M. de la Harpe," should have been fulfilled? for in

1788, when this prophecy was uttered, the guillotine was daily reeking with patrician 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
ILLUSION' OF SPECTRES. 41
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 friends; and knowing their circumstances and locality, so pro- phesy, that they seemed to have all the faculty of clair- voyance. 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 secrets 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 important mo- ment !"
Oliver Cromwell had reclined on his couch, and ex- treme fatigue forbad 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 Crom- well might have raised, during the distracted state of the kingdom, something even beyond this; and who may decide, if the spectre had whispered, " Thou shalt be king hereafter," that the protector would have re- fused the crown, as, on the feast of Lupercal, it had been refused by Caesar ?
" General Oglethorpe," writes Boswell, " told us that Prendergast, an officer in the Duke of Marlborough'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
42 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES.
Prendergast was still alive, his brother officers, while they were yet in the field, jestingly asked him, where was his prophecy now ? Prendergast gravely answered, ' I shall die, notwithstanding what you see.' Soon after- wards there came a shot from a French battery, to which the orders for a cessation of arms had not yet reached, and he was killed upon the spot!"
But can these shallow stories be cited as prophecies ? The links in the chain of causation are evident, and the veriest sceptic cannot doubt their sequence, where there was so strong a probability. It is merely by reflecting on the past and judging the future by analogy. Natural events of human actions have laws to govern them, and there is seldom foresight without the reflection on these laws. Lord Mansfield, when asked how the French revolution would end, replied, " It is an event without a precedent, and therefore without a prophecy."
ASTR. Then you do not believe, where you cannot develope the causes of events. Like all rational philo- sophers, you must have demonstrative proof. In which class of sceptics shall I enrol you, Evelyn ? — As a proselyte of Aristotle, who will deny not only the exist- ence of spirits, but affirm heaven and hell to be a fable, and that the world is self-existent ; or with the Epicu- reans, who believed the impious doctrine of blind chance, — that the sun and stars were vapours, and the soul perishable ; or with the modern fights of reason, — Sir Isaac Newton, 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 Corneille; or with the Sad- ducees themselves, who denied both prophecy and 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 metaphy-
6
ILLUSION OP SPECTRES. 43
sician blinks the question (as Lord Bacon does that of experimental chemistry,—" Vix unum experiment um adduci potest quod ad hominum statum levandum et juvandum spectat") ; thus wofully depreciating the pro- gress of chemical science, as if the discoveries of Wollas- ton, of Davy, of Dalton, and of Faraday were fruitless. Remember, modern philosophers are not like Xenophon, who (says Socrates) called all fools who differed from his opinion.
Even Baxter confesses the frequency of imposture in ghost stories, yet leans to the belief of all which he can- not 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 Co- pernicus, that it revolved in its orbit, while the earth was at rest. Remember, Astrophel, the way to the temple of Science is through the portals of doubt : it is a mark of weakness, "jurare in verba magistri." Even the prince philosopher of Denmark doubted the pro- phetic truth of his father's ghost on its mere appear- ance— ("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 appear, but because he can, therefore to conclude that he doth, is ill argued : and though 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 strangely warped to inter- pret a subsequent event. Those of William Rufus, and Innocent the Fourth, and Henry the Second of France, and a thousand others from ancient history, between the assumed prophecy and fulfilment of which, there is
44 ILLUSION' OF SPECTRES.
about as much truth as when Lady Seymour dreamt of having 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 association as to be for a moment startling to myself.
Influenced by a sort of veneration for the memory of the good Gilbert White of Selborne, I made a pilgrim- age to that calm and rustic village, so exquisitely em- bosomed among green meads, and beech-crowned chalk hills, and forests embrowned 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 mowed 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, immortalized, as it were, in the " Natural History of Selborne."
There was an imposing occurrence also, during the funeral procession of Sir Walter Scott to Dryburgh. A halt took place for many minutes (in consequence of an accident) precisely on the summit of the hill at Bemer- side, where a beautiful prospect 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 Irish secretary, told me he saw me in St. James's Street ; I was then in Turkey. A day or two afterwards he pointed
ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 45
out to his brother a person across the way, and said, 'There is the man I took for Byron:' his brother an- swered, ' Why, it is Byron, 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, prophesied 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 intensity - of romance and seem involved in the deepest 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 Teviotdale, 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 Tarn 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 aff the ghaist !" and was carried shivering to bed. And what was the phantom ? A maniac widow, on her distracted 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
46 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES.
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 death-bed 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 Sheridan, had an inkling for practical jokes. It was on a profes- sional visit of Dr. Moncey. " Garrick was announced for King 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 Garrick 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 himself, but that there was an actor named Marr, so like him in figure, face, and voice, and so admirable a mimic, that he had ventured to trust the part to him, and was sure the audience would not perceive the difference. Pretending that he began to feel worse, he requested Moncey to leave the room in order that he might get a little sleep, but desired 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. Having left Garrick in bed, he was bewildered by the scene before him, sometimes
ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 47
doubting and sometimes being astonished at the resem- blance between Garrick and Marr. At length, finding that the audience were convinced of Garrick's identity, Moncey 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 state of illness." These are truths which are indeed stranger than fiction.
Were a miracle once authenticated, our scepticism might cease, but we cannot be convinced of super- natural agency till something be done or known which could not be so by common means, or which through the medium of deception or contrivance imposes on the mind such belief; of which impression Alston the pain- ter once told Coleridge a melancholy story. 'Twas of a youth at Cambridge, who dressed himself up in white as a ghost to frighten 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 reached a pistol and fired at it, when, seeing the ghost immoveable and invulnerable as he supposed, a belief in a spirit instantly came over his mind, and convulsion succeeding, his extreme terror was soon followed by his death.
I have read (I believe in Clarendon), that the decapi- tation of Charles I. was augured (after death) from his coronation robes being of white velvet instead 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 General Montecuculi, who on some saint's day had
48 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES.
ordered bacon in his omelette. At the moment it was served, a peal of thunder shook his house, when he ex- claimed, " Voila bien du bruit pour une omelette !"
We wonder not to find Lily, into whose moth-eaten tomes I have sometimes peeped for amusement, prating thus of consequences. There is an old paper of his graced with " the effigies of Master Praise God Bare- bones/' wrhere, among other judgments, the blindness of Milton is recorded as a penal infliction of the Deity, for " that he writ two books against the kings, and Salma- sius his defence 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 solemn stories should have crept into our national legends, in which there is no truth : in which philosophers and divines have very innocently combined to bewilder us.
There is an assumed incident associated writh a melan- choly event in the noble family of Lansdowne, most illustrative of my observation. In the " Literary Re- collections" of the Rev. Richard Warner, is recorded the interesting story of the apparition of Lord William Petty, at Bowood, related to Mr. Warner by the Rev. Joseph Townsend, rector of Pewsey in Wiltshire, and " confirmed by the dying declaration of Dr. Alsop, of Calne."
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. After a few days,
ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 49
the young nobleman seemed to be out of danger; l>ut, on a sudden relapse, the surgeon was again sent for in the evening.
" It was night before this gentleman reached Bowood but an unclouded moon showed every object in unequi-' vocal distinctness. Mr. Alsop had passed through the lodge-gats, and was proceeding to the house, when, to his astonishment, he saw Lord William coming towards him, in all the buoyancy of childhood, restored appa- rently 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 reply, but, turning round, was quickly out of sight. Mr. Al- sop, 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 Wick- ham, in the vault which contained the remains of Lord William's mother ; the latter 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 latter 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 singular circumstances connected with this event, Mr. Jervis, and a most remarkable coincidence between a dream of the late Lord William and our present mourn- ful engagement. A few weeks ago, as I was passing
50 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES.
by his room door one morning, he called me to his bed- side,—* 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 Joseph, you can interpret a dream for me, which I had last night. I dreamed, Doctor, that I set out upon a long journey ; that I stopped the first night at Hungerford, 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,' con- tinued the Doctor, f these are precisely the places where the dear child's corpse will remain on this and the suc- ceeding 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 might set myself to illustrate the apparition by the agitated state of Mr. Alsop's mind, were it not for the utter fallacy of this mysterious story, on which the late Rev. Mr. Jervis, of Brompton, whom I knew and esteemed, deemed it essential to publish " Remarks," in the year 1831. From these, you will learn that Mr. Warner is in error regarding the " ad- dress, designation, and age of the Hon. William Gran- ville 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. Jervis attended the funeral, nor conversed at any time on the circum- stance. And, regarding Mr. Alsop's death-bed declara- tion, 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. Jer-
ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. ,1
vis's "Remarks," one simple sentence in reference to the gentleman by whom it was first told, — that " the enthusiasm of his nature predisposed him to entertain some visionary and romantic notions of supernatural appearances."
E2
PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
: This is the very coinage of your brain : This bodiless creation, ecstacy Is very cunning in." HAMLET.
CAST. How delightful to wander thus among the re- liques 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 pavements of Caerwent beneath the blue sky of yesternoon, 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."
There is a happy combination of antiquity and sim- plicity in this land of Gwent. Almost within the shadow of the Roman Caerleon, the Monmouthshire peasants, at Easter and Whitsuntide, assemble to plant fresh flowers on the graves of their relatives. How I love these old customs ! the chanting of the carol at
PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 53
Christmas; its very homeliness so redolent of love and friendship: and that quaint old Moresco dance wh id i was introduced to England by the noble Katherine of Arragon. Then the pastimes of Halloween and Hog- many in Scotland, and the Walpurgis night of Germany, and the May-day in Ireland, the festival of their pat r. MI saint, and the Midsummer night when the bealfires cast an 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 lona, whispering in my ear.
Inspired by such an influence, I have roamed over the Isle of Elephanta, and gazed on its gorgeous pagoda hewn from the rock, and adorned by gigantic statues and mysterious symbols of the same eternal granite : on the beauteous excavations of Salsette : on the wonders of Elora, and on the classic reliques of Persepolis : on the beautiful columns of Palmyra, the Tadmor in the wil- derness, 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 almost dared to think that superstition and idolatry might be forgiven
54 PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
for the splendours of its architecture, even for the ele- vation 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 court-yard of Chepstow Castle, whilom the Est-brig-hoel of Doomsdaye 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 regicide, 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 groaning dies.
Ev. I am most willing that you should thus indulge in your wild, rhapsody, Astrophel, for it is the happy illustration of one potent cause of spectral illusion — association. There are few whose minds are not excited in some degree when they tread the localities of interest- ing events. By memory and its combinations some- thing like an inspired vision may often seem to come over us — a day-dream. Or, if we have been brooding over a subject 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 past the scene of a murder, still will association fling around us its vision- ary shadows.
Shortly after the death of Maupertuis, the president 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 president standing in an
PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 55
angle of the room with his eyes intensely fixed on him : an effect perfectly explicable by the association of in- tense 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 spectral corps de ballet, that the very furniture was, as it were, con- verted into phantoms. To release himself from this un- welcome 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 association 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 substance at all to excite these spectres. Idea alone is sufficient.
Do you think it strange that a ghost should appear fleshless and shadowy without some supernatural in- fluence ? Be assured that the only influence 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 appear embodied, 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 ?
56 PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
" Phantasraa est sentiendi actus, neque differt a sen- sione 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 Malms- bury.
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, announced 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 phan- tom, 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 intense and beautiful ideas of a Shakspere, a Milton, or a Dante.
" Consider your own conceptions," said Imlac, " you will find substance without extension. An ideal form is no less real than material, but yet it has no exten- sion."
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 impression was on the focus of all the senses, the brain.
Indeed, two of these illusions are often synchronous . as when a deep sepulchral voice is uttered by a thin filmy spectre, like the ghosts of Ossiau, 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, phantasm, apparition, eidolon, ghost, shadow, shade.
The ghost then is nothing more than an intense idea.
PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 57
And as I have caught the mood of story-telling, listen to some analogies of those deep impressions on the mind which are the spring of all this phantasy.
That destructive brainworm, Demonomania, is often excited in the mind of a proselyte by designing 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 unqualified election.
These miseries do not always spring from self-inte- rested impostors. The parent and the nurse, in addi- tion to the nursery tales of fairies and of genii, too often inspire the minds of children with these diabolical phan- toms. The effect is always detrimental, — too often per- manently destructive. I 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 birth-day with several companions of her own age, in all the gaiety 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 >hc was sure she was to be damned. This accident \\a> immediately followed by a severe and tedious nenmis complaint.3*
The ghost will not appear to tell us what unit
58 PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
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 apparition 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."
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 Shakspere, 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 Brutus 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 ex- claims,— " Hence, horrible shadow ! unreal mockery, hence !"
IDA. Aye, and many a false heart, like Marmion, hears, as his life ebbs on the battle-field, the phantom voice of Constance Beverly :
" The monk, with unavailing cares, Exhausted all the church's prayers.
PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 59
Ever he said, tliat, 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 glaring 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 :
All 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 con- viction of our polluted nature, that rankle so intensely in the wounded heart ; and thence the repentant sinner feels so deeply that awful truth, that there is a Being infinitely more pure and godlike than himself.
Ev. A very fertile source of spectral illusion is the devotion to peculiar studies and deep reflection on inte- resting subjects. Mons. Esquirol records the halluci- nation of a lady, who had been reading a terrific account of the execution of a criminal. Ever after, in all lu-r waking hours, and in every place, she saw above lu i left eye the phantom of a bloody head, wrapped in Mack crape, — a thing so horrible to her, that slit- n pcutcdly
60 PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
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 " sabbath" ceremonies.
Monsieur Andral, in his youth, saw in La Pitie the putrid body of a child covered with larva, 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 an enemy, and he would, when a sudden frenzy 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 apprehen- sion, often raises a phantom. The unhappy Sir R
C , on being summoned to attend the Princess Char- lotte of Wales, saw her form robed in white distinctly glide along before him as he sat in his carriage : a parallel, nay, an explanation, to the interesting stories of Astrophel.
Then the sting of conscience may warp a common object thus. Theodric, the Gothic king, unjustly con- demned and put to death Boethius and Symmachus. It chanced at that time, that a large fish was served to him at dinner, when his imagination directly changed the fish's head into the ghastly face of Symmachus, up- braiding him with the murder of innocence ; and such was the effect of the phantom, that in a few days he
PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. (,|
died. But these spectral forms were seen, like tin dagger of Macbeth, and the hand-writing on the wall, by none but the conscience- stricken, a proof of tluir being ideal and not real.
Not long after the death of Byron, Sir Walter Scott was engaged in his study during the darkening twilight of an autumnal evening, in reading a sketch of his form and habits, his manners and opinions. On a sudden he saw as he laid down his book, and passed into his hall, the eidolon of his departed 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 Doctor T. that a certain lady was on the eve of her marriage, but her lover was killed as he was on his way to join her. An acute fever immediately followed this impression ; and on each subsequent day, when the same hour struck on the clock, she fell into a state of ecstacy, 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, under 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 England's court, and the chivalrous challenge of her beauty to the knights of France. During lii> travels on the continent, he fell in with the alchymist Cornelius Agrippa, who by his sleight cunning sho\\i d in a magic mirror (as he said) to the doting mind of tin- earl, his absent beauty reclining on a couch, and reading by the light of a waxen taper the homage of his pen to
62 PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
her exquisite beauty. Then there was an archbishop of the Euchaites, a professor of magic in the ninth century. The Emperor Basil besought this pseudo-magus Santa- baran, 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 phantasy, and the glamourie of the witch of Falsehope over Michael 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 impassioned mind ; may they not ?
Ev. I am proud of my proselyte, lady.
IDA. I presume these illusions may be wrought with- out the outlines of distinct shapes. I have ever thought the vision of Eliphaz the Temanite more solemn, be- cause an undefined shadow : " A vision is before our face, but we cannot discern the form ' thereof." And where the profane poets have written 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 —
"Isee
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 meta- phor when they inscribed their Temple of I sis, at Sais —
" I am wliatever has been, is, and shall be, and no one hath taken off my veil."
PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 63
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 subli- mity and a mystery in that which is indefinite. Two very deep philosophers have however differed in opinion regarding the effect of darkness and obscurity on the mind. Burke alludes to darkness as a cause of the sub- lime and terrific: (and he is supported by Tacitus — " Omne ignotum pro magnifico est :") Locke, as not naturally 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 deeply influential in raising phantoms; that which is indefinable becomes almost of necessity a ghost. If the ghosts of Shak- spere did not appear, the illusion would be more im- pre.ssive. In darkness and night, therefore, the ghosts burst their cerements, 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 Indian and the temples of Indostan. It is true children shut their eyes when frightened, but this is instinctive, 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 decayed trunk once gave birth, among some village gossips in the weald of Sussex.
There are few who " revisit the glimpses of the moon," whose romantic humour leads them abroad about night- fall, who have not sometimes been influenced by foclinjr somewhat like phantasy, during the indistinct vision of 6
04 PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
twilight ; the dim emanations of the crescent, or the more deceptive illusion of an artificial luminous point irradiating a circumambient vapour. Through the mag- nifying power of this floating medium, the image may be fashioned into all the fancied forms of poetical crea- tion.
At the midnight hour, by a blue taper light, and in a ruined castle, a simple tale will become a romance of terror.
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 presenting
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 poring over the subject of my study, by the dim light of a solitary taper. On a sudden I was star- tled 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 utter darkness, until straining my eyes, a blue and lurid glimmer floated around me. A chilliness crept over me, and I had a strange indefinable consciousness 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-twilight I was at length sensible that I was not alone, but in the presence of indistinct shadowy forms, silent and motionless as the grave ; and by that awful sensation of the sublime which springs from ob- scurity, I conceived that I had suffered transmigration,
PHANTASY PROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
or had glided unconsciously through the gates of Hades, and that these were the embodied 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 the forms became more distinct. When we are involved in mystery, the sense of touch is instinctively 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 an- guish, while a hoarse and wizard 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 dark- ness which again came around me. On a sudden all was hushed, 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 con- fess 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 chamber of death, or the solitary spectator of some demon incantation or of some whole- sale murder. There were some forms blue and livid, some cadaverous, of " span-long, wee, unchristened bairns," and others deluged in blood and impurity lay around me : one pale and attenuated form, that more
F
66 PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
than mocked the delicate beauty of the Medicean 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 realized before my eyes.
ASTB. 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 a 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 Radcliffian romance.
Simple as this will be the explanation of many and many a tale of mystery, although fraught with accumu- lated horrors, like those of the " Castle of Udolpho ;" and if, putting aside that ultraromantic appetite for the marvellous, we have courage to attempt their ana- lysis, the pages of demonology will be shorn of half their terrors, the gulph of superstition will be illumined by the light of philosophy, and creation stand forth in all its harmonious and beautiful nature.
PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT.
" A false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain."
MACBETH.
ASTR. I will grant the influence of all these inspiring causes, Evelyn, but it is not under adventitious circum- stances alone that the gifted seer is presented with his visions, but also in the clear daylight, in the desart, or in a mountain hut ; surrounded, too, by those who are content with the common faculties of man.
Among many of the Gothic nations especially, women were the peculiar professors of divination and ma-ru-. The Volva-Seidkona, the Fiolkyngi, the Visindakona, and the Nornir, were the oracular 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, diffused 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 catalogue of these weird women as ou were involved in thrir un-
08 PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT.
holy 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 Meri- dianum, or Satan at Noon-day,") accused of seeing spectres, such as " dragons with tails eight yards long, with four formidable 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 in- spiration, especially among the elevated parts of the globe. The Hartz and other forests in Germany, the Alps and Pyrenees, the Highlands of Scotland, the hills of Ireland, the mountains of the Isle of Man, and the frozen fields of Iceland and Norway, 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.
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 Appenines, 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 lowlander can form no idea.
The mind both of the Bedouin Arab, and especially of the mountaineer, is thus cradled in romance. If that mind be rude and uncultivated, credulity and superstition are its inmates ; ignorance being the com- mon stamp of the seers, except in rare instances of deep reflectors or melancholy bookworms, whose abstractions, like those of Allan Bane and Brian andMacAulay, assume the prophetic faculty ; the seer by its power perceiving,
PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 69
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 practice and governance of this clairvoyance, prove a deep in- terest and impression, but not a mystery. Among the defiles of Snaefel, in Man, the belief is prevalent : " A Manksman amid his lonely mountains reclines by some romantic stream, the murmurings of which lull him into a pleasing torpor ; half-slumbering, he sees a variety of imaginary beings, which he believes to be real. Some- times they resemble his traditionary idea of fanes, 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 melan- choly of the Laplanders renders 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 imagery the romances of mountain poets, — the wild legends of Os- sian, 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 Oxenford, yet I believe the critics are correct. When I was prowl- ing 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 Charle- magne, and the 4to. edition of Ossian. The one i^ sanctified by its subject, and rich beyond compare in
70 PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT.
illuminations of gold and colours, and priceless in the eyes of the bibliomaniac. The other was the favourite book 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 shapeless into air, like a column of smoke as it rises from the half-extinguished furnace. The spirit of Loda shrieked, as, rolled into him- self, he rose on the wind. Inistore shook at the sound. The waves heard it on the deep, and stopped in then* course with fear."
And yet these beauties, like the pictures of Turner, are looked upon with a smile of wondering pity or of scorn, simply because these home-keeping critics have never scaled the mountain, or breasted the storm for its wild and purple glory.
Among the mountains of Wales it was my fortune 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 the tiny hamlet of Pont-Neath-Vechan. I shall ever remember how fair and beautiful it seemed as I descended from the moun- tain rocks of Pen y Craig, the loftiest of the Alps of Glamorgan, which inclose 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 waters — those torrent streams which Drayton has impersonated in the Polyolbion, as
" Her handmaids Melte sweet, clear Hepste, and Tragath."
On the Melte is the wonderous cavern of Porth- Mawr, through which, in Stygian darkness, flows this Acherontic river. And on the clear Hepste is that glit-
PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 71
tering waterfall which in the midst of leafy woods and bosky glens, throws itself, like a miniature Niagara, from the rock, forming an arch of crystal, beneath which the traveller and the peasant cross the river's bed on the moss-green and slippery 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 beneath this crystal canopy from the deluge of a thunder-cloud. The lightning flash gleamed through the waterfall, forming a prismatic rainbow of transcendent beauty, while the deep peal swept through the echoing dingles, and the crimson-spotted trout leaped in sportive summersaults over the water-ousel that was walking quietly on the gravel, deep in the water.
In this wilderness of nature, no wonder that legends should prevail: that fairies are seen sporting in the Hepste cascades, and that in the dark cavern of Cwm- Rhyd y Rhesg, the ghosts of headless ladies so often affright the romantic girls 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 YWyddfa, while the white and crimson 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
6
72 PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT.
of flocks in the vicinity of its triple peak, were the re- sult 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 Brun- deln Alp.
Ev. The truth is sweeter on your lips than fiction, Castaly. Whisper again in the ear of Astrophel 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 degree voluntary : — by fixing the attention on a subject during the dark hour, the power of divination may be increased, but it cannot be con- trolled. But those who indulge in those illusions are often driven on to a degree of frenzy equal to the agonizing penalty of Frankenstein ; even as the witch of Endor trembled when she raised before Saul the spirit of Samuel, or the Iberian princess Pyrene, who, like Sin, fled from the child-serpent which wras born from her dalliance with Hercules.
The effort of the seers, nay, the mysterious ordeal 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 o'er, they will exclaim with Mac Aulay, " Thank God, the mist hath passed from my spirit \" Indeed, Sir Walter Scott ob- served in those who presumed to this faculty, " shades of mental aberration which caused him to feel alarmed for those who assumed the sight." Archibald, Duke of Argyle, was a seer, and it is written that he was haunted
PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 73
by blue phantoms, the origin, I believe, of our epithet for melancholy — " blue devils."
At the foot of yonder purple mountains in Morgany, 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 down by the phantoms of his evil conscience ; that he imprisoned himself and his boy, who was, I presume, a sort of famulus, in a small castle ; that he walked and talked of diablerie, 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 delirium, which vanish on the re-admission of light ; and in imaginative minds, under peculiar conditions, intense reading may so shut out the real world, that an effort is required to re-establish vision. In Polydori's " Vampyre" it is re- corded 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 Germany, 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 happiness.
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 woe. " Does
74 PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL, EXCITEMENT.
the sight come gloomy o'er your spirit ?" asks Mac Aulay. " As dark as the shadow of the moon when she is dark- ened in her course in heaven, and prophets foretell 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 gen- tleman 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 perils of the seer, in his " Ode on Highland Superstition," —
" 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 embodied 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 Mac Aulay 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 carry not the
PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 75
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 ?"
If prophetic visions in the early ages came over the dying, why not in ours ?
The last solemn speech of Jacob was an inspired pro- phecy 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 gather- ing of the people be." And is it profanation to ask, why may not the departing spirit of holiness, even now, prophecy to us ?
As we see the stars from the deep well, so may such spirits look into futurity from the dark abyss of dissolu- tion. In some cases of little children, I have learned that this unearthly feeling has caused them to anticipate their dying. How pathetically does John Evelyn, in his Diary, allude to the anticipation 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 existence. 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 tor- ture, even amidst his agonies, an inspired combination of belief and hope presents him with vivid pictures of the blessed regions of the Kitchi Manitou. The faith-
76 PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT.
ful Mussulman, in the agonies of death, feels assured that his enchanted sight is blessed by the beautiful houris in Mahomef s paradise. The Runic warriors also, as the Icelandic chronicles record in their epi- taphs, when mortally wounded in battle, " fall, laugh, and expire ;" and in this expiration, like the dying warriors 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 white- ness of their bosoms ; they approach and present me with the soul-exhilarating beverage in the bloody skulls 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 com- pass 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 observed that men sometimes upon the hour of their departure do speak and reason above them- selves, for then the soul begins to be freed from the ligaments of the body, and to discourse in a strain above mortality." It is on the verge of eternity,
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and the laws and principles of vitality may be already repealed by the Being who conferred them.— The argu- ments, 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 Shakspere, for one, with a poet's li- cense, brings before us, as you do, the dying hour, as the cause of prophetic vision. John of Gaunt, on his death-bed, mutters, —
" Methinks I am a prophet new inspired, And thus expiring do foretell of him,"
and then predicts the fate of Richard.
And remember, the dying Hotspur says, —
" now could I prophecy,
But that the icy hand of death," &c.
Ev. Well, I will not controvert your creed, Astrophel ; rather let me illustrate some of your apparent mysteries by simple analogy.
As in these extreme moments of life, so in the hour of extreme danger, when an awful fate is impending, 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 reality. We read in the writings of Dr. Conolly of a person who, in danger of being swamped on the Eddystone rock, saw the phan- toms 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
78 PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT.
minutest incidents arrayed before her simultaneously, as in a mirror, and she had a faculty developed as sud- denly for comprehending the whole and every part."
Now, although the coming on of death is often at- tended by that slight delirium indicated by the babbling of green fields, and the playing with flowers, and the picking of the bedclothes, and the smiling on the fingers' ends, yet in others some oppressive or morbid cause of insanity may be removed by the moribund con- dition. In the words of Aretaeus, — " the system has thrown off many of its impurities, and the soul, left naked, was free to exercise such energies as it still pos- sessed."
I will glance in illustration at these interesting cases : — from Zimmerman, of an insane woman of Zurich, who, " a few hours before her death, became perfectly sensi- ble and wonderfully eloquent ;" — 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 ra- tional some hours previous to his dissolution ; — and from Dr. Hancock, of the Quaker, who, from the condi- tion of a drivelling idiot, became shortly before his death so completely rational, as to call his family toge- ther, and, as his spirit was passing from him, bestow on them with pathetic solemnity his last benediction.
Thus your impressive records are clearly explained by pathology ; and, perhaps unconscious of this, Mrs. Opie has a fine illustration in her " Father and Daugh- ter :" — the mind of the maniac parent 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,
PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 79
she fell into typhus fever, and as this progressed, then- 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 con- tinued until she died. It was but the transient gleam of reason.
PHANTASY 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 supersti- tion, 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 corn-field, must have its fallow, or it is ex- hausted and reduced in the degree of its high qualities. In our intellectual government, therefore, we should ever adopt that happy medium, equally remote from the bigotry 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 phantoms and oppres- sive demons of the night-mare, consists in the accumu- lation 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 ol the brain will call up in the mind these " Hydras and Gorgons, and Chimeras dire."
IMIANTASY FROM CKItKllKA I, « » N (. l> I I
The learned Pascal constantly saw a gulph yawning at his side, but he was aware of his illusion. He was, however, always strapped in his chair, lest he should fall into this gulph, especially while he was working the celebrated problem of the cycloidal 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 coincidence with the phantom of the Count Duke d'Olivarez, the minister of Philip of Spain.
From Dr. Conolly we learn the curious illusion of a student of anatomy, who, during his ardent devotion to his study, confidently believed that there was a town in his deltoid muscle.
And, from Dr. Abercrombie, the case of a gentleman of high literary attainments, who, when closely reading in his study, was repeatedly annoyed by the intrusive visits of a little old woman in a black bonnet and man- tle, 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 disap- pearance, by altering the circulation of the brain-blood, then in a state of partial stagnation.
My friend, Dr. Johnson, has told me of a gentleman 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 conversa- tion, which, on one occasion, assumed a witty turn, and quips, and puns, and satire, were the order of the even- ing ; so that he was charmed with his ghostly visitors, and sought no relief. On a sudden, however, they changed into demoniac fiends, uttering expressions ot the most degraded and unholy nature. He became alarmed, and depletion soon cured him of his phantasy.
o
82 PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION.
A Scotch lawyer had long laboured under this kind of monomania, which at length proved fatal. His phy- sician had long seen that some secret grief was gnawing the heart and sucking the life-blood of his patient, and he at last extorted the confession, that a skeleton was ever watching him from the foot of his bed. The phy- sician tried various modes to dispel the illusion, and once placed himself in the field of the vision, and was not a little terrified when the patient exclaimed, that he saw the skull 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 occu- pation, but it was his own disordered imagination that raised the spectre.
You will believe from these illustrations, Astrophel, 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 ex- tremity, a great fire of wood and turf had been prepared within a huge gaping old-fashioned chimney. Waking in the middle of the night, he lay watching from his pillow the gradual darkening of the embers on the hearth, when suddenly they blazed up, and a naked child stepped from among them upon the floor. The figure advanced slowly towards Lord Castlereagh, rising
PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL ( () \ (i Ks I I o\. 83
in stature at every step, until, on coming within two or three paces of his bed, it had assumed the appear- ance 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 attitude of defiance. It re- treated before him, diminishing as it withdrew in the same manner that it had previously shot up and ex- panded ; he followed it, pace by pace, until the original child-like form disappeared among the embers. He then went back to his bed, and was disturbed no more.
The melancholy story of the Requiem of Mozart is an apt and sublime illustration of this influence. It was written by desire of a solemn personage, who repeatedly, he affirmed, called on him during its com- position, and disappeared on its completion. The re- quiem was soon chanted over his own 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 headlong to acts of ruin and devas- tation.
IDA. In this illusive condition of the intellect consists even the monomania of suicide ; and the phrenologist 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 tin- early history of Marseilles, suicide was sanctioned, not only by custom, but by authority.
Ev. It is a truth of history, but the essence of the G 2
84 PHANTASY FROM OPIUM.
crime is the predisposition in the brain. You will think to confute my position, Astrophel, by adducing Brutus and Cassius, and Antony and Cato, and a host of Ro- man 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 Rousseau, Montaigne, and Shaftesbury, leaned toward a sanction, we shall believe that Cato was indeed a monomaniac. I speak this in charity.
And to all these morbid states we may still offer analogies. Such are the effects of opium.
The brilliancy of thought may be artificially induced, 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 (e light up their minds wTith 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 sybil swallowed the juice of the cherry laurel ere she sat on the divining tripod; and from this may have arisen those super- stitious fancies of the ancients 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 ob- served concerning the custom of prophets and persons inspired of old to sleep upon the boughs and branches of trees, on mattrasses and beds made of leaves, ad consu- lendum, to ask advice of God. Naturalists tell us that the Lauras and Agnus Castus were trees which greatly composed the phrensy, and did facilitate true vision, and that the first was specifically efficacious, Trpoc roue ivOvmcuTfjiovs, to inspire a poetical fury : and Cardan, I remember, in his book de Fato, insists very much on the
1'IIANTASY FROM OFIIM. 85
dreams of trees for portents and presages, and that the use of some of them do dispose men to visions."
During the reverie 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 intoxication, 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 power of the faculties has been in fact exhausted by thought or study ; the stimulus of opium, then, restores that de- pressed energy to its proper level, leaving the judgment perfect, and not overbalanced. The celebrated Thomas Brown, during the composition 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 overheard the following command addressed to his daughter : " Effie, bring me the moderate stimulus of a hundred drops of laudanum." So that the excitement be obtained, it matters not how, whether by the use of opium, or other " drowsy syrups 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 stagger down to the House from White's or Brookes's, with those clubhouse laurels, wet towels, round their brows, and overwhelm Saint Stephen's by the thunders of their eloquence. Unl indeed, this be carried to excess, and then we have two very interesting states of vision, as you may gatlu-r
86 PHANTASY FROM OPIUM.
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, reverie; the 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 Comus,
" Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight, Beyond the bliss of dreams."
The phantoms of the third stage are often of unutter- able 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, haunting the grave- yard with gouls and afrits, sucks the blood of his race :
" 'Till they with horror shrink away From spectre more accurs'd than they."
Thus for a moment of delirious joy, he yields up his mind to the agonies of remorse, his body to a slow poi- son, perhaps to a sinful dissolution.
IDA. The scenes which I gazed on among the opium-houses of Constantinople, ever excited my won- der and my pity. These slaves of pleasure, when they assemble and take their seats, are the perfect pic- tures of either apathetic melancholy or despair. As the potent poison creeps through the blood, they are lighted with unholy fires, until, these being exhausted,
PHANTASY FROM OPIUM. 87
the vulture of Prometheus again gnaws their vitals, although the fire is not stolen from htaven.
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 partings, 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/'
u Whatsoever things capable of being visually repre- sented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately 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 splen- dour that fretted my heart."
Is there any earthly pleasure which will compensate 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 supplying 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 Natches 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 Oppenheim states that it is some- times administered to adults by design, to substantiate a statute of lunacy.
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
88 PHANTASY FROM OPIUM.
seems to reverse your laws? 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 Munchausen, 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 be- fore 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 recorded. Is this true ?
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 excites 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 difficult to stop. The muriate is the best preparation to induce fluency and confidence in speaking, or the mind to luxuriate through- out a night in delightful reverie ; and in the morning, after this phantasy, 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 effect is, I am told, at- tended 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' 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 PHANTASY, OR FRENZY.
" The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy 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 DRK.VM
. Is there so potent a charm in poppies, Evelyn ? You will make us believe, soon, that opium can make a Shakspere, that genius can be imparted by a drug.
The ghosts of fairy land, those bright emanations 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 Shakspere, the beautiful crea- tions of the "Tempest" and the "Midsummer Night \ Dream," are the very offspring of that innate genius, that " exhausted worlds, and then imagined new"
Those exquisite and tricksy spirits, the mischievous Puck and the delicate Ariel, indeed, the whole train of ghosts which appeared to Macbeth, and Richard, and Clarence, and Brutus, and Hamlet, and the spirits of the "Midsummer Night," the "Tempest," and " Mac- beth," of Bolingbroke and Joan of Arc, could not have been so painted, unless they had stood bcfon- t la- mind of Shakspere as palpable as reality.
6
90 POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRENZY.
Look, too, on those splendid illustrations of the Gothic 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 ceremony of a fairy's funeral, which he peopled with mourners and mutes, and described with high poetic beauty. He was engaged, in one of these moods, in painting King Edward I., who was sitting 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 Shakspere and Blake is antipodean. Blake was a visionary, and thought his fancies real — he was mad. Shakspere was a philosopher, and knew all his fancy was but imagination, however real might be the facts he wrought from. Ben Jonson told Drum- mond that he lay awake one whole night, gazing in mute admiration on his great toe ; surrounding which, in miniature, appeared the inhabitants of Rome, and Carthage, 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 Shakspere. 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 elegant Tasso. Listen.
" At Bisaccio, Manso had an opportunity to examine 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 illu-
POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRENZY. 91
sion of a disturbed imagination ; 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 complaisance to meet him the next day, and while they were engaged in discourse, on a sudden he observed that Tasso kept his eyes fixed upon a window, and re- mained in a manner immoveable ; he called him by his name several times, but received no answer. At last Tasso cried out, ' There is the friendly spirit who is come to converse with me : look, and you will be con- vinced 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 pretended spirit was, when he heard Tasso speak with great earnestness, sometimes putting questions to the spirit, and sometimes giving answers, delivering the whole in such a pleasing manner, and with such elevated ex- pressions, that he listened with admiration, and had not the least inclination to interrupt him. At last this un- common conversation ended with the departure of the spirit, as appeared by Tasso's words, who, turning to- wards Manso, asked him if his doubts were removed. Manso was more amazed than ever; he scarce knew what to think of his friend's situation, and waved any further 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 phantasy in a far different mind. " During these paroxysms she would talk, and was accustomed to ad- dress herself to some one individual present, with \vhmn she conversed at first in an obscure voice, but after-
92 POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRENZY.
wards in a distinct and audible manner. She evi- dently perceived him, and observed all his gestures ; but all she said to him bore a reference to one idea, on which she was intent. In the mean time she appeared not to see or hear any other person, even if he exerted his voice to the utmost to make himself heard. This fact I witnessed with the greatest astonishment, but many other persons are living 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 present. She would answer questions as if in- terrogated 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 marriage, al- though it had already been some time completed, 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 presence of her mother. This woman had in other respects good health, but was afraid of the smallest noise, and was easily affected by any thing she saw or heard. At length she fell into a consumption." In other cases, especially in accomplished minds, the phantasy is usually combined with derangement of health. A very ingenuous and elegant young lady, about the age of seventeen, was suddenly seized with cateflepsy. 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 reverie in a moment, her eyes and expression indicating a fixed attention. She then conversed with
POETIC PHANTASY, OR FKKN/V
imaginary persons, her eyes being wide open, and during this ecstasy she was completely insensible to the most irritating, and indeed 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 credebat miros audire tragoedos, In vacuo Uetus sessor plausorque theatre."
In Dr. Darwin, too, we read of an epileptic girl, who during a fit of reverie, 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 table, and, with great courtesy, handing him a chair. You re- member how pathetically Crabbe has illustrated this illusion in his poem of " Sir Eustace Gray."
CAST. Hark to the profane philosopher who asso- ciates 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 streaming through the green leaves upon your cheek, with the inspired volumes of Virgil, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, breath- ing nature in all the lines of their beautiful idyls — while Astrophel, perchance, was musing among cobwebs in Friar Bacon's study — tell me, felt you not the sublimity and truth of poesy ? You remind me of the quaint tra- dition among the shepherds of Snowdonia, that if two persons lie down, on midsummer eve, to sleep upon a certain rock on Snowdon, one will wake a poet, tin-
Q4 POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRENZY.
other a maniac. I pr'ythee, think other wise 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 " Defen- sio Secunda," I remember this gem of sentiments : — " Involved in darkness, not so much from the imper- fection of our optic powers, as from the shadow of the Creator's wings, — a darkness which he frequently irra- diates with an inner and far superior 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 Camp- bell, was "a poetry hi action," and who more than embodied the brightest pictures of Tasso and Ariosto, and eclipsed the glory of that Chevalier Bayard, like himself, " sans peur et sans reproche."
Ev. I cry you mercy, fairest ladies, I speak not of the light of poetry, but of its shadows. Cheromania is the first form of monomania, or the madness of one idea ; and this is marked by cheerfulness and splendid ideas, which indeed often tend to mitigate the melan- choly 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 excite- ment to confirmed mania, it was my duty to watch over.
December 4th, 1832.
« To - — , Esq.
" I am Lord President of the Counsil, a most honorable situation, and the richest gift of the Crown,
POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRENZY.
which brings me in seven thousand pounds every year. The Counsil consists of Three Secretaries of State, of which I am one ; and the Paymaster 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 subjects. 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 Windsor
Castle belongs to me, that the palace of Brighton also belongs to me, also I purchased from the Duke of Wel- lington the splendid park and Palace of Stratfieldsea, wherein there are very extensive Forests of Oak and of Pines trees, together with a 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."
96 POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRENZY.
I may tell you that the very onset of frenzy is often but an elevated spirit of poesy, in which brilliancy and judgment shall be companions; but, like ^Esop'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 of posture will relieve mus- cular fatigue, or as a sudden impression of fear or fright has thwarted a suicide on the moment of his self-attempt. Indeed mania will often appear to induce an almost inspired talent, which, I may hint to you, may be explained 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 wounded on the head, and, during its healing, the intellect be- came lucid (and this on the principle of a counter- action) ; but, on the healing being completed, 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 suppose that, whatever is born of the brain is ushered in by an easy birth ; but poesy is often attended by a pang of partu- rition, 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 skull 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
POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRKX/Y. 97
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 woe ;"
when we remember the gloomy setting of the brilliant sun of Scott, during the period of his apoplectic 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 perish'd in his pride :" we are incited, almost uncon- sciously 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 romance 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 youthful mind, as to unfit it for the common duties of life. Like Narcissus, the heart pe- rishes 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.
98 POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRENZY.
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 aggre- gated beauties are often made up of deformed or un- lovely 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 blossom 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 embosomed. 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 contentment. He was the leader of many a forlorn hope in Spain, and fell in a midnight enterprise among the guerillas in the Sierra Morena."
Ev. And had the sword spared him, he would have died a moral suicide.
What folly, thus to chase a butterfly, instead of yield- ing to the virtuous influence of woman, which, beyond aught else, softens and ennobles man's heart ; entranc-
POETIC PHANTASY, OR FRENZY. 99
ing 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 finger 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 for ever. Even in the lecture- room of Saint Thomas'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 wayfay- ringe in ye 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 everyche whytte lyke ye fayrest car- vynge of Quene Cythere, onlie thatte yl was swellyd and blushyd wyth warmthe and lyife wythalle.
" Her forhed was as whytte as ys the snowe whyche ye talle hed of a Norwegian pyne stelythe from y6 nor- therne wynde. One of her fayre hondes was yplaced thereonne, and thus whytte wyth whytte was ymyngld as ye 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 yclosyd yn slepe, save that two slaun- tynge raies shotte to her mouthe, and were theyre
H 2
100 POETIC PHANTASY, OB FRENZY.
bathyd yn swetenesse, as whenne bye chaunce ye moone fyndeth a banke of violettes and droppethe thereonne y6 sylverie dewe.
"The authoure was goynge onne withouthen des- crybynge ye ladye's breste, whenne lo, a genyus ap- pearyd — 'Cuthberte/ sayeth he, can thou canst not descrybe ye ladye's breste, and fynde a simile there- unto, I forbyde thee to proceede yn thy romaunt.' Thys, I kennd fulle welle, far surpassyd my feble powres, and forthwythe I was fayne to droppe my quille."
PHANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN.
" My eyes are made the fools o' the other senses."
MACBETH.
ASTB. 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 deadly 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 bygone fables: and the meta- 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 believe what they so learnedly give out, that frontal headaches in the loca- lity of form, colour, and number, and forsooth in the organ of wonder too, often accompany spectral illusions, and that white or grey ghosts result from excited form and deficient colour ! !
102 PHANTASY FROM SYMPATHY
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 uncour- teous, yet express my wonder, Evelyn, at the confidence with which you presume to the discovery of a material reason and a cause, for all the phenomena of our mys- terious 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 can- ticum 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? Recollect, I have presumed 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 func- tion of its varied structures. Lord Bacon has observed : " He who would philosophize in a due and proper man- ner 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 can- not, elucidate the coincidence of symptom and pathology in cases which so seldom prove fatal, and the causes of which may be so evanescent. Still, jt is only by a combination of metaphysical argument and anatomical research, with the essential aid of analogy, that the phenomena and disease of mind can be fairly investi- gated.
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 coercive treatment and excitement of fear in a maniac ; as if a savage keeper
WITH THE BRAIN. 103
possessed the wondrous power of frightening him into his wits. Hear what the magniloquent Reil writes on this point : " The reception 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, sanc- tioned by the divine axiom — "the rod helps God," urges the employment of coercion and cruelty 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 hood- winked by false metaphysics, would have so closely copied the malevolence of an inquisitor or a devil ?
We must believe that each illusive representation is marked by some change in some certain portion 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 recognized by our vision. Indeed, if the bodily sensations of every human passion be faithfully analyzed, it will be proved that there is an unusual feel- ing in some part, when even a thought passes through the mind, under these definitions : — a thrill, a creeping, a glow, a flush, a chill, a tremor, — nay, even fainting, convulsion, 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 deranged, in that instant an effect unlike health is produced : 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 be- fore it. Nay, we are assured by Tiedeman and Gall, (opinions of high value,) that they have known patients
104 PHANTASY FROM SYMPATHY
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 allusion to those classes, on whose privacy the ghost has the privilege of intrusion. I will now offer illustrations of those remote influences which work these seeming mys- teries 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 incubus, which confronted him, and appeared to strike him with a crutch. Immediately on this he would fall from his chair in a swoon. This gentleman was relieved by bleeding and abstinence.
The Abbe Pilori, in Florence, invariably saw the phantom of scorpions around him, after he had par- taken 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, like paint- ings, 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 facul- ties 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. Disorded diges-
WITH THE BRAIN. 105
tion aggravated his case extremely. Mr. Gregg's opi- nion was, that " his thinking was correct, but the expression of thought wrong." On examination, the dura mater was found adherent to the skull : 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 re- cords 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 shadowy 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 admit- tance ; and how they disappeared when he shut his eyes, and came again as he opened his lids ; or how he was at last amused by his analysis 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. During the time leeches were ap- plied 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 occa- sions, they attempted to re-appear, and changed to white, more and more faintly as his health improved.
106 PHANTASY FROM SYMPATHY
There is equal interest, both for science and curiosity, in the illusion of Mrs. A. (as told by Brewster, in his " Natural Magic"), and which sprung from the like causes. The sympathetic sensitiveness 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 carriages, and by corpses in shrouds peering over her shoulder at her toilet-glass, and ghastly like- nesses of gentlemen in grave-clothes, sitting unceremo- niously in arm chairs in her drawing-room. And yet the perfect restoration of the lady's health was coinci- dent 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 turning round ourselves, and if we open them, then 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 derange- ment of the circulation of the blood, between the brain and the heart.
In the case of an enlarged heart, Dr. Kelly discovered that a dark spectrum was perceived synchronous with the systole, or contraction of its ventricles ; 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 result from derangement or disease of the eye, are replete with interest. You are aware that the function of a nerve of sensation is so deranged by disease, that in some cases of paralysis cold bodies will appear heated. So, by ana-
WITH THE BRAIN. 107
logy, is the function of a nerve of sense deranged, if its fibrillee 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 intole- rance 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 statement 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 denned and marked by the possession of shadows, which are invisible to me in the high-coloured objects in a foreground, and which are thus left comparatively confined and shapeless masses of colour."
The eye may be curtailed of hah0 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 facetious 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 doth eyes. Disease of nerve may thus paralyse 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 «•!'
108 PHAXTASY FROM SYMPATHY
this retina, usually accompanied by night-blindness, where there is no vision but in a strong light, floating specks termed muscce volitantes often become so nu- merous, 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 muscee volitantes 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 destroyed, distorted or im- perfect objects will be presented. This speck may be a musca volitans.
ASTR. The original impressions in all cases are, I presume, from without: how is the internally excited idea presented as a prominent image before 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 de- pend on a turgid condition of the vessels of the choro'id coat or retina. It is usually relieved more by tonics than by depletion ; and very strange illusions of sight will sometimes be produced merely by depressing me- dicines, especially the preparations of antimony. Yet these dark specks appear to be floating before, and often at some distance withoutside 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 unlimited) ; and it is sufficient that one sole idea be excited to produce a sue-
WITH THE .BRAIN. 10Q
cession ; as a spark of fire will ignite a train of gun- powder ; or as an electric spark will discharge a whole battery.
In the curious case of photopsia, or suffusio scintillans, 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 excited brain, like drops of blood : he instantly ordered a retreat of his army. And this is not wonderful ; it is but excited sensibility, of which many analogies indeed may be artificially pro- duced, 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 phosphorescence of the eye was itself the source of light, in this instance so power- ful as to enable the prisoner to discern 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 over- straining or over-excitement of the eye.
Dr. Brewster, in the Edinburgh Journal of Science, vol. iii. says, " If in a fine dark night we unexpectedly 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 illumination, the retina is not capable of affording a permanent vision of the object ; and while we are straining our eye to discover its nature, it will
110 PHANTASY FROM SYMPATHY
entirely disappear, and afterwards re-appear and vanish alternately.
A friend of Buffon had been watching the progress of an eclipse through a very minute aperture. For three weeks after this there was a perfect spectrum of the lucid spot marked on every object on which he fixed his eyes.
Dr. Brewster had been making protracted experi- ments 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. Bostock thus concludes the account of his own ocular spectra : " It appeared as if a number of objects, principally human faces or figures, on a small scale, were placed before me, and gradually removed, like a succession of medallions. They were all of the same size, and ap- peared to be all situated at the same distance from the face. After one had been seen for a few minutes, it be- came 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 appear- ance."
Coloured vision may arise from permanent defect or from acute disorder : from some peculiar refraction 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 prismatic or primitive colours. Now, if the eye is fatigued by one of these colours, or it be lost, mechanically or phy- siologically, the impression of two only will remain, and this accidental or complementary 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 insen- sible to this, but perceives the blue and the yellow, the combination of which is green. So, if we look long on 6
WITH THE BRAIN. Ill
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 en- tirely disappear on a white ground, for it has no comple- mentary 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 ap- pear 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 transferred to the white ground of the letters.
ASTR. Then, as D'Agessau recommended the parlia- ment of Paris to leave the demoniac of our times to the physician and not the divine, you would delegate the management of all those, to whom the mysterious world of shadows is unfolded, to the sapient leech with his phials 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 float- ing in the memory ; and this is not a novel notion, for Plato and other philosophers held it long before our time.
Muscce volitantes are usually, though not always, substantial: i. e. depending on points or fibres in the axis of vision, on congestions, or varicose states of the vessels of the choro'id 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.
112 PHANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN.
But when many of the more confirmed illusions are depending on structural disease in the membranes and humours of the eye, I am confident in the resources of our science to relieve, if not to remove. Coleridge in- deed has expressed his belief, that by some convulsion of the eye, it may see projected before it part of its own body, easily magnified into the whole by slight imagina- tion. If this be true, the whole mystery of the Death- fetch is unravelled.
The nerves and their ganglia are often diseased, when we least suspect : and calcareous and scrofulous tu- mours, pressing on the optic axis, in the brain, or on the pneumogastric nerve above its recurrent branch, and disease in the bronchial glands around the cardiac plexus, may exist, with the very slightest sensations of pain. Even in extreme disorganization 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 phantasy. And this discrimination, Astrophel, of the line of distinction between sanity and derangement, is often of a hair's breadth ; and the law confesses here the high value of pathology, seeing that, in cases of suicide or of idiocy, and other states which involve the rites of sepulture, the conveyance of entailed estates, or personal responsi- bility, 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 CJBSAR.
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 presume to draw aside the veil of mystery, which hangs over the moun- tain and the cataract of yon wild principality ?
E'eri 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 ga- thered ; muse on the sequences of these strange ap- pearances, and you will at length confess, with the Benedictine Calmet — " Realite des apparitions es't prou- vee par Pevenement des choses predites."
i
114 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS.
The Tan- we or Tan-wed are streams of lucid fire, rolling along the lands of a freeholder, Avho, warned of his coming fate, immediately makes his will, and shortly after dies.
Among the gloomy gorges of Preselle, in Pembroke- shire, comes dancing on that blue wild-fire the "Canwyl y Cyrph," or "Corpse-candle." As the shades of evening are approaching, the spectre of the doomed comes flit- ting before us, with a lighted 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 glid- ing away to the place of the tomb, and, like the phan- toms of the Aensprecker, in Holland, (a funeral proces- sion of no less fatality,) they foretel the doom of some ill-fated friend.
Among the dingles of the Bachwy, in Radnorshire, amid scenery of wild and lonely beauty, a few rugged stones denote the site of an ancient castle of a Welsh prince ; it is the ruin of the " Black Rock." The op- posing 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 playing on the upper ledge of the water- fall, while its deep basin is shrouded in Stygian darkness. Into this gulph 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 cruelties, (as I learned from the oral legends of the peasants,) before a death, a strange unearthly groaning is heard, the " Ky- hirraeth," becoming fainter and fainter until the last gasp of the mortal whose doom it forebodes.
There is the dead-bell, which the Scottish peasants
MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 115
believe to foretel the death of a friend ; and the death- cart of Lancashire, which is heard rattling 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 within the year. We are assured also by the Saxon, Cranmer, that ere one of the elec- toral 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 Amon," 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 warning, 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 prototype of the Scotch and Irish " Banshie," which appears as an old crone, with streaming hair and a coat of blue, with her boding scream of death. The "Gwrach y Ithibyn," or " Hag of the Dribble," 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 " dribble." 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."
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 to their de- votion ; 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
L" Airy tongues that syllable men's names." T 2
116 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS.
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 defiles 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 im- portant from its consequence.
The park of Chartley is a wild and romantic spot, in its primitive state, untouched by the hand of the agri- culturist, 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 immense 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 pre- sent possessor. In the park is preserved, in its primi- tive 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 downfal of the great house of Ferrars happening at the same period, gave rise to the tradition, which to this day has been held in veneration by the common people, that the birth of a party-coloured calf from the wild breed in Chartley Park, is a sure omen of death within the same
MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. n;
year to a member of the lord's family. A calf of this description has been born whenever a death has hap- pened in the family of late years. The decease of the last earl and his countess, of his son Lord Tamworth, of his daughter, Mrs. William JollifTe, as well as the deaths of the son and heir of the present 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 Chart- ley, 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 remember how pathetically Harold sings the fate of Rosabelle 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 Christian is drowned in the Dee, a light appears over the spot, by which the body is easily discovered ; and hence the river is called " Holy " Dee.
The mysteries of the "Skibbereen Lights" are re- corded by an honourable gentleman of Ireland, and ladies and philosophers journeyed far to behold them, and believed. — In a cottage in a marshy flat near Bantry lived a man named Harrington, a perfect anatomic 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
118 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS.
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 ap- peared ; and on all occasions Harrington seemed to anticipate before others beheld them. Science has searched for causes; but neither in the arts of an im- postor, 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 magnificent fall, rolls its waters through the brown and purple valley to join the Wonion, and then expand into the mountain estuary of Abermaw, — the wanderer will hear from many lips this current story.
On a dark evening, a few winters ago, some persons were returning to Barmouth, on the south or opposite side of the river. As they approached the ferry-house at Penthryn, which is directly opposite Barmouth, they observed a light near the house, which they conjectured to be produced by a bonfire ; and greatly puzzled they were to discover the reason why it should have been lighted. As they came nearer, however, it vanished ; and when they inquired at the house respecting it, they were surprised to learn, that not only had the people 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 circumstance 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 afterwards, on the very spot where the light was seen. He was landing
6
MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. UQ
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 hah0 a mile from the town. A great number of people came out to see these lights, and after a while they all but one disappeared, 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 anchored 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 afterwards the man to whom that particular 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 mi- racles 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 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 won- der on the miracle.
The trials of the two divines, John Huss and Wick- liffe, were marked by awful and impressive phenomena. While the tribunal was sitting in judgment on Wick- liffe, the monastery in which the English monks had assembled was nearly overwhelmed by an earthquake. And it chanced, that while the council were in high assembly at Constance, which condemned Huss to the
120 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS.
stake, the eclipse, which over that city was nearly total, occurred, and the consternation of the people, at that time prone to the belief of miracles, was extreme.
" The night had wan'd ; but darkness and dismay Rose with the dawn, and blotted out the day. The council's warder, struck with sudden fear, Dropt from his palsied hand th' uplifted spear. Aghast each gazer saw the mystic power, That rob'd in midnight's pall the matin hour ; While hurrying feet, and waitings to and fro, Spread the wild panic of impending woe. The prince and prelates shudder'd at the sign : The monk stood dumb before the darken'd shrine : With faltering hand uprais'd the cross on high, To chase that dismal omen from the sky."
The wonders told me by one of my reverend an- cestors of the " Aurora," years ago, are so circum- stantial, 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 Neustriae" of " Walsingham," that the rebellion of the Percies was preceded by spectral battles in Bedfordshire, " sundry monsters of divers colours and shapes issuing from woods," &c.
Remember, it is a matter of history, that phantasms were seen by numbers in Whitehall during the Com- monwealth. And the wondrous narrative of The Just Devil of Woodstock, which was writ 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-steal ers were so alarmed that they left then* 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
MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 121
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 professor 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 discovered him, he slew Virgilius' 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 influential colours, is there not often a striking truth ?
Sir Kenelm Digby, writes Master Aubrey, among other wonders of his " Miscellanies," was born, fought, and conquered at Scanderoon, and died, — on the llth day of June.
In a book, printed in 1687, we learn that the four- teenth 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 con- sulate : that of Torlina on the river Beresina : the battles of Leipsic and of Waterloo : which were all fought on the 18th of the month. On that day also his corpse
122 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS.
.
was landed on* St. Helena: and on the 18th also the " Belle Poule" sailed with his remains for France.
As of the Emir of the East, green was the favourite colour of the " Daoine Shi," or men of peace, in Scot- land ; and the Druids waved a green standard, as we read in the Scandana, when they fought with the Fingal- lians. 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 Killi- crankie was lost because Dundee was habited in green uniform ; and an old Graeme, when his horse stumbled at a fox-chace, referred his disaster to his green whip- cord.
Do not so many sequences prove a consequence ?
Ev. You do not mince the matter, Astrophel ; in- deed, 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 bashful- ness.
But coincidence, and the natural leaning of the mind to superstition, will unfold all your mysteries : and these your illustrations (I cannot term them argu- ments,) are even weaker than the former. Remember, that the mind of some beings is impressible as the yielding wax, and especially, if under the constant in- fluence 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, although 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 Creator will thus alter a gigantic law for an atom.
ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF SPEC- TRAL 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 harmonious 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 Ame- ricans in dreams, their observation of omens, their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries of ani- mals, all which they supposed to be indications of future events. And if any one of these prognostics was deemed unfavourable, they instantly abandoned the pursuit of those measures on which they were most eagerly bent.
I wonder you brought not some classic proofs of this credulity, for such were all-prevalent in Judaea and the Eternal City.
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Thus, on February the thirteenth, the Romans were conquered by the Gauls : henceforward important acts were never undertaken on its anniversary: nor on August the tenth by the Jews, because their first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the other by Titus, long afterwards, on that day of the month.
I am not, however, without some curious stories of very modern date ; one anecdote may be recognised on the Stock Exchange. A wealthy Hebrew, who was wont to fling his gold even into the lap of kings, was once standing on a certain stone, at the Post Office, when he received a letter, on which he speculated, and lost 20,000/. On this he cautioned 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 bargain, 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 Stam- ford Hill, and the Lord Treasurer waited twenty-four hours for the Hebrews* gold.
With Brinsley Sheridan, Friday was a sort of holi- day ; neither journeys were undertaken, nor new plays allowed to be produced, on that day.
I presume you were ashamed to adduce ornitho- scopy, or the divination by birds, as an illustration. 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 beautiful bird, from which the
OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. I J.-,
augur was about to prophecy on the fate of an expedi- tion. " Why," said Mosollam, " did not the bird fore- know 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 own"
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 beautiful eccen- tricities 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 explanation of the fact requires.
On this scroll I have sketched an arrangement of phantoms or ghosts, in two grand classes.
GHOSTS OF THE MIND5S EYE,
or PHANTASMA.
Illusive perception, or ocular ( Conversion of natural ob- spectra. 1 jects into phantoms.
Illusive conception, or spec- ( Cm^ of phantom8. tral illusion. (
GHOSTS OF THE EYE,
or OPTICAL ILLUSION.
, . ( Refraction.
Atmosphenc. -> ,
\ Reflection.
Gases.
Lenses and mirrors.
Disease of the eye.
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ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
In the first class there is no real or palpable object, 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 frenzy. 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
OF SPECTRA L ILLUSION. 127
exceptions to general rules, from peculiar combinations of natural causes. The unlearned will term them pre- ternatural phenomena, simply because they are of un- common 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 analyse it? No- velty 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 wonder the ec- centric 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 display 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 annihilation of a mighty world.
To discriminate between these classes is not difficult : we may prove their nature by simple experiment. Opti- cal 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 excite- ment or disorder.
But in the purely metaphysical ghost or phantom, the change of position or locality will not essentially 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 impression of insanity, (un- changed even by "brilliant glare,") or from the day- dream of the castle-builder, 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 referred to some
128 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
supernatural agency : as Leo Afer, according to Burton, accounts for the swarms of locusts 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 creatures, 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? Cornelius 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 Languedoc there once burst an awful and super- natural 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 impressed 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, impressed with a holy belief in the miracle. And what was this but the glutinous crimson fluid, exuding from the diseased alburnum of a tree, which the woodmen indeed term bleeding, but which the ancient Turks affirmed, or believed, to be converted on every Friday into drops of real blood ?
The red snow, which is not uncommon in the arctic regions, is thus tinted by very minute cryptogamic
OF SPECTRA^, ILLUSION. 12Q
plants ; and the fairy ring is but a circle of herbage poisoned by a fungus.
In Denbighshire (I may add) the prevalent belief is, that the shivering of the aspen is from sympathy with that tree in Palestine, which was hewn into the true cross.
The simple stratification of vapours, especially during sudden transitions of temperature, may produce very interesting optical phenomena ; not by refraction or re- flection, but merely by partial obscuration 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 cathedrals, and obelisks, that were constantly displacing each other in whimsical confusion and end- less variety, 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 re- markable 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 represented a church, with win- dows, pillars, and domes."
We may scarcely wonder at the mystifications of na- ture, when she assumes these gorgeous eccentricities, as 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 the African traveller ; and the lakes seen by Captain Munday, during his tour in India.
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130 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
The very clearness of the atmosphere, like that which floats around the Rhine, renders distance especially dis- tinct ; but mountainous regions, from the attraction of electric clouds, afford the highest examples of atmo- spheric beauty and effect. London 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 distinctly to represent a sea-port, 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 scientific ac- curacy. The phosphorescence of the marshes, the ignis fatuus, Will o'Wisp, Jack o' the Lanthorn, or Friar Rush, and the corpse-candles, are mere luminous exhalations, strained into the marvellous by the vulgar, and thus set down as heralds of mortality. The dancing light of luminous flies has been termed the green light of death / and, if you wish for more, Astrophel, read the " Armorican 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 phantasie will suspect to be a ghost or devil. Glowwormes, firedrakes, meteors, ignis fatuus, which Plinius calls Castor and Pollux, with many such that appear in moorish grounds, about church-yards, moist valleys, or where battles have been fought, the causes of which read in Goclenius, Velcurius, Finkius, &c."
The Parhelia, or mock suns, are produced by the re- flection 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
OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 131
were seen of crimson, inclosed 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 monstrous 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 account and sketch of three suns, and an inverted rainbow, which Baxter terms " Binorum Pareliorum 4>atvojuei/ov." And because there were two lunar and one solar eclipses in 1652, it was called, as Lily records, " Annus tene- brum/' or " the dark year."
The 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 beau- tifully imitated by the passage of an electric flash through an exhausted glass cylinder.
The rainbow is a combination of natural prisms break- ing 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 achromatic, or destitute of colour, because reflected light 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,
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132 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
especially in Ionia and Italy. A perfect illusion is pro- duced, for the bow seems to approach the spectator and then recede, as if Juno were sending her messenger on some special mission. There are many minds which would yield with delight to this conviction, and such probably was the illusion of Benvenuto Cellini — was it not ? " This resplendent light is to be seen over my shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when the grass is moist with dew. It is likewise visible in the evening 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 inspire 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 rea- dily sympathise 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.
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
OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 133
columns, and cloud-capt towers, and gorgeous palm- 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 va- pours 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, As- trophel ; perchance we might, in some enchanted hour, see even beneath yon Severn flood the grotto of Sa- brina, 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 desolation of a shipwreck, hear the echo of some Ariel's song " full fathom five," undulating through the water; or realise the overwhelming of Maha-Velipoor, 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 ?
Who that has wandered among the dark mountains 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 ? and in the beautiful vale of Eidournion, in Merioneth —
134 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
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 : f 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, commit- ting 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 gorgeous assemblage in the hall of beautiful ladies and high-born nobles, to celebrate the festival of his birth.
It was midnight, when in the ear of an old harper, 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 disc, and warbled its mournful cry of ( Edivar' so plaintively, that the old man thought of the shriek of his little child Gwenhwy- var, 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 solitude 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 surface.
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 phantom, the
OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 135
" Schattenmann," according to vulgar tradition, haunts the lofty range of the Hartz mountains, in Hanover. It is usually observed when the sun's rays are thrown horizontally on thin fleecy clouds, or vapour of highly reflective power, assuming the shape of a gigantic shade on the cloud.
The romantic region of the Hartz was the grand temple of Saxon idolatry, the very hot-bed of terrible shadows ; the first of May especially being the grand annual rendezvous of unearthly forms. Even now, it is affirmed, Woden, known in Brunswick as the Hunter of Hackelburgh, (whose sepulchre, 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 horse- man 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" invested with supernatural dignity, in the minds of credulity and ignorance. And no wonder, for, although the dis- coverer 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.
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 scene 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 appear- ance, until Pellicanus, a philosopher, made it plainly
136 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
appear, that this angel was nothing else but the reflec- tion 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 conversed with a labourer in the Cyfarthfa works at Merthyr Tydvil, an illiterate seer, who saw, three times appear- ing 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 shadow emerged from the earth, and on the third ascent he looked on it, and recognized 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 opposite side of the valley to Mont Blanc, his magnified shadow was distinctly seen by him on the vapoury cloud that floated between these giant rocks.
In February 1837, two gentlemen, on whom I con- fidently trust, were standing on Calton Hill while a murky cloud hung over Edinburgh. Above this veil Arthur's Seat peeped out like a rocky island beneath two white arches, like the lunar bows ; and on the cloud itself, each gentleman saw the shadow of his companion magnified to gigantic porportions.
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 analogous 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 illumina- tion produced a singular effect, and continued for some time, till the clouds separated, and we remained swim-
OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 137
ming 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 mountain of clouds the colossal picture of the balloon and ourselves surrounded by myriads of variegated rainbow tints. A full half hour the spectral reflected picture hovered constantly by our side. Each slender thread of the network appeared distended to the size of a ship's cable, and we ourselves two tremendous giants enthroned on the clouds."
The phantom, which rode side by side with Turpin, might be a mere reflected shadow in the mist ; indeed, Burton writes that " Vitellio hath such another 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 sur- face, the rocks and buildings on its shores, often appear elevated far beyond their 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 bestowed 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 philosophy, though it may fall like a sunbeam on the
13S ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
mind. Like the recorder of the " Unheard-of Curiosi- ties/' they, at one time, confess the optical illusion, as when the Romans " saw their navy in the clouds ;" at another, as when Constantine professed to see the " Crosse shining most gloriously in the aire," marked with the motto, 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 Bucking- hamshire, and on the white-leaf cross near Princes Ris- boro', — would he not deem them deities, or the work of a magician or a devil ?
When the sailors of Lord Nelson saw the bloated corpse of the murdered Prince Caraccioli floating erect in the water directly towards their ship, can we wonder they should deem it a supernatural visitation ?
When Franklin set his bells a ringing, by drawing down the electric fluid from the thunder-cloud, and when Columbus foretold to the hour the sun's eclipse ; — can we wonder that the transatlantic Indians listened, as to one endued with preternatural knowledge, or that the other might be thought superhuman ? And when the king of Siam was assured that water could be con- gealed into ice, on which the sounding skate could glide, — can we wonder 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 C'en Vaen had thrown across the torrent of the Monach, 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 preci-
OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 139
pice. " Ah sure," said the old shepherd, who was watching his fold on the mountain-side, " the fairies are at their gambols, master, for they sometimes do play at bowls with these chalk stones." Such was his explanation ; but, on my gaining another ridge of the Brecon Beacon, I startled 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 Nubia to Cairo, which met the Savans attending on the expedi- tion of Napoleon into Egypt, among whom was Rigo. the painter. Struck with the deep character of expres- sion in the face of one of the Nubians, Rigo induced him, with gold, to sit for his portrait. The African sat calmly perusing its progress 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 en- chanter. And this impression was not solitary, for an assemblage 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 dis- possessed 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 simple 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 fainting-fit when- ever an eclipse took place, — a weakness which at length proved his death.
140 CLASSIFICATION OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION.
There was an old house in Angoulerne, the " Chateau 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 this usurpation, like Michael Scott's spirit, destroyed every night the walls which had been erected during the day. At length the men abandoned their work in despair. On the twenty-fifth night in May (1840), the ruined win- dows 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 cabalistic figures on the sanded floor. He was con- veyed to the maire, and was proved to be a poor saw- yer, named Favreau, who, bound by a superstitious oath, self-administered, had thus created a sensation of terror throughout a whole community.
In the records of the Harleian Miscellany, the cu- rious reader may discover one which might impress his mind with some terrific ideas of the natural history of the south of England in the seventeenth 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 awful interest, and is now but the shadow of a memory ; and those who were once converts to its reality, 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 won- ders of Palingenesy, Astrophel ; I will rather favour you with another batch, for I was once fond of unken- nelling these sly foxes.
It is solemnly attested by the noble secretary of a Duke of Guise, that, in company with many scientific men, he saw the face of a person in his blood, which had been given by a bishop, for experiment, 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 skull of a man, was placed in a water dish, there appeared next morning in the mass, figures of men fixed to a cross ;" and " when human skulls, on which mosses had vege- tated, were pounded, the family of the apothecary who pounded them were alarmed in the night by strange and terrific noises from the chamber."
142 ILLUSIONS OF ART.
The body of the Cid, Ruy Diaz, as we read in Hey- wood's " Hierarchic," sat in state at the altar of the cathedral at Toledo for ten years. A Jew one day at- tempted, in derision, to pull him by the beard ; but on the first touch, the Cid started up, and in high resent- ment 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 be 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 Ari- mathaea) is too glaring to be misconstrued.
Other of these blood miracles are still more easy of solution. The blood spots from David Rizzio are shown to this day in Holyrood : arid it was believed, that after the Irish massacre the blood of the victims then slain on Portnedown Bridge, has indelibly stained its bat- tlements. 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, 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 mephitic 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 Jantiarius concealed in a phial, and on certain solemn days this so called blood
ILLUSIONS OF ART. | j ;
really became liquified ; 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 unfolded. " 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 suf- ficient 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 renewed every week ; they put it in 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 hundred years ago, John Evelyn makes out this cata- logue of those he saw in St. Mark's, at Venice.
" Divers heads of saints, inchased 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 Magdalene !"
Among the more innocent illusions of art, I may re- mind you of concave and cylindrical mirrors and lenses,
144 ILLUSIONS OF ART.
the magic lanthorn,"les ombres chinoises/'and the phan- tasmagoria of Cagliastro, by which daggers appear to strike the breast of the spectator, 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 another 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 rational and innocent pleasure, by the inven- tion of optical toys.
The whisking of an ignited stick produces a fiery circle — why ? Because from excessive rapidity the rays from one point remain impressed on the retina, until the revolution completes the circle.
The Thaumatrope, or wonder-turner, and the Phan- tasmascope, are ingenious illustrations of this law of impression ; so also is the whirling machine, which so beautifully evinces the fact of white being compounded of all the prismatic colours, blended in certain propor- tions. The prismatic Iris is painted on a revolving circle ; by excessive rapidity of revolution, the colours are actually blended (as if mixed in a vessel) on the re- tina, and the surface of the machine is white to the eye.
To these may be 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
ILLUSIONS OP ART. 11,
developing the formerly 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 skeleton'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 sacrilege, he stole the flat inscribed tombstones from the church-yard, 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 co- incidence merely, although I believe it was discovered that it was a concerted trick ; but the preservation of the king and the priest were, of course, attributed to special interference of the Deity.
But there is one phenomenon in animal chemistry 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
L
146 ILLUSIONS OF ART.
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, enveloped 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 impressions on the finer senses ; that appearances which the eye per- ceives, and which the mind cannot explain, become phantoms, involving some special motive of wonder or dismay.
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 phenomena which certain atmospheric changes may produce, so pe- culiar and unusual sounds may be accounted for on equally erroneous principles, especially 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
L2
148 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS.
strings, they ever believed that the harp itself sympa- thized 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 ca- dence blended with the winds, how easy to impart to it a more than human source; and thus the dismal coronach among the Scottish Highlands may be mystified into the " boding scream of the Banshee."
It is a classical question whether the rebel giant, Typhoeus, was crushed by Jupiter beneath the island of Inarime, or Mount ^Etna ; but it might readily be be- lieved by the Sicilian, who had read this mythological 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 subterranean convent of monks, the priest of which, to 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 of sand from the summit and sides of the mountain.
In the last century, I remember there was a legend current in the west of England, of the "Bucca," a demon whose howling was heard amid the blast which swept along the shore. It was a sure foreboding of shipwreck. The prophecy was often but too fully veri- fied, but the voice of the demon was merely the premo- nitory gale from one certain quarter, which is always the avant-courier of a tempest.
ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 149
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 Woodstock," written in 1649, we are told of the pealing of cannon, the barking of dogs, and neighing of horses, and other mysterious sounds, which certainly 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 marvellous history in Sinclair and Plott, and the chronicles of those days, which eclipse the haunted house of Athenodorus in Pliny.
In the 16th century, Master Samuel Stryck discussed the whole question regarding these haunted houses, and warnings of ghosts, and belief in the reality of appari- tions, 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 — ' Deduct for spectres in bed and bed-room, and elsewhere, 51. 10*.'"
The drama of the Drummer, by Addison, I believe was founded on the mystery of the " Demon of Ted- worth," which beat the drum in the house of Mr. Mom- pesson. This also was the source of extreme wonder, until the drummer was tried, and convicted, and Mr.
150 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS.
Mompesson confessed that the mystery was the effect of contrivance.
The author of the Pandemonium, or Devils' Cloyster, 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 visitors ; 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 unwearied collector of our ancient mysteries.
The Cock-lane ghost is another instance of illusion in the ears of the credulous. Although Dr. Johnson, the Bishop of Salisbury, and other learned Thebans, sat in solemn judgment to develope its mystery, I be- lieve many were so in love with the marvellous, that they regretted the unravelling of the plot, and still be- lieved ; as Commodore Trunnion, 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.
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 undermine 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 spectres and supernatural sounds in the baths at Chaeronea, the scene of bloodshed and murder ; — what may be their motives, but the record of acknowledged 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.
ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 151
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 subject of inte- rest, 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 visitor to a steep rock, under which, he said, there must be a pro- found 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 myste- rious sound had never been heard by the oldest inmates, until the poem of " Marmion" appeared, in which the condemnation and the death of Constance in the dun- geons 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 unlet- tered and the superstitious, by whose wild and roman- tic fancy these noises are readily magnified 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 peninsula 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 cavities under our feet, and the tone of its voice is magnified by confinement and repercussion. From some such source
152 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS.
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 ex- plained.
In the grand duchy of Baden, near Friburg, is a very curious example of an ^Eolian lyre, constructed, as the traditions of the mountains will have it, by the very genius loci himself.
In a romantic chasm of these mountains, most melo- dious sounds are sometimes heard from the top of fir- trees overhanging a waterfall. The current 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 ^Eolian harp, the effect of which is much enhanced by the gushing of the waterfall.
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 wail- ing of a hamadryad.
Among the granite rocks on the Orinoco, Baron Humboldt heard the strangest subterranean sounds ; and at the palace of Carnac, some of Napoleon's savans heard noises exactly resembling the breaking of a string. It is curious that Pausanias applies exactly this expres- sion 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 morn- ing at sunrise, which can be compared only to that of the breaking of the string of a lyre."
ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 153
Juvenal has the same notion, but he has multiplied the sounds.
The mystery of Memnon may be readily explained, by the temperature and density of the external air dif- fering from that within the crevices, and the effort of the current to promote an equilibrium ; yet these simple sounds were in course of time warped into articulate syllables, and at length obtained the dignity of an ora- cular voice. And in these illustrations, fair Castaly, you have the clue to all the mysteries of demonia and fairyland.
To these natural illusions, let me add the triumphs of phonic mechanism and the peculiar faculty of the ventriloquist, the secrets of which the science of Sir David Brewster has so clearly developed. The won- drous heads of Memnon, and Orpheus, and ^Esculapius, the machines of Albertus Magnus, and Sylvester, are now held but as curious specimens of art, and are indeed eclipsed by the speaking toys of Kratzenstein, and Kempelin, and Willis, and Savart, and the inge- nious instruments of Wheatstone.
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 physiolo- gists, 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 resembling, but exceeding in delicacy, the finest musical box. The mouth was widely open, and the performance was one of considera- ble effort. The sounds were a mystery to us at the time, for they were perfectly unique, and are yet not satisfactorily explained. It is decided, however, by some, that the upper opening of the windpipe may be
154 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS.
considered as a Jew's-harp, or Molina, of very exqui- site power, behind the cavity of the mouth, instead of being placed between the teeth.
ASTR. And thus concludes our lecture on special 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 presum'd, An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air."
But the study of philosophy is nature and nature's known 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 immaterial nature of the mys- tical essence within us, we may not lightly discourse on. The sacred histories of Holy Writ, and the miracles recorded in its pages — the hand-writing in the hall of Belshazzar, 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 be submitted to the test of philosophical speculation : 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 fariea to attend on thee."
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
ASTR. Why so thoughtful, fair Castaly ? I fear Eve- lyn 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? 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 ethereal 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 sun- light is sleeping on Wyndcliff, and the breeze, creeping among the leaves, seems to me a symphony meet to conjure the phantoms of romantic creatures. Evelyn
156 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY.
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 ? Yon mossy carpet of emerald velvet, strewed with pearls and gold, may be the pre- sence-chamber of Titania ; and fays are dancing within their ring, which the silvery beech o'ercanopies so sha- dily ; and the chaunting of their viralays, or green-songs, comes like the humming of a zephyr'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 honied 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 Samothra- cian mysteries.
ASTR. Know, then, that the birth-time of mythology and romance was in the primeval ages of man. The ancient heathens believed in the legends of their deities, as we have credence in modern history and biography ; indeed, the romance of the moderns was with the an- cients 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 promised houris of Ma-
FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 157
hornet's paradise ; and its mysteries 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 ro- mances of our own days. The Peri of Persia was the denizen of Peristan, as the Ginn of Arabia was of Gin- nistan, and the Fairy of England of Fairyland ; and we have their synonyms in the Fata of Italy and the Duerga of northern Europe.
These spirits of romance are almost innumerable; for thus saith the " Golden Legend :" that " the air is full of sprites as the sonriebeams ben full of small motes, which is small dust or poudre."
The alchemyst Paracelsus asserts that the elements were peopled with life ; the air with sylphs and sylvains, the water with ondines, the earth with gnomes, and the fire with salamanders. And Martin Luther coincides with these assertions; nay, hath not Master Cross of Bristol illustrated the creed, and shown, by his galvanic power, an animated 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 interesting genealogical record of the faery brood, in that romantic allegory of the Eliza- bethan age, the "Faery Queen." Elf, the man fashioned and inspired by Prometheus, was wandering over the earth alone, and in the bosky groves of Adonis he dis- covered a lady of marvellous beauty — Fay. From this romantic pair sprang the mighty race of the fairies, and we have wondrous tales of the prowess of their heroic princes. Elfiline threw a golden wall round the city of
158 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY.
Cleopolis ; Elfine conquered the Gobbelines ; 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 his romance 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 hence- forth applied to fairies and phantoms.
ASTB. 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 ; Zeld-elfen their field-fairies, &c.
The American Indians to this day have faith in the presidencies of spirits over those lakes, trees, and moun- tains, and even fishes, birds, and beasts, which excel in magnitude. The orient Indian, too, at this hour, peoples the forests 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, Proserpine sits crowned among the fairies. The great zoologist, Pliny, writes in his Natural History, that " you often en- counter fairies that vanish away like phantasies." And Baxter believed that " fairies and goblins might be as common in the air, as fishes in the sea."
As the Peri could not enter Paradise in consequence of the errors of her " recreant race," so the elves could not enjoy eternity without marrying a Christian ; and
FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 15g
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 misery and commission of crime on the noble house of Plantagenet.
Now there are appointed times when the influence of the spirit fades for a season. It was the moment of the eclipse, among the American Indians 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 freemasonry.
In Germany, on May-day, when the unearthly ren- dezvous 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 gift of seeing that which is to all others invisible is imparted ; but this must be kept secret, for the Men of Peace will blind the second- sighted eye, if once they are recognized on earth by a mortal.
In the gloomy forests of Germany rose the legends of Kobolds, and Umbriels, and Wehrwolves, the Holts Koniff, the Waldebach, the Reiberzahl, and the Schatten-
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160 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY.
man, the Hudekin, the Erl Konig, and the beautiful naiad, the Nixa. The devil himself 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 Samogitae, on the Baltic ; the Bieraen Trold, or Skow, of Iceland ; and those mermaids which gambol around the Feroe Islands. We read in the Dunske Folksaga, that these " merrows" cast their skins like the boa, and in that con- dition are changed into human beings, till their scales are restored to them. And the Shetlanders implicitly believe that awful storms instantly arise 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 jormungandz (so conspicuous among the wild ro- mances of the Edda), whose coils .entwined the globe. Thor angled 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 herald 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; and many a hollow in the mountain where these strange animals resort, is called Cwm Pooka ; and the wondrous cavern of the Melte, in Breconshire, was believed to be haunted by this little pony.
In Ireland, they have a Merrow, the Runic sea, or oigh-maid; the Banshee, or fairy prophet; the Fear- Dear -g, the Irish Puck ; the Clurricane, a sottish pigmy ; and the Pooke, the wild pony.
FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 1C|
CAST. These must have been a prolific as well as a wandering brood, for I also have seen many caverns 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 noc- turnal revel-place for the Man fairies which preside over their fisheries.
Scotland was a fertile mother of monsters : the Ou- risks or Uriskin, the goblin-satyrs or shaggy men ; the Brownies; the Kelpies, or river-demons; the Bargheists ; the Red-cap; the Daoine 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 Rothiemurchus ; the Bodach- Glas ; and the Pixies, or small grey men.
CAST. There is an islet among the Scottish Hebrides, 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 skeletons of pixies ?
ASTR. I cannot think the notion irrational ; there are dwarfs and giants even in our days. The Bosgis-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 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 in- formed by our profane chronicles ? Nay, even the story may be true of the Pict, who bit off the end of the
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162 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY.
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 Athenaeus 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' 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 do- mestic spirit, and seems to have possessed no very dis- tinctive attributes. He was seldom seen, but was heard nightly by the servants 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 every thing into confusion. If, on the contrary, the apart- ment had been left in disarray, (a practice which the ser- vants found it most prudent to adopt,) the indefatigable goblin arranged every thing with the greatest precision. This poor esprit folet, 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 be- fore the kitchen fire, and the domestics sat up watching
FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 1G3
at a pnident distance. At twelve o'clock the spirit glided gently in, stood by the glowing embers, and survey rd the garments provided for him very attentively, tried them on, and seemed delighted with his appearance, frisking about for some time, and cutting several sum- mersets and gambados, 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 oriffine, an unembodied spirit ; but the boy of Hilton has, with an admixture of English superstition, 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 hay-fork, struck him, though not intentionally, a mortal blow. The story adds, 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 following in- quest : " Coram Johannem King, coron., Wardae de Chestrae,
apud Hilton, 3 Jul. 7 Jac. 1609." (And here follows a report in Latin.)
Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that the unhousel'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
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164 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY.
to be the peculiar privilege of those spirits only who are shouldered untimely by violence from their mortal tenements.
" Ling'ring in anguish o'er his mangled clay, The melancholy shadow turn'd away, And follow'd through the twilight grey."
A free pardon for the above manslaughter appears on the rolls of Bishop James, dated 6th 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 con- fusion ; and the mythology of Chimera, and Echidna, and Typhon, Geryon, and Cerberus, and the Hydra and Bellerophon, and Ortha and the Sphynx, and the Nenwean Lion, and the Minotaur, and the demoniac records of their origin, it is almost profanation even to reflect on.
But when Martianus Capella tells us that devils have aerial bodies, that they live and die, and yet, if cut asunder, soon re-unite ; 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 ah1 the allegories which adorn our legends are not so remote from truth or nature. The vampires are said to have gloated over the sacrifices of human life, while the gouls and afrits, the hyenas in human shape, not only fed on dead carcases, but, by a special trans- migration, took possession of a corpse. On this fable is
FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 165
founded the monstrous legend of " Assuet and Ajut." I confess it monstrous ; but indeed there is little ex- aggeration 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 creeping 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 skull 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.
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 Roman, 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 method 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 cap- tains, 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 mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Elea- zer would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators
DEMONOLOGY. 167
that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or bason 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 Chris- tian 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 American islanders, and the Kitchi and Matchi Manitou of the Indians ; and, if we consult Father Borri, we shall learn that in Cochin China Lucifer himself promenaded the streets in human shape.
Psellus records six kinds of devils ; and the arrange- ments of Agrippa, and other theologians, enumerate nine sorts of evil spirits, as you may read in one of old Burton's eccentric chapters.
The mythology of the Baghvat Geeta, the sacred re- cord of the Hindoo theists, is based on the notion of good and evil spirits, the emblems of virtue and of vice under the will and power of Brahma. 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 CEolus, and Cupid.
The creed of Zoroaster asserts a perpetual conflict between the good and evil deity, the types of religious knowledge and ignorance. The southern Asiatics are people of good principle, and the northern nations peo- ple of evil principle. And why may not the Persian thus coincide with Bacon himself, who in his book " De Dignitate," confesses his belief in good and bad spirits, in charms, and prophecies, and the varieties of natural magic. Or is it inconsistent that the Hindoos should incarnate the malignant disease, small pox, in the per-
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168 DEMONOL.OGY.
son 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 posses- sion, by divine command they went out of those pos- sessed, as, for sacred example, into the herd of the Gadarenes ; that they were also commissioned, for the fulfilment of the inscrutable will of the 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 embodying of a demon ; and that we too often model our modern principles, on the proud presumption of still possessing that miraculous power 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 histories of demoniac possession have arisen the coercion and cruelties, which once marked with an indelible stain the records of our own mad- houses ; where chains and lashes, inflicted by the de- mons of science, 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 similar errors. The demon, which, since the light of the Chris- tian dispensation has brooded in man's heart and mind, is his own base passion, which incites him to shut his eyes to this holy light, and follow 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,
DEMON'OLOGY. 169
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 masque under which evil looks 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 Christabel 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 nymph- olepts of old who had looked upon Pan, sealed an early doom), the paralytic is f airy -struck ; and superstition has inspired them with a belief in the influence of the evil eye or glamourie, especially in the vicinity of Black- water.
I remember, when our wanderings among the Wicklow mountains led us through the dark glen of the Dargle, 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 bestowed 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 frowning on the destiny of the babe ; and when happiness or misery predominates in a life, it is a minister of good or ill that blesses or inflicts. There is one beautiful scrap of this
170 DEMONOLOGY.
mythology — the thrill of holy joy which the Irish mo- ther 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.
In Cornish history, we read how Anne Jeffries was fed for six months by the small green people. And hi 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 business is, however, such, that who- ever ascends the mount must leave his companions and go quite alone. When alone, he was to say, as if speak- ing 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 ancient 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. Moreover, when the nectar was taken, the servant presented a towel to the drinker to wipe his mouth with, and then, having performed his office, he waited 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 peo- ple, till one day a knight of that city, when out hunt- ing, 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
DEMONOLOOY. i;i
cup-bearer, but kept it for his own use. But the illus- trious Earl of Gloucester, when he learned the truth of the matter, condemned the robber to death, and pre- sented the horn 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 mil- dew 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 fairies, Castaly, you forget there was a propensity to mischief. They were rather fond, like the Daoine Shi, of stealing unchristened babes, and of chopping and changing these innocents, thence called changelings. On this fable your own Shakspere has wrought the quarrel of Oberon and Titania : —
" A lovely boy, stol'n 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 ignorance may make a sad and cruel work of it, even among your romantic Irish peasantry.
A few months since, on the demesne of Heywood (as we learn from the " Tipperary Constitution"), the death of a child, six years old, was accomplished with a wantonness of purpose almost incredible. Little Ma- hony was afflicted with spinal disease, and, like many other deformed children, possessed the gift, — in this case the fatal gift, — of acute intellect. For this quality, it was decided that he was not the son of his reputed
172 DEMOXOLOGY.
father, but a fairy changeling. After a solemn convo- cation, it was decreed that the elfin should be scared away : and the mode 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 confes- sion 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 ? You have played the eaves- dropper. Why come you here ?
Ev. To counsel you to silence on these mysteries, sweetest Castaly : remember the fate of Master Kirke, of Aberfoyle, for his dabbling in elfin matters, which you may read in Sir Walter's " Demonology." Yet I will not flout all your fayrie legends ; there may be innocent illusions, that carry with theni 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 fairyland, without re- membering that good Sir Walter, as sheriff of Selkirk- shire, 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.
POETRY OF NATURE. 173
The doublings, or horse-shoes, of this Wye, or 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 Hayenbach in the gloomy gorge of Schlagen, or the Crook of Lune, 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 Olaslyn stream, at Beddgelert, the Rhone, and the Traun in Styria ; from the chalk ripples the grey 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 Merion- eth ; or even of transparent black, as the Elain, which flows down through the white schist rocks of Cardigan- shire.
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 rainbow beauty.
Oh, for those halcyon days of infancy, when every thought was a promise ; when hope, the dream of wak- ing 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 satel- lites glitter like diamond studs in the firmament. Yet shift but the lens of the star-gazer, and lo ! dark and murky spots instantly shadow o'er its purity ; nay, have
174 POETRY OF NATURE.
I not read that one deep astronomer, Fraiienhofer, has discovered mountains and cities ; and another, Sir John Herschell, the laying down of rail-roads 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 ani- mated 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 creatures — the population of the globe ! I hope, Castaly, you will not, like the Brah- min, break your microscope, because it unfolds to you these wonders 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 nebulae, the poetry of heaven.
Is there not an exquisite romance in the closing of the barometrical blossoms; of the white convolvulus, and the anagallis or scarlet pimpernel ; of the sun-flower, and the leaves of the Dioncea and mimosa ?
Is there not poetry in the delicate nautilus, with its
POETRY OF. NATURE. 175
arms dropped for oars ; in the vclclla and purple physnVw expanding their membranous sails; and the beautiful fish-lizard, the Proteus of transparent alabaster, found in the wondrous cavern of Maddalena, among the Sty- rian mountains; and even in the Stalactytes of Anti- paros, as glittering as the gems and crystal pillars of Aladdin's palace? Are not these more beautiful be- cause they are true, and better to be read than all the impersonations of mythology, or that voluptuous ro- mance which would endow a flower with the fervour of sense and passion ?
IDA. I have ever wondered that a scholar, like Dar- win, should have so wasted time with his " 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 unconscious 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 that science that magnifies the lights of heaven (created to rule day and night) into habitable worlds, weaken the in- fluence of faith in holy writ ?
176 POETRY OF NATURE.
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 controversion 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 ? Indeed, 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 before 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 super- stition, and the food of religious faith."
The belief in existence of a preadamite world, pre- sumes not to controvert the Mosaic record of the deve- lopment 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 con- cerned in the punishment of that delinquency. Of the existence of these creatures there is no doubt ; the dis- covery 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 beautiful world was fashioned by a fiat.
The truth of holy Scripture is too clear even to be disturbed by a sophist. You may recollect that Julian, the apostate, contemplated the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, in order to confute the prophecies ;
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but Julian failed, and misfortune 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 alchemyst, 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 " Theo- sophia Revelata," explained all nature's laws by warping texts of Scripture to their purpose. Yet it is clear that even the miracles of the prophets may have been some- times 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 en- deavours 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 ?"
CAST. We have risen with the lark to salute you, As- trophel. And you have really slept in Tintern Abbey ? Yet not alone ; " I see queen Mab hath been with you/* and brushed you with her wing as you lay asleep.
ASTB. Throughout the live-long night, sweet Cas- taly, 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 whisper 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 mysteries 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 immor- tality. Is it not so, Evelyn ?
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
NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 179
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 association with our immortal essence, reason will at length be in- volved in a maze of conjecture. True philosophy will never presume to explain the mystical union of spirit and of flesh; she would be bewildered even in their definitions, and would incur some peril of forming un- hallowed 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 Xeno- crates ; or harmony, according to Aristoxenus ; or the lucid fire — the Creator of all things, of the Chaldean astrologers.
He who aspires to a solution of the mystery, may wear out his brain in the struggle, as Philetas worked himself to death in a vain attempt to solve the celebrated " Pseudomenos," the paradox of the stoics ; or, like the gloomy students of the German school, he might con- clude his researches with a question like this rhapsody — unanswerable.
" But thou, my spirit, thou that knowest this, that speakest to thyself, what art thou ? 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 ? Whence comest thou ? where goest thou ? Ah ! where from and to, where darkness is before and behind thee ? Oh ye unclothed, ye naked spirits, hear this soliloquy — this soul-speech. Know ye that ye be ? 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 voue,
N2
180 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND.
(TMfia, of soul or spirit — of spiritual body, or of idol and of earthly body ; or of 0u/uoc, ^X^ a^d voue, $v\n> and so forth?
This fine distinction may be reduced to one simple proposition : — that soul and mind are the same, under different combinations: mind is soul evinced through the medium of the brain; soul is mind emancipated from matter. This principle, if established, might as- sociate the anomalies of many sophists ; the existence of two minds, the sensitive and intellectual, taught by the Alexandrian philosophers, or the tenets of Bishop Horsley, in his sermon before the Humane Society, the separation of the life of intellect from animal life ; and it might reconcile the abstract reasoning of medical philosophy, with the pure but misdirected arguments of the theological critic.
We believe the spirit to be the essence of life 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 recognize the TTVOTI £w»jc, or that breath of life, which the Creator breathed into none but man ; and the aicwv 0eou, 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 for- get 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 expo- sition of the mind, although we are already sated with the contrasted hypotheses of our deepest philosophers : the cogitation or self-reasoning of Descartes, (the essence of whose " Principia" was " Cogito, ergo sum ;" and it
NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 1SI
is an adoption of Milton's Adam, "That I am, I know, because / think .-" forgetting that the very ego which thinks, is a proof of prior existence ;) and of Male- branche, who believed they existed because they thought; the abstract spiritualism of Berkley, who believed he existed merely because others thought of him ; the consciousness of Locke ; the idealism of Hume ; the ma- terial psychology of Paley ; the mental corporeality of Priestley ; and the absolute nonentity of Pyrrho.
Ev. I leave these hypotheses to speak for themselves, Astrophel ; my own discourse will be wearying enough without them.
Over the intricate philosophy of mind, Creative Wis- dom has thrown a veil, which we can never hope to draw aside. True, the beautiful mechanism of its organ, the brain, is apparent ; and we can draw some analogies from inspection of the brain of a brute, and its progres- sive development in foetal life, in reference to compara- tive simplicity and complexity ; but its phenomena are not, like most of the organic functions of the body, demonstrable.
Now, although we know not the mode of this mutual influence, the seat of mind is a subject of almost universal belief; not that Aristotle, and . are our oracles on this point, although they have even identified the spot, terming the ventricles the mind's presence-chamber, 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 five faculties ; perception, association, memory, imagination, and judg- ment, and their focus or concentration is in the brain. We may argue long on the earthly nature of mind,
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contrasted with that of matter ; yet, in the end, we com- monly thus define it : a combination of faculties, and their sympathy with the senses.
That to different parts of this organ are allotted dif- ferent 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, physiological experiments are proof of it.
ASTR. Then there is some truth in the whimsical localities in the " Anatomy of Melancholy " and the pictures of the tenants and apartments of the brain in the ingenious romance of the Fletcher.
Ev. Although I grant that these eccentric writers evince much reading, I am not sure that their imper- sonations (like the " Polyolbion" of Drayton,) do not tend to confuse, rather than elucidate, a natural sub- ject.
Of a plurality of organs in the brain, I have been convinced, even from my own knowledge and dissec- tions. I have seen that very considerable portions of the cerebrum may be removed, the individual still exist- ing. The vital functions may continue, the animal func- tions 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 ob- served,— the diseases of the brain being commonly found in an inverse ratio to the severity of the symp- toms. When chronic tumours and cysts of water are gradually formed, the extreme danger is averted by the balancing 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
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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 re- sembles 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 art us Mens agitat molem."
Brain is therefore the habitat of mind, the workings 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 mate- rialist,— 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 repose, 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 metaphysi- cian, 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 contact with our consciousness, — except by the brain.
Dr. Gall writes of a gentleman, whose forehead was
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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 forehead 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 diseased, 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 many signs of intellect may still exist ; nay, even if the whole 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 statuary, without even the fabu- lous power of Prometheus, or Pygmalion, or Franken- stein ; 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, can- not be independent of the qualities of matter. We may as well agree with Plato, in endowing 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 Qiiaest. 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 sacred evidence of this ? for, even in our antenatal state, we live, and yet there is probably no consciousness ;
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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 subsequently placed it.
Ev. For this there is sacred evidence, Astrophel. There was light, ere the sun was created as its reser- voir ; but the soul was breathed into the body, which was already then created.
ASTR. This is a specimen of your special pleading, Evelyn, allied to that perilous error of Priestley, that supposed function and structure to be identical, because they are inflenced by the same disease, and seem to live and die, 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 animal is born with its birth, and dies with its death." You have conceded to me (and we must all be conscious of) the great difficulty of conceiving the nature of spirit ; but, if we are required to prove its existence, we may an- swer, by analogy, that we cannot always palpably prove the existence of matter, 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 wonderful 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 living of the soul with- out the body ; for here even a grosser matter, yet invi- sible, is evinced by its passage from one thing to
186 NATURE OF SOUL, AND MIND.
another, although it is inert when involved in the sub- stance ?
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 ?
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 of death which is cer- tainly 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 an- nihilation is so abhorrent, that he who believes it dooms himself indeed to a miserable existence ; for the crown- ing solace of a Christian life is holy hope, and belief in the priceless gift of immortality.
" Know'st them th' importance of a soul immortal !
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 prophetic 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, merely be- cause he disbelieved separate spiritual existence ; for Aristotle also asserts, that " the soul could not exist vnthout the body, and yet that it was not the body, but a
NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 187
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 substantial resurrection, is founded on New-Testament 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 grows ; so, although the body may not be restored, there is a de- velopment 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 Scripture uses the illustration of grain sown (which in its exact sense implies an offspring, and not a resurrection), 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 distinguish identity of person."
Blumenbach believed that when the soul revived, after death, the brain would equally revive ; and there is, indeed, nothing very irrational in all this, for death is, even to our senses, not an annihilation, but only a new combination of matter. The Greek sceptics thought that the teeth would remain perfect, if all else was de- composed and lost ; and the rabbins conferred this per- petuity 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 in- animate clay, celebrate their wakes with rites often, as licentious as they are profane ; the cannibal Ca/ati thought it more respectful to eat the bodies of their
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departed 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.
It is certainly more consolatory to associate our thoughts with the immortal part of a lost friend ; to be- lieve the spirit to be in celestial keeping, and that it still hovers around us. The collapse and change of fea- tures 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 ele- ments. I shall ever remember with horror the scenes which I witnessed in Naples, when a pile of bodies, col- lected from the chapels by the dead carts, which go round the city at night, was thrown by irreverent hands into the public cemetery of the Campo Santo.
The fiat of the Creator MAY at once produce a recon- struction of the body, however widely scattered its par- ticles, 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 functions and passions to which they are subservient?
IDA. It may be a bliss to gaze even on the shadows of those we love. There is a beautiful allegory of this solemn question told in the " Spectator," which, as Addison approves, it cannot be profanation to admire. It is the Indian legend of " Marraton and Yaratilda," in which the devoted husband comes unawares on Paradise, and sees the shadowy forms of his wife and children,
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without their substance. The story exquisitely blends t h fond wish of Marraton to die, that he may be again ad- mitted 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 revelation, he asso- ciates the joys of his elysium with the sensual pleasures of terrestrial life. The Indian dreams of his dogs, be- lieving that the greatest hunters shall be in the highest favour with Brahma ; 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 skulls 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 Evelyn ?
Ev. As you do, Ida. As to the atheist, one, per- chance, may have lived, if we rightly interpret the senti- ments of Diogenes, and Bion, and Lucian, and Voltaire ; but, I believe, one never died. My solemn duty has summoned me to the death-bed of more than one re- puted infidel, who have in health reasoned with fluency and splendour, and have penned abstruse theses on life and the world's creation. But, when danger lay in their path of life, their stoic heroism fled, and left them ab- ject cowards. 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 death-bed like that of Beaufort, who made " no signal of his hope," not because he disbelieved a God, but because a con- viction of his sin left him without a hope and faith in the promises.
Of course there cannot be an Euthanasia where irre- ligion 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
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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.
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 polytheism, but the purer theo- logy 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 immortal mind and a paradise. Like the reasonings of natural philo- sophy, 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 Natches should wor- ship 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 Abul Fazel 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 error, but he will confess his admiration of their sublime notion of the divine attri- bute, which Colonel Dowr has thus imparted to us : " As God is immaterial, he is above all conception ; as he is invisible, he can have no form ; but from what we be- hold of his works, we may conclude that he is eternal,
NATURE OF SOUU AM) MIND. lyi
omnipotent, knowing all things, and present every- where."
I will grant that the oriental notions of cosmogony, or the creation of the world, are a blot on their scripture page : because the pagan theologians 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 remote analogy to the Bible itself; and, granting 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 beautiful world from a chaos of wide and dark waters.
IDA. You are wandering very far eastward, Astro- phel : I will propose this question to Evelyn.
If it is so evident that the brain and mind, although 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 " Con- solations of a Philosopher,") "even in the imperfect life which belongs to the earth, increases with age, out- lives the perfection of the corporeal faculties, and, at
192 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND.
the moment of death is felt by the conscious being." Does this imply decay ?
Ev. The retentive powers of old age, are the excep- tion to a rule, which the ultra spiritualist assumes 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 duration and constitutions vary, so may mental powers indicate different degrees of vigour. If mind mcreases, no doubt it decreases ; and I have known many, who retain every faculty but me- mory, 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 misanthrope —
u Nature, as it grows again toward earth, Is fashion'd for the journey, dull and heavy."
Reflect on the painful end of Sheridan and other bril- liant 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 zenith 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 conse- crate our body, so fraught as it is with basest passions, and so decayable withal.
NATURE OF SLEEP.
" Sleep, gentle sleep !
Nature's soft nurse." HENRY IV. Part ii.
IDA. I begin to perceive the importance of this digres- sion 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, coincident 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 repose, sufficient for its restoration, — if it were to sleep, death would be the result.
This repose is in contrast with a state of waking, that activity of mind in which ideas are constantly chasing
o
194 NATURE OF SLEEP.
each other like the waves of ocean ; the mode of dis- placing one idea being by the excitement of another in its place.
In that state of sound sleep which overcomes chil- dren, 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 in- fluence over mental or corporeal faculties ; and I may even adduce a scrap from Burton, although I am an admirer of the quaint old compiler for little 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 inhibi- tion of spirits, the way being stopped by which they should come ; this stopping is caused by vapours aris- ing 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 predetermined hour ? If we retire to sleep at the latest hour, or oppressed with fatigue, so strong an impression is produced in our mind, that the breaking 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, — -passive
NATURE OF SLEEP. 195
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 impres- sion, mechanically established by constant 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, after some time, that the works of the clock were injured, so that the striking for a time had ceased. The idiot, notwith- standing, 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 ana- logous to this.
I may quote Holy Writ hi support of this passive con- dition 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 pro- fane 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.
o 2
196 MATURE OF SLEEP.
On the tomb of Cypselus, according to Pausanias, 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 seiz'd My drowned sense, untroubled ; tho' I thought I then was passing to my former state, Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve."
But how fearful is this resemblance which changes " tirM nature's sweet restorer" into a type of death ! IVythee, Evelyn, do not affright me thus, by clothing sleep with terror, as if it were disease and danger.
Ev. Why tremble for the mortal sleep of the just and good, who will feel, with William Hunter, on their death-bed, " 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 excess, or from intense and direct narcotics, as opium sleep, and the para- lyzing senselessness from extreme 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 : inflammation, 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 extremes, are proved, by suffering, to be morbid.
NATURE OF SLEEP. 197
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 be- comes perilous when intense, or too much indulged. One eccentric physician, as we read in the learned Boerhave, even fancied sleep the natural 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 positive 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 accumulation.
The conceits regarding the cause of sleep are so va- rious, 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 con- ditions 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 result of de- pressed nervous energy — exhaustion, fatigue, cold, and the influence of powerful narcotics, or the combustion of charcoal. Others, that sleep arises from the depo- sition of fresh matter on the brain, ^nd its sudden pres- sure. Then we have the cerebral cmlapse of Cullen, and of Richerand ; the deficiency of animal spirits of Haller ; the diminished afflux of blood to the brain of Blumen- bach ; and the exhausted irritability of the Brunonian theory 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 :
198 NATURE OF SLEEP.
" Non semper arcum
Tendit Apollo."
Watchfulness invariably reduces, even in the brute : the wild elephant is tamed by the perseverance 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 unembodied essence of the soul, with its combined existence in the brain — that union from which a thought is born}, the mind cannot exert itself beyond a certain period without a sensation of fatigue in the brain, as palpable as the exhaustion from excessive mus- cular 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, .regain its expenditure by simple rest, requiring a certain period for this re-accumulation, like, the charging of an electrical jar. Sleep, however, is not always a sequence of ex- hausted 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 exemplified than by some passages in the life of Collins, by one who knew him well : —
NATURE OP SLEEP. 199
" He languished some years under that depression 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 per- ceived gathering on his intellects, he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France ; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned. His disorder was no alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than intellectual 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."
I believe that sensibility and fatigue of mind, by in- ducing sleeplessness, may often be the source even of mania.
The sleep of animals is usually light, 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 prowl- ing in the night. The python and the boa are also long awake, and then sleep for many days during the process of digestion. Indeed, all the fer sound sleep after feeding ; while the ruminants scarcely sleep at all ; nor do they crouch like the ferte, with the head between the legs : but then their whole life is one scene of quiet ; rumination is a mindless reverie. The West Indian slaves and the Hottentots, 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 negative, proofs, from the records of Dr. Rush. — " In despotic
200 NATURE OF SLEEP.
countries, and where the public passions are torpid, and where life and property are secured only by the extinc- tion of domestic affections, madness is a rare disease. Dr. Scott informed me that he heard of but one single instance of madness in China."
" 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 ? We have a saying in Hereford- shire, 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, ex- cept the prevailing law of nature, — the feeling of neces- sity ; 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 exist- ence ; but for old age there is no essential period or limit. Old Parr slept almost constantly 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 diminution of its time of sleep, so that at ten years old its period should be about eight hours.
The strength or energy of brain will, when aided by custom, modify the faculty of controlling the disposi- tion to slumber. Frederick the Great, and our own Hunter, slept only five hours in the twenty-four ; while Napoleon seemed to exert a despotic 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 energetic constitutions, I might propose the wise distribution which Alfred made of his own time
NATURE OF SLEEP. 201
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 pro- duce 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 cannon ; and, if I remem- ber 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 capricious 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, although there was one idle poet, even Thomson, who confessed he had " noe motive for rising early." It was the cus- tom of Jewel and Burnet to rise at four ; and Buffon, we are told, rewarded his valet with a crown, if he suc- ceeded in getting him up before six.
It is to slight the creation, not to enjoy the beauties
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
202 NATURE OF SLEEP.
loss in men and horses was very far greater among the night marchers.
CAST. I believe it was Panza, who ({ never desired a second sleep, because the first lasted from night till morning/' — that immortal Sancho Panza, whose quaint rhapsody we must all echo so gratefully, — " 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 " Valentinian," and Shakspere, from the lips of Henry