litter for the king's bed-chamber;" as though that chivalrous Norman had been a horse; and a "yeoman named Peter Spileman, at a subsequent period, had to find straw for the king's bed." Thomas à Becket used to cover his floor with clean straw in winter, and green rushes and sprigs of trees in summer, that the nobles who dined with him might sit on the floor without injuring their clothes, if there happened not to be room enough on the benches; and old Hollinshed, speaking of "improvements," says, that he and his fellows "have lain full oft upon straw pallets covered only with a sheet or rough mats, and a good round log under our head,

instead of a bolster.

Such are some of the glimpses into the past we get from Mr. Merryweather's "Glimmerings in the Dark," a pleasant book for a chimney-corner, full of patient reading and quaint anecdote, and, withal, not without its moral. It shows us how the past has ministered to the present, even as the present must prepare the way for the future. It tells us how difficulties have vanished before effort, how servility has been elevated into comparative freedom, how ignorance with its blind faith has grown into partial knowledge with its keen-eyed scepticism, how England, "merrie "and poor, has become Britain, the careful, busy, and rich, and leaves us to hope-it may be to infer, for the wish will be "father to the thought," that England the rich is progressing toward England the happy.

FAR-OFF BEAUTY.

Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their ala. baster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent rolling. They were meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for their place, high above your head; approach them, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapour. Look at the crest of the Alp, from the faraway plains over which its light is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by myriads. The child looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it set, for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the far-off sky; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away about its foundation, and the tide of human life, shallowed upon the vast aerial shore, is at last met by the eternal "Here shall thy waves be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks; its silver fretwork saddened into wasting snow; the stormbrands of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment.-Ruskin.

SUSPENSE.

Of all the conditions to which the heart is subject, suspense is one that most gnaws and cankers into the frame. One little month of that suspense, when it involves death, we are told by an eye-witness, in "Wakefield on the Punishment of Death," is sufficient to plough fixed lines and furrows in a convict of fiveand twenty,--sufficient to dash the brown hair with grey, and to bleach the grey to white.—Eugene Aram.

(ORIGINAL.)

A PATHETIC LAMENT.

"Here's a state of things! the company come that we │ didn't expect till next week, and master gone nobody knows where."-DOMESTIC ASIDE OF A "PRETTY PAGE."

THE lost "gude man," the lost "gude man,"
Oh, the width of our anguish who could span,
When we stood at the gate in pilgrim state
Bemoaning our lonely and dinnerless state.

The castle was nigh with its towers so high,
And the flagmast poking its nose to the sky;
The walls were grey as the farewell of day,
When the muffin-boy goes on his wandering way.

The ivy was green in the Midsummer sheen,
With as noble a watch-dog as ever was seen;
All things were enriching the prospect bewitching,
Excepting a little black smoke from the kitchen.

We could see at a glance that the fairies might dance,
Or the poet might sing in such field of romance;
But alack and alas! the plain truth comes to pass,
Proving
" looks foolish without "Mrs.
Spenser

Glass."

We had conjured bright dreams of rare Burgundy streams,

Of terrestrial cake and ethereal creams;

With the zeal of a Milton our fancies had built on
The hopes of some precious old port with ripe Stilton.
The soul-stirring line may be all very fine,
Provided the minstrel can manage to "dine;"
But to stand 'neath a portal where the commons are
short all,

Takes a vast deal of sentiment out of the mortal,

The carnivorous room was as still as the tomb,
With those horrid things in it—a duster and broom;
Not an atom of chicken for invalid's picking,
Not a morsel of ox, neither sirloin nor sticking.

We sat in despair, with a starvation stare,—
Not a plate, not a dish, not a fragment was there;
Not the chink of a fork nor the creak of a cork,
To tell that the butler was doing his work.

The master was out after flounders and trout,
Far away on the tide gallivanting about;
And, most doleful to tell, to complete the sad spell,
Took the butler and Bramah keys fishing as well.
Three blusterous nights, 'mid doubts and frights,
Did we linger and pine on the castle heights;
And each hour we ran, like "sister Ann,"
To see if we spied a coming man.

We have got him at last, and we'll hold him fast,
And drink his health while the Rhenish is passed;
But we'll add 'mid the rout of the echoing shout,
66 May we ne'er come again when the keys have gone
out."

ELIZA COOK.

ERROR.-Page 272, line 20, of Poem, should be

"And the grass still dark with dew."

Printed by Cox (Brothers) & WYMAN, 74-75, Great Queen Street, London; and published by CHARLES COOK, at the Office of the Journal, 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street.

MYSTERIES!

"I BELIEVE nothing that I do not understand," is the favourite saying of Mr. Pettipo Dapperling, a gentleman who very much prides himself on his intellectual perspicacity. Yet ask Mr. Pettipo if he understands how it is that he wags his little finger, and he can give you no reasonable account of it. He will tell you (for he has read books and "studied " anatomy), that the little finger consists of so many jointed bones, that there are tendons attached to them before and behind, which belong to certain muscles, and that when these muscles are made to contract, the finger wags. And this is nearly all that Mr. Pettipo knows about it! How it is that the volition acts on the muscles, what volition is, what the will is-Mr. Pettipo knows not. He knows quite as little about the Sensation which resides in the skin of that little finger-how it is that it feels and appreciates forms and surfaces-why it detects heat and cold-in what way its papillae erect themselves, and its pores open and close,-about all this he is entirely in the dark. And yet Mr. Pettipo is under the necessity of believing that his little finger wags, and that it is endowed with the gift of sensation, though he in fact knows nothing whatever of the why or the wherefore.

We must believe a thousand things that we cannot understand. Matter and its combinations are a grand mystery-how much more so, Life and its manifestations! Look at those far-off worlds majestically wheeling in their appointed orbits, millions of miles off: or, look at this earth on which we live, performing its diurnal motion upon its own axis, and its annual circle round the sun! What do we understand of the causes of such motions? what can we ever know about them, beyond the facts that such things are so? To discover and apprehend facts is much, and it is nearly our limit. To ultimate causes we can never ascend. But to have an eye open to receive facts and apprehend their relative valuethat is a great deal,-that is our duty;-and not to reject, suspect, or refuse to accept them, because they happen to clash with our preconceived notions, or, like Mr. Pettipo Dapperling, because we "cannot understand" them.

"O! my dear Kepler," writes Galileo to his friend, "how I wish that we could have one hearty laugh

[PRICE 14d.

together! Here at Padua is the principal Professor of Philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass, which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! And to hear the Professor of Philosophy at Pisa lecturing before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations to charm the new planets out of the sky!"

Rub a stick of wax against your coat-sleeve, and it emits sparks: hold it near to light, fleecy particles of wool or cotton, and it first attracts, then it repels them. What do you understand about that, Mr. Pettipo, except merely that it is so? Stroke the cat's back before the fire, and you will observe the same phenomena. Your own body will in like manner emit sparks in certain states, but you know nothing about why it is so.

ever.

Pour a solution of muriate of lime into one of sulphate of potash,-both clear fluids; but no sooner are they mixed together than they become nearly solid. How is that? You tell me that an ingredient of the one solution combines with an ingredient of the other, and an insoluble sulphate of lime is produced. Well! you tell me a fact; but you do not account for it by saying that the lime has a greater attraction for the sulphuric acid than the potash has you do not understand how it is-you merely see that it is so. You must believe it. But when you come to Life, and its wonderful manifestations, you are more in the dark than You understand less about this than you do even of dead matter. Take an ordinary every-day fact-you drop two seeds, whose component parts are the same, into the same soil. They grow up so close together that their roots mingle and their stalks intertwine. The one plant produces a long slender leaf, the other a short flat leaf,-the one brings forth a beautiful flower, the other an ugly scruff-the one sheds abroad a delicious fragrance, the other is entirely inodorous. The hemlock, the wheatstalk, and the rose-tree, out of the same chemical ingredients contained in the soil, educe, the one deadly poison, the other wholesome food, the third a bright consummate flower. Can you tell me, Mr. Pettipo, how is this? Do you understand the secret by which the roots of these plants accomplish so much

more than all your science can do, and so infinitely excel the most skilful combinations of the philosopher? You can only recognize the fact-but you cannot unravel the mystery. Your saying that it is the "nature" of the plants, does not in the slightest degree clear up the difficulty. You cannot get at the ultimate fact-only the proximate one is seen by you.

But lo! here is a wonderful little plant-touch it, and the leaves shrink on the instant: one leaf seeming to be in intimate sympathy with the rest, and the whole leaves in its neighbourhood shrinking up at the touch of a foreign object. Or, take the simple pimpernel, which closes its eye as the sun goes down, and opens as he rises again-shrinks at the approach of rain, and expands in fair weather. The hop twines round the pole in the direction of the sun, and

"The sunflower turns on her god when he sets,
The same look that she turned when he rose."

Do we know anything about these things, further than that they are so?

A partridge chick breaks its shell and steps forth into its new world. Instantly it runs about and picks up the seeds lying about on the ground. It has never learnt to run, or to see, or to select its food; but it does all these on the instant. The lamb of a few hours' old frisks about full of life, and sucks its dam's teat with as much accuracy as if it had studied the principle of the air-pump. Instinct comes full-grown into the world at once, and we know nothing about it, neither does the Mr. Dapperling above named.

When we ascend to the higher orders of animated being, to man himself,-we are as much in the dark as before-perhaps more so. Here we have matter arranged in its most highly-organized forms,--moving, feeling, and thinking. In man the animal powers are concentrated; and the thinking powers are brought to their highest point. How, by the various arrangements of matter in man's body, one portion of the nervous system should convey volitions from the brain to the limbs and the outer organs-how another part should convey sensations with the suddenness of lightning and how, finally, a third portion should collect these sensations, react upon them, store them up by a process called Memory, reproduce them in thought, compare them, philosophize upon them, embody them in books,—is a great and unfathomable mystery!

Life itself!-how wonderful it is! Who can understand it, or unravel its secret? From a tiny vesicle, at first almost imperceptible to the eye, but gradually growing and accumulating about it fresh materials, which are in turns organized and laid down, each in their set places, at length a body is formed, becomes developed-passing through various inferior stages of being,-those of polype, fish, frog, and animal,-until at length the human being rises above all these forms, and the law of the human animal life is fulfilled. First, he is merely instinctive, then sensitive, then reflective-the last the greatest, the crowning work of man's development. But what do we know of it all? Do we not merely see that it is so, and turn aside from the great mystery in despair of ever unravelling it?

The body sleeps! Volition, sensation, and thought, become suspended for a time, while the animal powers live on; capillary arteries working, heart beating, lungs playing, all without an effort-voluntarily and spontaneously. The shadow of some recent thought agitates the brain, and the sleeper dreams. Or, his volition may awake, while sensation is still profoundly asleep, and then we have the

somnambule, walking in his sleep. Or, volition may be profoundly asleep, while the senses are preternaturally excited, as in the abnormal mesmeric state. Here we have a new class of phenomena, more wonderful because less usual, but not a whit more mysterious than the most ordinary manifestations of life.

We are astonished to hear men refusing to credit the evidence of their senses as to mesmeric phenomena, on the ground that they cannot "understand" them. When they cannot understand the commonest manifestations of life,-the causation of volition, sensation, or thought,-why should they refuse belief on such a ground? Are the facts real? Are these things so? This should be the chief consideration with us. Mysteries they may be; but all life, all matter, all that is, are mysteries too. refuse to believe in the electric telegraph because the instantaneous transmission of intelligence be tween points a thousand miles apart seems at first sight fabulous, and, to the uninitiated, profoundly mysterious? Why should not thought-the most wonderful and subtle of known agencies-manifest itself in equally extraordinary ways?

Do we

We do not know that what the mesmerists call clairvoyance is yet to be held as established by sufficient evidence. Numerous strongly authenticated cases have certainly been adduced by persons whose evidence is above suspicion-as, for instance, by Swedenborg (attested by many impartial witnesses), by Goethe, by Zschokke, by Townshend, by Martineau, and others; but the evidence seems still to want confirmation. Only, we say, let us not prejudge the case let us wait patiently for all sorts of evidence. We cannot argue à priori that clairvoyance is not true, any more than the Professor at Padua could argue, with justice, that the worlds which Galileo's telescope revealed in the depths of space, were all a sham. That truth was established by extended observation. Let us wait and see whether this may not yet be established too by similar means.

Some of the things which the mesmerists, who go the length of clairvoyance, tell us, certainly have a very mysterious look; and were not sensation, thought, and all the manifestations of Life (not yet half investigated) all alike mysterious, we might be disposed to shut our eyes with the rest, and say we refused to believe, because we "did not understand."

But equally extraordinary relations to the same effect have been made by men who were neither mesmerists nor clairvoyantes. For instance, Kant, the German writer, relates that Swedenborg once, when living at Gottenburg, some three hundred miles from Stockholm, suddenly rose up and went out, when at the house of one Kostel in the company of fifteen persons. After a few minutes he returned, pale and alarmed, and informed the party that a dangerous fire had just broken out in Stockholm, in Sudermalm, and that the fire was spreading fast. He was restless, and went out often; he said that the house of one of his friends, whom he named, was already in ashes, and that his own was in danger. At eight o'clock, after he had been out again, he joyfully exclaimed, "Thank God, the fire is extinguished the third door from my house." This statement of Swedenborg's spread through the town, and occasioned consternation and wonder. The governor heard of it, and sent for Swedenborg, who described the particulars of the fire,-where and how it had begun, in what manner it had ceased, and how long it had continued. On the Monday evening, two days after the fire, a messenger arrived from Gottenburg, who had been despatched during the time of the fire, and the intelligence he brought confirmed all

that Swedenborg had said as to its commencement: and on the following morning the royal courier arrived at the governor's with full intelligence of the calamity, which did not differ in the least from the relation which Swedenborg had given immediately after the fire had ceased on the Saturday evening.

A circumstance has occurred while the writer was engaged in the preparation of this paper, which is of an equally curious character, to say the least of it. The lady who is the subject of it is a relation of the writer, and is no believer in the "Mysteries of Mesmerism." It may be remarked, however, that she is of a very sensitive and excitable nervous temperament. It happened, that on the night of the 30th of April, a frightful accident occurred on the Birkenhead Lancashire and Cheshire Railway, in consequence of first one train, and then another, running into the trains preceding. A frightful scene of tumult, mutilation, and death ensued. It happened that the husband of the lady in question was a passenger in the first train; though she did not know that he intended to go to the Chester races, having been in Liverpool that day on other business. But she had scarcely fallen asleep, ere, half dozing, half awake, she saw the accident occur,-the terror, the alarm, and the death. She walked up and down her chamber in terror and alarm the whole night, and imparted her fears to others in the morning. Her husband was not injured, though greatly shaken by the collision, and much alarmed; and when he returned home in the course of the following day, he could scarcely believe his wife when she informed him of the circumstances which had been so mysteriously revealed to her in connection with his journey of the preceding day!

Zschokke, an estimable man, well known as a philosopher, statesman, and author, possessed, according to his own and contemporary accounts, the most extraordinary power of divination of the characters and lives of other men with whom he came in contact. He called it his "inward sight," and at first he was himself quite as much astonished at it as others were. Writing of this feature himself, he says:"It has happened to me, sometimes, on my first meeting with strangers, as I listened silently to their discourse, that their former life, with many trifling circumstances therewith connected, or frequently some particular scene in that life, has passed quite involuntarily, and as it were dream-like, yet perfectly distinct, before me. During this time, I usually feel so entirely absorbed in the contemplation of the stranger life, that at last I no longer see clearly the face of the unknown, wherein I undesignedly read, nor distinctly hear the voices of the speakers, which before served in some measure as a commentary to the text of their features. For a long time I held such visions as delusions of the fancy, and the more so as they showed me even the dress and motions of the actors, rooms, furniture, and other accessories. By way of jest, I once, in a family circle at Kirchberg, related the secret history of a seamstress who had just left the room and the house. I had never seen her before in my life; people were astonished and laughed, but were not to be persuaded that I did not previously know the relations of which I spoke, for what I had uttered was the literal truth; I, on my part, was no less astonished that my dream-pictures were confirmed by the reality. I became more attentive to the subject, and when propriety admitted it, I would relate to those whose life thus passed before me, the subject of my vision, that I might thereby obtain confirmation or refutation of it. It was invariably ratified, not without consideration on their part. I myself had less confidence than any one in this mental

jugglery. So often as I revealed my visionary gifts to any new person, I regularly expected to hear the answer,-'It was not so.' I felt a secret shudder when my auditors replied that it was true, or when their astonishment betrayed my accuracy before they spoke.' Zschokke gives numerous instances of this extraordinary power of divination or waking clairvoyance, and mentions other persons whom he met, who possessed the same marvellous power.

The "Posthumous Memoirs of La Harpe" contain equally extraordinary revelations, looking forward, instead of backward, as in Zschokke's case, into the frightful events of the great French revolution; the sightseer being Cazove, a well-known novel writer, who lived previous to the frightful outbreak. Mary Howitt, in her account of the extraordinary "Preaching Epidemic of Sweden," recites circumstances of the same kind, equally wonderful; and the Rev. Mr. Sandy and Mr. Townshend's books on mesmerism are full of similar marvels. Among the various statements, the grand point is, how much of them is true? What are the facts of mesmerism ? To quote the great Bacon:-"He who hath not first, and before all, intimately explained the movements of the human mind, and therein most accurately distinguished the course of knowledge and the seats of error, shall find all things masked, and as it were enchanted; and until he undo the charm, shall be unable to interpret." How few of us have yet arrived at this enviable position.

THE BOW-WINDOW.

AN ENGLISH TALE.

BY FRANCES DEANE.

THERE is something so English, so redolent of home, of flowers in large antique stands, about a bowwindow, that we are always pleased when we catch a glimpse of one, even if it be when but forming the front of an inn. It gives a picturesque look too, to a home, that is quite refreshing to gaze on, and when journeying in foreign lands, fond recollections of dear England come flooding o'er us, if we happen in some out-of-the-way village, on such a memory of the land from whence we came. I have not, from absence from my country, seen such a thing for some few years; but there is one fresh in my memory, with its green short Venetian blinds, its large chintz curtains, its comfortable view up and down the terrace where we lived, to say nothing of its associa tions in connection with my childhood. But it is not of this bow-window that I would speak, it is of one connected with the fortunes of my friend Maria Walker, and which had a considerable influence on her happiness.

Maria Walker was usually allowed to be the beauty of one of the small towns round London in the direction of Greenwich, of which ancient place she was a native. Her father had originally practised as a physician in that place, but circumstances had caused his removal to another locality, which promised more profitable returns. The house they occupied was an ancient red-brick mansion in the centre of the town, with a large bow-window, always celebrated for its geraniums, myrtles, and roses, that with a couple of small orange-trees, were the admiration of the neighbourhood. Not that Thomas Walker, Esq., had any horticultural tastes,-on the contrary, he was very severe on our sex for devoting their minds to such trifles as music, flowers, and fancy-work; but then blue-eyed Maria Walker

*Autobiography of Zschokke, pp. 119-70.