what he had so fondly cherished. If the subject was mentioned, he felt uncomfortable; and he declared, that he verily believed that if it had been proposed to him, by walking into a room, or even by drawing a curtain, to see the finest work of art that had ever been executed, he would have shunned the sight with a feeling of loathing. This is the picture of a mind warped a little astray. And where, in the wanderings, the errors that beset the paths of our minds, shall we set up our mark and say, so far are the limits of sound reason?" It is a hard riddle, Eusebius, and we must leave it where we find it.

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I mentioned to you my own unfortunate and fortunate year. I will not detail either the disasters of the one, or the recompenses of the other; but the termination of the unfortunate year, even to the very last moment, was very remarkable, as was the instantaneous change from imminent peril to perfect safety, even at the very moment that ushered in the new and successful year. It was thus:-The last day of the year I was obliged to go to the city of -upon very distressing business that had long harassed me-o -one of the evil occurrences of that evil year. travelling at night by coach: I had an outside place. One of the passengers remarked, "We are within two minutes of the new year." He had scarcely spoken these words, when we observed the coach to sway very much, and not to keep its place in the road; the coachman cried out, "jump off all of you as quick as you can, for we shall be upset.' I could just see that the off-leader had, somehow or other, disencumbered his head of his headgear ;-the bit was out of his mouth, and the reins had no power over him. All scrambled off as they could: I was not so quick, having on a thick greatcoat; and when I did get off the coach, I swung, holding by the irons, the coach moving on the while in most irregular motion; at length my right leg and thigh fell in between the spokes of the wheel on the inside. At that very instant the coach, as if by a merciful Providence, stopped;-some one had, at the very nick of time, contrived to get to the head of the leader, and held him, yet not knowing the precarious situation in which I was; nor could I immedi

ately extricate myself. Had this person been the minutest point of time later, had the horses advanced one single step, either before they could be held or after, my leg and thigh must have been torn from my body, and in all probability I must have been killed upon the spot. I was, in truth, in a most awful situation; so it was, not one single move did the coach make from the instant I was thus, with my limb between the spokes of the wheel till I was perfectly extricated; and none of this was effected by any human means with the intention of saving me, for no one was aware of my situation. I never could think it other than a providential escape; and I trust I was then, and am still, thankful for that and the many other mercies I have experienced. But I well remember being struck with this circumstance, that the moment of my utmost peril must have been the last moment of the unfortunate year, and the moment the coach stopped must have been the first of the new year; and I recollect the thought passing through my mind, that it was a merciful, a happy beginning, and I accepted it, in my thankfulness, as an omen that that year would be as happy to me as the last had been otherwise. I found, when I arrived at, letters which put the disagreeable business, the cause of my journey, in a better train. I succeeded to my utmost wishes; and I may say that, from the moment of the commencement of that year to its termination, it gave me as much success as the last had brought disasters. Does not the mind feel at times something very like a conviction, upon which it does not reason-will not reason—that it is under the influence of evil spirits that thwart all its resolves, all its actions? And how could I avoid a feeling that the evil demon, the Alastor, that had persecuted me, had been subdued? A sparrow falleth not to the ground without permission. Evil is permitted to work, and it is stayed by an Omnipotent hand-so that, be it how it may, by whatever agency the evil is prevented, and the good brought to pass, we have still reason to be thankful: and I trust here is no superstition. And if there were, is it not a certain necessity of our condition that there should be some in us all? And could we divest

ourselves of that portion, it might be a question how far we should be the better. Superstition implies a fear of a power superior to ourselves: and it has at least a tendency to get the conceit out of us, strutting, crowing creatures, that exalt ourselves in our pride of science and knowledge. The wisest of mankind have been under its influence, as well as the weakest. It is curious to see Rousseau speculating upon his future condition in another world by throwing stones at trees and being quite sure of his happiness because he hit what he could hardly miss. His own account of the matter is curious. He says "Je voudrais savoir s'il passe quelquefois dans les cœurs des autres hommes des puerilités pareilles à celles qui passent quelquefois dans le mien, au milieu de mes études et d'une vie innocente, autant qu'on la puisse mener,et mal grè tout ce qu'on m'avoit pu dire, la peur de l'enfer m'agitoit encore souvent. Toujours craintif et flottant dans cette cruelle incertitude, j'avois recours pour en sortir aux expediens les plus risibles et pour lesquels je ferois volontier enfermer un homme, si je lui en voyois faire autant. Un jour rê vant à ce triste sujet, je m'exerçois machinalement, à lancer des pièrres contre les troncs des arbres, et cela avec mon addresse ordinaire, c'est à dire sans presque en toucher aucun. Tout au milieu de ce bel exercise je m'avisais de m'en faire une espèce de prognostic pour calmer mon inquietude. Je me dis je m'en vais jetter cette pierre contre l'arbre qui est vis à vis de moi: si je le touche signe de salut; si je le manque-signe de damnation. Tout en disant ainsi, je jette ma pierre d'une main tremblante, et avec un horrible battement de cœur; mais si heureusement qu'elle va frapper au beau milieu de l'arbre : ce qui veritablement n'etoit pas diffi cile; car j'avois en soin de le choisir fort gros et fort près, depuis lors je n'ai plus doute de mon salut. Je ne sais en me rappellant ce trait si je dois rire ou gémir sur moimême. autres grands hommes qui riez sûrement, felicitez vous, mais n'insultiez pas à ma misère, car je vous jure que je la sens bien."-(Confessions, liv. 6, p. 145-6. vol. xx.) Now the phenomenon is, that those delusions shall take possession of a man, while in other respects his understanding and

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genius shall be in full vigour. Was the good, the religious Pascal more reasonable than the whimsical philosopher, when he practised the most severe mortifications, even ordering a wall to be built before a window of his study, from which he thought he had too agreeable a prospect; or his sister, a woman of sound judgment and piety, when she actually died of thirst, as she thought, to the glory of God? What are we to say to the curious case of Brown, author of the "Defence of the Religion of Nature," and of the "Christian Revelation," in answer to "Tindal's Christianity, as old as the Creation," which he dedicated to Queen Caroline-a man of exemplary life, and great intellectual abilities; yet he thought that his rational soul was gradually perishing, and there was nothing left to him but animal life in common with brutes; and thus he informs her Majesty, "That by the immediate hand of an avenging God, his very thinking substance has, for more than seven years, been continually wasting away, till it is wholly perished out of him, if it be not utterly come to nothing?" Such is the disease of an overwrought mind; and this one refuge or escape for the unsound part, may leave the other judgment and faculties whole, and thus superstition is, in that sense, Nature's physician-and, perhaps, in such cases the best. In a similar case, poor M. Count de Gibelin, author of nine very learned volumes, "Le Monde primitif analysé et comparé avec le Monde Moderne, ou Recherches sur L'Antiquité du Monde," applied to the celebrated magnetic doctor, Mesmer, whose vagaries are again offering a safetyvalve to the eccentricities of mankind. His death, in Mesmer's house, gave occasion to the following lines:

"Cy git ce pauvre Gibelin,

Qui parloit Grec, Hebreu, Latin; Admirez tous son heroïsme Il fût martyr de Magnetisme!" Mesmerism!-the very word is of conjuration. What is there to prevent believers in it from believing witchcraft?-the power of spirits, seen and unseen? I read (I think in the Lancet) a few months ago, a grave account of a lady magnetized, without knowing the operation was going on, at her own house, while the operator was in his, at a considerable distance;

and by signs and volition merely, on the part of the operator, conversations were elicited-the person was under a spell. We read and hear of so many cases of this kind now-a-days, with strange and incredible circumstances, that it is, perhaps, idle to mention the above: yet, a believer in Mesmerism is a philosopher-a believer in witchcraft a fool; though there is, perhaps, more argument in favour of the latter than the former.

The physician who, when called upon to cure the Indian prince of an incurable ulcer in his nose, declared his ability to do so, but insinuated that there existed a connexion between the disease and the sovereignty, and therefore recommended the letting it remain, did not, as it seems to me, propose a greater absurdity, or appeal to a stronger superstition, than would the man who would persuade me that he, being at the time in London, by merely the antics of his own body, and the volition of his own mind, would set me, in Edinburgh, asleep, awake, or talking, and seeing with my eyes shut, at his pleasure. The old necromancer was but a tame performer, in comparison with modern Mesmerian practitioners, and yet we say the world has lost its credulity! It has but changed its objects. It is in human nature, has an insatiable appetite, takes a surfeit with one kind of food, and becomes voracious for another; while the public, that were wont to see it feed, finding the old provisions remain on hand, think the monster is dying of inanity, while he is gorged with what they furnish him in another line. There does not exist a really, and in all things, incredulous man. I have said, Eusebius, that we might not be much the better could we at once get rid of our superstition. You are shocked, it may be, that I should even seem to encourage it; and would conjure up in array against me the degrading superstitions that, in countries Christian or unchristian, sanctify, as it were, atrocities. But are we quite sure these are owing to superstition? Mankind are cruel, and seek a palliation for their cruelty in superstition. The superstition does not give, but takes the character of the man. Such a monster as Louis the Eleventh of France, would never have given up his cruelty, though you : had stripped him of the superstition

with which he covered it. He would still have made no conscience of any villany, if he had not gone as he did, covered with relics, and wearing a leaden image of the Virgin Mary in his hat, of which, it is said, he asked pardon for his murders before they were committed. He made a deed of the earldom of Bulloigne to the Virgin Mary. But the priest who absolves for a murder, before committed -what of him? He is the devil's servant, and does his work; he is a hypocrite, and the only incredulous of the party.

Superstition takes its colour from the mind: it may exhibit an awful phantasmagoria; but the pictures are made for it, and people choose those they like best: superstition only makes them conspicuous. The villain who commits a murder, and seems to quiet his conscience by absolution, would commit it though he believed neither in God nor devil. His nature is evil, and he gives way to it. I may then be permitted, Eusebius, to doubt that we should be the better could we eradicate from our minds that propensity to credulity in mysterious things, which we name superstition; and something may be said of the good, as well as evil, it may be thought to produce. The superstitious feeling, for some will call that a superstitious feeling, that there is ever present a persecuting witness of murder, that will in his own time bring it to light, may be a set-off against the absolution; and so strong is this feeling, that the murderer himself sometimes cannot bear it, but gives himself up to justice, rather than endure his misery. Then the touching the body, as a test of guilt or innocence, whether Providence choose to mark the criminal by miraculous change, if that change in the bleeding body be not some natural sympathy, we know not how elicited, but called miraculous because we understand not the operation; or whether the illusion is only in the mind's eye of the guilty, who sees gushing the blood that he has once shed, (as Shakspeare finely conceives in Lady Macbeth in vain washing that little hand,) and confesses the deed, the ordeal may have prevented many a murder, by the notoriety of the discovery. Take an example from the State Trials.

"On the trial of Philip Stands field

for the murder of his father, is the following extraordinary evidence, (in Scotland, Edinburgh.) Deposition of Humphrey Spurway, viz. :

"When the chirurgeons had caused the body of Sir James to be, by their servants, sewen up again, and his grave-cloathes put on, a speech was made to this purpose. It is requisite now, that those of Sir James Standsfield's relations and nearest friends should take him off from the place where he now lies, and lift him into his coffin.' So I saw Mr James Rowe at the left side of Sir James' head and shoulder, and Mr Philip Standsfield at the right side of his head and shoulder; and, going to lift off the body, I saw Mr Philip drop the head of his father upon the form, and much blood in hand, and himself flying off from the body, crying Lord have mercy upon me,' or 'upon us,' wiping off the blood on his clothes, and so laying himself over a seat in the church; some, supposing that he would swaiff or swoon away, called for a bottle of water for him."

Sir George M'Kenzie takes this notice of the above evidence in his speech to the inquest. "But they, fully persuaded that Sir James was murdered by his own son, sent out some chirurgeons and friends, who, having raised the body, did see it bleed miraculously upon his touching it. In which God Almighty himself was pleased to bear a share in the testimonies which we produce: that Divine Power which makes the blood circulate during life, has oft times, in all nations, opened a passage to it after death upon such occasions, but most in this case."

Now, if we fairly consider the matter, such a discovery of a murder is not a whit more wonderful, nor more to be accounted as from Divine pur pose, than is the discovery of a murder by dreams; and there are so many of the kind in every one's mouth, that it is difficult to know where to choose; and some are so authenticated, that it seems to me to be but a presumptuous boldness altogether to set them aside. There are, however, two instances of such extraordinary dreams having occurred within these few years. It was stated at the time, and, if I mistake not, appeared in the course of the trial, that Corder's murder of his wife was found out by a dream,

in which the very place where the body was deposited was seen. The other is the most extraordinary, because the object of it does not appear. You must recollect the whole vision, in a dream, of the murder of Mr Perceval, at the distance of more than a hundred and fifty miles from the scene, and a week or more before it was perpetrated, in which the faces of Bellingham and his victim were most distinctly portrayed. I remember a somewhat detailed account was given of this in Maga a year or two ago, if I mistake not in one of those able papers, "The world we live in." Who will say that Homer was not justified when he said that " Dreams are from Jove, Ovapex A10s?" There are many curious examples in the tale of the "Cock and the Fox." I suppose they are Chaucer's-I only remember them through a Dryden. They are probably from a common stock, and well known, or well believed, at the time. I will tell you a discovery, though not of a murder, that was told me by the dreamer, a very intelligent person, and upon whose veracity I had great reliance. He has been dead many years. It occurred to him when a young man. He was engaged in a china manufactory at Swansea. dreamed that he saw a man drowning in one of their pools. He dreamed the same a second time and a third time, and then could not resist making an effort to rise and satisfy himself that it was not so. He did rise, went to the spot, and found the man drowned. But have we not authority for dreams that we cannot question? There is the significant dream of Jacob; there is Joseph, the pious, the favoured dreamer, and the interpreter of dreams; there is Pharaoh's dream of the fat and lean kine; the dream of Pilate's wife, and consequent admonitioh," Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him." And if it be said that dreams which have no consequent action are not likely to be divinely significant, we may point to this dream of Pilate's wife. It did not save. What shall we say of the precautionary dream of Cæsar's wife? And of the dreamlike vision-Cæsar appearing to Brutus, and the famous "meet me at Philippi ?" Then comes the question, Are "appearances" dreams, im

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aginary visions? or are they, however inexplicable the mode, the actual spiritual presence of the persons whose images they bear? "It is wonderful," said Dr Johnson, "that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it, but all belief is for it." Is not all belief at least one argument? I cannot but think it much less a matter of astonishment that the spirits of those who have existed should assume form and appearance, than that, as in dreams and the like, "coming events (should) cast their shadows before." I once knew a gentleman, who held high rank in the army, who made several attempts at suicide; but was always prevented, as he himself asserted, by the apparition of his father that once he was going to throw himself into the sea, and his father appeared to him out of the water, directly in his way, so as to impede the act. It may be said this was the effect of imagination. It may have been, and it may not.

We are too apt to think things impossible, because we cannot account for the manner in which they are done; but we may as well at once deny all the secrets of nature. Reason is continually thrown off her wise guard, and made to own the existence of thousands of her impossibilities. We cannot conceive of time and of eternity together; nor of space and infinity, pretty much the same as eternity. We contradict ourselves every day in our conceptions; and, great as we think ourselves in science, we but discover the molecules upon the shell of it, and these again fall into our maze of impossible possibilities; and in such bewilderment we are, as it appears to me, when we attempt to reason upon apparitions? How little, in fact, do we know of the material world; and how much less of the spiritual, and nothing of the connexion between them? In such a state of actual ignorance, I would set the "all belief" against the reasoning of any. I wish there was a committee to examine into facts. It is strange : are there none established? I want to have the sign and seal of the wisest and truest to attest facts. Is the wellknown tale of Lord Littleton's death

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a mere story, a fiction, that they put back the clock to deceive him, and that he said, "I shall bilk the ghost yet?" but he did not. I had rather make discoveries here, in this "terra incognita," the world of spirits, and their connexion with us, than all that has been, or ever will be, discovered in Arctic and Antarctic seas. fact established upon authority, would be inestimable. Some must be worth sifting;-all cannot arise from the law of chances of singular coincidences. Here is a story that seems to rest upon the most undoubted evidence ; for acts have followed it. It may be ascertained, and I believe the person for whose benefit the appearance was made, is still living. I will not, therefore, give the name at full length; but I will say, had such an occurrence happened to myself, I would have published the whole transaction. We gossip and relate trifles from our biography; and matters deep and grave as this we omit, from a fear, perhaps, of being laughed at for credulity, or a fear of too much questioning.

Colonel B, with two other officers of the names of D- and S-, were stationed in America some years before the American war. Colonel B- was sent up the country to quell an insurrection of the natives; the other two remained behind. A very short time after the Colonel's departure, D- and S-were sleeping in the same apartment in two separate beds, when Colonel B entered the room some hours after the gentlemen had been in bed. S (a light burning in the room) perceived him enter, and expressed much surprise to see him return so soon; the Colonel told him that he was now no more, having been killed by the natives early in the action: that his reason for appearing was to request Sto find his infant son, who was then in England; and directed him where to find his will. He then left the room; S asked his friend Dif he had seen or heard any thing, to which D replied, that he had seen the apparition, and had heard every syllable of what had passed. Returning to England, they found every circumstance exactly coinciding with the apparition's account, and the affair was represented to her Majesty, (Queen Charlotte,) who, in consequence, kindly adopted the infant.