungry, while his own voracity plainly indicated that the hunger was in himself. Another, in a fit of intoxication, insisted on undressing all his family, as they were drunk, and could not do it themselves. 298 INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. \ Now we certainly move ourselves unconsciously in our sleep as a relief from painful positions. If, however, these uneasy sensations are increased from stagnant blood about the heart and lungs, the op- pression is extreme, and loads the moving powers, producing a transient agony and an intense effort. If this were unsuccessful on the limbs and speech, the result would be often destructive. The nightmare dreamers are usually lethargic, and their ideas are often wild and visionary. Polidori, the author of the " Vampire," was a prey to nightmare ; he died with a laudanum bot- tle in his bed. And Coleridge might have thus left a sad and pointed moral, blazoning his wretch- ed suicide to that world which, unconsciously, has pored with a thrill of admiration over those fruits of his delinquency, the romantic and unearthly v stories of Christabel and the Ancient Mariner. ^v^Ji The grand feature of nightmare, then, is impedi- ment ; but how can I record all its varieties of mis- erable struggles ; of attacks and manglings from wild monsters ; of the rolling of mountains on the heart ; or the unhallowed embraces of a witch 1 The young lady who reads mythology will fancy herself a syrinx, and struggle to escape from the amorous clutches of Pan. If we have been think- ing of Chamouni and her giant peaks of snow, we may be overwhelmed in our sleep by the fall of an avalanche; or we may be dashed off a precipice, and feel ourselves falling into interminable space without a hope of resting. A lady whom I know, and who is a frequent sub- ject of nightmare, is very uniform in this dreamy occupation. She is shaken to and fro in her bed by fiends, and the process seems to her to occupy considerable time. And there are many who are tortured by the feeling that they are buried alive, INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 299 and attempt to cry out, and. beat against their coffin- lid in vain. Aurelian writes that the epidemics in Rome were premonished by incubus. These, and thousands of a similar kind, might be cited ; but a vivid imagination, with a hint or two, will readily create them at its pleasure. " A battalion of French soldiers, during the toils and dangers of a campaign, were marching on a cer- tain point on a most oppressive day, and at double the usual speed ; their strength was eight hundred men, all hardy, seasoned, and courageous ; care- less of danger, despising the devil, and little occu- pied with the thoughts of ghosts and phantasmago- ria. On the night of the occurrence in question, the battalion was forced to occupy a narrow and low building at Tropcea, barely calculated to ac- commodate three hundred persons. Nevertheless, they slept ; but at midnight, one and all were roused by frightful screams issuing from all quar- ters of the house, and to the eyes of the astonished and affrighted soldiers appeared the vision of a huge dog, which bounded in through the window, and rushed, with extraordinary heaviness and speed, over the breasts of the spectators. The soldiers quitted the building in terror. Next night, by the solicitations of the surgeon and chef de bataillon, who accompanied them, they again resumed their previous quarters. ' We saw,' says the narrator, * that they slept. We watched the arrival of the hour of the preceding panic, and midnight had scarcely struck when the veteran soldiers, for the second time, started to their feet. Again they had heard the supernatural voices, again the visionary hound had bestrode them to suffocation. The chef de bataillon and myself heard or saw nothing of these events.'" The superstitious thought this spectre to be the 300 INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. devil ; but the heat and carbonic acid gas were, I believe, enough for the excitement of the phantasm and the feeling. There can scarcely be imagined a more terrific feeling than this sense of extreme danger or diffi- culty, this intense impediment, without a power to avert it. The constant labour of Sisyphus, with his rolling-down stone, and the punishment of Tan- talus, would yield in severity to the agony of night- mare, but for its transient existence. It seems to me that this want of balance between will and power influences human nature so much, that life itself may be termed one long and painful incubus. The actions we perform seldom reach the perfection which the will desires. Hence arises that constant dissatisfaction, which even the close approach to perfection of some of the most accom- plished professors of art and science cannot avert. We must confess, with Socrates, that the extent of our knowledge is, indeed, but a conviction of our ignorance. The metaphor of Sir Isaac New- ton, on the insignificance of his own scientific at- tainments, is well known. Sir Joshua Reynolds so highly appreciated perfection in his art, that he was ever discontented with his own paintings, and frequently, as I have heard, by repeated touches, destroyed the effect of a picture which had been in its early stages beautiful. And Dr. Johnson, after astonishing the world with his perfect speci men of lexicographical composition, confessed that he " had not satisfied his own expectations." May I add to these the frequent discontent of the unri- valled Paganini ? Ida. The desire of the mind is, indeed, unlimit- ed ; and when this is intense, it wishes to appro- priate to itself all which it can comprehend. But disappointment must ensue ; for all wish to be the INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 301 whole, when they form but a part. Thus will ever be proved the futility of worldly ambition — it is never satisfied. But the desires of religion are not a phantom or an incubus. True devotion, which aspires to heaven, as the hart panteth for the water- brooks, will never fail. Its fervent hopes and de- vout prayers, we believe, will be blessed by their accomplishment. Cast. Then the visitations of the incomparable Mab are naught but the infliction of the nightmare 1 Gentle Master Evelyn, how I should be aweary of your philosophy, but that I am half won over to believe it true ] In good faith, " The Gordian knot of it you do unloose Familiar as your garter." Ev. Then, I pray you, let me counsel you not to court such visits, dear Castaly. There is some peril in the touch both of Mab and Mara ; for, al- though rare and transient cases of nightmare ex- cite no alarm, yet its repetition, in a severe form, is not to be slighted. It sometimes has been the forerunner of epilepsy ; its immediate cause being obstruction to the course of the blood by which the brain especially is surcharged, and the action of the lungs and heart impeded, as we prove by the extreme labour of breathing at the time we awake. I believe that there is usually a fulness of blood, also, in the vessels of the spinal marrow ; as, al- though nightmare may occur in the sitting, it is far more frequent in the recumbent position. Thus the marrow is oppressed, and there is then no force transmitted by the nerves to put the muscles into action. Distention of the stomach should be prevented, as the diaphragm is thus pushed up against the lungs, and the gas is accumulated in the cavit}'. All these conditions often occur in our waking Cc 302 SOMNILOQUENCE. SOMNAMBULISM. moods, but then our judgment tells us how to re- lieve them speedily ; whereas, in sleep, the load ac- cumulates. All indigestible substances, therefore, should be avoided, as nuts, cucumbers, shell-fish, &c. Early and light suppers we advise to those whom Madame Mara so unmercifully overlies. A mat- tress should be our couch, and we should endeav- our to compose ourselves on one side, having, pre- vious to our rest, taken gentle exercise. SOMNILOQUENCE.— SOMNAMBULISM. " It is a sleepy language ; and thou speak 1 st Out of thy sleep." — Tempest. " Doct. You see her eyes are open. Gent. Ay, but their sense is shut." " A great perturbation in nature. To receive at once the ben- efit of sleep, and do the effect of watching." — Macbeth. Ev. In the common dream, ideas float through the mind, but the body is passive. When the power of expressing these ideas by speech is added, it is somniloquence. When there is the conscious, yet powerless will to move, it is incubus. When the unconscious power of moving in accordance with the ideas or wishes of the dream exists, it is som- nambulism. The common dreams of sleep are not unfolded to us until the waking recollections of the dreamer relate them ; but the matter of a dream may be half developed during its existence, by the curious propensity to unconscious talking and walking in the sleep. Sleep-talking is the slightest of these phenomena, and, indeed, closely resembles the speaking reveries of some absent people, and the raving of a maniac. The sleep is, at this time, little deeper than a revery. The voice of the somniloquist is usually natural^ SOMNILOaUENCE. 303 but as again, in the cases of mania and of delirious excitement, a common voice may become sweetly- melodious, and there will be an imparted fluency allied to the inspiration of the improvisatore. Indeed, in some young ladies subject to hysteria, I have known, at certain periods, as it were, a new accomplishment, a style of singing which was far beyond their power in waking moments. Dr. Dewar relates a case of a girl who, when awake, discovered no knowledge of astronomy or the sci- ences in any way, but when she was asleep she would define the rotations of the seasons, using ex- pressions the most apt to the subject, such as " the globe is now set agee." It is probable that this was the memory in slumber of some geographical lesson which she had heard, but did not remember while her senses were active, that is, in her waking moments. And an American lady, during a fever, commenced a course of nocturnal prating, compo- sing most eloquent sermons, chiefly made up, how- ever, of remembered texts of Scripture. I am informed, too, that a lady of Edinburgh, during her somnolent attacks, recited somewhat lengthy poems ; and it was curious to notice that each line commenced with the final letter of the preceding. These sleep-talkings are sometimes the mere lispings of an idiot ; although Astrophel, perchance, may contend that the following, written down from the lips of a servant maid, is a proof of special in- spiration, converting a rustic girl into an improvis- atrice. " You may go home and wash your hose, And wipe the dew-drops from your nose, And mock no maiden here. For you tread down grass, and need not ; Wear your shoes, and speed not, And clout leather's very dear ; But I need not care, for my sweetheart Is a cobbler." 304 SOMNILOaUENCE. I have heard this trash cited as a proof of facil- ity of composition in slumber. You do not believe it such ; like other specimens, it was a ruse of a wanton girl to excite admiration. In the magnetic somnambulism of Elizabeth Okey, that cunning lit- tle wench, who was the prima buffa of the magnetic farces enacted at the North London Hospital, would often skip about and sing snatches of equal ele- gance : " I went into a tailor's shop To buy a suit of clothes, But where the money came from, G — Almighty knows." These are, indeed, the very burlesque of somnilo- quence; and yet Okey was an invalid, and presu- med on the credulity of those who ministered to her. True somniloquence is often preceded by a cat- aleptic state ; and in girls like this, the senses are often so dull that the firing of a pistol close to the ear does not rouse them until the poetic fit is over. Cast. Were sleep-talking more common, it would, indeed, be a very dangerous propensity. If the confessor were to prate in his sleep of the pec- cadilloes of the fair penitents that kneel at his con- fessional, if the minister on his couch were to di- vulge his state secrets or his fine political schemes, where would be the tranquillity of domestic or na- tional society % Yet the lips of the love-sick maid- en have not seldom whispered in sleep her bosom's secret ; and sometimes the unconscious tongue has awfully betrayed even the blood stain on the hand. Thus did the ill-mated Parisina of Byron : " Fever'd in her sleep she seems, And red her cheek with troubled dreams ; And mutters she, in her unrest, A name she dare not breathe by day." The fate of Eugene Aram, I believe, may be imputed to such an unfortunate propensity ; and in somnambulisaM. 305 Lady Macbetli's "Out, damned spot!" was con- fessed her participation in the murder of Duncan and the grooms. Somewhat like this, too, was the half-sleeping exclamation of Jarvis Match am after he had com- mitted the murder of the drummer boy. Starting from his bed when roused by the waiter, his first words were, " My God ! I did not kill him." Ev. A dream will sometimes half wake even a child to a state of terror, although children are with difficulty completely roused. I have known in- stances in which children would sit up in bed, with their eyes open, sobbing, and talking, and staring in a sort of trance ; nay, they will sometimes start from bed, but still asleep, and, after a time becom- ing calm, they have again composed themselves to slumber. I have known sleep-talkers who have not re- membered one iota of their wanderings when awake ; and even the ecstatic somnambulist, who pretends to prophesy wisdom, recollects nothing when the ecstasy is over. It is clear, also, that the mind varies in sleep and waking in regard to its memory ; for it has been proved that persons who often talk in their sleep have renewed the exact points of a subject which terminated their last sleep- talking, although, in the waking interval, it was to them oblivion. Somnambulism is the most perfect paradox among the phenomena of sleep, as it exhibits actions with- out a consciousness of them ; indeed, so complete a suspension of sensibility, that contact, nay, in- tense inflictions, do not produce that mental con-, sciousness which is calculated to excite alarm, or even attention. There is a somewhat remote analogy to this in the want of balance between the judgment and vo- 20 C c 2 306 SOMNAMBULISM. lition of ambitious minds. In the campaign of Russia, Napoleon's march was a sort of somnam- bulism, for he must have been madly excited to action against his better judgment. In this he forms a curious contrast with his royal predecessor; for in Louis XVI. we observe a mind that might conceive great things, but which volition hesitated to accomplish. The points of the mystery of somnambulism were never more forcibly illustrated, to my own mind, than in the following cases : In 1833, a man was brought before Alderman Thorp who had- a parcel cut from his arm, al- though he had strapped it tightly on to prevent this, as he was often falling asleep, even during his walk. Yet, even then, he usually took the par- cels to their proper directions. The crew of a revenue boat on the coast of Ire- land, about two o'clock in the morning, picked up a man swimming in the water. He had, it appear- ed, left his house about twelve, and walked two miles over a most dangerous path, and had swum about one mile. After he was taken into the boat, he could not be persuaded that he was not still in his warm bed at home. In 1834, Marie Pau was admitted into the hos- pital at Bordeaux, her left hand and arm covered with deep and bleeding gashes, its tendons project- ing, and the bones broken. She had, in her sleep, gone into a loft to cut wood with a hedging bill ; thinking she was cutting the wood, she had hack- ed her forearm and hand until she fainted away, and fell bathed in her blood. She had felt no pain, but merely had a sensation as if the parts were pricked with pins. Some time ago (I believe in the year 1832), a journal thus records a case analogous in its nature, although less unhappy in its effects : SOMNAMBULISM. 307 " Some fishermen at Le Conquest, near Brest, were surprised at finding, at two o'clock in the morning, a boy about twelve years old up to his waist in the sea, fishing for flounders, of which he drew up five or six. Their surprise, however, was increased to wonder when, on approaching him, they found that he was fast asleep. He was taken home and put to bed, but was immediately after- ward attacked with a raging fever. Ida. These walkers were of low degree ; I pre- sume philosophy is not altogether exempt from the fault. Ev. Oh no : Galen was U somnambulist ; and Franklin assures us that, in a warm bath at South- ampton, he floated on his back nearly an hour in his sleep. Now that there is an apathy of the senses during somnambulism is clear, for the eyelids are unclosed, and if a candle be held to the eye of the somnam- bulist, the actions of the iris are seen, but there is seldom aversion of the head to avoid the glare. Was Mrs. Siddons aware of this when she smelt to her bloody hand, but did not look upon it? In sleep-walking, indeed, there is always one, at least, of the five senses asleep. The actions of somnam- bulists often appear almost automatic, without a reason for them ; somewhat resembling instinct, as the beaver will still build his dome for shelter even under a roof, or as monomaniacs will do a work in three or four different places, forgetful of their previous labour. It is evident, too, that there is a dulness of reflection when the progress is im- peded. The somnambulist will try to move on in a straight line, overturning things in his course : thus Mathews, in Somno, overturned the tables, but had not the judgment to go round them. Un- der very great obstruction to their ' progress, the somnambulists will sometimes burst into tears. 308 SOMNAMBULISM. , Gall relates the case of a miller who every night got up and worked in his mill, asleep ; and Mar- tinet, of a saddler, who also worked nightly in his sleep ; and Dr. Pritchard, of one who had been subject to epileptic fits, thus : " They ceased en- tirely until the nineteenth year of his age, when he became a somnambulist, working during the night at his trade as a saddler, getting out on the roof of the house, going out to walk, and occupying himself in a thousand various ways. Soon after this the fits of epilepsy reappeared, occurring every five or six days, increasing in duration, and commencing from that time only with a sensation of heat, which, from the epigastrium, rapidly extended to the head, and produced complete insensibility. He was, at various times, relieved by bleeding; and, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, being then a soldier, he escaped three months without a return of his epilepsy. In the following year he was astonished to find himself one night on the roof of the house, w r et with rain ; the impression which he thence conceived produced, some time afterward, an at- tack of epilepsy, followed by contraction of his fingers and toes." In many cases, however, there is some predeter- minate motive for the walk which excites the mem- ory in the sleep. The somnambulist has been thinking deeply ere he retires to rest, and the walk occurs early in the night, so that we might believe a mood of musing had really prevented sleep, and itself been the cause of the phenomena. Thus may be explained the miracle recorded by Fulgosius. Marcus, the freedman of Pliny, dream- ed that a barber, sitting on his bed, had shaved him, and awoke well trimmed : Marcus had un- consciously shaved himself. And also other cases related by Dr. Pritchard, of which I will offer you a fragment. SOMNAMBULISM. 309 " He is just recovering from a singular state of revery, in which he has passed twenty-four hours. It began in the evening with a rigour, which con- tinued more or less the whole night. From that time he remained constantly in motion, walking up and down the room or about the house. He kept his eyes open, but was unconscious of exter- nal impressions ; sometimes he muttered to him- self, and by his gestures and the motions of his hands it appeared that he fancied himself to be working' in his usual occupation. In this state he remained all the ensuing night and a part of the following day. During that time he never ate or drank anything in a natural manner; he some- times caught hold of a piece of bread, and, having bitten it hastily, threw it down, and drank in the same way, immediately continuing his work. If he was spoken to, he was some time without ta- king any notice, and then would reply hastily, as a person does who is disturbed by a question when in a revery." Our study of these curiosities of mind teaches us how intimately combined in their essence are all the species of illusion. Somnambulism is a very common feature in epi- leptic idiots. In confirmed insanity, also, we ob- serve, in an intense degree, that fearless daring and almost preternatural power which characterize somnambulism. A Highland woman, in a state of puerperal mania, which was increased by a ter- rific dream, escaped to the gorges of the mountain, and herded with the deer. She became so fleet of foot that it was impossible to overtake her. One day, an awful tempest drove her and her " velvet companions" to the valleys, when she was secured. Providence, which " tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," had covered her body with hair. 310 SOMNAMBULISM. The dreamer walks and talks with imaginary- people — spectral illusion. The following is a per- fect illustration of this night-fantasy. It is a story- told to Sir Walter Scott by a Lisbon trader : " Somnambulism and other nocturnal deceptions lend their aid to the formation of such phantasmata as are formed in the middle state between sleep- ing and waking. A most respectable person, whose active life had been spent as master and part owner of a large merchant vessel in the Lisbon trade, gave an account of such an instance, which came under his observation. He was lying in the Tagus, when he was put to great anxiety and alarm by the following incident and its consequences : One of his crew was murdered by a Portuguese assassin, and a report arose that the ghost of the slain man haunted the vessel. Sailors are gener- ally superstitious, and those of my friend's vessel became unwilling to remain on board the ship ; and it was probable they might desert, rather than return to England with the ghost for a passenger. To prevent so great a calamity, the captain deter- mined to examine the story to the bottom. He soon found that, though all pretended to have seen lights and heard noises, and so forth, the weight of the evidence lay upon the statement, of one of his own mates, an Irishman and a Catholic, which might increase his tendency to superstition, but in other respects a veracious, honest, and sensible person, whom Captain S. had no reason to suspect would wilfully deceive him. He affirmed to Cap- tain S., with the deepest obtestations, that the spec- tre of the murdered man appeared to him almost nightly, took him from his place in the vessel, and, according to his own expression, worried his life out. He made these communications with a de- gree of horror which intimated the reality of his SOMNAMBULISM. 311 distress and apprehensions. The captain, without any argument at the time, privately resolved to watch the motions of the ghost-seer in the night, whether alone or with a witness I have forgotten. As the ship-bell struck twelve, the sleeper started up with a ghastly and disturbed countenance, and, lighting a candle, proceeded to the galley, or cook- room of the vessel. He sat down with his eyes open, staring before him, as on some terrible ob- ject which he beheld with horror, yet from which he could not withhold his eyes. After a short space he arose, took up a tin can or decanter, filled it with water, muttering to himself all the while, mixed salt in the water, and sprinkled it about the galley. Finally, he sighed deeply, like one reliev- ed from a heavy burden, and, returning to his ham- mock, slept soundly. On the next morning, the haunted man told the usual precise story of his ap- parition, with the additional circumstances that the ghost had led him to the galley, but that he had fortunately, he knew not how, obtained possession of some holy water, and succeeded in getting rid of his unwelcome visiter. The visionary was then informed of the real transactions of the night, with so many particulars as to satisfy him he had been the dupe of his imagination. He acquiesced in his commander's reasoning, and the dream, as often happens in these cases, returned no more after its imposture had been detected." The case I am about to relate occurred within my own experience. A butcher's boy, about sixteen years old, appa- rently in perfect health, after dozing a few minutes in his chair, suddenly started up and began to em- ploy himself about his usual avocations. He had saddled and mounted his horse, and it was with the greatest difficulty that those around him could remove him from the saddle and carry him within 312 SOMNAMBULISM. doors. While he was held in the chair by force, he continued violently the actions of kicking, whip- ping, and spurring. His observations regarding orders from his master's customers, the payment at the turnpike-gate, &c, were seemingly rational. The eyes, when opened, were perfectly sensible to light. It appears that flagellation even had no ef- fect in restoring the patient to a proper sense of his condition. The pulse in this case was 130, full and hard ; on the abstraction of thirty ounces of blood it sunk to 80, and diaphoresis ensued. After labouring under this phrensy for the space of an hour, he became sensible ; was astonished at what he was told had happened, and stated that he rec- ollected nothing subsequent to his having fetched some water and moved from one chair to another, which, indeed, he had done immediately before his delirium came on. Cast. In the monastery of , this story was told to a party of Alpine travellers, to beguile our winter's evening. A melancholic nobleman of Italy, Signor Augus- tin, walked usually at the waning of the moon. The walk was always preceded by his lying on his back with eyes fixed and open. At this time the beatings of his heart were scarcely perceptible. During this state he noticed none of his compan- ions around him ; but if any noise was made by them, his steps were hurried and agitated, and if the noise was increasad, a sort of maniacal state was induced. In his sleep he would saddle and mount his horse, he would listen at a keyhole if he heard noises in another room, and, if he entered his billiard-room, he would seem to be playing with the cue. On returning to his bed, he usually slept for ten hours after his walk. Tickling would al- ways rouse him. , In a Gazette of Augsburg I have read this sad SOMNAMBULISM. 313 story : " Dresden was the theatre of a melancholy spectacle on the 20th ult. As early as seven in the morning a female was seen walking on the roof of one of the loftiest houses in the city, appa- rently occupied in preparing some ornaments as a Christmas present. The house stood, as it were, alone, being much higher than those adjoining it, and to draw her from her perilous situation was impossible. Thousands of spectators had assem- bled in the streets. It was discovered to be a handsome girl, nineteen years of age, the daughter of a master baker, possessing a small independence bequeathed to her by her mother. She continued her terrific promenade for hours, at times sitting on the parapet and dressing her hair. The police came to the spot, and various means of preserva- tion were resorted to. In a few minutes the street was thickly strewn with straw, and beds were call- ed for from the house, but the heartless father, in- fluenced by the girl's stepmother, refused them. Nets were suspended from the balcony of the first floor, and the neighbours fastened sheets to their windows. All this time the poor girl was walking in perfect unconsciousness, sometimes gazing to- wards the moon, and at others singing or talking to herself. Some persons succeeded in getting on the roof, but dared not approach her, for fear of the con- sequences if they awoke her. Towards eleven o'clock she approached the very verge of the para- pet, leaned forward, and gazed upon the multitude beneath. Every one felt that the moment of the catastrophe had arrived. She rose up, however, and returned calmly to the window by which she had got out. When she saw there were lights in the room, she uttered a piercing shriek, which was re-echoed by thousands below, and fell dead into the street." D D 314 SOMNAMBULISM. Such would have been the result, according to poetical justice, in the beautiful romance of " La Sonnambula." Had Amina been awakened while she was descending, she would probably have top- pled down headlong ! Ev. Custom would render these wakings less formidable, perhaps. There was a family alluded to by Dr. Willis, in which the father and many sons jostled each other nightly in their sleep-walk. This was probably but a cheerful recognition and to sleep again. In Fraser's Magazine is recorded a very curious story of this sort. If I remember right, an individ- ual had the mortification of discovering, every morn- ing when he awoke, that the shirt in which he had slept was gone. Some trick was supposed to have been played upon him by an inmate of the house ; and, thinking that the practical joke would soon be abandoned, he went on day after day, till his stock of linen was completely exhausted. The individ- uals of the family were now anxiously examined, but no tidings of the stray linen could be obtained. It was at last suspected that some depredator had entered the house and unswathed his sleeping vic- tim, and a strict watch was made on the following night. At a suitable hour the somnambulist was seen to quit his bed, to pass through a skylight window to the roof of the house, to enter by an- other window a garret that was always locked, and to return shirtless to his lair. The garret was ex- amined, and the thousand and one shirts were found carefully wrapped up and deposited in a pyramid. Something like this is the story of the spectre of Tappington, in the Ingoldsby legends. The actions, therefore, unlike the ideas of a dream, are often neither heterogeneous nor incon- sistent, and it is astonishing to observe the exact- ness with which the work is executed. SOMNAMBULISM. 315 Dr. Pritchard tells the case of a farmer who arose, saddled his horse, and rode to market in his sleep : the Archbishop of Bordeaux the case of a student who composed both theological essays and music thus unconsciously. Now if the dreamer be awakened, he will relate the circumstances of his dream clearly ; but the somnambulist, if roused, will generally express himself unconscious of what he intended, or of what he had done. It is, by-the-by, often danger- ous, on another account, to wake the sleep-walker ; indeed, we have recorded the case of a young lady who was walking in a garden in her sleep ; she was awoke, and almost instantly died. But in some future somnambulism the same ac- tions will be again performed unheeded. And if there be memory of the sleep- walk, the somnam- bulist, I believe, always relates his actions as the mere ideas of a dream, and is long a skeptic of the fact, even if there are visible signs of his exertions. Cast. I can illustrate this question from the recollection and knowledge of an ancestor of my own. Early on a morning, an immense number of footprints were observed by the men about a gate (on a farm in Sussex), which were not there oxer night. On their return the servant-girl was relating her dream ; that she was told the cows had got into a wrong field, and that she had gone out, opened the gate, and driven them back. And I remember reading that a young gentleman of Brenstein was seen to rise, get out of his window on the roof, and take a brood of young magpies from their nest, and wrap them in his cloak. He then returned quietly to his bed, and in the morning related his dream to his two brothers. They had slept with him, and had witnessed this feat, of which he would not be persuaded until they showed him the birds in his cloak. 316 SOMNAMBULISM. I interrupt you, Evelyn. Ev. It is evident, as in dreams, and in rare cases of disease, that the mind of the somnambulist is often a contrast to its waking faculty. The mem- ory will leap over intervals. Dr. Dyce records an illustration of this. A girl, in a state of somnam- bulism, was taken to church, and wept at the sub- ject of the sermon. She never adverted to this impression when she awoke ; nor could she be brought to recollect it until, in her next sleeping paroxysm, she spoke of it distinctly. In delirium, also, we see these intervals of thought. The patient will commence a subject in the delirious state ; when this has subsided, the subject is dropped. In the next attack of delirium it will again be started, ay, and at the very point, even the word itself, at which it was broken off. We read in an American journal that a man, previous to an attack of mania which lasted several years, had placed his work-tools in the hollow of a tree. To them no allusion was made during the period of his disorder. When, however, this pass- ed off, he directed his son to fetch them, believing that he left them only yesterday. In the same book, too. we learn of that lady who became maniacal as she was engaged in needle- work. For seven years she thought not of this ; but directly she recovered, she asked for her nee- dle-work and canvass. The same may occur in in- toxication also, which is but another form of delir- ium. In Mr. Combe's work we are told of a drunk- en man who left a parcel at a wrong house. When sober, he recollected nothing of the circumstance ; but when again intoxicated, he soon remembered his eiTor, and reclaimed the parcel. Astr. These cases form high contrasts with Hamlet's proof of insanity : ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 317 " Bring me to the test, And I the matter will reword, which madness Wou'd gambol from." Ev. Yet, if you analyze their nature, you will find them even proofs of derangement; for you thus see that the faculty of memory is changed ac- cordinsr to the state of mind. In the followino: case by Dr. Abercrombie, we shall find the same variation in impression and taste. A girl, in her early youth, expressed her abhorrence of tunes played on the violin, which she termed a discord- ant fiddle. She was after this introduced into more refined society, and became a somnambulist. Du- ring her paroxysm she imitated the beautiful airs which she said she had formerly heard on the same violin. Lieutenant C was once my patient, and died a maniac. The insanity arose from thwarted am- bition, and was confirmed by his notion that he had seen his death-fetch. For some time he walked and talked in his sleep ; subsequently he would walk for an hour round the table unconsciously. In him, too, was this change of feeling. He once talked little, and cared less for his child ; but now he would caress it fondly, and expressed the deep- est anxiety for it. It was difficult to decide, at times, whether this gentleman was awake or not ; indeed, these states of mania, which have been termed " melancholia errabunda" by Bellini and Montalti, are closely allied to somnambulism, for the walker is absorbed in deep thought, and totally unconscious of his actions. And the analogy ap- pears to have been recognised by the law. It is well known that the brother of Lord Colepepper, who was a great dreamer and somnambulist, shot a guardsman and his horse. He was found guilty; but he was pardoned on the ground of his complete unconsciousness in his somnambulism. Dd2 318 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. We do not wonder more to see the perfection with which these unconscious labours of the som- nambulist are performed, than at the ease and power which is evinced, and the very slight fatigue which ensues, although the occupation might have been most laborious. As in chorea the most delicate girls will dance incessantly for twenty-four hours, resting merely for one sole hour, yet they will sit down perfectly cool and free from fatigue. Ida. Is it not wonderful that the somnambulist will incur great dangers with complete sang-froid ? They will walk over " Torrents roaring loud, On the unsteadfast footing of a spear ;" or scale the gigantic precipice, the mere contem- plation of which would fright their mind from its propriety when awake. I remember to have read of a French Jew, who walked by chance across a dangerous pass over a brook, in the dark, without the slightest fear or harm. The next day, per- ceiving what danger he had incurred, he fell down dead. Ev. It is equally curious that a concentration of nervous energy, which is here the result of uncon- sciousness, should also be produced by fear in some cases, which in others paralyzes ; but this is in- deed a slight degree of heroism, or energy of de- spair. Thus we leap far higher, and run much faster, when danger threatens, than we could be- lieve. These are all very apt illustrations of somnam- bulism. I will check myself in quotations of more, as the phenomena may closely resemble each other. But what is its philosophy, and how can I ven- ture on its explanation, which involves the most intricate pathology of the nervous system % unless, ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 319 with the self-complacency of the quaint old Burton, I cut the Gordian knot by this affirmation, " There is nothing offends but a concourse of bad humours, which trouble the fantasy. These vapours move the fantasy, the fantasy the appetite, which, moving the animal spirits, causeth the body to walk up and down, as if it were awake." Thus much I may expound to you, if I am again allowed to run up our scientific scale. The phi- losophy of the dream and of incubus refers to the activity of the brain with a passive body ; for som- nambulism, we require an active body with an un- conscious brain. Now there are Jour sources of nervous influence : the brain and cerebellmn, within the scull ; the marrow in the spinal canal ; and the nervous bun- dles in the large cavities termed ganglia. It is on the independent or unconscious function of the marrow, chiefly, that those mysterious ac- tions, which do not seem to be willed by a con- scious mind, depend. In the day-dream, a thought or form shall pre- sent itself, even at a time when the mind is em- ployed on subjects of a contrasted nature. These thoughts, or forms, are usually fraught with a high degree of pleasure or of pain, or refer to events of vital importance to the dreamer ; such are the ob- jects of the lover's idolatry, the anticipation of mis- fortune, or subjects of prospective felicity. Un- der this excitement, the influence of external ob- jects is often for a time lost; the retina may be struck by a ray, or the memhrani tympani by a vi- bration, but the mind shall fail in its perception, no internal impression being made. This cannot arise from a point of the retina, or the expansion of the auditory nerve being preoccupied, as some have supposed. The idea of material impression 320 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. must fail in explanation; for, on the instant that the mind is awakened, the external impression is again perceived. The external sense, in this case, is not in fault, nor is its direct influence on the sensorium suspended; for we find that a person will continue to read in this state, as it were, me- chanically ; but the attention is diverted by deep thought, so that the reader, at the end of his task, may have no remembrance of what he has been reading. Let me tell of a curious little episode of Dr. Darwin's, which will aid me in my illustration. A young lady was playing on the piano a very elab- orate piece of music. It was correctly and scien- tifically performed, although she was agitated du- ring her task ; and when it was over, the lady burst into tears. She had been watching all the time a favourite canary in the fluttering of death, and with this catastrophe her mind, was almost wholly occupied, but her fingers did not err in their complicated and delicate motions, which they un- doubtedly would have done if the will or mind alone had directed them. In sanity of mind, and in mania, the most phil- osophical distinction is based on the health or dis- ease of memory. The ecstasy of madness may not seem, perhaps, more irrational than an ecstatic vision ; but the maniac will not reword the matter, whereas the mere visionary will repeat the action of the trance as a dream. Astr. But there is a sort of somnambulism the reverse of this. In the retreat to Corunna, many of the soldiers, although exhausted by a long march, and having actually fallen asleep, continu- ed to move forward, leaving their companions be- hind, who halted and laid down to repose. Ev. This is the continued association of that ex < ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 321 citement which has produced muscular motion. The mind was exhausted and sleepy, the brain was inert ; but we believe that the spinal marrow does, of itself • effect motion, while the will and consciousness sleep ; and we may also stand and sleep. These soldiers did not walk in their sleep, but slept in their walk. Astr. I am informed, too, that Richard Turpin, in allusion to his famous flight to York, asserted that Black Bess appeared to gallop unconsciously. Ev\ It is true ; and when we reflect on this gi- gantic feat, we may suppose that the mare gallop- ed the farther, because her consciousness of fa- tigue was not awake, and her muscular energy was thus concentrated. Paralyzed muscles will often quiver when the sound limb is quiet ; the brain's influence being, in this case too, inert, sensation is diminished ; but involuntary motion continues from a habit in the muscle, or the excitement of unexhausted irrita- bility, as in chorea, spasm, &c. And in some cases of post-mortem galvanism, Dr. Dunbar, of Virginia, passed the galvanic aura along the ulnar nerve of an executed negro, and the fingers instantly quiver- ed, and assumed the attitude and action of one playing on a flute or the strings of a violin. Astr. It is possible, then, to move without our willing to do so, or being conscious of our act. Ev. There are believed to be, indeed it is al- most a demonstration, four sets of nerves, traced along the spinal marrow : two to the brain, of sensation and volition, by which the mind feels what the body touches, and transmits its will to the mus- cles ; two others to the marrow, by which it also is stimulated by outward touch, and by which it excites the muscles to motion. Now when the brain's influence is kept from a 21 322 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. muscle, that muscle will still possess irritability, de- rived from the spinal marrow ; nay, that irritability will be greater, because it lias not been expended by the acts of that volition which resides solely in the brain, and which is now cut off. Thus the excito- motory function, and the influence of volition, are, in these cases, antagonists. And this principle of the incident and reflex spinal nerve is an explana- tion of the curious dilemma, regarding the suspen- sion of the will in sleep and dream, to which Dr. Stewart alludes : " Not a suspension of volition, but only of its influence over those organs which it moves when we are awake." Decide for your- selves between the physical and metaphysical the- ories. Yet, do you not see that all this does not essen- tially require the direction of mind ] If you tickle the palm of a sleeping child, it will close its hand upon your finger ; if' you awake it, and engage its attention, it will often leave its hold. This is a fact proved by the anencephalous or brainless children. Even the puppy, deprived of its brain, and also the mammary foetuses of the kangaroo and opossum, fix eagerly on the nipple when it touches their lips. There is a beautiful mechanism in the foot of the roosting birds adapted to this physiological law. The tendon of the claws is tightened immediately they are touched, by which action they contrive to grasp the bough or perch even when asleep. In cases of paralysis even, the foot will sometimes be instantly drawn up, although it does not possess the least sensation ; we may assert, then, that irri- tability is in an inverse ratio to sensibility. The polype, in which we trace no brain or nerve, exists and moves by its irritability, and without sensation or consciousness. We know, also, that the vis insito, or vis nervoso of a muscle, that is, its ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 3-23 irritability, exists even after the animal life has ceased. The turtle will live and move long after its brain has been removed. The heart itself, an involuntary muscle, is stimulated also to action with- out sensation. The heart of the assassin Belling- ham beat long after he was cut from the gallows. If I have made these things clear, I am now pre- pared to explain, with some anticipation, those two curious contrasts, somnambulism and incubus. If the spinal or motive nerves be asleep, and the cer- ebral, or intellectual, or volition nerves awake, we shall have nightmare ; if, on the contrary, the mo- tive nerves are in excess, beyond the sensiferous or volition nerves, we have sleep-walking. Astr. I believe the philosophy of Leibnitz af- firms two perceptions ; one with, and another with- out consciousness. I do not recollect if he dis- tinguishes the seat of these 2 ierce P iwns > but if the brain be that which perceives, I presume con- sciousness will follow that perception sometimes in so slight a degree as not to excite judgment or re- flection. Am I correct \ Ev. You have adopted the common error of metaphysicians. If, in the abstraction of waking moments, some persons talk to themselves, as it were, unconsciously, so, from the reflex influence, may volition and motion occur, with as little self- feeling. That the immediate impression, however, and a necessity of action may combine, is illustra- ted by Dr. Beattie's case of the officer who could be thus excited in his sleep. By a whisper in his ear, he was induced to go through the whole cer- emony of a duel, and did not completely wake un- til the report of his pistol roused him. This gen- tleman was also told that he had fallen overboard, aud he began to imitate the motions of swimming ; then that a shark was following him, when he would 324 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. dive off his couch upon the floor ; and when he was told that the battle was raging around him, he proved himself an arrant coward by running aWay. Somnambulism may be induced by congestion or irritation of that point where the incident nerve blends with the gray matter of the spinal marrow, producing internal irritation, as the tickling of the foot does through the cutaneous nerves of a sense- less limb. Cast. We are thankless creatures, dear Evelyn, but all this reiteration bewilders me ; does it not you, Ida % Yet, in my simplicity, I can but think it unphilosophical entirely to disregard the will as the spring of our actions. Ev. If I must explain, fair lady, I cannot avoid prolixity. But to your question I will answer no ; for somnambulism may be excited by the memory of an intention. In the experiment made by the committee of the physical society of Lausanne, on the Sieur Devaud, of Vevay, it was proved that, on the evening before the fit of somnambulism, his head was heavy, and he had a sense of oppression on his eyelids. If, at this time, the mind was im- pressed by some legend, or story, or incident, the actions of the sleep-walk were perfectly coincident with such a subject. If a romantic tale of banditti were related, his alarm would be apparent in his subsequent sleep. In this somnambulist was beau- tifully illustrated the effect of permanent impres- sion on the brain, rendering, for a time, the sense of vision useless ; for, having once perused his pa- per, it was so imprinted on his mind, that the exact spot for each letter was exactly fixed on by the fin- ger ; and we have heard of one more interesting case, in which the somnambule, remembering that he had made errors in his writing, traced, on a blank paper substituted for that written on. the cor- ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 325 rections, in the very places corresponding to the er- roneous writing. And that here was memory was proved in this, that during the time his eyes were shut the pen was dropped on the very sjwt where the inkstanA stood ; but this being removed, no ink was obtained, and the writing was blank. Now we believe that there are certain vessels which contribute to nervous energy, perhaps by se- creting a nervous fluid in the brain, or by concen- trating electricity, which Dr. Faraday believes may constitute the animal portion of the nervous sys- tem. This influence may be profusely accumula- ted in a waking state ; the resolution to act has been formed, or there may be a rapid production in sleep of this energy. Then, when sleep occurs, this impression becomes uncontrolled. The third form of insanity of Spurzheim, irresistibility, exists, and the night-walk takes place ; and, indeed, it may form an interesting analogy to that satiety of the voluptuary, " Childe Harold," " Who e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below," and to one unhallowed story related in " Salmonia." From this excess there is the stimulus of pain to move, one of the most powerful motives of human action. Cardan, if we may believe in his "Opera et Vita," was at least a monomaniac ; and he " was wont instinctively, as it were, to relieve this ten- dency of his mind by the excitement of bodily pain." I may assure you that I have, during my profes- sional studies, often witnessed (and, indeed, have sometimes suggested) a remedy on this knowledge ; you may be aware that a severe and painful dis- order will mitigate, if not entirely dissipate, that apathetic misery which springs from a vacant or unoccupied mind. In contrasting childhood and age, we witness .... . . these curiosities in the restless activity of youth E E 326 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. and early manhood, for at these periods we are very constant somnambulists : not so in the passive state of old age, in which sleep-walking is very rare. Something of this we see also in the grow- ing pains and fidgets of girls and those whose du- ties are sedentary. Exercise is the relief for all this. Now when the sleep-walk has exhausted this excess of irritability or electricity (if it be so), the dreamer returns to bed and sleep. A hint is here thrown out to us, that if powerful exertion be em- ployed previous to sleep, the night- walk might not ensue. . Lethargy often terminates in somnambu- lism. If I may for another moment still prose over the intricate, but deeply interesting question of the pa- thology of somnambulism, I will observe, that we often find it one symptom of madness or idiocy, and we know that somnambulism not seldom ter- minates in epilepsy. In the brains of epileptic idiots, who are very determined somnambulists, we discover changes the most various : effusion, congestion, ossification of \ membranes, ramollissement, indurcisscment, bony spiculce, or points pressing the brain, tubercles, cysts. \ In some, the scull assumes the density of ivory. J Yet in those persons who have been known to be \ sleep-walkers, the inspection is seldom satisfactory. Plethora of the head has often, however, preceded the sleep- walk. Signor Pozzi, physician to Ben- edict XIV., if he submitted not to depletion each second month, became a somnambulist ; and we have known that in chorea, previous to the dance, and in some cases of somnambulism also, pain has been felt from the occiput along the course of the spinal marrow. This is from immediate excite- ment ; but dyspepsia and other abdominal derange' IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 327 merits may so influence the ganglia and nerves of organic life, and, through them, the brain and cord, as to excite sleep-walking by remote sympathy. That injuries of the nervous matter about the nape of the neck are of the highest importance in our studies of these eccentric actions, is certain. The experiments of Flourens show that the 'pro- gressive or forward motion of animals is influenced by varied states of the cerebellum. When Magen- die cut through the corpora striata, the animal dart- ed forward ; when the pons Varolii was cut, the animal rolled over sixty times in a minute. When a soldier is struck by a ball about the cer- vical vertebra, he often springs from the ground and drops dead. It is our duty, then, not to slight the condition of the somnambulist. It' simple irritation be its ex- citing cause, much benefit may be derived from counter-action on the surface, and other remedial means. Even if there be diseased structure, some palliation may be afforded. As preventives of the fit, we may inculcate an abstinence from late meals, exercise in the evening previous to retirement to rest, a high pillow, &c. If the propensity continue in spite of our efforts, it will be risrht to have the windows fastened or locked, and the door of the chamber bolted with- out ; or to confine the ankle or wrist to the bed- post by a long fillet, which may, by its detention, awake the sleeper on starting from the bed. IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. " Men, wives, and children stare, cry out, and run, As it were doomsday." — Julius Caesar. There are other very curious analogies of som- nambulism which are marked by a power of action 328 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. that appears preternatural. And here again we witness the irresistibility of motion, which seems to subvert the laws of gravitation and the princi- ples of mechanics. The involuntary twitchings and contortions of St. Vitus's dance present the slighter form of these eccentric actions, which, in the intense degree, become like the fury of a ra- ving maniac. In young girls there often is a proneness to be excited by slight causes — to be startled by mere trifles. Savary tells us of a man who, at two o'clock each day, was irresistibly impelled to rap at doors and make very odd noises, and felt intense pleas- ure in doing this. If this had occurred in the night, it would have been termed somnambulism. Gall also relates of a young man at Berlin, who, after rolling about in his bed for some time, and jumping out and in repeatedly in his sleep, at last started up awake, astonished at the crowd around his bed. And Dr. Darwin writes of. a boy nine years old, who went through a course of gymnas- tics, with an occasional song between the acts. At length he seemed bursting, and soon sank down in a stupor. Astr. I have read (I think in Mezeray) of an epidemic mania of this sort, in which the creatures tore off their clothes, and ran naked through the streets and churches, until they fell breathless on the ground. Some of them swelled even to burst- ing, unless they were bound down by cords. The disease was referred to the agency of demons, and treated by exorcisms ■ they even tore their flesh to free themselves from their possessing devils. I have seen also a confident story of some nuns, who jumped so high during an hysteric ecstasy, that they were at length seen to fly ; in imitation, IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 329 perhaps, of the Corybantes, the priests of Cybele, who, in the celebration of their mysteries, leaped and raved, like madmen in the midst of their shrieks and howlings. Ev. All these eccentricities amount to complete monomania for the time they last, and they are marked often by a very violent imitative propen- sity, like the delirium which came upon the Ab- derites on witnessing the performance of the " An- dromeda" of Euripides by Archelaiis. Of such nature was the " dancing mania" of the Middle Ages ; the tarantula of Apulia, in which melan- choly was succeeded by madness ; the feats of the Jumpers of Cornwall, and the Convulsionnaires of the Parisian miracles. Yet, with all this apparent violence, there might be a power of control by management. On some sudden and extreme mental influence, there was in the Maison de la Charite at Haerlem an infec- tious convulsion of this nature, so that the troop of little scholars, girls and boys, were a mere legion of dancing maniacs, and nothing appeared to re- lieve them until a ruse of the physician Boerhaave put to flight the illusion. With a solemn voice he pronounced, in the hearing of the little creatures, his decision that each of them should be burned to the bone of the arm with a red-hot iron. From that moment the mania subsided. Dr. Hecker, in his account of the Dance of the Middle Ages, notices two forms of this national monomania — " Tarantulism" and the " Danse de Saint Guy.'''' The first was marked by all sorts of illusions, demonomania, obscene dancing, groaning, and fall- ing down senseless. The persons who believed themselves bitten by the tarantula became sad and stupid. The flute or E e 2 330 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. guitar alone could give them succour. At the sound of its music they awoke, as if by enchant- ment ; their eyes opened ; their movements, which at first slowly followed the music, gradually be- came animated, until they merged into an impas- sioned dance. To interrupt the music was disas- trous : the patients relapsed into their stupidity, until they became exhausted by fatigue. During the attacks, several singular idiosyncracies were manifested, contrary to what occurred in Germany. Scarlet was a favourite colour, though some pre- ferred green or yellow. A no less remarkable phenomenon was their ardent longing for the sea ; they implored to be earned to its shores, or to be surrounded by marine pictures ; some even threw themselves into the waves. But the dominant pas- sion was for music, though they varied in their par- ticular tastes. Some sought the braying sound of the trumpet, others the softer harmony of stringed instruments. There was once a woman of Piedmont who was charmed by the " capriccio," played by the leader of an orchestra, into an ecstatic dance. In her, the sensations, as she expressed them, were so " strangely mingled" as powerfully to illustrate the fine line of distinction between pleasure and pain. She gradually became weaker, and the memory of the music was so intense, that, while she was irre- sistibly impelled to this maniacal dance, her ex- pressions were those of acute pain, and her cries were constantly of those "horrid sounds." In six months this unhappy creature died exhausted. The Tigretier of Abyssinia is believed in Africa to be the effect of demoniac influence. Indeed, there is in this strange state a complete metamor- phosis of features, and voice, and manner. In the hearts, even, of the women, the affections of nature IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 331 and of attachment seem to be annihilated, and they seem overwhelmed by some oppressive weight, which is dissipated only by almost preternatural exertion, excited by the charm of music, in which wild dance the female is dressed in ornaments of silver, like the chiefs of battle. This maniac move- ment is often, I believe, kept up from early morn- ing until sunset, ere the accumulation of energy is exhausted ; and even then the woman will start off suddenly and outrun the fleetest hunter, until she drops as if dead. But it seems the climax of the cure is not complete until she drops all her orna- ments, and a matchlock is fired over her, when she owns her name and family, both having been pre- viously denied. She is taken to the church and sprinkled with holy water, and then the spell is broken. There is another strange monomania, an incite- ment to suicide, evinced in that loathsome disease of the Lombard and Venetian plains, Pellagra. The prevailing fashion is drowning ; so that Strambi has termed this monomania water-madness. Others are driven on by still more horrible fan- cies. Thus Grenier wrapped himself in a wolf- skin, and murdered young maids that he might de- vour them ; and among ourselves, the desire to change the infant into a cherub has led the wild fa- natic to the murder of the innocents ! Astr. This, I suppose, is Lycanthropy, or wolf- madness, on which old Burton so funnily expatiates, and to which the author of the old play of" Lingua" also points, alluding to the " Thousand vain imaginations, Making some think their heads as big as horses, Some that they're dead, some that they're turned to wolves.' In the woods of Limousin, in France, the belief in the power of changing from men to wolves is still 332 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. prevalent. The Loup-garoux, or Wehr-wolf, was thought to have been in league with Satan. In my wanderings through Poictou, these mon- sters seemed to me to confine their unholy powers to midnight prowling and the wolf-howl. Yet Marie, in the il Lai du Bisclavarct," endows them with the cannibalism of the goul and the vampire : " So Garwal roams in savage pride, And hunts for blood, and feeds on men ; Spreads dire destruction far and wide, And makes the forest broad his den." Ev. The extraordinary effects of the instinct of imitation in spreading these epidemics is but an example on the grand scale of what we see daily instances of in yawning, hiccoughing, coughing, and other similar acts, and in the propagation of hysteria and epilepsy. Some persons, again, pos- sess an irresistible tendency to imitate others in mere trifling things. Tissot relates a case of a fe- male who never could avoid doing everything she saw any one else do. She was obliged to walk blind- folded in the streets ; and, if you tied her hands, she experienced intolerable anguish until they were loosened. There was another girl, that was seen by Dr. Horn, at Salzburg, who sat cross-legged, like a hog. She had been brought up in a sty. Even during the Commonwealth, the religious fanaticism of the Quakers carried the proselytes to such a pitch that the preachers were thrown into excessive convulsions, and seemed possessed of demons. The churches were broken into, and the ministers insulted and attacked in the pulpits. Chains, and locks, and the pillory, which were in- flicted on these mad people, failed, as it might be expected, in restoring their senses, although they bore them with the most astonishing fortitude. In their worshipping, the same eccentricities were IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 333 seen : after a deep and long silence, a number of the devotees rose at once, and declaimed. The presumptuous imitation of the Saviour was a fa- vourite illusion ; and the forty-days' fast sometimes terminated in death. Naylor, convinced of his di- vine identity, rode in procession on a mule, while his deluded proselytes spread their garments, and sung hosannas to him. Nay, the purity of the fe- male mind was so grossly perverted, that a Quaker- ess walked naked into a church, before Cromwell, as a sign to the people ! There was a letter in an " Aberdeen Herald," dated Invergordon, Sept. 9, 1840, from which I quote this story : " I had the curiosity to go to the church of Ros- keen last night, to observe the workings of a revival. I was prepared for something extraordinary, but certainly not for what I saw. The sobs, groans, loud weeping, fainting, shrieking, mingled in the most wild and unearthly discordance with the harsh, cracked voice of the clergyman, who could only at intervals be heard above the general weeping and wailing. I was struck by the cries being all from young voices ; and on examining a little more closely, I found that the performers were almost wholly children — girls varying from five to fourteen years of age ; a few young women, perhaps a dozen, but not a single man or lad. I stood for nearly half an hour by three girls, the eldest about twelve years of age, who were in the most utter distress, each vying with the other in despairing cries. Their mother came to them, but made no exertion to check their bursts of — I don't know what to call it. In the churchyard there were lots of children in various stages of fainting. One poor girl seemed quite dead, and I insisted on one of the old crones, who was piously looking on, to go for some water, or 334 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. to attempt something to give her relief, but was told, ' It was no' a case for water ; it was the Lord, and he would do as he liked with her. She was seeing something we didna see, and hearing some- thing we didna hear.' She was lying on the ground, supported by her father. Indeed, the poor igno- rant parents have been worked upon until they be- lieve they are highly honoured by the Lord, by having such signs of the Spirit manifested in their families. The service, if it may be called so, was in Gaelic." In the reign of the second George, Count Zin- zendorf came from Germany and established the principles of the Hernhutters, or Moravians. These were debased by ceremonies, which they misnamed worship, of the most licentious character. Like Mohammed, Zinzendorf proclaimed himself a prophet and a king, and in his presumption of an immediate appeal to, and answer from the Sav- iour in all matters of doubt, made a host of prose- lytes. Ida. In our own day, another delirious profana- tion of the holy name of the Saviour has been ex- hibited in the imitative monomania of Sir William Courtenay (as he was called), in Kent. In May, 1838, this wild enthusiast (whose beauty, of feature and expression closely resembled the paintings of Christ by Guido and Carlo Dolce, and who, to heighten this resemblance, wore his hair and beard in a peculiar form, and clothed himself in a robe) gained by his art numerous disciples in Kent, who implicitly believed his divine nature and mission. His career was, however, soon closed in a very awful and bloody tragedy — the death of himself, of many of his followers, and of the military who were called out to secure him. His disciples, to the last, not only believed in his divine nature, but, IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 335 even after his interment, were watching in implicit belief of his approaching resurrection ! The mania of the " unknown tongues" has al- most equalled this delusion. If we presume to analyze, on the principles of philosophy or reason, those religious eccentricities which seem, even in the mind of the fanatic, to spring from sincerity or conviction, they must yet, I suppose, be termed maniacal, and this without the slightest profanation of the Divine will. Evil, doubtless, is permitted for a wise purpose, and while we deplore its im- mediate effects, we must not hope to reveal its ori- gin or its end. At Brighton, some time ago, while at one of the Millennium chapels, the wife of Caird, who was then preaching, uttered a dismal howling of this unknown language, which paralyzed some, and threw into convulsions many others of the congre- gation. A young French lady among them in- stantly was struck with maniacal despondency, and, after some infliction of self-torture, became deliri- ous, and died in a hospital. We learn from Plutarch that in Milesium there was once a prevalent fashion among the young girls to hang themselves ; while the same mania once spread among the demoiselles of Lyons, to drown themselves in the Rhone. The Convulsion- ists of Paris, in 1724, not only inflicted self-torture, but in their wild delight solicited the by-standers to stone them. The commission of a great or extraordinary crime to this day produces, not unfrequently, a kind of mania of imitation in the district in which it happened. I have known incidents, falsely call- ed religious, to occasion similar events ; and what is remarkable, the scene or place of the frst event seemed to favour its repetition, by other persons 336 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. approaching it. Thus a supposed miracle having been performed before the gate of the convent of St. Grenevieve, such a number of similar occurrences happened on the same spot in a few days, that the police was compelled to post a peremptory notice on the gate, prohibiting any individual from work- ing miracles on the place in question. When the locality was thus shut up, the thaumaturgia ceased. It is not long since we witnessed in Paris two events of a similar character. About four years ago, at the Hdtel des Invalides, a veteran hung himself on the threshold of one of the doors of a corridor. No suicide had occurred in the estab- lishment for two years previously, but in the suc- ceeding fortnight five invalids hung themselves on the same crossbar, and the governor was obliged to shut up the passage. During the last days of the empire, again, an individual ascended the col- umn in the Place Vendome, and threw himself down and was dashed to pieces. The event ex- cited a great sensation ; and, in the course of the ensuing week, four persons imitated the example, and the police were obliged to proscribe the -en- trance to the column. The same mania was al- most induced by the suicide of a foolish girl, who leaped from the balcony of our own city column on Fish-street Hill. Indeed, Monseigneur Mare, of Paris, alludes to a society enrolled for the mere purpose of suicide, and there was an annual ballot to decide which of these miserable creatures should be immolated as the suicide of the year ! ! Dr. Burrows, I remember also, relates cases analogous to these. They occurred in the ranks of some army on the Continent, in which there was an epidemic propensity to suicide, until the general began to hang the soldiers on trees as scarecrows. The mania, as you may believe, very soon subsided. IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 337 Ev. Your curiosities eclipse mine, Ida. But the natural leaning to the marvellous will, without mania or fanaticism, by the mere sympathy of in- tercommunicating minds, spread wide these illu- sions, even in the most simple instances. Some time since, a veiy large assemblage were watching with intense interest the stone lion of the Percies at Northumberland House. They were unanimous in the conviction that he was swinging his tail to and fro ; a false impression, of course, which had gradually accumulated from this solitary exclama- tion of a passenger : " By Heaven, he wags his tail ! ' ' Of this sort of illusion I was myself a wit- ness. Beneath the western portico of St. Paul's a crowd of gazers were bending their eyes on the image of the saint, who was nodding at them with a very gracious affability. Curiosity had risen to the pitch of wonder at a miracle, when suddenly a sparrow-hawk flew from the ringlets of the saint, and the illusion vanished. These eccentricities, you will perceive, occurred spontaneously ; and it is a most interesting study to note the analogies between these diseased ac- tions, and those resulting from the influence of cer- tain gases and vegetable juices. I have known the seeds of stramonium, when swallowed by children, produce a temporary de- lirium, and a state of chorea, singing, dancing, laughing, and other mad frolics, which could not be controlled. And in the " History of Virginia," by Beverly, it is recorded, that during the rebellion of Bacon, at James' Town some soldiers, after eat- ing the young leaves of stramonium for spinach, enacted " a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days : one would blow up a feather into the air ; another would dart straws at it with much fury ; another, stark naked, 22 F f 338 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. was seen sitting up in a corner, like a monkey, grinning and making mouths." In this frantic con- dition they were confined for safety. In eleven days they recovered, but had no memory of the delirium. Such, also, is the effect of large quanti- ties of black henbane. Dr. Patouillet, of Toucy, in France, in 1737, witnessed a mania of this sort in nine persons, who had eaten of that root. It was marked by the strangest actions and expres- sions. In these, also, there was no recollection of the illusion. But the closest analogy, in point of concentrated energy, to eccentric somnambulism, is the effect of the inhalation of the ''gaseous oxide of azote," or "protoxide of nitrogen," the laughing-gas. So intense is its impression on the nerves and blood of the brain, that it effects a perfect metempsycho- sis. This gas contains a greater relative proportion of oxygen than common air, and it is inhaled through a tube from a bladder or silk bag. After a little giddiness and headache, the breather soon begins to feel a very delicious thrilling ; the eyes are dazzled by even common objects, so much are the senses excited. Pride mid. pugnacity are quick- ly developed : we think ourselves grand seigniors, and elevated far beyond the common class of mor- tals. We expect from all a salaam, arid, with all the proud dignity of papacy, wonder that the peo- ple do not fall down and kiss our toe. We turn a deaf ear to all which is addressed to us ; in short, we are dissociated from all around us. Sir Hum- phrey Davy, as the effect was wearing off, seemed to have been charmed into the combined philoso- phy of Berkley and Hume. He writes, " With the most intense belief and prophetic manner, I ex- claimed, ' Nothing exists but thoughts ; the uni- verse is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains.' " IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 339 This brilliancy is probably the effect of scarlet or highly oxygenized blood, acting on the brain and nerves of the senses. The duration of this gaseous influence is usually from five minutes to a quarter of an hour. It is not, however, always so transient. From the record of Professor Silliman, it seems to have converted an "II Penseroso" into a "L'Al- legro." A man of melancholy became a man of mirth ; and, although before his inhalation he had no sweet tooth in his head, he began to eat little except sugar and sweet cakes, and to swallow mo- lasses with his meat and potatoes. Although sparring is the grand amusement of the gas-breather, yet we can often decide on the shades of character, however studiously they may have been concealed from us in sane moments. A gentleman among my fellow-students threw himself forcibly on his back by his attempts to spout Shakspeare with dignity and effect. Another threw himself prostrate in the snow, and, rolling himself over and back across the quad- rangle at Guy's, turned himself into an immense cylindrical snowball. Another snapped his fingers in defiance, and walked with a most pompous stint, and without his hat, to the middle of London Bridge ere he was brought to his senses. Indeed, these experiments seem so replete with the ludicrous, that I wonder Cruikshank and Hood have not often caught a fact, as a theme for their brilliant fancy. 340 REVERY. REVERY. " That fools should be so deep-contemplative." " In his brain He hath strange places cramm'd With observation, the which he vents In mangled forms." — As You Like It. Astr. I was dreaming last night, Evelyn, of your eccentric puppets ; and I cannot but wonder at the contrasted influences of nitrous oxide on the brain and marrow, as you say. In one, we see the wondrous phenomena of somnambulism ; in the other, a state of apathy, like the almost senseless revery of the idiot. Ev. You are shrewd, Astrophel, and have hit on these objective analogies with the acuteness of a pathologist. Contrasts they truly are, and yet there is a natural transition from one to the other. Somnambulism is the most eccentric condition of sleep, and ULevery is that state which constitutes the nearest approximation to slumber. But the French verb rever is a comprehensive word, sig- nifying all the eccentricities of mind, from idiocy to divine philosophy ; so that its derivative, " Rev- ery," may be construed into Dream, Delirium, Ra- ving, Thought, Fancy, Meditation, Abstraction. You may wonder at this combination ; but, how- ever you may smile, the existence of every one is marked by a certain degree of moral or instinctive mania, modified by the peculiarity of habit, taste, or sentiment, and, I may add, of intellectual mo- nomania (" monomanie raisonnante"), in reference to some particular subject. There may, indeed, be an incubation of madness, and, if circumstances occur to sit and hatch, the germs will be devel- oped. When these two, moral and intellectual er- ror (which may separately pass current in the world for eccentricity), unite, then the man is mad, and becomes an irresponsible agent. ABSTRACTION OF IDIOCY. 341 The term "Revery," then, will imply the varied conditions of that faculty which phrenology terms concentratircness, the extremes of which mark the idiot and the sage. Idiocy is the most abject and imperfect condition of the waking mind, resembling closely the first dis- position to slumber, the sensation of doziness. The creature will commit the most absurd acts, and ut- ter the most ridiculous or profane expressions, without the redeeming apology of being engaged in abstract thought or abstruse calculation. It is consolatory, however, to know that this weakness is usually connate, or manifested at the very dawn of intellect ; so that we have not the painful study of contrasting in one being the light of mind with its shadowy darkness. The idiot, indeed, often appears so little more than a laughing or a dancing vegetable, that pity yields to curiosity and mirth j and, instead of mourning, we work into the plot and incidents of a novel or a stage farce either that strange mix- ture of weakness and cunning which is delineated in Davie Gellatly, or the absolute imbecility of Audrey, Slender, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. But this melancholy being is no.t always a soli- tary curiosity. In many districts, especially in the stream-fed valleys of Europe and Asia, nature fails, by wholesale, in the development of that " paragon of animals," man. Such are the Capots, or Cretins, of Chinese Tar- tary, as we learn from Sir George Staunton ; those of the Rhone and Tyrolese valleys ; the Coliberts of Rochelle ; the Cagneux of Brittany ; the Gaffos of Navarre ; the Gavachos of Spain ; and the Gez- itani of the Pyrenees. The condition of the lowest class of these wretch- ed beings is indeed that of idiocy, their intellect- F f 2 342 ABSTRACTION OF IDIOCY. ual power being little more than the mental blank which would mark the acephalous, or brainless monsters, could such abortions attain the age of maturity. It is mere animal life, with the very faintest stamp of intelligence. The Cretin is from four to five feet high, cadaver- ous, flabby, the head immensely out of proportion, the skin studded with livid eruptions, the eyes blear and squinting, the lips slavering, the limbs weak and crooked ; and (like the Stulbings of Swift) the senses are imperfect, the hearing and speech often absolutely lost, the expression being that of a fool or a satyr. And dissection demonstrates the fre- quent causes of all this ; for, in the scull of these beings, we often find a bluish jelly instead of healthy brain. This diseased pulp is thus the source of both animal and intellectual apathy. The idiot will often seem insensible to pain, while his flesh is burning ; and objects or subjects do not cause sufficient impression on this pulpy brain to produce their image, so that the being may almost live without a sense. Cast. This is a dreary, but, I suppose, a faithful picture, and shows us one of those impressive con- trasts which nature is fraught with. The Cretin dwarf amid the gigantic sublimity of the Alps ; the lava stream rolling over the chestnut groves of Val- ombrosa ; the malaria that steams up from the Pon- tine even to Albano ; the murky sulphur-cloud that floats over Avernus and the Solfaterra ; and the poison-snake creeping among the honeyed flow- ers and purple festoons which gild the prairies and interlace the forests of Columbia, show us how in- timately are blended the lights and shadows of creation. Yet Evelyn will let me ask him if there are not many beautiful stories, which we may have deemed the creation of poesy, proving that idiot- WANDERING. 343 ism is not always definite and permanent. I ought to blush while I recite them. The romance of Cymon and Iphigenia is not a mere fable. I have heard a story of a youth who was an idiot to his seventeenth year. At this time he saw a beautiful girl, and instantly felt deep and devoted love for her, and became, from this almost divine influence, as acute in intellect as his playmates. Astr. And whatwriteth the quaint Anatomist of Melancholy ! " We read in the lives of the Fathers a story of a child that was brought up in the wil- derness from his infancy by an old hermite. Now come to man's estate, he saw by chance two comely women wandering in the woods. He asked the old man what creatures they were. He told him fayries. After a while talking obiter, the hermit demanded of him which was the pleasantest sight that he ever saw in his life. He readily replied, the two fayries he espied in the wilderness. So that without doubt there is some secret loadstone in a beautiful woman, a magnetique power." Ida. We do not hold your gallantry lightly, As- trophel ; there is some hope of your conversion. Ev. That mind is termed weak where there is a want of the power of fixing the attention to one object, a wandering of the imaginative faculty. A train of ideas arises, between the links of which there is some remote relation; but its beginning and end may appear so dissonant, that the absent person will fail to recognise the connexion, until, by an effort to retrace the steps of thought, the mystery is developed. Ida. The subjects of this form of re very are, I presume, the wool-gatherers of society, being " ev- erything by turns, and nothing long ;" and often, like the dog in the fable, losing the substance while they grasp at the shadow ; others employ their time by sitting 344 ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. " Musing all alone, Building castles in the air," forming plans and projecting schemes which shall fill men's minds with wonder, and their own pock- ets with gold. But these castle-builders are, alas ! but the dupes of their own mad fancy. The card-house is near- ly finished, and one imprudent touch of the child topples it down headlong. One of the most salu- tary lessons on this foible is the fable of the Per- sian visionary, the glassman Alnaschar, who, by rehearsing one kick of the foot, that was to indi- cate his despotic will, broke into ten thousand pie- ces the basket of merchandise which, by its accu- mulating profits, was to raise him to the highest dignities. Such are the results of self-glamourie or castle-building. Ev. It is a moral lesson of great worth, dear Ida. But these wanderings are often assimilating the true delirium of fever, of which the dreams of Piranesi are examples. In his sketches of these illusions he figures himself as ascending by steps so high that he at length vanishes into the clouds. Now there are many curious instances of forget- fulness, as there may be a confusion of ideas from this deficiency of concentration, memory being, as it were, deranged. From study, or intense thought, a jumble of strange ideas will sometimes force themselves involuntarily on the mind, displacing or confusing the subject of meditation. Thus a German, of the name of Spalding, of high attainments, informs us that, after great mental labour, he was intending to write this receipt : " fifty dollars, being one half-year's rate," but quite unconsciously concluded it thus : " fifty dollars through the salvation of Bra." And the author of the " Spiritual Treasury," Mason, during his devo- ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 345 tion to its composition, had, as he believed, taken the address of a visiter on whom he was to wait ; but on referring to his note, he read, not the ad- dress, but " Acts ii., verse 8." Children have naturally a want of power of con- centration. I have told you that if a new or more attractive object strikes their sight, they will drop that which they were holding ; and Foote would often, while taking a pinch, let his snuffbox fall from his hand, if for a moment his attention was diverted. Astr. The reverse of wandering, then, you term conccntrativeness. You would not stigmatize the passive or involuntary form of abstraction as the revery of a monomaniac. Ev. No. As attention is concentration of a sense, abstraction is the concentration or attention of the mind ; therefore the power of fixing the senses and forgetting the mind is attention, that of fixing the mind and forgetting the senses is abstraction — phi- losophy, if you will. The active form, the power of fixing the atten- tion on one subject, or of separating ideas and bringing them into association on one point, is the great characteristic of the philosopher and the math- ematician. That inattention to minutice during this abstraction has, I grant, caused the shafts of satire to be profusely flung at many a "learned pun- dit;" for the jokes of Rabelais are eclipsed by the eccentricities of our sages : Dominie Sampson is no caricature. As I trace these forms of revery from monoma- nia to its curious contrast, the folic raisonnante of men of one idea (in which there is an aberration of intellect, or want of consciousness on all subjects but one), and so on to philosophical abstraction, we shall learn, not without some humility, how close 346 ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. an alliance does really exist between great wits and madness. The records of history and fiction teem with the illusions of the monomaniacs from intense impres- sion. The madness of Ophelia and of Lear are true and faithful illustrations of the effects of brooding over sorrow. In the monarch, indeed, that one mo- mentary glimpse of reason when the word " king," like an electric shock, falls on his ear, and for an instant lights up his intellect, which as suddenly darkness again overshadows, beautifully shows forth by contrast this madness of one idea. Dr. Gooch relates the case of a lady, who, in consequence of an alarm of fire, believed that she was the Virgin Mary, and that her head was con- stantly encircled by a brilliant halo or glory. A gentleman, on narrowly escaping from the earthquake at Lisbon, fell into a state of delirium whenever the word " earthquake" was pronounced in his hearing. In " Pechlin" we read of a lady who gazed with painless interest on the comet of 1681, until she ob- served it through a telescope of high power; the terror was so intense that she was frightened to death even in a few days. Dr. Morrison relates the case of an insane gen- tleman who had consulted a gipsy, and was instant- ly in a state of high excitement whenever a subject associated with her prophecies was alluded to. My friend Dr. Uwins informed me of an intel- lectual young gentleman, who, from some morbid association with the idea of an elephant, was struck by an horrific spasm whenever the word was na- med, or even written before him ; and to such a pitch was this infatuation carried, that elephant pa- per, if he were sensible it were such, produced the same effect. ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 347 The Reverend John Mason, of Water Stratford, evinced in everything sound judgment, except that he believed that he was Elias, and foretold the ad- vent of Christ, who was to commence the millen- nium at Stratford. Dr. Abercrombie writes of a young botanist who had gained a prize : he thought he was in a boat sailing to Greenwich on a botanical excursion, and conversed rationally on all points but that of the prize, which he asserted another student had gained. Hear, too, another rhapsody of the " Opium-eat- er." After a close and intense study of the works of Livy, the words Consul Romanus seemed to haunt his mind. " At a clapping of hands would be heard the heart-rending sounds of ' Consul Ro- manus;' and immediately came sweeping by, in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus Marius, girt round by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos of the Roman legions." There is a story (written in the seventeenth cen- tury) of a youth, who in a playful frolic put a ring on the marriage finger of a marble Venus ; and a strange illusion came upon him that she had thus become his wife, and, in obedience to the injunc- tions of the ceremony, came to his bed when the sable canopy of night was spread around them. So intense was this illusion, and so cold and love- less was his heart withal, that, as the story goes, an exorcist was employed to dissolve the spell which had so firmly bound him. Ida. I believe it was Mrs. Barry who (as we read in the " Last Essays of Elia") averred that, when playing the child of Isabella, she felt the burning tears of Mrs. Porter fall on her neck as 6he was breathing o'er her some pathetic sentence. 348 ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. Even the study of Lady Macbeth, in midnight soli- tude, so intensely excited the imagination of Mrs. Siddons, that Campbell says, as she was disrobing herself in her chamber, she trembled with affright even at the rustling of her own silk attire. Ev. I could add many stories to yours, Ida. This sensibility, if protracted or in excess, becomes the Panophobia of Esquirol. He attended once a lady whom the slightest noise alarmed, and who was wont to scream with affright at the simple moving of herself in bed. From the journal of Esquirol I will quote other fragments, in which we see that every object was associated with one image. " During our promenade he (a gallant general) interrupted me several times in the midst of a very connected conversation, saying, ' Do you hear how they repeat the words '■'•coward, jealous V y &c. This illusion was produced by the noise of the leaves and the whistling of the wind among the branches of the trees, which appeared to him well- articulated sounds ; and, although I had each time combated it with success, the illusion returned whenever the wind agitated the trees anew. " A young married man was in a state of fury whenever he saw a woman leaning on a man's arm, being convinced that it was his oivn wife. I took him to the theatre at the commencement of his con- valescence, but as soon as a lady entered the saloon accompanied by a gentleman, he became agitated, and called out eagerly several times, ' That is she, that is she.' I could hardly help laughing, and we were obliged to retire. " A lady twenty-three years of age, afflicted with hysterical madness, used to remain constantly at the windows of her apartment during the summer. When she saw a beautiful cloud in the sky, she ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 349 screamed out ' Garnerin, Garnerin, come and take me!' and repeated the same invitation until the cloud disappeared. She mistook the clouds for balloons sent up by Garnerin." Cast. There is here as much romance as when Ajax mistook a drove of oxen for the armed Greeks, or Don Quixote the windmills for a band of Span- ish giants. Ev. Again, Dr. Beddoes relates the case of a scholar who locked himself up to study the Reve- lation. The confinement brought on dyspeptic pains and spasms, and he was persuaded that " the mon- ster blasphemy, with ten heads, was preying on his vitals." The Reverend Simon Brown died with the con- viction that his rational soul was annihilated by a special fiat of the Divine will ; and a patient in the Friends' " Retreat," at York, thought he had no soul, heart, or lungs. From " Tulpius" we learn that the wife of Salo- mon Galmus sank into a state of extreme melan- choly from the deep conviction that she was a vis- itant from the tomb, but sent back to the world with- out her heart, for God had detained that in heaven. Such illusions are sometimes excited by wounds of the brain. A soldier of the field of Austerlitz was struck with a delirious conviction that he was but an ill-made model of his former self. " You ask how Pere Lambert is" (he would say); "he is dead, killed at Austerlitz ; that you now see is a mere machine made in his likeness." He would then often lapse into a state of catalepsy insensible to every stimulus. Dr. Mead tells us of an Oxford student who or- dered the passing bell to be rung for him, and went himself to the belfry to instruct the ringers. He returned to his bed only to die. Gg 350 ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. A Bourbon prince thought himself dead, and re- fused to eat until his friends invited him to dine with Turenne and other French heroes long since departed. There was a tradesman who thought he was a seven-shilling piece, and advertised himself thus : " If my wife presents me for payment, don't change me." Accuse me not of transatlantic plagiarism. Bishop Warburton tells us of a man who thought himself a goose fie; and Dr. Ferriday, of Man- chester, had a patient who thought he had swallow ed the devil. So, indeed, thought Luther. As in Hudibras, " Did not the devil appear to Martin Luther in Germany for certain ?." In Paris there lived a man who thought he had, with others, been guillotined, and when Napoleon was emperor, their heads were all restored, but in the scramble he got the wrong one. And there is the " Visiter of Phantaste," in the old play of " Lingua," who exclaims, " No marvel, for when I beheld my fingers, I saw they were as transparent as glass." You perceive that the illusions of Pope's "Rape of the Lock" are not all fictions : the maids who fancied they were turned into bottles were not more in error than these philosophers with their maladie imaginaire. Cast. Is there not wisdom, Evelyn, in nursing some of these innocent illusions'? . I remember Kot- zebue, in his " Journey to Paris," relates the fol- lowing anecdote of a young girl romantically in love. Her lover had often accompanied her on the harp : he died, and his harp had remained in her room. After the first excess of her despair, she sunk into the deepest melancholy, and much time elapsed ere she would sit down to her instru-. ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 351 ment. At last she did so, gave some touches, and, hark ! the harp, tuned alike, resounded in echo. The good girl was at first seized with a secret shuddering, but soon felt a kind of soft melancholy : she was firmly persuaded that the spirit *of her lover was softly sweeping the strings of the in- strument. The harpsichord, from this moment, constituted her only pleasure, as it afforded her the certainty that her lover was still hovering near her. One of those unfeeling men who want to know and clear up everything once entered her apartment. The girl instantly begged him to be quiet, for at that very moment the dear harp spoke most dis- tinctly. Being informed of the amiable illusion which overcame her reason, he laughed, and, with a great display of learning, proved to her by ex- perimental physics that all this was very natural. From that instant the maiden grew melancholy, drooped, and soon after died. Ev. Truth is not always to be spoken, nor too much energy exerted in our treatment ; for many a mad act, as it will be called, is resorted to as a relief Tirouane de Mericourt was wont to saturate her bedclothes with cold water, then lie down on them. Although an extreme remedy, it might yield her relief from burning pains. In the darker ages she would have been chained and scourged. But from Marcus Donatus we read the following case of still more melancholy interest ; another il- lustration of your question, dear Casialy : " Vicentinus believed himself too large to pass one of his doorways. To dispel this illusion, it was resolved by his physician that he should be dragged through this aperture by force. This erro- neous dictate was obeyed ; but, as he was forced along, Vicentinus screamed out in agony that his I 352 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. limbs were fractured, and the flesh torn from hi3 bones. In this dreadful delusion, with terrific im- precations against his murderers, he died." ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. " I love to cope him in these sullen fits, For then he's full of matter." — As You Like It. Astr. So that, in these cases, it is one faculty only which is interrupted, and not the combined in- tellect. But all the faculties but one may be de- ranged, may they not \ Ev. Yes. When the patient is insane on all points but one, we term it " Folie raisonnante." The very idiot, indeed, is often fond of most ex- act arrangement. The savage of Aveyron instantly put things in order when they were deranged. White, in his " History of Selborne," records the propensities of an idiot, who, he says, was a very Merops-apiaster, or bee-bird. Honey-bees, humble-bees, and wasps were his prey : he would seize them, disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Ex- cept in this adroitness, he had no understanding. Pinel states the case of a mechanical genius who became insane, believing his head to be chan- ged. Yet he invented mechanism of the most in- tricate combinations. We are informed, too, of a clergyman who was ever insane but when deliv- ering his discourses from the pulpit. I believe some parts of a national establishment were constructed from the plans of one of its in- mates, who was, to all other intents and purposes, a madman. Dr. Uwins once told me that some of the lines in his biographical work were written by a maniac ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 353 in the Hoxton Asylum, who was ever aware of the approach of his mania. These lines were thought to be among the best in the work. Nay, idiots will sometimes reason, and work out a syllogism. I think Dr. Conolly relates a story of two who quarrelled, because each asserted that he was the Holy Ghost : at length, one decided that the other teas the Holy Ghost, and that he could not be, because there were not two. From this " folie raisonnante" there is an easy transition to that eccentricity which seems to be a set-off against the strength of mind of the deep thinker. The permanent derangement, however, we term insaiiity ; the transient, eccentricity. Marullus informs us that Bernard rode all day long by the Lemnian Lake, and at last inquired where he was. Archimedes rushed into the street naked from the bath, in an ecstasy at having dis- covered the alloy in the crown of Syracuse. Pinel tells us of a priest, who, in an abstract mood, felt no pain, although part of his body was burning. " Viote," says Zimmerman, " during his fits of mathematical abstraction, would often remain sleep- less and foodless for three days and nights." And Plato thus records an instance of the ab- straction of Socrates : " One morning he fell into one of these raptures of contemplation, and contin- ued standing in the same posture till about noon. In the evening some Ionian soldiers went out, and, wrapping themselves up warm, lay down by him in the open field, to observe if he would continue in that posture all night, which he did until the morning, and as soon as the sun rose he saluted it and retired." This is mental abstraction with a vengeance ! Astr. I will laugh with you at these oddities, Evelyn ; yet not a whit less ludicrous are some of 23 G g 2 354 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. the vagaries of the learned Thebans oimoctern times. The abstractions of Newton were proverbial. It may not be true that he once inserted the little finger of a lady, whose hand he was holding, into his pipe in- stead of a tobacco-stopper, or that he made a small hole in his study door for the exit of a kitten by the side of a large one for the cat : it is certain, how- ever, that he was once musing by his fire, with his knees close to the bars, when, finding his legs in danger of being grilled, he rang his bell, and, in a rage, desired his servant to take away the grate. Dr. Hamilton, author of the acute " Essay on the National Debt," visited his college class in the morning with his own black silk stocking on one leg and his wife's white cotton on the other, and would sometimes occupy the whole class time by repeatedly removing the students' hats from his table, which they as often placed there. He would run against a cow, and beg madam's pardon, hoping he had not hurt her ; and he would bow politely to his wife in the street without recognition. Yet, with all this, he would, at any time, directly con- verse on a scientific subject beautifully and elo- quently. Bacon, the sculptor, in a rich full dress, was fin- ishing Howard's statue in St. Paul's, and, being cold, put on a ragged green and red shag waist- coat. In this trim he walked out to call on some ladies in Doctors' Commons. On his return, he told his son that they were sadly disposed to laugh about nothing. On being: convinced, however, of his condition, he remembered the people he passed also giggled, and cried out, " He does it for a wager." Hogarth paid a visit, in his new carriage, to the lord-mayor, and, after his audience, walked home in his state clothes, leaving his carriage at a private door of the Mansion House. ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 355 Dr. Harvest, of Ditton, a very learned man, would unconsciously allow his horse to be loosened from his grasp, and walk home with the bridle on his arm. He would walk into his church on Sun- day with his fowling-piece. He would write a let- ter, address it, and send it to three different jier sons. He lost a lady, the daughter of a bishop, as his wife, by going out to catch gudgeons, forgetting that it was the morning of his marriage ceremony ; and he once threw a glass of wine at backgammon, and swallowed the dice ! After this we can no longer call caricatures the abstract philosopher who boiled his watch, and held the egg in his hand as the time-keeper ; or the American, who put his candle to bed and blew himself out ; or the lady who believed herself to be a post-letter, but waited patiently until the let- ter-sorter had examined her, to ascertain if she was single or double. Ev. There is some hope of you now, dear As- trophel, for you are returning to matters of fact. From the deep interest of dramatic scenes may spring the same apathy as that which you have il- lustrated. Dr. Fordyce writes of one who forgot he was sitting on a hard bench when Garrick brought in his dead Cordelia in his arms. And even the impression of fatigue and pain will often, for a time, leave us when we are gazing on archi- tectural or picturesque beauty. Ida. Are not those minds which are easily influ- enced by morbid sensibility, the minutiae of exist- ence, often thus depressed into a condition some- what resembling the moroseness of these half-idiots % Ev. Ay, even the mighty minds of heroes and of monarchs. Queen Elizabeth was often wont to sit alone, in the dark, in sorrow and in tears. We know not if the fate of Essex or of Mary were the S56 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. cause, but the marble mind of Elizabeth was dis- solvedbefore she died. In Sully's " Memoires," also, we read that the solitude of Charles IX., of France, was saddened by remorse, for his memory was ever pealing in his ear the shrieks and groans of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. During this influ- ence we may often find that the features or ac- tions are so deeply expressive as to prove an in- voluntary, though correct index of the thought. According to the passions or subjects which occu- py the mind will be the play of feature or the movement of the body. " We might almost suppose the body thought." This " brown study" is the slightest form of that state which the French term emiui, in which the mind too often is left to prey upon itself, having, as it were, no sympathy with the world. Its more severe symptoms are those of misanthropy, melan- choly, and hypochondriasis, inducing but too often that extreme tedium vitce, the climax of which is suicide. Out of the first, which is but the mere ripple of derangement, we may be laughed or coaxed ; nay, it may yield to the positive suffering of the body. The second is like the deep, still water, the awful calmness antecedent to a tempest. In the words of Lord Erskine, " Reason is not driven from her seat, but distraction sits down on it along with her, holds her trembling on it, and frights her from her propriety. And then comes often o'er the mind a very coward sentiment, echo- ing the demoniac resolution of Spenser's " Cave of Despair :" " What if some little payne the passage have, That makes frayle flesh to fear the better wave ? Is not short payne well borne that brings long ease, And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave ?" Ida. Despair will often rouse even the most sen- ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 357 sitive beings to the most patient fortitude. How is this % Ev. Not rouse, but depress ; not fortitude, but apathy. I could excite your deepest sympathy and wonder, Ida, by the history of the young and beau- tiful Ann G n, who was hung for child-murder, in whom the convulsive agony which followed her sentence at length ended in a resignation which some would term heroism. During the nights in which I myself watched her slumbers, both from deep scientific interest and the request of her judges, her actions were automatic ; her existence was one perfect trance ; and she met her fate as if life and its consciousness had long been parted. Even an intense blow will sometimes, as it were, annihilate sensibility, creating an icy apathy to all subsequent inflictions, which was the effect on Mandrin during the tortures of the wheel, for he smiled at the third blow to find that it hurt him so little. Ida. Then we are to contrast the state of the unhappy girl with the voluntary endurance of hero- ism depending on the power of concentrating mind ? The almost superhuman endurance of pain is finely displayed among the North American Indians, who even chant their own death-song calmly amid worse than the tortures of the Inquisition, or sustain, with a smile, those probationary trials for the dignities of a chief, or the admission to the class of warriors that are modelled with all the refinement of cru- elty. On the banks of the Orinoco, especially (if Robertson be right, or Gumilla, his authority, are to be believed), the ordeal begins by a rigid fast, reductive of the body's energy ; then commences a flaying of his body, by lashes as dreadful as the knout, by the hands of the assembled chiefs, and then, if the slightest sensibility be evinced, he is 358 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. disgraced forever. His raw and reeking flesh is then exposed to the stings and venom of insects and reptiles, and again suspended over the scorching and suffocating flames of herbs of the most disgust- ing odour ; and, to close this tale of torture, it is not seldom that the victim sinks in mortal agonies beneath the dreadful ordeal. Ev. The two great springs of voluntary endu- rance of pain are religion and honour. Thus, among other heroic acts of England's martyrs, Cranmer held the apostate hand which signed his recanta- tion in the midst of the flames until it was toasted. And the unyielding fortitude with which the victim bore the rack and other excruciating tortures of the Popish Inquisition is almost beyond belief. The fanaticism of the wild enthusiasts of the East it were profanation to call religion ; but, with the hope of rejoining her husband in the realms of bliss, the Hindoo widow clasps his corpse in her arms, and, without a sigh, sets the torch to his fu- neral pile. And, to inherit the paradise of Brah- ma, the Fakir or Yoghee keeps his fist clinched for years, until the nails grow through his hand, or forces the hooks between his ribs, and whirls him- self aloft until he expires, or throws himself pros- trate beneath the crushing wheels of Juggernaut. It is written that Cardan rendered himself, by great efforts, insensible to external irritants. And analogous to this was the almost superhu- man effort of that determined action of Muley Mo- loch, quoted in the " Spectator," from Vertot's " Revolutions of Portugal :" " In a condition of extreme prostration, he was borne in a litter with his army. On the sounding of a retreat, although in a half-dying state, he leaped from the litter, and led his quailing troops to a charge, which ended jn victory. Ere this was accomplished his life was ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 359 fast ebbing, and, reclining on his litter, and enjoin- ing the secrecy of his staff, with his finger on his lip, he died." But my analysis will be incomplete if I do not revert to a point that I had almost forgotten. These abstract moods have often been confounded with the visions of slumber, being adduced as proofs of the perfection of mind during sleep. You reminded me, Astrophel, of the brilliant parody composed by Mackenzie, of the versifica- tion of Voltaire and La Fontaine, of the solution of the difficult problem by Condorcet, of the dis- cussion of abstruse points of policy by Cabanis. You might have added Condillac, who asserts that when he was composing the " Cours d* Etudes" he often left a chapter unfinished, but had it all in his mind when he awoke. And Franklin assures us that he often dreamed of the issue of important events in which he was engaged, believing the vis- ion to be the influence of inspired prophecy. Dr. Haycock, of Oxford, too, is said to have composed and preached sermons in his sleep, in despite even of bufferings. These are not dreams, but the reveries of phi- losophers and poets. The faculties of perception are suspended ; one only object occupies the mind, and the impression on the memory is vivid and permanent. Of this revery I do not recollect a more interesting illustration than the " Dream of Tartini," and its exquisite product, "La Sonata di Diavolo." This admirable violinist and once es- teemed composer relates the following anecdote as the origin of his chef-d'oeuvre, the " Devil's Son- ata:" " One night, it was in the year 1713, 1 dream- ed that I had made over my soul to his satanic majesty. Everything was done to my wink : the faithful menial anticipated my fondest wishes. 360 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. Among other freaks, it came into my head to put the violin into his hands, for I was anxious to see whether he was capable of producing anything worth hearing upon it. Conceive my astonishment at his playing a sonata, with such dexterity and grace as to surpass whatever the imagination can conceive. I was so much delighted, enraptured, and entranced by his performance, that I was un- able to fetch another breath, and, in this state, I awoke. I jumped up and seized upon my instru- ment, in the hope of reproducing a portion, at least, of the unearthly harmonies I had heard in my dream, but all in vain ; the music which I composed under the inspiration I must admit the best I have ever written, and of right I have called it the ' Devil's Sonata ;' but the falling off between that piece and the sonata which had laid such fast hold of my im- agination is so immense, that I would rather have broken my violin into a thousand fragments, and renounced music for good and all, than, had it been possible, have been robbed of the enjoyment which the remembrance afforded me." In the cases of precocious children, who are said to have " lisp'd in numbers," I do not doubt that the secret may be referred to this concentration of genius. Mozart composed a sonata at the age of four. The precocious little girl, Louisa Vinning, who was called the " Infant Sappho" has yet eclipsed Mozart in this : that at the age of two years and eight months she sang repeatedly a mel- ody perfectly new, and so perfect, that it was writ- ten down from her lips, and entitled, " The Infant's Dream." During all this, the little creature was in such a state of apparent abstraction, that it was believed by all around her that she walked and talked in her sleep. These mental concentrations can, by some en- ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 361 thusiasts, be produced at pleasure. The paroxysm of the improvisatore, for instance. But it is an ef- fort which, like the dark hour of the Caledonian seer, is not endured with impunity ; it points, in- deed, emphatically to the limit beyond which mind should not be strained. The Marquis de Moschati expressed himself to us as experiencing excitement like intoxication when he sat himself to compose, and threw his whole soul into his subject. It commenced with irregular and laborious breathing, excessive palpi- tations, vertigo, tinnitus auriwn, the perception of objects being lost. Then came romantic fancies, like the visions of opium, " thoughts that breathe, and words that burn." At the conclusion was felt excessive exhaustion, and a state of mild catalepsy ensued for five or six days together. This excited talent, therefore, is an evanescent madness. Cast. Another fling at poesy. "Were I an im- provisatrice, you would not so libel my inspiration. " Listen, lords and lady gay." In the summer of 18 — , after the Eisteddfod at Cardiff, we wan- dered over the hills to Caerphilly, the gigantic towers of Owain Glyndwr. As I lay under the celebrated Hanging Tower, which is projecting eleven feet beyond its base, I reflected on the strange circumstance of the arrest of so gigantic a mass in its progress to prostration. " What," I exclaimed, " is the power by which it is suspended ]" My imagination heightened my revery, and placed before me the image of the De- stroyer, with his emblematic scythe and glass, and he answered me thus : "Half-dreaming mortal, listen ! it is 7, Time, the destroyer, whose gigantic arm Lifted this pond'rous ruin from its base. Why hangs it thus, arrested in its course, In bold defiance of attraction's law ? Hh 362 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. Why, like its once proud lord, renown'd Glyndwr, Sinks not its mouldering grandeur to the ground? Behold an emblem of vitality ! A type of mortal man, of thee, of all ! Like this gray wall, thy tott'ring steps are staid, And on a thread thy fragile life is hung ; Yet leaning, ever leaning, to the grave. One moment more, an atom of an age, This mould'ring ruin, trembling on its base, May, like the marble shafts of lone Palmyra, Be hurl'd to earth, and crumble into dust ; And, like the ruin, thou !" And yet I was not mad. Ev. I talk not of a gentle heart like yours, fair Castaly, but of that extreme when ideas are re- ceived by a mind nearly exhausted, and lie for a while dormant. As sleep and fatigue wear off, and consciousness returns, these images are sud- denly and brilliantly lighted up. If intense im- pression shall have been made on the heart or mind, intense will be the abstraction of the enthu- siast. Until one thought is touched, the patient is sane ; but, when the chord vibrates, then, as in the pathetic episode of Sterne's Maria, the parox- ysm is expended in a flood of tears, or in a mad fit, or in a gush of wildest music. To the latter cause we owe many beauties of composition. Demarini, the Italian tragedian, act- ed a prison-scene before Paganini, in which, with the pathos of deep distress, the victim prayed for death. The maestro retired to bed, but not to sleep ; his excited brain relieved its painful sym- pathies by the composition of the "Adagio apas- sionato." Carl Maria Von Weber witnessed the waltzing of his wife with a gallant cavalier. He retired in a mood of jealous phrensy, and expressed the ideas which rankled in his heart by the "Invitation a la Walse." Astr. Well, is there not something special in all this % ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 363 Ev. Yes, truly — a power imparted to some, withheld from others — genius. Astr. Yet, in explanation of this abstract rev- ery, the phrenologist will, I dare say, satisfy him- self by merely deciding that the organ of concen- trativeness is strongly developed. Ev. It is clear, at least, that the deep interest of the subject .of reflection overbalances the influ- ence of the external senses. The impression of objects is either too slight or rapid to produce perception, or (in other words), however the im- pression may be imparted to the brain by the nerve, the brain is not sensible of it, and there is therefore no perception. So intense, indeed, has been this influence, that Pliny contemplated the volcanic philosophy amid the ashy cloud of Vesuvius by which he was de- stroyed. And Archimedes was so intent in solving a problem during the siege of Syracuse, that no sense of danger impelled him to avoid the storm, or fly from the dagger of the assassin. While Parmegiano was painting at Rome the " Vision of St. Jerome," which now adorns the National Gallery of England, the famous siege of that city was concluded by its spoliation. Yet Parmegiano (absorbed with his painting) was un- conscious of the tumult, until his studio was burst open by some of the soldiers of the enemy. A similar story is told, also, of Protogenes, when Demetrius was laying siege to Rhodes. Cast. The flappers of Laputa would soon have dispelled this revery. Ev. But if they had thus flourished their official bladders, perhaps the " Principia Mathematica" had not been written, for Newton explained the extent of his discoveries by his " always thinking unto them." 364 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. Somewhat like the effect of intense study on the mind, the muscles of the limbs will be influenced by one long-directed habit. Paganini was observed, on board a steamboat, constantly to repose on the sofa. During this state of revery, his left arm as- sumed the peculiar attitude in which he held his violin, until he saw that he was noticed, when he altered its position. The right hand of Benjamin West, of which I saw a posthumous model at Lord de Tabley's, ap- peared to have taken that form in which he was wont to hold the pencil. By this concentration, this full possession of the mind, the wildness of fancy in the dark is often the source of terror ; but this is ever lessened or dis- pelled by any sound or sight which presents a sub- ject to the perceptive faculty. Such is the sudden glimmer of a light, the barking of a dog, or the al- most instinctive effort of the schoolboy, " Whistling aloud to keep his courage up." All these cases, then, indicate concentration of mind. " Mental conception is uninfluenced by con- scious perception." I may add that, in the heat of engagement, sol- diers and sailors are often unconscious of being even seriously wounded. In the battle of Lake Thrasymene, the armies of Rome and Carthage were so absorbed in the tumult and din of war, that an earthquake, which spread desolation around them, was unheeded by these determined soldiers. Ida. I have gleaned enough from your illustra- tions, Evelyn, to believe that we may explain by them that solemn and last revery of the dying, when all other ideas have ceased to influence but the most impressive — " The ruling passion strong in death ;" when earthly life is on the wane, and the spirit, in SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 365 this expiring thought, takes its last farewell of the flesh. I remember some beautiful evidences of this influence. It was observed that Porson, after a paralytic fit, scarcely uttered a word of English, but to the last moment spoke Greek fluently. Dr. Adam (a master of Sir Walter Scott), on the subsidence of delirium, exclaimed, " It grows dark — the boys may dismiss ;" and instantly ex- pired. The last words of Dr. Abercrombie were ad- dressed to an imaginary patient, regarding the care of his digestive functions. Some time after the trial of the Bristol magis- trates, Lord Tenterden lapsed into a stupor from exhaustion. A short period before death he rallied, and, after conversing with his friends for a few minutes, he raised himself on his couch, and said, " Gentlemen of the jury, you may retire ;" and then fell back and expired. SOMNOLENCE.— TRANCE.— CATA- LEPSY. " In this borrowed likeness of shrunk death Thou shalt remain full two-and-forty hours, And then awake, as from a pleasant sleep." Romeo and Juliet. Cast. Evelyn, you have again bewildered my thoughts. Sleep, that should be the anodyne of the mind, has awakened afresh my curiosity. I am in a mood for mystery. Any more wonders 1 Ev. The prototypes of sleep, dear Castaly, are all " mysteries," as you call them, and marked by ever-varying shades. The most impressive conditions of the mind are these : H h 2 366 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. Unconscious and passive, as in sound sleep. Conscious, yet passive, as in dreaming. Conscious and willing, yet powerless, as in night- mare. Unconscious, yet active, as in somnambulism. If we go deeper in our analysis, we shall dis- cover a state more wondrous still than all we have unravelled, in which mind is unconscious, sensa- tionless, unwishing, motionless, powerless, as in trance or catalepsy ; an absolute apathy of body and complete oblivion of mind. And yet life is there ! In the dream of nightmare, you remember, there is a will, but no power. In the absolute senseless- ness of trance, all sympathy between the brain or spinal marrow, or the influence of the nerves of motion, or of the will on muscle, altogether cease. I will not fatigue you with varieties, such as carus, catalepsy, and the like, or with mere medi- cal definitions, as syncope or fainting, epilepsy, ap- oplexy, and their analogies. By the term trance I would define all those con- ditions in which there is protracted derangement of volition or the will, sensibility and voluntary action being suspended, while the vital functions are per- formed, yet with diminished energy ; the " deep sleep" of Paracelsus, Hieronymus, Fabricius, Cel- sus, and other writers of antiquity. In some, the rosy colour of the lips and cheeks will not fade ; in others, they are pale and blood- less ; the body becomes cold as marble, the pulse often imperceptible, and the vapour of breathing on a polished surface alone distinguishes the still living being from the perfect work of the sculptor. I have, however, had patients who were rosy when they fell asleep, but became pale about the end of the second day. Girls often smile sweetly in full catalepsy, but SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 367 the countenance will become anxious as waking approaches ; and this must ever excite suspicion. The body, indeed, is, to the external world, dead ; for, although the cataleptic will often swallow food, while all the other muscles are in spasm, this may, I believe does, depend on mere irritability, by which, as I before told you, the brain is first ex- cited, and then directs a movement without the mind's feeling. Catalepsy is so peculiar to young females of extreme sensibility, that it may be con- sidered an intense hysteria, depending on certain sympathies, or resulting from sudden or powerful influences on the passions. The form of catalepsy marked by hysteria is least dangerous, but it is very stubborn. Probably this is the form so com- mon in Germany. Previous to the cataleptic acme girls are often maniacally violent, and will then suddenly regain their temper and their reason. They will sit and play with their fingers in a sullen mood, and the power of motion and speech and other acts of voli- tion may be alternately impaired or lost. In some, the sleep has been preceded by fits of lethargy, by lassitude, and inaptitude to exertion, and perhaps a propensity to sleep-walking. The decided state of catalepsy has begun in an epileptic convulsion. In all, I think, I have seen combined with this dis- order irregular determination of blood ; in one case, where the taste and smell were gone for four or five months, the climax was suicide by arsenic. The countenance is almost always placid in cata- leptic sleep, the eyes being turned up, the pupils dilated, but the eyelids closed. If the fit be the result of sudden fright, the features will remain as they were at that moment — the eyelid fixed, but the pupil usually sensible. The joints and muscles are pliable, and may be moulded to any form, but 368 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. they remain in that position as rigidly fixed as the limbs of a lay figure, or the anchylosed joints of the self-torturing fakir — insensible to all stimuli, beat- ing, tickling, or pricking. I have seen patients lapse into a state of catalep- sy in a moment, without a struggle. I remember, during one of my visits to the asylum in Hoxton, a maniac, who often, in the midst of his occupation, became instantaneously a statue, leaning a little forward, one arm lifted up, and the index finger pointed as at some interesting object, the eye sta- ring and ghastly, and. the whole expression as of one rapt in an ecstasy of thought or vision. The waking from a trance, like the recovery from the asphyxy of drowning, is painful. It is attended with a struggle, and the hand is almost invariably placed firmly over the heart, as if its ac- tions were a painful effort to overcome congestion. In some cases, indeed, a purple hue will sudden- ly suffuse the cataleptic body ; the limbs are then extremely rigid, but become pliant when the healthy tint is restored. The sensation in the brain of the cataleptic, as of those recovering from drowning, resembles the pricking of needles, the circulation soon becoming accelerated. Hunger is usually intense when the patient awakes. The usual duration of catalepsy is from twenty to forty hours. The return of voli- tion is commonly marked by perspiration; this premonitory sign is often followed by a piercing shriek, as in the case of nightmare, and, indeed, in a slight degree, of an infant's cry as soon as it is born. It has appeared to me that the cataleptic is mark- ed by extremes of feeling and disposition. The sensibility either being too dull for the feeling of joy, or so intensely excited by pleasure as to ap- SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 369 proach the confine of delirium. One of my pa- tients, in particular, who was an eighty-hour sleep- er, endured a metamorphosis from religious enthu- siasm to theatrical mania. Her Bible was discard- ed for romances and play-books, and even the most licentious volumes. Cast. I have read (I suppose in some moth-eaten tomes, enshrined I know not where) of a scholar of Lubeck, who slept seven years ; in Diogenes La- ertius, of Epimenides, who slept fifty-one years in a cave ; in Ricaut, of the seven devoted sleepers of Ephesus (the same, I presume, as the seven il- lustrious sleepers of Mohammed's tale in the Ko- ran) ; and of the Leucomorians, who fall asleep with the swallows early in November, and wake at the end of April. One moment more among the legends of ro- mance. In the " Hierarchie of the Blessed An- gels" it is written, that in a dark cavern of the Baltic there were discovered five men in Roman habits, so deeply sleeping that all efforts to awaken them were unavailing. Ogier the Dane is now sleeping in the dungeon of Cronenburg Castle (so recordeth the " Danske Folk Saga"). Prince Arthur, too, was lying, when a chronicle was written, in a trance at Avelon, and the Britons, with implicit belief, were watching for his awaking. Years have passed since these mysterious le- gends were penned, and I dare not say that the spells are broken yet. Ev. If they then slept, sweet Castaly, they are surely sleeping now. Tales lose nothing by telling, and nature is often thus magnified into a miracle. You may, however, believe this, that a periodical catalepsy, with intervals, may last even for years. The " Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin" record 24 370 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE.— -CATALEPSY. the case of a woman who sunk into catalepsy twice a day for many years, during which period she was married, and became the almost uncon- scious mother of children. Nay, there is a story of Mynheer Vander Gucht, of Bremen, who, with very brief intermissions, slept and dreamed for thirty years ; so that, on the re- turn of travellers by sea or land, the primal ques- tion was, if Mr. Vander Gucht was up ! Ida. Catalepsy, I believe, has been often feigned; and, although it is astonishing with what apathy pain may be endured, the imposture, I presume, may be usually discovered by the proposition of some horrible remedy. < Ev. Frequently ; but many impostors have with- stood the test, and triumphed in their deception. Yet it is true that the perfect state of catalepsy has been, in very rare instances, voluntarily produced, thus exhibiting the complete influence of will over an involuntary muscle, the heart. The case of Colonel Townsend I adduce as one of undoubted authority. This officer was able to suspend the action both of his heart and lungs, af- ter which he became motionless, icy cold, and rigid, a glassy film overspreading his eyes. As there was no breathing, there was no vapour appa- rent on the glass when held to his mouth. During the many hours in which this voluntary trance ex- isted, there was a total absence of consciousness, yet a faculty of self-reanimation ! Avicenna speaks of one that could " cast himself into a palsie when he list ;" and Celsus, of a priest that could " separate himself from his senses when he list, and lie like a dead man, void of life and sense." Cardan, the P avian astrologer, brags of himself that he could do as much, and that " when he list." SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 371 Dr. Cleghorn, of Glasgow, relates the case of a man who could stop the pulse at his wrist, and re- duce himself to the condition of syncope, by hit will, of course. Barton, the holy maid of Kent, was enabled thus to " absorb her faculties." Restitutus, a presbyter, could also throw himself into a trance, being insensible except to the very loudest sounds. So says Augustin. Astr. So that there may not be much imposture in the case, recorded in the " Spectator," of Nich- olas Hart, a professor of somnolency, who lived by sleeping. The following is his advertisement in the " Daily Courant" of that time : " Nicholas Hart, who slept last year in Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, intends to sleep this year at the ■ Cock and Bottle,' in Little Britain." I will freely confess to you, Evelyn, my skepti- cism as to these ultra romantic legends ; but may my own memory fail me not while I relate a few strange stories, and demand of yourself confirma- tion. Euphemia Lindsay, of Forfarshire, slept eight weeks, having taken nothing but (possibly) a little cold water. In the eighth week she died. Angelica Vlies, of Delft, had fasted in a state of insensibility from 1822 to 1828. She took nothing but water, tea, and whey, and these in the most minute quantities. In a record, A.D. 1545, I read that " William Foxley, a potmaker to the Mint in London, slept in the Tower of London (not being by any means to be waked; fourteen days and fifteen nights ; and when he waked, it seemed to him that the in- terval was but as one night." Samuel Clinton, of Timbury, near Bath, often slept for a month, and once from April to August. 372 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. He would, during this period, suddenly wake, but, ere food could be administered to him, he lapsed again into a trance. Margaret Lyall, of Edinburgh, slept from the morning of June 27th to the evening of the 30th, then from July 1st to August 8th. Her breathing was scarcely perceptible, and her pulse low ; one arm was sensitive, the other senseless to the prick- ing of pins. She had never any subsequent cog- nizance of this sleep. A lady at Nismes had periodical attacks of trance, and it is curious that the intervals of waking were always of the same duration as the previous time of sleeping, however these might vary. In the year 1738, Elizabeth Orvin slept for four days, and, for the period of ten years afterward, passed seventeen hours of the twenty-four in sleep. No stimuli were powerful enough to rouse her ; acujiuncturation, flagellation, and even the stinging of bees, were ineffectual. Like many other somno- lents, she was morose and irritable, especially pre- vious to the sleeping fit. " Elizabeth Parker, of Morley Saint Peter, in Norfolk, for a considerable time was very regu- lar in her time of waking, which was once in seven days, after which they became irregular and precarious, and though of shorter duration, they were equally profound, and every attempt at keep- ing her awake, or waking her, was vain. Various experiments were tried, and an itinerant empiric, elated with the hope of rousing her from what he called counterfeit sleep, blew into her nostrils the powder of white hellebore ; but the poor creature remained insensible to the inhumanity of the deed, which, instead of producing the boasted effect, ex- coriated the skin of her nose, lips, and face." The records of medicine, I doubt not, may add SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 373 a volume to these simple stories, and, perchance, may unfold to us something of the exciting causes which have induced these strange conditions ; yet they seem to me so various — in some the effect being so sudden, in others so gradual — that it were vain for me to conjecture. Ev. The influence of fear, and fright, and ex- treme joy will often produce instantaneous paral- ysis, while that of intense study or anxiety will steal on by degrees ; and then, while in some cases the senses will be entirely apathetic, in others they will be acutely excited. Mendelssohn almost every evening immediately fell into a trance whenever " philosophy" was even named in his presence ; and so acutely deranged was then his conception of sound, that a voice of stentorian force seemed to ring in his ears, repeat- ing to him any impressive conversation he had heard during the day. Without presuming to satisfy Astrophel in ex- plaining the full pathology of these curious cases, I may, by analogy, illustrate his question by allu- ding to the acute influence which impressions exert on the mind, and, through it, on the body. Captain D , on service in Ceylon, was or- dered to march to the Kandian territory. This dis- trict had been the grave of many officers who had resided in it. From this circumstance, and the an- ticipation of a similar fatality to himself, he became speecruess, and died in fifty hours. During the plague of Egypt, lots were drawn for a decision as to what surgeon should remain with the sick on the departure of the troops. Mr. Dick, the army inspector, relates that on one occa- sion the surgeon on whom the lot fell dropped dead. In the treaty with Meer Jaffier, Colonel Clive omitted the name of the Gentoo merchant, Omi- I i 374 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. J chund. This man was induced to expect treasures to the amount of one million for his aid in deposing the Bengal nabob. From this disappointment he became speechless, and subsequently insane. George Grokatski, a Polish soldier, deserted. He was discovered a few days after, drinking and merry-making. On his court-martial he became speechless, unconscious, and fixed as a statue. For twenty days and nights he lay in this trance, with- out nourishment ; he then sunk and died. Some girls (as we read in Platerus) playing near a gibbet, one wantonly flung stones at the criminal suspended on it. Being violently struck, the body swung, and the girl, believing that it was alive, and was descending from the gibbet, fell into violent convulsions and died. The following case, although not fatal, very pow- erfully displays the paralyzing effects of imagi- nation. A lady in perfect health, twenty-three years of age, was asked by the parents of a friend to be present at a severe surgical operation. On consid- eration, it was thought wrong to expose her to such a scene, and the operation was postponed for a few hours. She went to bed, however, with the imagi- nation highly excited, and awoke in alarm, hearing, or thinking she heard, the shrieks of her friend un- der the agony of an operation. Convulsions and hysterics supervened, and, on their subsiding, she went into a profound sleep, which continued sixty- three hours. The most eminent of the faculty were then consulted, and she was cupped, which awoke her; but the convulsions returned, and she again went to sleep, and slept, with few intermissions, for a fortnight. The irregular periods continued for ten or twelve years, the length of the sleeping fits from thirty to forty hours. Then came on irri- - • ,- . « ■ SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 375 tability, and total want of sleep for three months, her usual time for sleeping being then forty-eight hours. But if the sudden transition be excess of joy, its effect may be equally melancholy. Wescloff was detained as a hostage by the Kal- mucs, and carried along with them in their memor- able flight to China. His widowed mother had mourned him dead, and, on his sudden return, the excess of joy. was instantaneously fatal. In the year 1544, the Jewish pirate, Sinamus Taffurus, was lying in a port of the Red Sea called Orsenoe, and was preparing for war, being then engaged in one with the Portuguese. While he was there he received the unexpected intelligence that his son (who in the siege of Tunis had been made prisoner by Barbarossa, and by him doomed to slavery) was suddenly ransomed, and coming to his aid with seven ships, well armed. He was im- mediately struck as if with apoplexy, and expired on the spot. A Swiss student, writes Zimmerman, yielded himself to intense metaphysical study, which grad- ually produced a complete trance of the senses, the functions of the body being not inactive. After the lapse of a year of apparent idiocy, each sense was successively excited by its proper stimulus ; the ear by loud sounds, &c. When these were restored, the mind was again perfect, although in this effort his strength was nearly exhausted. I may add that lunar influence, though it is now somewhat out of fashion, was formerly believed even by so sage a physician as Dr. Mead and others, and Astrophel will thank me for blending with his own examples the following case of catalepsy in a moonstruck maiden. At the full of the moon this damsel fell in a fit, the recurrence obeying the 376 PREMATURE INTERMENT. regular periods of the tide. During the flood she lay in a speechless trance, and revived from it on the ebb. Her father was engaged on the Thames, and so struck was he with the regularity of these attacks, that on his return from the river he cor- rectly anticipated the condition of his daughter ; and even in the night he has arisen to his work, as her cries on recovering from the fit were always a cor- rect monitor to him of the turning of the tide. PREMATURE INTERMENT. — RESUSCI- TATION. " Oh sleep ! thou ape of death, lie dull upon her ; And be her sense but as a monument, Thus in a chapel lying." — Cymbeline. " Sleep may usurp on nature many hours." — Pericles. Ida. These stories are, indeed, painfully inter- esting ; but tell us, Evelyn, is it so certain that the shaft of Azrael had irretrievably struck these un- happy creatures of whom you speak 1 Is it not to be feared that instances of premature sepulture have too often occurred from want of scientific dis- cernment 1 On the exhumation of the Cimetiere des Innocens at Paris, during the Napoleon dynas- ty, the skeletons were, many of them, discovered in attitudes indicating a struggling to get free ; in deed some, we are assured, were partly out of their coffins. To avert this awful catastrophe, it was the cus- tom, in the provinces of Germany, to place a bell rope in the hand of a corpse for twenty-four hours before burial. "We may look on this, perhaps, as one natural source of romance and mystery, foi the ringing of bells by the dead has been a favour- ite omen of the ghostly legends. Ev. Alas ! even my own professional study and PREMATURE INTERMENT. 377 duties have not been free from these melancholy- scenes ; and if I make not your gentle heart to tremble, fair Castaly, I will recount some of those unhappy instances of fatality to which the errors and neglect of man may doom his fellow-mortal. Miss C (of C Hall, in Warwickshire) and her brother were the subjects of typhoid fever. She seemed to die, and her bier was placed in the family vault. In a week her brother died also, and when he was taken to the tomb the lady was found sitting in her grave clothes on the steps of the vault, having, after her waking from the trance, died of terror or exhaustion. A girl, after repeated faintings, was apparently dead, and was taken, as a subject, into the anatom- ical theatre of the Salpetfiere" at Paris. During the night, faint groans were heard in the theatre, but no search was made. In the morning, it was evident that the girl had attempted to disengage her- self from the ivinding-sheet, one leg being thrust from off the tressels, and an arm resting on an ad- joining table. A slave girl of Canton, named Leaning, appa- rently died. She was placed in a coffin, the lid of which remained unfastened, that her parents might come and see the corpse. Three days after the ap- parent death, while the remains were being con- veyed to the grave, a noise or voice was heard pro- ceeding from the coffin, and on removing the cov- ering, it was found the woman had come to life again. In 1838, at Tonnieus, in the Lower Garonne, as the graveman threw earth on a coffin, he also heard groans. Much terrified, he ran away, and a crowd assembled. On opening the coffin, the face of the buried man was distorted, and he had disengaged his arms from the folds of his winding-sheet. Ii2 378 PREMATURE INTERMENT. The Emperor Zeno was, as it is written, prema- turely buried ; and, when the body was soon after casually discovered, it was found that he had, to satisfy acute hunger, eaten some flesh from his arm. Astr. One might think that Master Ainsworth, from this record, sketched the episode of the sex- ton and the old coffin in his " Rookwood." The truth is equal to the fiction. Cast. When I was at Breslau in 1835 (and this is not one of Astrophel's fictions), a nun of the Ur- suline Convent was placed in her coffin in the church. At midnight, the sisters assembled to chant the vigils over the body of their sainted sis- ter. While the holy hymn was echoing through the oratory, the nun arose, tottered to the altar, knelt before the cross, and prayed. The sisters, with a cry of horror, awoke the abbess ; and on her arrival, the nun again arose, and lay down in her coffin. The physician of the convent was speedily summoned, but, on his arrival, he found her dead. There can scarcely be drawn a scene combining the sublime and beautiful of romance in higher in- tensity than this. It was the spectral visitation of a seraph. Ida. Like many sublimities of nature, these mys- teries have been profaned by unholy imitation, as, for instance, the reanimation of the nuns in the opera of " Robert le Diable." But there is an aw- ful romance mingled with the history of those mel- ancholy creatures, from whose inanimate clay the immortal spirit was thought to have parted, still more impressive. That instinctive, that inexpressi- ble dread with which we contemplate a corpse, is nothing in comparison with that thrill of astonish- ment which overwhelms us when a body becomes (as in the miraculous recall of Lazarus) reanima- ted — when a spirit appears to visit us from the dead. PREMATURE INTERMENT. 379 Yet this is not fear, for we know it cannot injure us ; it is a feeling that we are with something be- yond ourselves spiritual, which had seemed to have endured a transfiguration, and been admitted into the order of angelic beings. There must be some- thing of the supernatural which creates this fearful wonder, an impression on the heart that is an es- pecial influence of the Deity : else should we not behold with dread, instead of a sacred pleasure, the success of our efforts in cases of suspended anima- tion ] This visitation from another world is one of the surest indications of our spirituality ; and, like the reanimation of soul, and mind, and consciousness, from deep and undreaming sleep, lighting up the body into brilliancy and beauty, might drown a skeptic's reasoning in a flood of holy faith, and overwhelm him with the belief of immortality. Cast. It is this combination of vitality and death, so seemingly a paradox, that forms the basis of many of our deepest romances ; as the " Spectre Life in Death," in the Ancient Mariner of the mel- ancholy Coleridge, himself a wild visionary of the first order. If I remember, he is writing of a spec- tre ship " Betwixt us and the sun. And straight the sun was fleck'd with bars (Heaven's mother send us grace !) As if through a dungeon grate he peer'd With broad and burning face. Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) How fast she nears and nears. Are those her sails that glance in the sun, Like restless gossameres i Are those her ribs, through which the sun Doth peer, as through a grate '*. And is that woman all her crew ? Is that a Death— and are there two ? Is Death that woman's mate ? Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold, 380 RESUSCITATION. Her skin was white as leprosy, The nightmare Life in Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold." Ev. It is melancholy that a noble mind should be so perverted by poppy-juice. And yet the Mo- hammedan beats him hollow at this sort of bur- lesque. There is a fiction in Sale's notes to the " Koran*' ' During the building of his magnificent temple, King Solomon sleeps in death. He remains sup- ported by his staff, on which he had been leaning, until a worm eats away the prop, and the body falls prostrate to the ground. But we need not go to the East for our speci- mens. Even in the year 1839, in our Emerald Isle of superstition, they would have us believe a miracle of this kind. In a field near Lurgan, a man called Farland had received money from a widow wherewith to pay her rent ; this he failed to do. On her remon- strance and declaration, she was asked to name her witnesses. She answered, " No one but God and herself." " Then," rejoined the man, " your God was asleep at the time." The attestation of three witnesses records that he was instantly struck in a trance as he w T as resting on his spade, and in that attitude he had ever since continued ! Cast. And is it not a blot on the page of sci- ence that so many ill-fated creatures are thus, through an error, doomed to dissolution ] Say, gentle Evelyn, has not your philosophy discovered some mode of discernment between life and death, which would smile the philanthropist on to patient watching ] Ev. To a degree. But it were vain to offer here precepts for such discrimination, which, sooth to say, are not yet absolute. The rosy tint of com- plexion may remain for some time, and even per- RESUSCITATION. 381 spiration may break forth, after deatli ; or the body- may assume the most deathlike aspect, and yet vital- ity is only in abeyance. Among our recoveries, it is true, there are many spontaneous rousings, and this especially if deep impression has been the cause of trance. Listen to the following from a journal of 1834 : " The wife of Thomas Benson, livery-lace maker, of Great Queen-street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, being suddenly taken ill, to all appearance expired ; and, when every symptom of life had fled, the body was duly laid out. On the following night, between nine and ten o'clock, while the undertaker was in the house receiving instructions for the funeral, to the astonishment and terror of the whole family, Mrs. Benson came down stairs, having been in a trance nearly thirty hours. Her situation has so terribly shocked her that but faint hopes are en- tertained of her recovery." It is melancholy to know how often these cases are abandoned to nature; but science may do much, and should do more to relieve them, al- though we possess not the wondrous vial of Rena- tus, nor have developed the creative mysteries of Prometheus or Frankenstein. Yet the recovery of Francois de Civille was al- most as great a wonder. He was thrown, at the siege of Rouen, into insensibility. He was in this state carried home by his servant. During a week he became warm, but exhibited no other sign of life. He was at this period flung out of a win- dow by the besiegers, and cast upon a dunghill, where he lay naked for three or four days. Yet even after this he was restored to life. Astr. You confess the wonder, Evelyn, that is some concession ; you may, perchance, believe an- other of equal interest. " My mother being sick to death of a fever three 382 RESUSCITATION. months after I was born, which was the occasion she nursed me no longer, her friends and servants thought, to all outward appearance, she was dead, and so almost two days and a night; but Dr. Win- ston coming to comfort my father, went into my mother's room, and, looking earnestly in her face, said, ' She is so handsome, and looks so lovely, I cannot think she is dead ;' and suddenly took a lancet out of his pocket, and with it cut the sole of her foot, which bled. Upon this he immediately caused her to be laid upon the bed again, and to be rubbed, and such means, as she came to life, and opening her eyes, saw two of her kinswomen stand by her, my Lady Knolleys and my Lady Russell, both with great wide sleeves, as the fash- ion then was, and said, ' Did not you promise me fifteen years, and are you come again V which they not understanding, persuaded her to keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she then was ; but some hours after she desired my fa- ther and Dr. Howlsworth might be left alone with her, to whom she said, ' I will acquaint you that during the time of my trance I was in great quiet, but in a place I could neither distinguish nor de- scribe ; but the sense of leaving my girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, remained a trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly I saw two by me clothed in long white garments, and methought I fell down upon my face upon the dust, and they asked me why I was so troubled in so great hap- piness. I replied, O let me have the same grant given to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen years to see my daughter a woman ; to which they answer- ed, It is done, and then at that instant I awoke out of my trance.' And Dr. Howlsworth did then af- firm that that day she died made just fifteen years from that time." I remember a story of the effect of deep impres- RESUSCITATION. 383 eion on a sensitive mind : the sleep of a lovesick Juliet, without the entrancing draught of the friar. A young French lady in the Rue St. Honore, at Paris, was condemned by her father to a hated marriage while her heart was devoted to another. She fell into a trance, and was buried. Under some strange influence, her lover opened her grave, and she was revived, and married. Thus the romance of the " Beauty of Verona" was acted without its tragedy. I have heard, but where I recollect not, a story of another French lady, who was actually the sub- ject of an anatomist. On the evidence of some faint signs of vitality, he not only restored the lady to life, but united himself to her in marriage. There is no doubt, also, that Rachel, lady Rus- sell, would have been buried alive had not the de- voted aifection of her husband, and his constant visits to her coffin, prevented it. I read, too, that Shorigny, an hysterical girl in Paris, was watched daily by her physician, after he was assured by the friends that she was dead. On the sixth day the cloth covering was seen to move, the eyes soon after opened, and she gradually re- covered. Ev. It is one of the anomalies of our science that similar causes will often produce opposite ef- fects. We may be thrown into trance by fright, and intense alarm may be the cause of recovery. I may relate an Oriental anecdote as an analogy, which, however, I beg you to receive with some reservation. A Persian, at the siege of Sardis, was about to kill Croesus, whom he did not recognise. By his side was the king's dumb child, who, in a sudden paroxysm of agony, screamed out, " Kill not Croe- sus !" From this instant (as it were a miracle), Herodotus writes, his speech was fully restored ! 384 RESUSCITATION. We learn from Bourgeois, in 1838, that a med- ical man, from the sudden influence of grief, sunk into a cataleptic state, but his consciousness never left him. The lamentations of his wife, the sym- pathetic condolence of his medical friends, and the arrangements regarding his funeral, were to him distinctly audible. He knew that he was in his coflin, and that there was a solemn procession fol- lowing him to the grave. As the solemn words of " Earth to earth" were uttered, and the dust fell on his coffin lid, the consciousness of this, and his horror at his impending fate, burst the fetters of his icy trance — he shrieked aloud, and was saved. In the " Psychological Magazine" we read of a lady who fell into a state of catalepsy after a vio- lent nervous disorder. " It seemed to her, as if in a dream, that she was really dead ; yet she was perfectly conscious of all that happened around her in this dreadful state. She distinctly heard her friends speaking and lamenting her death at the side of her coffin ; she felt them pull on her dead clothes, and lay her in it. This feeling produced a mental anxiety which was indescribable. She tried to cry, but her soul was without power, and could not act on her body. She had the contradictory feeling as if she were in her own body and yet not in it at one and the same time. It was equally impossible for her to stretch out her arm or to open her eyes as to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so. The internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height when the funeral hymns were sung, and when the lid of the coffin was about to be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the first one which gave activity to her soul, and caused it to operate on her corporeal frame." RESUSCITATION. 385 I have been assured that the soldier who has been placed in his grave by such an error has been awoke in his coffin by the volley fired over him. Parallel with these are the instances in which vitality seemed to be instantly excited by acute pain. I remember the case of a cataleptic girl, related by the Abbe Menon, who was doomed to dissec- tion ; the first stroke of the scalpel awoke her, and she lived. Cardinal Sommaglia was not so fortunate. He fell into syncope from intense grief, and it was de- cided that he should be opened and embalmed. As the surgeon's knife punctured the lungs, the heart throbbed, and the cardinal attempted to avert the knife with his hand ; but the die was cast, and he shortly died. The Abbe Prevost was also sacrificed in this way. As Vesalius, the physician of Philip II., was opening the thorax of a Spanish gentleman, the heart palpitated. Death also occurred here. Ve- salius was brought before the Inquisition, but was pardoned. A gentleman was seized, apparently with apo- plexy, while at cards. A vein was opened in both arms, but no blood flowed. He was placed in a room with two watchers, who slept, alas ! too long; for in the morning the room was deluged with blood from the punctures, and his life was gone. These are, indeed, unhappy instances of the er- rors of omission and commission entailed on the fallibility of science. I believe a French author, Bruhier, has collected fifty-two cases of persons buried alive, four which were dissected prema- turely, fifty-three which recovered, and seventy- two which were falsely reported dead. Astr. Ther^ is a solemn problem associated 25 K r 386 RESUSCITATION. with this, on which I have often reflected, the so- lution of which, I presume, your philosophy can- not offer to us. At what moment would the mind cease to influence the body, were there no recov- ery from the trance ] I have sometimes felt a mys- terious influence, apart, I am sure, from philoso- phy, that whispered me, the life, which I had watched in its ebb, was at length gone. Yet of the transit of an immaterial spirit, although convin- ced of the sublime truth, it is certain we know no- thing. Ev. Nothing demonstrative. It is not, however, when the body seems dead, for consciousness, or the systemic life, may for a while be suspended by mere cold. But dissolution is that point, unknown to us, when the principle of life (whether that be the in- fluence of arterial blood, or electricity, magnetism, or galvanism) is not excitable, when molecular death has ensued ; not even irritability, that vis insita or vis nervosa of Haller, remaining. Of course, mind must instantly depart on the commencement of de- composition, the brain being then totally incompat- ible with mind. The Stoics believed the soul to occupy the body until it was putrefied, and resolved into its materia prima. Astr. I once thought, Evelyn, that the difference in the tenacity of life in the man and the zoophyte might, with some subtlety, be explained on this prin- ciple, thus : that the life of a reasoning creature was in its soul; that of an inferior animal in its spinal ir- ritability. Thus, when man is decapitated, his soul is gone from him — he is dead ; but when vitality is in the vis nervea, as in the insect, life may exist with- out a head, that is, the organ of a soul. The but- terfly will flutter, I am told, long after decapitation. Ev. The excito-motory principle illustrates this fact, without the requisition of such a notion ; and RESUSCITATION. 387 life, we know, may be artificially sustained for a time after decapitation. The interesting physiolo- gy of the reflex actions of a nerve explains this, and all the terrific convulsions of galvanized bodies. Cast. I think I have a glimpse of your mean- ing, Evelyn. May we not believe, then, that there is truth in the affirmation that Charlotte Corday's cheeks blushed at her exposure after her decolla- tion ] Ev. There is far more romance than truth, fair Castaly, in this story; but I do believe the proba- bility of a story almost as marvellous, that the lips of Mary Stuart frayed visibly after her head fell from her body. Soemmering has written, that if the open eyes of a decollated head be turned full on the sun, the lids will immediately close, but this, of course, without consciousness. Cast. And yet some learned men believed the head of Charlotte Corday sensible of its state, from this asserted fact of its blushing. Ev. They should not have been believed with- out complete evidence. Indeed, this question may now be deemed decided in the negative by the ex- periments of a learned professor of Heidelburg on the head of Sebastian Zink, decollated at Rastadt. On placing bitters on the tongue, and hallooing "pardon" in his ear at the instant ef decapitation, it was proved that there was an utter insensibility to all. Ida. Then sensation is instantly destroyed. In this, as in all his dispensations, how is the mercy of the Deity displayed ! Ev. It is still a question with us whether our physical sensations, on the point of dissolution, are often so acute as they appear. Cabanis and the famous Guillotine declared their conviction that no pain was felt at the moment of 388 RESUSCITATION. or after decapitation. In the works of Lord Bacon, we read of one who was suspended till he was all but dead, and his declaration was that his suffer- ing was a mere trifle. Cowper also left a manu- script, in which he states that, in one of his three attempts at suicide, he hung himself over his door in the Temple, but that he did not suffer in the least. Ida. And in drowning % Ev. While the medical committee of the Hu- mane Society were framing those scientific rules which have rendered the process of resuscitation so successful, I remember, especially, one pale and melancholy girl, who glided in before us like a spectre. She had attempted suicide, but her inten- tion was happily thwarted, after she had been for many minutes in the water, and was apparently lifeless. True, the mental agony which prompts to such an act will often overwhelm sensation; but this creature was conscious of her act, and assured us that the sensation of drowning was but an intense feeling offaintness preceding a sinking into insensi- bility, with a short spasmodic struggle ; an uneasi- ness rather than a pain. When Clarence therefore, recounting his dream, exclaims, " My God, methought what "pain it was to drown !" I believe he should rather have referred his feel- ings to his recovery,!? the words of the pale girl were true; for, when consciousness and sensation are returning, the feeling is intense. Throughout the body, as it is recovering from apathetic numbness, the sense of returning circulation of the blood is terrible : an acute sensation of pins and needles in the brain and the marrow of the spine. No won- der, then, that these resuscitated beings will request that no efforts may be made should they again be in a state of suspended animation. The sensation RESUSCITATION. 389 on being born is probably as acute as that on dis- solution. Ida. Then there is consciousness 1 Ev. The evidence of Dr. Adam Clarke will il- lustrate this interesting question. Yet I differ some- what with him regarding so perfect a conscious- ness during submersion. In his life, you will see the following dialogue with Dr. Lettsom, in which Clarke describes his own case of immersion : " Dr. Lettsom said, ' Of all that I have seen re- stored, or questioned afterward, I never found one who had the smallest recollection of anything that passed, from the moment they went under water till the time in which they were restored to life and thought.' Dr. Clarke answered Dr. L. : ' I knew a case to the contrary.' ' Did you, indeed V 1 Yes, Dr. L., and the case was my own. I was once drowned.' And then he related the circum- stances, and added, ' I saw my danger, but thought the mare would swim, and I knew I could ride when we were overwhelmed. It appeared to me that I had gone to the bottom with my eyes open. At first I thought 1 saw the bottom clearly, and then felt neither apprehension nor pain ; on the contrary, I felt as if I had been in the most de- lightful situation ; my mind was tranquil and un- commonly happy. I felt as if in Paradise, and yet I do not recollect that I saw any person. The im- pressions of happiness seemed not to be derived from anything around me, but from the state of my mind ; and yet I had a general apprehension of pleasing objects ; and I cannot recollect that anything appeared defined, nor did my eye take in any object, only I had a general impression of a green colour, as of fields or gardens. But my hap- piness did not arise from these, but appeared to con- sist merely in the tranquil, indescribably tranquil Kk2 390 RESUSCITATION. state of my mind. By-and-by I seemed to awake as out of a slumber, and felt unutterable pain and difficulty in breathing ; and now I found I had been carried by a strong wave, and left in very shallow water upon the shore, and the pain I felt was oc- casioned by the air once more inflating my lungs and producing respiration. How long I had been under water I cannot tell ; it may, however, be guessed at by this circumstance : when restored to the power of reflection, I looked for the mare, and saw her walking leisurely down shore towards home, then about half a mile distant from the place where we were submerged. Now I aver, 1st. That, in being drowned, I felt no pain. 2d. That I did not, for a simple moment, lose my conscious- ness. 3d. I felt indescribably happy, and, though dead as to the total suspension of all the functions of life, yet I felt no pain in dying ; and I take for granted, from this circumstance, those who die by drowning feel no pain, and that, probably, it is the easiest of all deaths. 4th. That I felt no pain till once more exposed to the action of the atmospheric air, and then I felt great pain and anguish in re- turning to life, which anguish, had I continued under water, I should have never felt. 5th. That animation must have been totally suspended from the time I must have been under water, which time might be, in some measure, ascertained by the dis- tance the mare was from the place of my submer- sion, which was at least half a mile, and she was not, when I first observed her, making any speed. 6th. Whether there was anything preternatural in my escape, I cannot tell ; or whether a ground- swell had not, in a merely natural way, borne me to the shore, and the retrocession of the tide (for it was then ebbing) left me exposed to the open air, I cannot tell. My preservation must have been TRANSMIGRATION. 391 die effect of natural causes, and yet it appears to be more rational to attribute it to a superior agency. Here, then, Dr. L., is a case widely different, it appears, from those you have witnessed, and which argues very little for the modish doctrine of the materiality of the soul.' Dr. Lettsom appeared puzzled with this relation, but did not attempt to make any remarks on it." And well he might, for if animation were totally suspended, consciousness would have been suspend- ed also. TRANSMIGRATION.— ANALYSIS OF TRANCE. " Thou shalt hold the opinion of PylYiagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam." — Twelfth Night. " Through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize Each vital spirit." — Romeo and Juliet. Astr. You have granted me more than you de- sire, dear Evelyn. If life be restored, it had never deserted the body, and yet the mind Jiad deserted it. The mind and body, then, are both independent of each other. From this truth a metaphysical ques- tion of deep and wondrous interest arises : In what condition does the mind exist, during so long a period^ uninfluencing and uninfluenced by the power of per- ception ? I remember searching for some elucidation of this mystery among those ghost-stories of the Hebrews, founded on the " purgatorie of souls," in Stehelin's " Traditions of the Jews," but I rose from my reading unenlightened. Ida. And ever will, Astrophel. Profane curi- osity must fail in such a study ; adoration alone can sanctify this mystic question, on which theolo- 392 TRANSMIGRATION. gians and philosophers, even those devoutly confi- dent in the sublime truths of immortality, have so essentially differed. Like Astrophel, Paley inquires where is the soul during suspended vitality 1 and Priestley, where when the body was created] Hume, with the subtlety of the skeptic, asks how can the soul long be the same, seeing that, like the body, its parti- cles are constantly changing ] While Glanville thinks himself a wondrous wight as he prates of its " essential spissitude, a something that is more subtle than the body, contracting itself into a less ubi" Were this sublime secret fathomable by the deepest intellect, then would be unfolded things above, which are ordained to be ever mysteries to creatures on earth, such as the future existence of the spirit, and the nature of Paradise. Although revelation has given us glimpses enough to satisfy humble devotion, what mind can decide on the exact nature and changes of its own future state 1 The negative answer is at once returned by the variety of these learned opinions : That the soul is, immediately after death, submitted to its reward or punishment. That its state after death is one of half happiness and misery, until it be again joined to its body on the resurrection, and then it shall enjoy or suffer the extremes of felicity or torment. That the soul rests in quiet uncon- sciousness until the day of judgment. And, lastly, that souls are purified by purgatory and compara- tive suffering, and then are admitted into the realms of perpetual enjoyment. Astr. Is it not strange that in this notion of pur- gatory, with slight variations, pagans, and Roman- ists, and Egyptians, and Brahmins so nearly ac- cord ] In the creed of the Brahmins there is TRANSMIGRATION. 393 something of sublimity, whatever may be their er- ror, and Ida will not chide if I repeat the essence of their creed, which Robertson has gathered from the " Baghvat Geeta." " Every intelligent nature, particularly the souls of men, they conceived to be portions separated from this great spirit ; to which, after fulfilling their destiny on earth, and attaining a proper degree of purity, they would be again reunited. In order to efface the stains with which a soul, during its res- idence on earth, has been defiled by the indulgence of sensual and corrupt appetites, they taught that it must pass, in a long succession of transmigra- tions, through the bodies of different animals, until, by what it suffers and what it leaves in the various forms of its existence, it shall be so thoroughly re- fined from all pollution as to be rendered meet for being absorbed into the divine essence, and re- turns, like a drop, into that unbounded ocean from which it originally issued." Aristotle, in taking up this notion of transmigra- tion in his book " De Anima," says that " the soul was always joined to a body, sometimes to one, sometimes to another." And from this idea were taken the stories of Fadlallah and the Dervis, in the " Spectator," of the " Transmigrations of In- dus," and the beautiful fable of " Psyche," or the soul, which, when a body died, could not live alone on earth, and so crept into another. Herodotus, in the second book of his history, has some allusions to the Egyptian creed ; and, indeed, the fear of this transmigration was the origin of mummies among the Copts. Their belief that the soul (the immor- tality of which they very early, if not the first, de- cided) could not leave the body when entire, in- duced them to preserve that body as long as possi- ble ; and the mummy unrollers and hieroglyphic 394 TRANSMIGRATION. readers must commit sad sacrilege by exposing their sacred dust to the decomposition of air. When the body was diss-olved, however, the soul entered that of some animal that instant born ; and profane commentators have, on this creed, presu- med to explain the sacred story of the " banish- ment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar." At the end of 30,000 years it again entered that of a man ; and it is likely that their object in embalming was to have the soul re-enter the same body from choice and habit. Simonides, four hundred years after the siege of Troy, ungallantly reversed this doctrine, deci- ding that " the souls of women were formed of the principles and elements of brutes." The Pythago- rean system was, if not more courteous, at least more just. " Thus all things are but altered, nothing dies ; And here and there th' imbodied spirit flies. By time, or force, or sickness, dispossess'd, And lodges, where it lights, in bird or beast ; Or hunts without, till ready limbs it find, And actuates those according to their kind. From tenement to tenement is toss'd, The soul is still the same, the figure only lost." This is from Dryden's translation of Chaucer. And Burton's record is as follows : " The Pythagoreans defend Metempsychosis and Palingenesia, that souls go from one body to an- other, epota prius Lethes nudd, as men into wolves, beares, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in their lives, or participated in conditions : ' inque ferinas Possumus ire domus pecudumque in corpora condi.' " Lucian's cock was first Euphorbus, a captaine : ' Ille ego (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli Panthoides Euphorbus eram? " And Plato, in Timaeus and in Phaedo — Ev. Enough of Plato, dear Astrophel ; or be- TRANSMIGRATION. 395 lieve, with me, that his philosophy on this point was merely figurative of the similarity of mind, or genius, or feature, between the dead and the living ; as it was said of old, that the soul of Raphael had transmigrated to the body of Francesco Mazzola (Parmegiano), becausehis style and personal beauty so closely resembled those of the all but divine master of his art. And pray what was the gist of that special as- tronomer, who affirmed that he "saw something written in the moon V A wild romance only ! No, forsooth. Pythagoras may classically vociferate " errat, et illinc, Hue venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus Spiritus : eque feris humana in corpora transit, Inque feras noster." But read farther, and you will find the high moral to be a severe injunction against flesh-eating : " Then let not piety be put to flight, To please the taste of glutton appetite ; But suffer innate souls secure to dwell, Lest from their seats your parents you expel ; With rabid hunger feed upon your kind, Or from a beast dislodge a brother's mind." Think you this injunction will be obeyed, in the face of the "Almanac des Gourmands'?" Ida. Evelyn is severe. May 1 tell him that among the records of the East he will find inci- dents blended with this idea which may almost consecrate the creed of a Pagan ] As the honey is hung close to the poisoned sting of the bee, there may be a bright spot to illuminate the gloomy an- nals of superstition. The very belief in transmi- gration may impart an atom of mercy, even to an infidel ; and where superstition, shorn of the light of Christianity, must prevail, it were better sure to foster that notion which may, even in one little sen- timent, half humanize the heart. 396 TRANSMIGRATION. Listen to this contrast between some Orient sects, along the eastern shores of Hindostan. The daugh- ters of Guzzerat fold their infants to their bosoms drugged with opium ; and when the babe is thus poisoned, the Hindoo girl will answer with a lan- guid and seeming innocent smile, "It is not diffi- cult to blast a flower-bud." Then the Kurrada Brahmins (as we read in the " Rudhiradhyaya"), believing themselves the agents of Vishara Boot, the spirit of poison, sacrifice the pundits to their vampyre goddess, Maha-Lackshmi. Equally blind, yet more happy in the nature of their superstition, are the Shravuch Banians, or the proselytes of Jena. The Yati, or officiating priest of this order, in purifying the temples, sweeps the floor with the Raju-hurrun, a broom of cotton-threads, lest hapless one little insect may be destroyed. And this we may believe, from the creed of trans- migration being influential among these people. Sir Paul Rycaut, also, in his Oriental history, in- forms us of parallel incidents among the devout Mohammedans, who, believing that in the body of a brute may reside the soul of a departed relative, ransom with their gold many a bird that would otherwise flutter away its captivity in a cage. Cast. I will not flout your praises, Ida; but in our own island, this illusion has rather led to cap- tivity. I remember the story of a lady living in Worcestershire, who, under the innocent delusion that her daughters were changed into singing-birds, hung her pew in the Cathedral with cages of gold- finches and linnets. And Lord Orford, in his " Reminiscences," thus records the monomania of the Duchess of Kendal : "Ina tender mood, he (King George) promised the duchess that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. 397 he would make her a visit. The duchess, on his death, so much expected the accomplishment of that engagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa at Isle- worth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and treated it with all the respect and tenderness of duty, till the royal bird, or she, took the last flight." Astr. You spoke of the absolute senselessness of trance, and yet there were some hints of the awakening power of fear. Is this consistent 1 Ev. I expected your objection. In the cases of perfect catalepsy, the brain is not conscious of its mind, or if the mind be active, there is no assu- rance of its activity. But, as its faculties are awa- kened, it usually begins to work exactly where it left off; one of the most imposing proofs, both of a separate existence during life, and of our bodies' unconsciousness of this transient disunion. Astr. I may own, Evelyn, that your illustrations of our questions, in despite of some straining at explanation, carry, on many points, conviction to my own mind, but not on all. There is another question equally interesting with the former .• How is vitality preserved during this protracted absti- nence 1 Ev. Remember, dear Astrophel, my confession, that there are inexplicable mysteries. But to the point of your last question. We are aware of the long period during which the body may fast after shipwreck, or beneath a fallen cliff, or even on the incarceration of animals for the purpose of exper- iment. Thus Captain Bligh, and seventeen per- sons, sailed four thousand miles in an open boat, with a small bird occasionally for the food of all, The Juno's crew, wrecked off Aracan, existed twenty-three days without food ; and the wreck of L T. 398 ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. the Medusa is fresh in our memories. Here the body feeds on its own fat, shrinking until that sup- ply is lost, and then it dies. I might relate to you the very impressive stories of Anne Moore, of Tutbury ; of Janet M'Cleod, told by Dr. Mackenzie ; and many strange facts related by Dr. Willan, Sir William Hamilton, and others. I might refer you to legends, of which I can scarcely press for your belief, as the strange but authenticated story of Anna Garbero, of Racconig- gi, forty miles from Turin, who existed without nutrition for two years, becoming like a shrivelled mummy ; and that of Eve Hergen, who existed thirteen years upon the odour of flowers ! But even with that incredulous frown of Astrophel's, and that faint smile of thine, fair Castaly, let me at once to my explanations. In natural sleep the functions of the body are impeded. One of these is digestion. As there is little waste of the system there is little necessity for repletion, and life can be supported by a very slight action of the heart, a minute current of blood; like the slender vitality of infants, who, even in a state of health, seem frequently scarcely to breathe. The circulation is materially influenced in sleep, the pulse being slower and more feeble than du- ring waking ; the relaxation of the cutaneous ves- sels inducing frequent perspiration, especially in debilitated systems, and in the last stages of ady- namic fevers. The body of the cataleptic patient descends to the condition of less complex animal life, in which there appears a much greater simplicity of organ- ization ; and we well know, as we descend in the scale of creation, towards the cold-blooded single- hearted animals, and especially if we reach the zoo- ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. 399 pliyte, in how exact a proportion to this simplici- ty of structure is the tenacity of life increased. " Fish," says Sir John Franklin, " were taken out of the nets frozen, and became a solid mass of ice, being by a blow of a hatchet easily split open ; they, however, recovered their vitality on being thawed." A course of' systematic abstinence will enable us, if we wished it, to endure extreme privations, which a high feeder would soon sink under ; and this is probably the discipline adopted by the fa- kirs of India, who fast so long under the influence of superstitious devotion. Vaillant's spider lived without food nearly one year ; John Hunter's toad fourteen months ; land tortoises eighteen months ; a beetle three years ; and two serpents, according to Shaw, five years ; an antelope has survived twenty days without food ; some dogs forty days ; an eagle twenty-three days. Now all animals fall asleep at certain tempera- tures, which they cannot resist, but the common effect of extreme cold is death. Dr. Solander was yielding to the influence of intense cold in Terra del Fuego, but was saved by the firmness of Sir Joseph Banks. Richmond, the black, lay down on the snow to sleep, and died. There is a close analogy between this state and the hybernation of animals, although the causes are not similar. Animalcule often become torpid for lack of moisture, and, even after the lapse of twen- ty-seven years, have been revivified by water. The smdWfui-cularia anastobea will repeatedly become animated and lively by a single drop of water, its previous condition being completely quiescent. The snail, the alligator, indeed most of the ophidi- an and saurian reptiles, assume the torpid state in 400 ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. a period of extreme drought ; and Humboldt states this also of the centenes solosus, a Madagascar hedgehog. This hybernation of animals, as of the marmot and the dormouse, resembles the deep sleep ari- sing from cold of a certain degree ; for if this be intense, they will sometimes be momentarily roused from it. They may be constantly kept awake by heat and powerful light. Thus hybernation and the sleep of plants take place from the withdrawal of stimuli, heat being the animal, light the vegetable stimulus. Cast. The sleep of plants % a fiction, surely ! Ev. Nay, a truth. The irritability of plants is excited by their peculiar stimulus; when this is withdrawn, they fall to sleep. Most of the discous flowers turn to the sun in his course, as the sun- flower, the helianthus, and the croton. The acacia leaves at noon point towards the zenith. The tam- arind, the oxalis, and the trefoil fold their leaves on the exclusion of light. The evening primrose shuts its blossom at sunset, while that minion of the moon, the night-blowing cactus, then only be- gins to bloom ; perhaps like the owl, and goatsuck- er, and bat, who find the sun too powerful an exci- tant. Vegetables may be put asleep by the withdraw- al of proper stimulus — the exclusion of this light. JBut this is a law of nature, and ordained for a spe- cial purpose. It is chiefly during fructification ; the leaves at night folding around the flowers and seed-vessels, to protect them from the chilling blight of the night cold, which would congeal their juices. In this condition of the plant its irritabil- ity ceases, but the circulation of its sap-vessels is not suspended. Its vitality continues, but if the exercise of its peculiar phenomena be long discon- ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. 401 tinued, it will fade and die. Now the vis insita of the muscle resembles vegetable irritability ; and, as this is lost and sensibility suspended, the body is indeed in a condition of vegetable sleep ; for vegetables have not, of course, sensation, although the Darwinian romance would endow the dioncea, the hedysarum, and the mimosa with sensibility, and all the blossom-beauties of Flora with the fervour of sexual passion. Trance, then, is caused by the removal of a stimulus. As somnambulism may re- sult from a redundancy of nervous energy, trance and catalepsy, as well as incubus, seem to arise from an inefficient secretion or supply of this qual- ity, in whatever it may consist, or an impediment to its transmission from the sensorium or brain to the expansion of a nerve. Thus the motive pow- er of a muscle is in these diseases suspended, which in paralysis may be permanently impaired or de- stroyed. To describe this state, I must abound in nega- tives. The brain is not conscious : there is no sen- sation. Even the marrow, by its reflex faculty, does not excite a muscle : there is no action : the mind has no cognizance : the body is for a time paralyzed. What is there, then, which may be termed life % merely involuntary circulation and gentle breath- ing. In this condition, also, there is a congestion of dark blood about the brain and in the right side of the heart, the circulation being reduced to an ex- treme lentor or sluggishness, while in real asphyxy there is a total stagnation. I have done with minute pathology : as there are, however, two diseases, epilepsy and insanity, which may be the result of catalepsy, I may offer a pre- cept on the point. The propensity to trance can- not suddenly be averted, but the state of the body and mind are important studies for our treatment, 26 L l 2 402 ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. Melancholy and apathy are the features of the mind of the cataleptic, and languor and faulty secretions the symptoms of the body. Cheerful society, sym- pathy with suffering, but firmness in resisting sloth and erroneous fancies, and the direction of the pa- tient's mind to moral recreations, comprehend the sum of our mental treatment. It is equally essential to ensure regulation of the secretions, especially those of the liver. We should employ cupping from the nape of the neck if there be pain, or heat, or fulness of the head, and con- stant but gentle exercise. The head should not be low during sleep, nor should food be taken within two hours of retiring to rest. I believe obedience to these slight precepts will frequently mitigate, perhaps in the end avert the attacks, especially if* they have arisen from diseased conditions of the body, or gloomy or depraved studies, and deep contemplation. The most simple or unconnected form of cata- lepsy is that most likely to end in madness. Per- haps, too, in deep and gloomy subjects, which be- gin by absorbing mind and sense, the end is thus, so that cataleptic abstraction is but the revery or foretaste of mania. As to suspected cases of still existing vitality : where there is plethora, I would employ bleeding, or cupping, insufflation, Galvanism ; and I should not, in extreme cases, fear acupuncture of the heart, and galvanic shocks then transmitted through the needle. Beclard, in " La Pitie," in Paris, allows the needle to remain three or four minutes, and then withdraws it ; and I have learned from my Oriental friends that the Chinese practice this mode exten- sively. MESMERISM. 403 MESMERISM. " Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber, Not as Death's dart, being laugh'd at." — Cymbeline. " By some illusion see thou bring her here, I'll charm his eyes against she doth appear." " Such tricks hath strong imagination." Midsummer NighVs Dream. Ida. You are very formidable creatures, Evelyn, if you can touch and wound the heart of a sensitive girl so easily; we must be wary, dear Castaly. It must be a desperate case that justifies so desperate a remedy ; yet, with all this danger, the magi of our day will, as I have heard, induce by their art this very state of trance. Astr. Magnetic sleep. If the phenomena of this animal magnetism be not a mystery, it is at least a curiosity. And yet Evelyn will tell us that they, too, obey the common laws of our nature. I believe, however, there are stories of most strange and novel interest, beyond the scope even of his philosophy. Ev. The hand of a magnetizer seems, I confess, to effect a wonder ; but your challenge will be fa- tal to you, Astrophel. In this same question of an- imal magnetism we may discover the spring of all your mysteries. The close analogies between the natural and imparted phenomena of trance, and magnetic sleep, and somnambulism, and somnam- bulic blindness, and magnetic ecstasy ; even the frauds of lucid vision and clairvoyance, and the vaunted gift of prophetic divination, with the ex- planation of some, and the refutation of others, will dispel the most subtle arguments in proof of divine influence, seeing that the process is conducted by men of mortal mould, who claim no merit even for the possession of occult learning. Cast. Mercy, dearest Evelyn, mercy. No more 404 MESMERISM. philosophy to-night. The smile of yon planet Ve- nus, that was twinkling from out its cerulean blue, is veiled in a cloud, for our cold discourse is trea- son to its influence. Be ready with your stories, Astrophel. Ev. The history of Mesmerism is a romance in itself, dear Castaly. If I invade not the province of Astrophel, I will, as some apology for my dull prosing, sketch its progress by way of episode. You must know, then, that it was Maximilian Holl who first, from the influence of his magnets on the body, imparted the practical idea of animal magnetism to Mesmer, who had already written his inaugural thesis, at Vienna, on " Planetary Influ- ence," and had laid down this unblushing aphorism : " There is one health, one disease, one remedy, and one physician, and that physician am I." His im- mediate proselytes were Deslon at Paris, and Gmelin at Heilbronne, and Reicke at Stutgard, and Kluge at Berlin. Encouraged by the Sweden- borgian tenets, this magic brought immense rev- enue into the purses of Mainanduc in England, and the rest of its revivers, so that one hundred guin- eas were given for a course of lectures and exper- iments, and fifteen guineas for a consultation and the imparting of its influence. In after times, Miss Prescott, among others, gained great fame in the art ; but De Lauterbourg was one of its most popular professors. Three thousand patients, it is said, were often waiting for the magnetic influence about his house at Ham- mersmith. In 1784, an ordonnance of the French king con- firmed Mesmer in his working of these apparent miracles. By tractions on the body, either with the hand or by substances magnetized with his " imponderable fluid," by champooing, and the ac- MESMERISM. 405 compartiment of sweet music, a state of enchant- ment of the senses v/as induced. Convulsions and mania were often excited in the " Hall of Crisis," which was lined by soft cushions to protect the convulsionaries. These paroxysms and tempests of the brain Mesmer seemed to control, like a second Prospero, with his wand of enchantment, gliding, in robes of silk, among the multitude of devotees whom novelty and voluptuousness had attracted to his shrine. To study and report on these mysteries, com- missioners were appointed by the " Faculty of Medicine," by the " Academy of Sciences," and by the " Royal Society of Medicine." These savans referred all to the influence of imagination, or of emotion in sensitive systems ; and that there must be this sensitive predisposition is often proved, for idiots, and those who have been blindfold, and un- conscious children, remain uninfluenced, although it is declared by one that he magnetized an idiot baby I I must observe, that before the commissions in Paris, especially that of which Franklin was a member, not the slightest influence was observed ; and the experiments of Monsieur Berner, who was the chief manipulator, were a perfect failure, espe- cially in regard to the clairvoyance. Astrophel reminds me by his frown — Astr. That magnetic power is not granted to all ; that all possess not the essential qualities of mind and body. It was affirmed that the operator must have his mind abstracted, and teeming with affection and benevolence towards his patients ; must believe himself a very magnet, and feel a de- sire of benefiting mankind. Thus a sympathy, or incorporation of atmospheres, was induced, by which disease was influenced ; and even in per- sons distant from each other, by an intensity of 406 MESMERISM. thought, the patient tasted, smelled, or heard the flavours, odours, or sounds which at that moment affected the senses of the operator. The magnetizer must thus be confident that, by his will, he can pass his whole nervous energy into his patient. It is essential, also, that the mind of the patient should have a corresponding willingness to he magnetized. Ev. And this congenial Platonism is sometimes so intense, that offers of magnetic marriage are made by the ecstatic ladies to their magnetizers, even though it may not be leap-year, on the plea that the loneliness of magnetic widowhood distress- ed them, and that the possession of a sleeping part- ner was better than sleeping alone. Under this interesting disposition for magnetic union, the eyes of the maiden being fixed on the magnetizer intensely, his hands were passed before her body, his fingers thus forming natural con- ductors, by which the magnetic fluid was conveyed from the positive to the negative magnetic body. Then came the wonders of this influence. The patient was warmed by the benevolence of the magnetizer, who felt an aura or tingling in the part corresponding to any painful part of the patient's body which was relieved or cured. Indeed, Ber- trand assures us that many told him they saw a blue fluid streaming from his fingers when he mag- netized them. The secret of this is closely analogous to the effect of brooding over sorrow : the mind of the patient is concentrated on the spot to which the passes are directed ; and, as we know that disease can be excited thus by imagination (especially in the hypochondriac), so it is a truth that this con- centration may remove disease and pain, especially by the superaddition of faith. Astr. But the magnetizer, as they said, was not MESMERISM. 407 always in a state to operate, and required a certain training. So it was observed that Caspar Hauser's cat did not follow him after he had eaten meat ; his magnetic and somnambulent qualities were de- stroyed by animal food, although they were so abundant in his wilder state, as his history will thus illustrate to those who believe it : " As I came into the room, and the door of the deceased person was opened, which I did not know, I felt a sudden dragging on both sides of my breast, as if any one wished to pull me into the room. As I went on and proceeded towards the sick person, a very strong breath blew on me from behind, and the pulling which I felt before in my breast I now felt in my shoulders. I went towards the window; the sick person followed me. At the time that I wished to ask a question of Mr. Von Gutter, I felt a trembling in my left foot, and it became unwell. She went back again, and that trembling left me. She seated herself under the canopy, and said, ' Will not the gentleman sit down V Hereupon Mr. Professor Hensler said to her, she should see me. So, as she drew nigh to me, within two or three steps, I was still more unwell than before, and I felt pains in all my limbs. Mr. Professor Hensler told her that I was the man who had been wounded (that is, by the attempt which had been made to assassinate him) ; at the same time, she noticed my scar, and pointed to- wards it ; then came the air strong upon my fore- head, and I felt pain in it ; also my left foot began to tremble greatly. The sick person seated her- self under the canopy, and said that she was ill ; and I also said that I was so unwell that I must sit down. I sat down in the other room : now the other foot began to twitter. Although Mr. Von G-utter held my knees, I could not keep them still. 408 MESMERISM. Now a violent beating of my heart came on- me, and there was a heat in all my body : that beating of the heart left me afterward ; and I had a twit- tering in my left arm, which ceased after some minutes, and I was again something better. This condition lasted until the next morning, when I had a headache again and a twittering in all my limbs, still not so violent. In the afternoon, about three o'clock, it came again, something less, and left me earlier; then I was quite well again." " The Somnambulist was greatly affected by the presence of Hauser. I heard that afterward, when she was asleep, she had said these words : ' That was a hard struggle for me.' She felt indisposition from this process even on the next day." Ev. The first sensation from magnetism is usu- ally that of slight vertigo, a state of musing or rev- ery succeeding, the mind being lulled into abstrac- tion, as it is by the rippling of water, the busy hum of bees, or the murmuring of the iEolian harp. I would explain this feeling by the term confusion of the senses ; for a certain period must elapse ere an external object make an impression on the mind. When, therefore, objects or sounds become extreme- ly rapid, the perception is confused, and the mind, left, as it were, to itself, cannot follow the impres- sions so as to associate them, and thus the magnetic ecstasy ensues. Astr. But Monsieur de Paysegur, who first ex- cited magnetic somnambulism, magnetized trees and ropes, by which he converted those who clung to them into sleep-walkers. Dr. Elliotson also mesmerized a sovereign by merely looking on it; and a girl, who intuitively selected it from a heap of others, was instantly struck with coma. Ev. The last is a very frail experiment. Pay- segur often failed in his illustrations, and then the MESMERISM. 409 cunning juggler explained this by affirming that the trees counter-magnetized each other. Now, whatever maybe the influence imparted by this trac- tion, the phenomena of excited somnambulism are similar precisely to those spontaneously occurring. Magnetic sleep, or ecstasis, is its precursor ; and there is a total unconsciousness of it when awake. Here is one of those close analogies that are the most potent arguments on which the question of magnetism rests ; for, in all the states alluded to, the interval of ecstasy is a blank. And, as in the cases of intense alarm, as you remember, the mes- meric ecstasy will cause a sensitive girl to forget the present, while the scenes of youth and infancy pass vividly before her memory. Now the effects of the passes of magnetism are referred to six degrees, the chief conditions being those of sleep, somnambulism, and clairvoyance. The essence of the last, it seems, is combined with a blending- of one's own feeling and nature with those of others ; a reuniting, in fact, of body and soul, once separated from that individual whole, which some philosophers, as Hecker, believed the whole human race to be. You observe my fideli- ty, Astrophel 1 It must be confessed that some of the experi- ments at which I have myself assisted exhibit very strange results. In some, there is the propensity to chatter nonsense, a system of one form of hys- teria of which the analogy is perfect. One little jade created much amusement by inserting super- numerary syllables, thus — opiporivaytumwhatsty. The insensibility of the nostril to the most pow- erful ammonia is a very imposing fact, one which must strike us more than that of insensibility of the eye to light, or the ear to sound ; for the faculty of perception may be often suspended in either of Mm 410 MESMERISM. those organs of sense if attention be powerfully diverted to another point, or, as it is by the ab- straction of magnetic ecstasy, not directed to any. So that I do not wonder when thoughtless pros- elytes believe these effects to be miraculous, or credit the assertions of Pereaud, in his "Antidcemon of Mascon" that " the devil causeth witches to fall into ecstasies, so that a man would say their souls were out of their body ; or those of Bodin, in his " Theatre of Universal Nature" that " those that are rapt of the devil feel neither stripes nor cuttings." So that the honour of the magnetic monomania must at last be conceded to the fallen angel. Ida. And are all these wonders worked only to excite curiosity ? Astr. I believe there is some good in it. Is it not certain that, during this state of magnetic sleep, operations have been performed without creating pain ! The lady on whom Mons. Chapelain oper- ated talked coolly and unconsciously during its performance. And Jules Cloquet, in Paris, am- putated the breast of a lady who had been put into an ecstasy or state of apathetic trance by a mes- merizer. Ev. It is, I believe, quite true that she was per- fectly unconscious of the operation ; but even this is not safe. Pain is given us as a warning against extreme injury, that by our complaint or suffering the surgeon's mind may be on its guard ; for the body is so far in disorder when it is chilled by this apathetic spell, that it may sink under fatal inju- ries, although they may be endured by the mind unconscious of its peril or its state. As a very cu- rious antitype to these cases, it is stated in a med- ical gazette that a young lady fell down in an hys- terical fit and was insensible for two days. As a MESMERISM. 411 puffy swelling arose, she was trephined, but there was no disease of the brain. In two days after this she awoke, and expressed all the steps of the operation of which she had been 'painlessly sensible. Astr. And in this state of ecstasis, is there not strange havoc played with the senses by then- seem- ing displacement or transference 1 The philosophers will tell us that the ganglia in the abdomen become, as it were, little brains, and the plexuses and the nerves of the skin become, like those of the senses, capable of imparting the idea of visible objects to those ganglia, and of ren- dering a slight whisper distinctly audible. This is all very fine and very material, but this straining at explanation is itself a proof of mystery. Van Ghest records the case of Mademoiselle B , a young lady who was magnetized : she assured him that while she was intently looked upon, she felt her eyes and brain leave her head, and become fixed in her stomach, in which situation she saw acutely ; but if she was in the slightest degree dis- turbed, the eyes and their sense seemed to return to her head. The stories recorded in the book of the Rev. Chauncey Townsend are not less curious than this. Ev. Although I take the metaphysics of a divine with reservation, his facts may not be doubted ; for there are other powerful impressions that will produce phenomena as curious. The arm of a young man in the " Ospidale della Vitta," at Bo- logna, in 1832, was grasped by a convulsive pa- tient. Violent spasms succeeded, and he lost the senses of taste, smell, and sensibility of the skin, but he could hear if the voice was applied on the stomach, and could, at that spot, discriminate be- tween different substances. Another patient in the same hospital was subject 412 MESMERISM. every third day to violent convulsions, during the continuance of which he lost entirely the use of all his senses, and could neither hear, see, nor smell. His hands also became so firmly clinched that it would be impossible to open them without break- ing the fingers. Nevertheless, Dr. Ciri, the phy- sician under whose charge he was placed, discov- ered that the epigastric region, at about two fingers' breadth above the navel, received all the impres- sions of the senses, so as to replace them complete- ly. If the patient was spoken to while the finger was placed on this spot, he gave answers, and even, when desired, opened his hands of his own accord. If any substance or matter was placed there, he could describe its form and quality, its colour and smell. As long as the finger was kept on the stomach, the convulsion gradually diminished until it entirely disappeared; but if the finger were placed on the heart, the convulsion returned with increased violence, and continued as long as the finger was kept in that position. If a flute was played while the finger was kept on the stomach, the patient heard the music ; but if the finger was taken away, and placed on the heart, and then ta- ken back again to its former position, the man asked why they played by intervals ; yet the flute had never ceased. These experiments were all made in the presence of the professors and stu- dents of the hospital. I will not counsel you, Astrophel, as to the extent of your belief in these strange tales, but extreme exaggeration often lessens the interest which sci- entific minds would take in these curiosities. These pictures are correct in their outline, but the artists have not spared their colours. They will remind us, who are learned in legends, of that illu- sive monomania among the monks of Mount Athos, who believed that they could at pleasure attain a MESMERISM. 413 celestial vision by communing devoutly with the Deity, while their attention or their sight was di- rected to the umbilicus ! And they were therefore called "Omphalopsychians." We discover, also, very close analogies to this mental concentration in the acuteness with which one sense is endowed on the failure of another. The delicacy of touch in the blind is often extreme ; I knew a blind lady who played an excellent rubber, passing her finger lightly over the card spots ; and more curious still are the cases of Miss M'Avoy, of Stanley, the or- ganist, and of Professor Saunderson. De Luc tells us of a lady who read distinctly by passing her fingers over the page, even of a strange book. In Laura Bridgman, an American girl, an inmate of the Institution of Boston since 1837, the whole fac- ulty of perception was concentrated in the one sense of touch. At the age of two, sight, and hearing, and smelling, and almost taste, deserted her. To this interesting creature, through the acuteness of her sense of touch in tracing letters, has been im- parted so much knowledge, that the moral senti- ments and the congenial affections of the heart are now beautifully displayed in her character. If by the dumb alphabet, or finger-talking, conversa- tion is commenced with her, she follows the fingers with her arm with extreme rapidity, so that scarce a letter escapes her. Such are the wonders of this child's intelligence, that her mind has been cited as illustrative of innate sentiment ; but the very fa- cility is enough to explain her actions. Le Cat writes of a blind sculptor at Voltera, who modelled features most faithfully by the touch. A French gentleman lost the integrity of every sense, but sensation remained in half of his face, on which he received the correspondence of his friends by their tracing on it letters or forms. M m 2 414 MESMERISM. In Mr. Eschke's establishment at Berlin, conver- sation was earned on by tracing letters on the clothes of the back. A Bolognese, on witnessing a woman in acute hysteria, became occasionally convulsed, and im- penetrably deaf; if, however, the slightest whisper was breathed to the pit of the stomach, he heard distinctly. From Andral's Lectures, to please you, Astro- phel, I will select this fragment : " I saw yesterday a young lady who has been fre- quently magnetized, and who, on my visit, present- ed some very remarkable circumstances. After a fit of indigestion she fell into the ecstatic state, in which she continued when I saw her. Her skin was perfectly insensible, and her eyes were open like animals' in whom the fifth pair of nerves has been divided. She could perceive light, knew the difference between day and night, for instance, but she could see and distinguish nothing else. She could not speak, but by signs expressed that her intellect was unusually active. But the most re- markable of the phenomena she presented was a singular exaltation of the sense of hearing. So ex- traordinarily delicate had this become, that she dis- tinctly perceived sounds inaudible to myself and several other persons." Cams, unmindful of the existence of a state of abstract revery resembling sleep, records the case of a young ecclesiastic who' composed sermons in a state of slumber, correcting and adding to them with peculiar care. And this is the deduction, that the sense of vision seemed to be transferred to the fingers, as the eyes were perfectly blinded to the writing paper. His eyes, when he sat for his por- trait, should have been painted at the tips of his fingers. MESMERISM. 415 James Mitchell, congenitally deaf and blind, dis- criminated his friends from strangers, and even formed a fair estimate of character, by the smell of the parties. And there was a deaf woman (writes Le Cat) who could read, and even tell the difference of languages, from the silent motion of the Up. From these very curious illustrations we may confess that these lines in Hudibras are no fiction : " Communities of senses To chop and change intelligences, As Rosicrucian virtuosis Can see with ears and hear with noses." For so strange are the synonymes of the senses, that the blind will express their notion of colour by sound ; the tint of scarlet is like the sound of a trumpet. From this hint, probably, St. Amand, in the " Pilgrims of the Rhine," speaks of a visible music. Ida. Do we not perceive, also, something of this acuteness in the sense of touch under certain other conditions %/ In the story of Caspar Hauser, wheth- er it be romance or reality, we read the following illustration of the effect of mineral traction : j " Once, when the physician, Dr. Osterhausen, and the royal crown fiscal, Brunner, from Munich, happened to be present, Daumer led Caspar, in order to try him, to a table covered with an oil- cloth, upon which lay a sheet of paper, and desired him to say whether any metal was under it. He moved his finger over it, and then said, ' There it draws.' ' But this time,' replied Daumer, 4 you are nevertheless mistaken, for,' withdrawing the paper, ' nothing lies under it.' Caspar seemed at first to be somewhat embarrassed, but he put his finger again to the place where he thought he had felt the drawing, and assured them repeatedly that he there felt a drawing. The oil-cloth was then 416 CLAIRVOYANCE. removed, a stricter search was made, and a needle was actually found there." Caspar Hauser might have felt this, or a cunning youth might have palmed on us his idea for a truth. Yet, I confess, Parkinson also relates the case of a woman who fainted on the touch of a stethoscope, exclaiming that it was " drawing her too strongly." Cast. And of clairvoyance — have you no inci- dents, Astrophel'? Astr. Many. Listen to the following fragments. One from Andral's Lectures : "M. Feruss was present at the experiment. A watch was held behind the individual's head. * I see,' said he, ' something that shines.' ' "What is it?' * A watch.' He was asked the hour, and replied exactly. Two different watches were tried. He was equally precise. The watches were taken out of the room, and the hands altered. He still told the hours and minutes expressed on the dials." Another, from an English newspaper in 1833 : " Mr. Barnaby ('twas at Bow-street) took his watch from his pocket, and said, * What have I got in my hand V 'A watch,' was the reply. ' What is it made of'?' ' Gold.' ' What chain is attached to it V ' None at all,' said the boy ; ' there is a riband to it.' ' Can you tell at what hour the hand stands?' 'Yes, at twelve.' Mr. B. showed his watch, and the hands were at twelve precisely. Mr. B. then produced his purse from his pocket, and asked the boy the colour of it, and what it con- tained, and his answers were, without having the least opportunity of turning round towards the bench, that one end of the purse was brown and the other yellow, and that the brown end contained sovereigns and the yellow end silver. Mr. B. ad- mitted the correctness of the description, and, ta- king some silver from his pocket, asked the boy to CLAIRVOYANCE. 417 describe the different pieces. ' What is this V 'Sixpence,' said the boy, 'and of the date 1819/ • What is the next V ' A shilling, and dated 1816,' was the reply. And when the clerk brought forth another coin, and asked similar questions, the boy said, ' That is a sixpence of the date of 1817 ;' and all these guesses proved to be correct." Townsend and Wood, at Antwerp and Paris, produced this second sight in several instances. E. A., with eyes bandaged, read two hundred pages of print, and even written music. Ev. A little more sifting of these cases, Astro- phel, and they would resemble that of the catalep- tic female of Amiens, related by Petelin, who also professed to tell the spots of a card, unseen by her. But it was discovered that the physician glided it beneath the bedclothes. Or that told by Bertrand, of another ecstatic female : "While lying entranced in a chamber illuminated by a candle, her ring was removed from her finger by Monsieur Bertrand, and given to a person standing near him. She was asked who had her ring: 'Mr. Eyre has it, in his trousers pocket.' Mr. Bertram exclaimed that she was wrong, for it was not to Mr. Eyre the ring was given. The lady persisted in her statement, and, on immediate inquiry, it was found that the person who first was given the ring had secretly conveyed it to Mr. Eyre." The pages of history are not deficient in these pretensions to miracle. From Ulrick Zwingle we learn that Thomas Aquinas, the evangelical doctor, professed, by intense thought, to throw himself into ecstasy, in which strange visions and mysteries of another existence passed before him. Matthew Paris writes of a monk of Evesham, and of a certain Sir Oiven, that, in one of these ecstasies, was favoured with an introduction into 27 418 MAGNETIC ECSTASY, Saint Patrick's purgatory. So the mad visionary, Jacob Boehm, fell into many strange trances, and at last were revealed to him "the origin of nature; the formation of all things ; and even divine prin- ciples and intelligent natures !" But the case of Santa Theresa, if we can but be- lieve the testimony of so accomplished a hypocrite, presents phenomena far more remarkable than all these. " Her frame was naturally delicate, her imagination lively, and her mind, incapable of be- ing fixed by trivial objects, turned with avidity to those which religion offered the moment they were presented to her view. But, unfortunately, meet- ing with the writings of Saint Jerome, she became enamoured of the monastic life, and, quitting the line for which nature designed her, she renounced the most endearing ties, and bound herself by the irrevocable vow. Deep melancholy then seized on her, and increased to such a degree, that for many days she lay both motionless and senseless, like one who is in a trance. Her tender frame, thus shaken, prepared her for ecstasies and visions such as it might appear invidious to repeat, were they not re- lated by herself and by her greatest admirers. She tells us that, in the fervour of her devotion, she not only became insensible to everything around her, but that her body was often lifted up from the earth, although she endeavoured to resist the motion. And Bishop Yessen relates, in particular, that when she was going to receive the JBlucharist at Avila, she was raised in a rapture higher than the grate, through which, as is usual in nunneries, it was pre- sented to her. She often heard the voice of God when she was recovered from a trance ; but some- times the devil, by imitation, endeavoured to de- ceive her, yet she was always able to detect the fraud." MAGNETIC ECSTASY. 419 So that Theresa's life was an elysium on earth, and she might well have cried out in her ecstasy, " sic sine vita, Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori." Yet the modern proselytes to Mesmerism would scarcely believe this a fiction, but an illustration of that lucid vision which may, it is believed, be so highly excited as to associate the being with uni- versal nature : a creed grounded on the expansion or illimitable nature of thought or mind, by which it seems to leave the body, carrying with it its con- sciousness. So the disciples of Mesmer asserted that, when they thought or spoke warmly of absent persons, they would both appear in their eidolon ; and also that they were, at that exact time, speaking or thinking of them. This was Shelley's conviction, that minds sympathetically imparted ideas and thoughts; particles, indeed, of the "mens divinicr." So that they might well see in the dark. Brown would be in a flood of joy to hear the af- firmations of these ecstatics, whose spirits, as they believe and avow, are for the time released from the chains of mortality. " Why," exclaimed one of these half-spiritualized creatures, " why do you bring me again to life 1 Would you depart from me, my body would grow cold, my soul would not return to it, and I should be happy." Astr. You are fond of caricature, Evelyn. I speak of sober truths only. I am told that the powers of acquirement may be so increased by magnetism as to resemble new faculties. A lady, during a sort of ecstasy, sung most scientifically church music, although when awake she entirely failed, and had forgotten all ; and others will speak languages and sentiments of which they are per- fectly unconscious when awake. 420 MAGNETIC ECSTASY. There was a girl in the vicinity of Bedford Row, of whose case there are related similar wonders or this magnetically-imparted accomplishment; and her beauty was so enchanting as to transcend the brightest visions of Michael Angelo or Correggio. Ev. Like that of the inspired somnambule, ot whom "Wolfart thus writes in his " Annals :" " An evil spirit ushered in her somnambulic sleep, and then a good spirit spread its wings around her, and when they had conversed, he flew with her to the Eternal City, through the sun and the moon ; and while there, tranced scenes were around her, and her spirit was enjoying her beatitude ; her face was like the face of a seraph, and no mortal painter might essay to trace its beauty." So say those who saw this mystery. Astr. Yet, as to the prophetic power imparted by magnetism, cases are recorded by our enthusi- astic proselytes which throw the spells of the con- juror into an eclipse — Ev. And therefore forbid belief. Astr. Even those displayed before our learned bodies. Madame Celini Sauvage, you remember, in the presence of the committee, in Paris, was placed in somnambulism. Even while insensible to stimuli, she formed, it is recorded, a correct judg- ment of the diseases of persons around her, espe- cially in the person of M. Marc, one of the com- mittee ; and in that of a young lady, on whom M. Dupuytren had operated for dropsy, and had tried the effects of the milk of a goat which had been anointed with mercury. Madame, unconscious of this, prescribed the very same remedy. You remem- ber the report, Evelyn. Ev. I remember, but believe it not. Cast. And is it thus with all our legends % have you no more faith in your own order 1 There is MAGNETIC INTUITION. 421 the learned physician, Justin Kerner. You have not forgotten, Astrophel, his beautiful story of that most accomplished somnambule, the Prophetess of Prevorst, who seemed, as she said, to draw from the air a living principle, and whose very vitality, it was believed, was preserved by the magnetic in- fluence. The body of this ethereal creature en- folded her spirit like a veil of film ; she was a very flower of light, living on sunbeams. Her senses were lighted up by the minutest atom. A web of gossamer stung her waxen skin like a nettle. At the pale green light of a glow-worm she fell into ecstatic sleep ; and then (as to my own Tasso) came to her spectral visitants, with whom she conversed, and whose colourless forms were visible even to her earthly companions. This fair creature had, as the story goes, been some time dead, when her mother made passes over her cold face and lips, and lo ! her eyes opened, and a tremour was on her lip. Were I Astrophel, methinks I would make a pilgrimage to Lowenstein, where her body lies. And now, Evelyn, if you will, reprove me for my wildness, but confess there must be a sort of truth in legends so circumstantial as these. Ev. A fair question, dearest Castaly. Yes, it is the crude or false interpretation of that sort of truth, a transient glimpse, it may be, of some embryo prin- ciple, that leads to popular error. A baseless the- ory is raised on an isolated fact, and infantile sci- ence, bursting from its leadingf-strinors ere it can crawl, topples headlong down the precipice, and splits on the rock of hypothetical presumption. And then the confusion into which the mind is thrown by the definitions and conclusions of mag- netizers would make a very Babel of the fair field of philosophy. The least perplexing, perhaps, is that of the French savans, who referred magnetism N N 422 FALLACY OF MESMERISM. to the efforts of a fluid, matter consisting of fire, air, and spirit, to preserve its equilibrium in certain bodies which were, as to their capacity for this fluid, in a state of plus and minus. There is nothing very unphilosophical in this ; for the essence of magnet- ism is somewhat analogous to eccentric derange- ment of mind, a disturbance of that order or sym- metry among the faculties and actions by which one is highly excited and another is comparatively passive. In a word, Mesmerism is true in part : it may induce catalepsy, somnambulism, exalted sen- sation, apathetic insensibility, suspended circula- tion, even death. Clairvoyance and prophecy alone are the impositions as regards its effects, as the "blue flame" at the finger tips is of its nature. One folly more. Mesmer himself vaunted to Dr. Von Ellikon, " Twenty years ago I magnetized the sun," &c, so that the miracle of Joshua was but a stroke of magnetism. Indeed, Richter, rector of the school of Dessau, affirms that all the miracles of the Testament were but the sequences of mag- netic passes. And Kieser refers all to a " telluric spirit/' a sort of magic, of which the sun and moon are the grand reservoirs ; nay, this influence is the real cause of sleep and waking. Ida. So that we are mesmerized by the moon at nightfall, and unmesmerized by the sun at the opening of the dawn. Ev. Then there were some aphorisms of Wolf- art about fiddling to the viscera with his magnetic medicine, and working them up, as it were, to a jig or a bolero. These are the visions of a madman. But surely the illusion regarding this mysterious fluid is confessed in Dupotet's own notion of his own wondrous faculty, when he asserts his belief that animal magnetism is analogous to the royal touch, and the mysteries of Apollo, and iEsculapius, ANALYSIS OF ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 423 and Isis, the miracles of Vespasian, and the Sibyl- line prophecies. Astr. You sneer at this as you did at the blue flame ; but Dupotet assures us that while he is magnetizing his patients, he feels a sensation at the points of his fingers resembling the aura from dif- fused electricity. ( Now is it not fair to ask if elec- tro-magnetism may not reside in the animal as well as in the mineral^ in man as well as in the torpedo and gymnotus ? And why may there not be a con- dition of intercommunication or en rapport, a mag- netic aura creeping through the nerves of each body?/ We should not, therefore, make any hasty decis- ion against the presence of an aura streaming from the fingers and directed by the will. Monsieur Deleuze said, in Paris, " I do not know if this be material or spiritual, nor to what distance it is im- pelled ; but it is impelled and directed by my will, for if I cease to will, the influence instantly ceases." I remember Priestley opined that phlogiston in our bodies produced electricity, which was destined for our own purposes merely. But as the silurus and the torpedo possess the power of imparting theirs, although at the expense of their animal pow- er, I presume to think that concentrated mind may impart our own nervous influence to others. Ev. I admire the acuteness of your question, Astrophel ; but you are now come down from your clouds ; you are descending unawares to physiol- ogy. There are, doubtless, many peculiar states of the nervous system at present inexplicable. I grant it is possible that the influence of the nervous energy may become so eccentric as to illustrate the phenomena of magnetism, if as some believe, this influence depends on a subtle fluid analogous to light, heat, and electricity, the nerve conveying this fluid as the wire conducts the electric. 424 ANALYSIS OP ANIMAL MAGNETISM. Thus an influence, which is apparently physical, may be, in reality, mental, for there is usually con- sciousness of the contact. M. Bertrand believed that the mind alone of the patient was acted on, and this is strengthened by the experiments of the Abbe Faria, who produced many of these phenom- ena by merely exclaiming to his sensitive visiters, " Dormez." Astr. Well, you are drawing the influences of mind and body very closely together, Evelyn. If animal magnetism be not the universal influence of sensitive beings, what is personal sympathy ? Ev. It is not that mysterious freemasonry of the senses which may impart a superhuman knowledge, or confer a power of personal recognition ; yet we are required to believe such stories. Astr. And are there not many well attested'? There was a Monsieur de la Tour Landrie, a no- bleman of France, who so powerfully influenced a young shoemaker by whom he was measured, that the youth fell into a senseless syncope, and profuse haemorrhage succeeded it. This influence was re- peated, and excited so deep an interest in the mind of the noble, that he instituted an inquiry regarding his birth and fortunes ; and the result was, that Monsieur de la Tour discovered in the humble me- chanic the son of his sister, the Baronne de Vesines. The thrill of feeling with which the lover touches the lip of his mistress, the intense delight with which the mother presses her infant to her bosom, are il- lustrations of that power to which I allude. It is the magnetic touch of beauty which sends the fires of passion, not only thiough the bounding heart of youth, but even through the icy veins of the stoic. *' He that would preserve the liberty of his soul," said Socrates, "must abstain from kissing handsome people." "What, then," said Charmides, "must ANALYSIS OP ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 425 1 be afraid of coming near a handsome woman % Nevertheless, I remember very well, and I believe you do so too, Socrates, that, being one day in com- pany with Critobulus's beautiful sister, who resem- bles him so much, as we were searching together for a passage in some author, you held your head close to that beautiful virgin, and I thought you seemed to take pleasure in touching her naked shoulder with yours." " Good God !" replied Soc- rates, " I will tell you truly how I was punished for it for five days after. I thought I felt in my shoulder a certain tickling pain as if I had been bit by gnats or pricked with nettles ; and I must con- fess, too, that during all that time I felt a certain hitherto unknown pain at my heart." Ev. So that " the crime," like that of Sir Peter Teazle, " carried its punishment along with it." But you must see that the mind of Socrates first ap- preciated beauty, ere this influence was imparted to him. Imagination is not certainly idle here, yet I grant that if the charm of substantial beauty or en- dearment be wanting, poesy will ever be but a cold and joyless sentiment. Astr. Then there is another mysterious sympa- thy, the fascination of the evil eye, or fascino. There were, both in Africa and in Illyria, writes Aulus Gellius, certain families believed to possess the power of destroying trees, flowers, and children, and this by merely praising them ; and Plutarch and Pindar refer to the credence of the Greeks on this point, who were wont to invoke the Fate Nem- esis against this fascination of an evil eye. I think, too, traces of this credence may be found in Ovid, and Horace, and Pliny. Ev. Yes, and in modern Italy the professors of the art are yet termed jettatori, or eye-throwers. But Valletta, an Italian author, conscious of the Nn2 426 INFLUENCE OP FAITH. truth, boldly disclaims for his countrymen the no- tion of demoniac influence, referring it to physical impression, somewhat resembling the fascination of the eye of the rattlesnake, that drops, as we are told, the bird from the branch into its mouth. In that exquisite sympathy between mind and body (the sequence of an influence on sensibility, or on the senses) consists the secret of all this. You remember the effects of intense impression on the mind in the excitement of catalepsy, and, indeed, in causing instantaneous death : this is in- tense influence on the sensibility. The effects of deep impression on the sight or touch, by the pass- es of magnetism, are magnetic ecstasies : this is intense influence on the senses. So that all your mysteries are the result of this influence passing through the brain to the body ; and the vaunted miracles of Mesmer, and Bertrand, and Dupotet are, as I have said, impositions, chiefly as regards the nature of their influence; and, like these, the doctrines of Fludd the Seeker, of the Abbe Nollet, of Lavater, of Nicetas the Jesuit, and the quaint ideas of many other visionaries, which you may read in their writings, are really explicable by the laws of physiology. When the magnetizer asserts that a patient should possess a disposition to he acted on, he un- warily divulges his own secret; for this is nothing more than blind faith in a promise. And this credulity is most characteristic of that disordered condition of a nerve, acute sensibility, in which the slightest causes may effect a seeming wonder. Nay, even disease and death were so induced during the manipulations of Hensler and Emmelin. This also is the secret of that influence imparted by the touch of a seventh son ; or of the hand of a criminal hanging on the gallows ; or the revolting P INFLUENCE OP FAITH. 427 precept of Pliny, that an epileptic should, drink the blood of a dying gladiator as it gushes from his wound ; or the stroking of Valentine Greatrex ; the sympathetic powder of Sir Kenelm Digby; the trac- tors of Perkins ; of chiromancy, rhabdomancy, and of other curiosities recorded in tracts and journals. In my professional life I have seen the same in- fluence, though infinitely less in degree, imparted, by an implicit confidence in the blessings of our science. Even Bertrand honestly confesses its power. A lady was thrown into deep sleep by the touch of a magnet, sent by him in a handkerchief from the distance of three hundred miles. But the same ef- fect was produced by the contact of unmagnetized cambric ; and Bertrand allows that where an ig- norance of his intention existed, even the magnetized talisman was powerless over his patient. I could tell you tales of bits of wood effecting all the wonders of the metallic tractors of Perkins ; and cubes of lead, and those of nickel, fraught, as a learned doctor had declared, with magnetic vir- tues ; but I spare you. From this superstitious faith spring also the mir- acles of that pious saint, who had assumed the staff of Saint Francis Xavier, the Prince Hohenloe. One of these was the cure of Miss O'Connor, at- tested by Dr. Baddeley, of Chelmsford, who had tried in vain to relieve the lady of acute neuralgia. She was directed to prostrate herself at the altar in Chelmsford at the moment when the sainted prince would kneel at his shrine in the Cathedral of Bam- berg. At the appointed time, during the solemn celebration of high mass, as she exclaimed, " Thy will be done, O Lord," the agonizing limb was painless. I do not doubt the possibility of such an incident. 428 INFLUENCE OF FAITH. And here is the unfolding of another secret of these German magnetizers, who were believed to shoot at their patients with the unerring aim of a rifle, even though many miles might intervene. Nadler, as we are told in the " Asclepeion," was so good a shot, that he brought a woman to the ground at the moment he fired his magnetic aura at her, aiming between the eyes and the bosom, even at the dis- tance of eighteen miles. I am aware that this, my philosophy, would not pass current at the Vatican ; for " the congregation of the holy office, having once applied to the pope ■ to know if animal magnetism were lawful, and if penitents might be permitted to be operated on, his holiness replied that the application of princi- ples and means purely physical to things and ef- fects which are supernatural, for the purpose of explaining them physically, is nothing but an un- lawful and heretical deception." But I may tell you that his holiness himself was once a great monopolist of saints' cures, if we may believe a book, printed by Roberts, in London, in 1605, entitled, " A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures, to withdraw the hearts of religious men, under pretence of casting out devils ; prac- tised by Father Edmunds, alias Weston, a Jesuite, and divers Romish priests, his wicked associates.' , And, moreover, the interference of priests has often led to the interdiction of Protestants, in their scientific ministering to disease the most severe, as typhus fever, or surgical operations, because they were heretics ; while the profane Paracelsus says, 11 It matters not, by God or devil, so he he cured ;" even without an indulgence, I presume, from Delia Ganga, or the leave of the sacred college. Believe me, the influence of faith will illustrate all this mystery, and reduce even these impostures SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 429 to a simple truth. Without it, only the grossest superstition would believe that sympathy would thus " take the wings of the morning," and impart to a mind that was thinking at our antipodes a con- sciousness of our own sentiments ; for this would be a revival of that blind credulity which, in the darker ages, was reposed in the superhuman agen- cy of magic and of witchcraft. SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. " She was a charmer, and could almost read The thoughts of people." — Othello. Ida. As you unfold the wonders of the mind, Evelyn, the secrets of many splendid mysteries shine forth in the light of your truth ; and the wis- dom of " charmed rings," " blessed brambles," and amulets and talismans, fades before the precepts of a purer faith. Yet is there no witchcraft in your philosophy 1 You have, methinks, absolved As- trophel from spells and dark hours, for, in the soft- ened lustre of his eye, I see a light more holy than its wonted flash of divination. Cast. You have more faith in his conversion than I have, Ida ; for, lo ye now ! on a mossy stone in Tintern lay this sable velvet pouch, which, from its mystic 'broidery, might be the lost treas- ure of a Rosicrucian cabalist. " There's magic in the web of it ; A sibyl that had number'd in the world The sun to make two hundred compasses, In her prophetic fury sew'd the work." And here is a scroll of vellum folded within it. Listen, and you shall hear the pencillings of some unhappy student, benighted in the mazes of the Cabala. *' The eye of modern philosophy may wink at 430 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. the wisdom of occult sciences, and sorcerers and magicians, necromancers and Rosicrucians, caba- lists and conjurers, astrologers and soothsayers, Philomaths, Drows, and Oreades, wizards and witches, and warlocks, and sibyls and gipsies, may be, in its estimation, a mere legion of ciphers. Yet faith hath been long and firmly lavished on the art of divination by the learned and mighty men in all ages. The Chaldean, who read the stars, was the coryphaeus and the type ofrsuperhuman knowledge ; the magi of Persia and Egypt, and other Orient lands, followed in his wake. The venerable Her- mes Trismegistus was surrounded by his proselytes in the year of the world 2076 ; and Apollonius, and Zoroaster, and Pythagoras, and, in later ages, John of Leyden, Roger Bacon, and other learned mys- tagogues, have imbibed a more than mortal wis- dom from the aspect of those starry lights which gem the vaulted firmament, while the luminous schools of Padua, and Seville, and Salamanca were rich in the records of occult and mystic learning. Emperors, and kings, and ministers, who ruled the destiny of mighty nations, have believed. Wallen- stein was all confiding; Richelieu and Mazarin (as Morin writes) retained soothsayers as a part of their household ; Napoleon studied with, implicit faith his book of fate ; and Canute, obedient to his confidence in the virtue of relics, directed his Ro- man agent to buy St. Augustine's arms for one hun- dred silver talents and one of gold. " Nay, what saith divinity itself] Glanville, the chaplain of King Charles II., affirms, in his ' Sadu- cismus Triumphatus,' that ' the disbeliever in a witch must believe the devil gratis ;' and Wesley said that ' giving up witchcraft was, in fact, giving up the Bible.' Now, as the Chaldean sophs were divided into three classes — 1. The ' Ascaphim,' or SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 431 charmer ; 2. The ' Mecascaphim,' or magician ; 3. The ' Chasdim,' or astrologer — so the legion of mod- ern witches was composed of a mystic triad, dis- tinguished by colours that were a symbol of their influence on our mortal frame. The black witch could hurt, but not help ; the white could help, but not hurt ; the gray could both help and hurt." Ida. My own Castaly, have pity on us. Evelyn may unrol the coils of this unholy manuscript if he will. I do believe this lettered clerk has, in some un- happy hour, wandered by the ruins of the Seven Churches in the valley of Glendalough, and there, creeping up to St.Keven's bed, that hangs over the gloomy waters of its lake, has won the fatal gift of Catholic magic — or perchance he has sworn alle- giance with Faust and Friar Bacon. Astr. If an Oxford student must kneel at the shrine of a fair lady, he will whisper this confes- sion. In exploring the treasures of black-letter romance, he revelled among the occult mysteries, slighting that pure analysis of nature which is the essence of all philosophy. The legends of Regi- nald Scott, De Foe, Glanvil, and Wanley, were the companions of his pillow ; and thus, in poring over the legends of enchantment, he was himself en- chanted, and contemplated a wondrous history of witchcraft, where Sir Walter himself had failed. Let me have light penance, and I promise in the simple and beautiful light of nature alone to read her wonders, and if I dare, to study astrology in those planet eyes which look so mildly on their proselyte. Ida. Or, rather, as the magi of old, you will burn your books of divination ; and, like Friar Bacon, who broke the rare glass which showed him things * fifty miles off, you will study divinity, and become a pious anchorite. 432 SIBYLLINE INFLUECNE. Cast. I am happy that you abandon the dark and dooming spells of the magus and the witch, Astrophel, for witchcraft is the unholy opposition of a demon to the Deity. Yet in your fate I read my own. But censure not the poetry of that inno- cent romance that lights up the legends of the berry-brown sibyl, whether she be a tirauna prowl- ing in the streets of Madrid, or a gipsy perched upon the heath-brow of Norwood, for theirs are happy prophecies. Yet if, like Astrophel, I am to be the slave of philosophy, let me at least make " a dying and a swan-like end." It was among the heath- valleys, where nature lay in wild repose around the place of my birth, that I first met the glance of a gipsy's eye. On the northern side of that beautiful sand-hill in Surrey, that rears its purple and turret-crowned crest be- tween the chalk hills and the weald, there is a green and bosky glen, the " Valley Lonesome." Along the waste of Broadmoor, that spreads be- tween the brow of Leith Hill and the Roman camp of Anstie-bury, comes rippling down the crystal streamlet of the Till, which, blending with a tor- rent that leaps from a lofty sand rock, steals away amid mosses, and cardamines, and cuckoo flowers, now gliding between its emerald banks, now swell- ing into a broader sheet beneath the beach woods of Wotton, the ancient seat of the Evelyns. There the willows dip their silver blossoms, and the vio- let, almost hidden beneath them, fills the air with sweetness. There the wild brier wreathes in light festoons its tiny roses, and the passion flower, en- twining its luxuriant tendrils around the aspen and the sycamore, hangs its beautiful blue stars in rich profusion. And there, among the boughs of lofty elms r whose shadows in the early morning darken the casements of TilUngbourne, a colony of rooks SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 433 hang their woody nests ; and the murmurs of the ringdove, nestling within the woods of Wotton and the Rookery, are heard in the golden noon and sunset of June, floating around this leafy par- adise. It was on such an eve that my thoughts had fa- ded into slumber ; and when my eyelids oped, there was a form of imbrowned beauty before me, so wild, yet so majestic, that Cleopatra, in the garb of an Egyptian slave-girl, might have stolen upon my sleep : so scant of clothing, so lovely of form and feature, she was like an almond-flower upon a leafless branch. Her expression was full of beau- tiful contrasts, for, while her eaglet eye went into my being, there was a languid smile on her ruddy lip, as she were about to syllable my own destiny ; and, indeed, she did unfold to me many things which have been most strangely worked out and verified in my life. I wept at some of these fore- tellings, and she said, " Tears were the pearls that gem the rose-leaves of life." I smiled at others, and she said, " Smiles were the sunlight that warm- ed their swelling leaflets into beauty." Throughout that summer night, when all were sleeping save two romantic girls, she unfolded to me the secrets of her tribe, and a mine of mysteries learned from a Bohemian Maugrabee. She told me how and why the Druids, when the moon was six days old, cut the mistletoe with a golden knife ; how the vervain was gathered with the left hand at the rising of the dog-star ; and the lunaria was valueless if not picked by moonlight; how the roan-wood, and the banyan seedling, and the four- leaved shamrock, bore a charm in their tender leaves against every ill of life. In nature, she said, there is no bane without its antidote, were the in- tellect of man ripe for its discovery. There are 28 Oo 434 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. corals and green jaspers, carved into the forms of dragons and lizards, hung round an infant's neck for the cure of an ague ; the crimson-spotted helio- tropium, to stanch a flow of blood; a wrapper of scarlet cloth, to mitigate the virulence of smallpox ; the blue flannel, nine times dyed, to allay the pains of rheumatism ; and the magic word Abracadabra, to soothe the disorders of a nerve. And, above all, that wondrous iveapon-salve of sympathy, which once healed on the instant the wound of Ulysses, and that which the dainty Ariel gave to Miranda to charm Hippolito to life and health, and that with which the lady of Branxholme salved the bro- ken lance when William of Deloraine was healed. It will be long ere from my memory fade this vision of Charlotte Stanley. In pity, Evelyn, leave me this one romance of my young life — the sheet and taper, nay, the ducking-stool for the witch, if you will, but deign to bestow one smile upon the gipsies. Remember the story of the Sibylline Tables. If Sextus Tarquin had not frowned on the Roman gipsy, she had not burned six of those precious vol- umes, which, from the massive cabinets of stone made to enclose the three that were preserved, prove that the Roman thought them priceless. One smile, Evelyn, for my sibyl. Ev. Not in memory of the Sibylline Tables, but for your own sake, dear Castaly. Although the innocence of your nut-brown sibyl is not so clear, and I am somewhat jealous, too, of that white ma- gic of hers, which hath won the belief of so many minds the reverse of illiterate, who, from the Chal- dean even to Bacon and William Lilly, have spurned philosophy, and even divinity, and pinned their faith upon a gipsy's sleeve, and doted on the inspiration of an astrologer. SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 435 Ida. Forgetful, it would seem, that the wicked king of Babylon found the devout Daniel, and Han- aniah, and Michael, and Azariah, ten times better than all his magi and astrologers. These are the antiquaries who possess the last relic of the true cross, or the last morsel of Shaks- peare's mulberry, of which last bit there may be about ten thousand ; such are they who would pen learned theses on the disputed place of sepulture of St. Denys, and determine the question, too, al- though one of his heads is in the Cathedral of Bam- berg, another in the church of St. Vitus in the castle of Prague ; one of his hands in a chapel at Munich ; one of his bodies, minus one hand, in the keeping of the monks of Saint Emmeram at Regensberg, while the monks of Saint Denys possess another, his head being preserved m the third shrine of the treasury in their cathedral. These may be inno- cent follies, but superstition, alas ! will not always stop here ; fanaticism soon descends to self-inflic- tion or to cruelty, and in that moment it becomes a black stain on the heart of man. Yet even for the tortures of the Inquisition (so exquisite that we might believe them the suggestions of a devil) the J esuit Macedo has put forth this profane justifica- tion : that the bloody tribunal was first instituted by the Deity in the condemnation of Cain and the bricklayers of Babel. Ev. Such was the trial of ordeal instituted for the test of innocence. Among the Anglo-Saxons, as all the chronicles of their history will show, this mode of trial prevailed ; as in the ordeals of the Cross, of boiling water, and of the hot iron ; of cold water, or drowning; and of the corsned, or consecra- ted cake. Equally savage was the trial for mur- der, so prevalent in Scotland, especially the insti- tution of their Bahr-recht, or " Right of the bier.'* 436 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. Among the " decisions" of Lord Fountainhall you may read of legends almost incredible. Philip, the son of Sir James Standfield, was executed be- cause, in lifting the corpse of his murdered father from its bier, blood welled forth from his wound ; and the Laird of Auchindrane was tortured be- cause a corpse chanced to bleed on the approach of a little girl, who, I believe, was merely one of his domestics. But, waving these profanations, the relics of a darker age, let me have a word with Astrophel on parting. The seeming fulfilment of many a sibyl- line prophecy is perfectly clear as to its source. There may be coincidence, as in the dream ; or faith and inducement may impart an energy of ac- tion, which may itself work a wonder, or accom- plish that end which is referred to a special power. At the siege of Breda, in 1625, when fatigue and abstinence had welmigh reduced the garrison to prostration and despair, the Prince of Orange prac- tised this pious fraud on his soldiers : he pretend- ed to have obtained a charmed liquor, so concen- trated that (on the principles of homoeopathy) four drops would saturate a gallon of water with resto- rative virtues ; and with so much skill was this ad- ministered by the physicians, that a general restora- tion was speedily effected. You remember, Astrophel, the temptation of Diocletian. From Flavius Vopiscus we leam that he was paying the Druidess of Brabant, with whom he lodged. " When I am emperor," he said, " I will be more generous." " Nay," said the Druid- ess, "you shall be emperor when you have killed the boar." He hunted and killed boars incessant- ly, but the purple .was not offered to him. At length the Emperor Numerianus was murdered by Arrius Aper. This was the eventful moment, and, SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 437 transfixing the heart of Aper with his sword, he said, "I have slain the boar!" and the imperial crown was his. Is not this, too, the counterpart of that seeming prophecy of the Weird Sisters which made Mac- beth a murderer and a king 1 There was an enchanted stone at Scone, in Scot- land, the palladium of Scottish liberty, for it was believed that the lord of that spot on which the stone lay should bear sovereign sway. King Ed- ward bore this talisman away in triumph, and Scot- land, depressed by its loss, became a vassal of the English crown. And this faith may invest the merest trifle with a spell. Sir Matthew Hale was presiding in his court on the trial of a witch. She had cured many dis- eases by a charm in her possession, and the evi- dence seemed conclusive of her guilt. But when the judge himself looked on this charm, behold ! it was a scrap of paper, inscribed with a Latin sen- tence, which, in default of money, he himself, while on the circuit, had given many years before, in a merry mood, to mine host, by way of reckoning. Among the many analogies to this story in an- cient times, there was the potent poison-charm or antidote of Mithridates, king of Pontus. Its effect was supreme. And what its composition % twenty leaves of rue, one grain of salt, two nuts, and two dried figs ! Now you will remember that the wizard and the ministers of these charms, even among savages, were also their physicians, and, among pagans and papists, their priests. It is clear that the sensitive- ness of mind and body under disease, when the first were consulted, and under the influence of super- stitious fear, instilled by the priesthood, rendered them impressible to the most trifling causes. Oo 2 438 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. Even in minds of superior natural energy, from the instilment of superstitious ideas in infancy, a blind faith will often become paramount. Such a mind, and so influenced, was Byron's ; and on such a faith he once stole an agate bead from a lady, who had told him it was an antidote to love. It failed : had it not, Byron might have been a happi- er man, but the world would have been 'reft of po- esy, the brightest, yet the darkest that ever flashed on the heart and mind of man. Sir Humphrey Davy, you may recollect, " knew a man of very high dignity who never went out shooting without a bittern's claw fastened to his button-hole by a riband, which he thought ensured him good luck. To illustrate the innocence of your gipsy, Casta- ly, hear this story. "About forty years ago, a young lady, afterward Mrs. W , rallied her companions aloud for lis- tening to the predictions of an itinerant gipsy, when the latter malignantly threatened her to beware of her first confinement. She was shortly afterward married ; and, as the period of her peril approach- ed, it became evident to her friends that the re- membrance of the wizard malediction began to fasten upon her spirits. She survived her, time only a few days ; and the medical attendants, who were men of eminence, stated it as their opinion that mental prepossession alone could be admitted as the cause of her death, not one unfavourable cir- cumstance having occurred to explain it. "And some melancholy illusion of this nature induced fatality in the case of another lady (Mrs. S.), who, according to the statement of the vener- able Mr. Cline, reluctantly submitted to the re- moval of: a small tumour in her breast. Unexpect- edly, and without any apparent cause, she died on SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 439 the morning following the operation. It was then for the first time ascertained that she had prognos- ticated her death, and the impression that she should not survive had taken so strong a possession of her mind, that her minutest household arrangements were preconcerted, as appeared by the papers found in her cabinet." I believe that many modem instances of gradual and almost imperceptible decay may be referred to the influence both of melancholy prophecies and visions on the mind, although their agency may be unsuspected, and as obscure as that of the poison- ous herbs of the Thessalian Erichtho, or the sor- ceress of Neapolis, or the aqua tofana of the Ital- ians. And superstitious fear may induce a sudden death. Alfred, a nobleman, was one of the con- spirators against the Saxon Athelstan. To justify himself from the accusation, he went to Rome, that he might make oath of his innocence before John, the pope. On the instant he took the oath he was convulsed, and in three days died. Then as to the language of the stars : as the phrenologist is much indebted to the principles of Lavater in forming his estimate of character, so I believe of the astrologer. The aspect of thence is not always disregarded in his prophecy, while he seems to observe only the aspect of the stars. And although there is often a very strange precis- ion in his guesses, yet there was once a curious incident in my own presence, from which we may learn something of this secret. On a visit to a learned astrologer (who might rest his fame on an- other art in which he is so eminent), our fortunes, past and future, were told with extreme minute- ness, and, I confess, with many coincidences of former times. One was reminded by the seer of 440 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. a state of deprivation which he endured in the year 18 — , in the Mediterranean. The officer remem- bered in that year being becalmed in a voyage to Malta, and, under a sultry sky, with parching thirst, enduring the want of water for many days. This was conclusive of the fidelity of the planets, until we discovered that the horoscope was imperfect, for the officer had given to the astrologer the wrong date of his birth. Cast. And this, sir, is your Philosophy of Mys- tery 1 Oh for the forethought of my sibyl, that I might leam my own fate for listening to this trea- son against the throne of fancy, on the steps of which I have so long offered up my homage — this ruthless spoliation of her dreamy kingdom ! Ev. Let me for once play the sibyl, fair Casta- ly, and whisper the penalty in your ear — Ida. A lesson in natural philosophy ; and the apt scholar, as I read it on her cheek, has in a moment learned it all by heart, o'ershadowing all her bright visions of earth and its romances. Ev. What marvel that a daughter of earth should be so apt in its philosophy ] " For half her thoughts were of its sun, And half were of its show'rs." But it is not so easy to shake the throne of fancy, or to lay the genius of romance. He will ever wave his wand of enchantment over the human mind. The poet will still build his air-castles, and the ghost-seer indulge in his wild visions of non- entity. The wonders of creation will still affect us, ac- cording to the quality of intellect or genius, or the constitution or cultivation of the mind. The poor Indian will still " see God in clouds, and hear him in the wind," and the untutored rustic be startled by the shadow of a shade. To him the slightest IBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 44J change in the regular course of nature will still be a special miracle : thunder, the awful voice of Di- vine reproof; lightning, the flashes of Divine dis- pleasure ; the scintillations of the aurora, the spec- tral forms of contending armies; and the comet foretel the wreck of mighty empires. Against this untutored devotion I would not breathe a thought • it^is the voice of the Deity speaking to the °sav- But it is the privilege, the duty of intellect to think more deeply of the physiology of nature, and to learn from the physical sciences its real utility m the grand scheme of the creation. Philosophy rising from the sublime study of these beautiful phenomena, regards them as the pure effect of those elemental laws by which the integrity of the universe is preserved. And what ought this philosophy to teach us ? Not the su perstition of the bigot, for the age of special mir- ^?£J%£™*' P ast ' ** ! he Fide of the ftt„i;„* u j- r — ,, ' K ' iuL lua P llcle °t the fatalist, who refers all to chance and necessity ; not the mama of the astrologer, who pl ume s himself on his prophetic wisdom, and presumes to inter- pret to the letter the mysterious voice of his Crea- tor; but that true wisdom which threw over Boyle, ^lAr 1 Newton the mant]e ° f h >-% The autumn floods had descended from the mountains of Gwent • the banks of the meander! ing Wye were desolate, and her woods leafless- £&£f of Tintem was "* -*-?S sW^ bee " de 1 c , i r ded , that ^ the summer sun shone again on Wyndcliff, the wanderers should ZT the , ^""^ alleys that lay beneath i C) n memory of happy hours ; but, ere this was fulfilled 442 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. changes manifold had come over their destiny, from which might be fashioned a true love-story. For Astrophel, Ida had unconsciously worked a spell of natural witchcraft, and his wild thoughts were ever chastened by the pure light of her de- votion ; and Evelyn almost confessed to Castaly that there might be a sort of animal magnetism. He has neglected the study of the atomic theory for the contemplation of the animated atoms that play around his domestic hearth ; and the heart and life of Castaly, a poetry in themselves, have since interwoven many a blushing flower on the classic pages of his philosophy. THE END. 1 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 ■ --■■■iMiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuUUUUUUUM LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 523 046 7