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through those passing shadows to the abiding substance, and beyond these things perishing to the enduring realities, and is able to realize this beloved one emancipated from all those earthly infirmities, and able in heaven to recal the past, and there, at least, appreciate the love and self-denial which here so long ministered to their necessities? For surely such moments in their history, while disciplining for glory, can never grow dim in the memories of the redeemed. If Lazarus on earth felt grateful to the dogs who licked his sores, will any Lazarus in heaven forget a Christian brother or sister who relieved his pains of body or of soul? If Jesus desired that the love of Mary, when she anointed him for his burial, should be memorable to the end of time, and, like the precious nard, fill the world with its odour, will not the followers of Jesus be allowed to express in eternity their sense of a similar love poured out upon them here for His own sake, and at a time, too, when, it may be, the feeble mind could not appreciate, or the feeble tongue utter thanks for the offices and ministrations of patient and enduring affection!

And there are sadder than bodily sufferings still to which some of God's people have been subjected-long and dreary nights, when the mind slept, but beheld in its dreams nightmares of dread fear, terrible visions of confused and impalpable horrors-when in laughter there was no mirth-when any light amidst the gloom was but as a fitful and lurid

flash revealing the cloud, the storm, and the deep calling unto deep! Oh! deal gently and tenderly with this Christian soul and all its wild ravings! You see too clearly what he now is; see also what he shall be. Think of the morning when the sleep will be over, when the calm eye will open to the light of God's countenance, and the weary breast breathe the fresh atmosphere of His love, and the soul shall rise up like a giant, the feverish dreams and the turmoil of the dark forgotten amidst the glorious company, the intellectual and joyous feast in heaven! Ah! treat the sufferer even now with respect; pity but reverence the dethroned king, for remember he is yet to regain his kingdom !

TO A WOUNDED SEA-FOWL. How it will wring thy little heart, To see thy kindred all depart,

N.

All glad, refreshed, and free! Thou'lt stretch in vain thy wounded wing, Thou may'st not from the wave upspring. Alas! poor bird, for thee.

Alas! for thee, poor bird. No more 'Twill be thy joy with them to soar

Through sunshine, calm, or storm: Nor on thy shelly shore to land, And sit like sunshine on the sand, Pluming thy beauteous form.

Cold, nestled in the black sea-rock,
I hear thy little feathered flock
In piteous accents mourn
For thee and food; but all are gone,
And thou art drifting on and on,

And shalt no more return.

By MACLAGGAN, a Journeyman
Plumber in Edinburgh.

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us it seems a striking proof of man's natural propensity to this belief, and of the infectious influence of vulgar opinion, that even the Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius,-who denied the existence of the soul,-not only expressed his belief in ghosts, but attempted to account for their appearance, by affirming that all bodies cast off their films or shells,

"As heifers cast the membranes of their horns And snakes their glittering coat among the thorns."

In the book of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite gives a description of a spectre, which Lord Byron has pronounced the most sublime and terrible picture of an apparition ever drawn; but the speaker tells us that he saw it only in a dream, or vision of the night: "In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up: it stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes; there was silence, and I heard a voice." Similar illusions have appeared to thousands; and tales of spectres, so strange and startling, have been recorded, that, if true, we must doubt the testimony of Reason and revelation. But never yet have we heard of such a story, incapable of being explained as a specimen of gross superstition. Indeed, as we conceive, no popular legends, no fancied horrors of haunted houses, no amount of evidence however respectable, can justify our crediting a spirit's appearance from heaven or hell, merely to haunt a house, or a burial-ground,—so long as we believe the assurance of the Son of God, that if the lost soul once enters its prison-house, it cannot escape till it has paid the "uttermost farthing,”—and that Lazarus could not be sent to the brethren of Dives, because, "if they heard not Moses and the prophets, neither would they repent though one should rise from the dead." Faith in ghosts, therefore, is something worse than superstition, simply as such. It is not only the childish imagination, that departed spirits revisit this world; but a practical disbelief in

the all-sufficiency of the Holy Spirit, the Word, and the providence of God, to produce repentance. Nay, it seems to amount to a virtual denial of the doctrines of Him, who "came to destroy the works of the devil," who shuts the gates of the invisible world, and no man opens them, and who alone has “the keys of hell and of death."

1st.-Nothing is more common than sudden frights, occasioned by objects indistinctly seen, or heard in a state of mental excitement.

Most of our readers may remember the sudden fear, the painful throbbing of the heart, and the horrid action of the scalp and hair, produced by the sight of some fantastic object, dimly seen in the midnight shade, or the trembling noonlight; or by the unexpected sound of a falling body, a startling cry, or the rustling of leaves in a gust of wind. Simple as such phenomena are, imagination can make them phantoms of terror, not only to man, but to horses, dogs, and other animals; nor can the mind regain its selfcomposure, and break the spell that masters it, till the eye or the ear has become familiar with the exciting cause of its trepidation. Such is the creating power of imagination, to which all superstitious fears may be traced,-which can discover in the embers of a common fire scenes and pictures the most grotesque, and which can transform the bright summer-clouds into "all the animals that entered the ark," so that we shall fancy, with old Polonius, that they are "like a camel," or "backed like a weasel," or "very like a whale!"

An instance of this species of illusion happened to the writer of the present article. On awakening one morning in a hotel in Edinburgh, we beheld the figure of a man in front of our bed, fantastically dressed, and glaring on us with unearthly eyeballs. The face especially excited sensations akin to horror; and not till we rose to grapple with the phantom, did we discover it to be the creature of our own imagination, woven out of the curtains of the bed, and the printed paper on the opposite wall. On another occasion, in an ancient country house, we

were kept awake by wailing sounds, brane, which communicates with the groans, and stifled lamentations. We brain by the optic nerve; and as the need not say that we strove in vain brain is the organ and seat of all our against superstitious feelings, till we perceptions, it is thus that the idea or found at daybreak that the sounds arose mental picture of objects is transmitted to from a rent in the wall, admitting the the mind. Generally this image fades wind in fitful cadences. from the retina, or mirror of the eye, the instant we look from one object to another; but, when we gaze on the sun or any brilliant light, the image remains a considerable time, though the eyes are shut; and, when the stomach is affected by certain diseases, and the brain is excited by grief, remorse, conjestion of blood, or delirium tremens, the patient sees what are called spectra, or pictures of objects which have no real existence, and which he stubbornly believes to be ghosts. These facts are well known to the medical profession, as they were to Shakspeare when he wrote his masterpieces,-Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III. They account for the hideous and terrific visions of delirium tremens, which prostrate the vital strength of its victims, or drive them on to the act of suicide. And on the same principle it is, that the guilty conscience of the midnight assassin presents to his horrified imagination, in every object that intercepts his flight, the mangled corpse and streaming blood of his murdered victim, and the wild sound of his death-shriek in every howl of the tempest.

Sir Walter Scott relates, in his Letters on Demonology, that one of his literary friends, on rising from the perusal of the Life of Lord Byron, and passing from his room to the entrance-hall, in the gloom of twilight, saw distinctly in the moonlight the exact representation of the departed poet. Amazed at the sight, he paused for a moment; but advancing to it, it resolved itself into the greatcoats, shawls, and plaids which hung on a screen such as is found in the outer hall of a gentleman's house. The same writer tells us, that two of his friends one night beheld a female figure near the arched window of a neighbouring church. Her head was encircled by a halo of glory, similar to that which is seen in the pictures of Roman Catholic saints; and while they gazed on an object so extraordinary, she bowed repeatedly and disappeared. Three several nights the vision was seen, and much alarm was felt; but when search was made, the supposed apparition was found to be an old woman in her kitchen garden, bearing a lanthorn and gathering cabbages! Now, in all these instances, had the spectators yielded to their first impressions, the mysteries would have remained unravelled, and they might have cherished the awful superstition, that they had seen and heard supernatural beings: but, by exercising moral fortitude and deliberate inquiry, they happily discovered that what they had at first deemed spectres were simply fanciful images, not a whit more terrible than a curtain, the wind, a screen covered with clothes, and an old woman gathering vegetables by night.

These remarks may serve to assist us in understanding the following cases, which otherwise might seem incredible, or inexplicable on philosophical principles :

When Locke, the philosopher, had overworked his brain in protracted study, he beheld a life-like image of himself; but, aware of the nature of the airy phantom, he amused himself by piercing it through, and cutting it in twain with his hand. Nicolai, the bookseller of Berlin, was long harassed by similar apparitions. His chamber was frequently crowded with spectres of men and animals, so that he knew not which were This organ may be described as a actual, and which imaginary beings; but natural mirror, reflecting an image of the annoyance sprang from plethoric disthe object of vision. This image is ease, and yielded at once to the use of formed on the retina, or net-like mem- the lancet. Similar was the case of a

2d. Sometimes these delusions spring from disease, acting on the optic nerve and retina of the eye.

gentleman of rank in Edinburgh, who, terror, when she saw it moving to and fancied that every day after dinner his fro on her bedroom table! Many a dining-room door burst open, and that woman would have fled or fainted; but, an old woman rushed in with a furious determined to solve the mystery, she countenance, and felled him to the floor discovered that the motion of the skull with her staff. He firmly believed that was occasioned by a rat, which had he was haunted by some infernal spirit, entered the socket of the dead man's eyes, till he consulted the celebrated Dr. but could not escape from its dismal Gregory, who found him attacked by prison. periodical shocks resembling apoplexy, and restored his health and peace of mind by copious bleeding.

The following case, condensed from an author to whom we are already largely indebted, is one of a permanent and fatal character. It is that of a legal gentleman, the symptoms of whose malady were, constant depression of spirits, loss of appetite, indigestion, and slowness of pulse. The cause of his mental affliction he long concealed; but at last he revealed it to his medical attendant as follows, for two years a large cat mysteriously appeared for hours in his chamber, and as mysteriously vanished. Happily, however, the vision occasioned little annoyance, as he ascribed it to its real origin,a morbid state of his brain, and visual organs. At the end of that period, the cat disappeared, and a gentleman dressed in black took its place and courteously bowed him into every company. Even this apparition, which he knew to be the phantom of his own imagination, he could endure with comparative indifference. But great was his horror when it finally assumed the very semblance of Death, a frightful, ghastly, grinning skeleton ! He felt convinced it was nothing but a spectre of his own excited brain; but he could neither banish, nor endure the sight of this constant monitor of death and the grave. This was his curse, his torment day and night; and he wasted away, the victim of a horrible disease, till death, not in vision, but in stern reality, came to his relief.

3d.-Even healthy persons may become ghost-seers, from a combination of mysterious circumstances.

A pious lady had got a candlestick fixed on a human skull, to remind her of death at her evening devotions. One night she lighted the candle; but what was her

Sir Walter Scott relates the case of a Teviotdale farmer, whose road from market lay by the corner of a churchyardwall, on the summit of which stood a female form in white, tossing her arms on high, and gibbering to the moon. Though sorely frightened, he rode slowly on; and when almost opposite the dreaded spot, he plunged his spurs into his horse's sides, and set off at the gallop. But the woman that instant leaped from the wall, lighted behind the rider, and clasped him firmly around the waist. The touch of her hand, which was cold as ice, increased his terror; and when he reached his home he shrieked and shouted to his wondering servants,—' Tak' aff the ghaist!' They did so, of course; and their master was borne to a bed of sickness, where he lay for weeks in a nervous fever. We need scarcely add, that it was not a spectre that had caused his fright, but a youthful widow who had lost her reason on the death of her husband by a fall from his horse on his way from market. She was a harmless lunatic, and when she escaped the guardianship of her relatives, she fled to the churchyard, and wildly wept on his lowly grave, or stood on the churchyard-wall, watching the return of him whom she had lost for ever! Now, if the poor creature had been shaken off by the motion of the horse, or the convulsive struggles of the rider, she might have been killed or confined in an asylum; in which case the farmer and his friends might have concluded that he had seen and felt a visitant from the spirit-world.

The following case is so remarkable, and so illustrative of the manner in which the spectre-superstition may originate and spread, that, limited though our space now is, we cannot omit it :—A

club of literary gentlemen met one even-haunted spot, or the scene of recorded ing at Plymouth, when their president murder. Robbers have become ghosts, was reported to be on his deathbed. in order to steal our property, without From a sentiment of respect the chair was perpetrating murder; and the terror inleft vacant, and the conversation natur- spired by their appearance in this guise ally turned on their absent friend, when has been found a surer and more formidsuddenly the door opened, and the form able weapon than the dagger or the pistol." of the president entered the room in a Servants, too, are sometimes tempted to white night-dress, and his face as ghastly frighten the young with superstitious as death itself. Forward he stalked threats, which brand themselves on the with solemn gravity, occupied the vacant infant mind for life, if they do not lead to chair, lifted an empty glass, and bowing insanity and death. Who has not heard round, put it to his lips,-thereafter of the German student, who, for a wager, quitting the place in perfect silence. watched beside an open coffin? At midThe company remained, deeply appalled; night what seemed the dead man rose in the and their amazement was intensified winding-sheet. The student presented a when two of their party called at once pistol, but the form still drew near. He at the president's house, and learned that fired; and the ball was flung back in his he had just expired! Here, then, to all face. And what was the consequence? appearance, was an unchallengeable proof The pretended spirit was a living man ; but of the existence of ghosts. The philosophical spirit of these literary men could not resist the evidence of their own senses; and the apparition of their president might have haunted their imagination to the last hour of life. But some years afterwards the mystery was cleared up by the dying confession of a sick-nurse, who had attended Mr. the president, throughout his illness. In great distress of conscience she said, that, as he was delirious, she had been ordered to keep strict watch upon him; that unfortunately she fell asleep, and during her sleep, the patient awoke and left the apartment; that on his return he retired to bed in a state of exhaustion, and soon afterwards died; and that when his two friends called to make inquiry after his health, she did not dare to reveal the whole truth, but simply informed them of his recent death. 4th.-Apparitions may originate in trick but still they sang the same monotonous and imposture.

In the words of a writer already quoted -"Doubtless many venerable apparitions have issued from the workhouse of man's own ingenuity. As an idiot in the sun can make a shadow, so any man can easily fabricate a ghost. The magic lanthorn is an excellent ghost-manufactory. A windingsheet wrapped round a living man, makes a passable spectre in a dark night; more especially in the neighbourhood of some

the student was dead! The other youth, who had joined in the wager, had extracted the bullet from the pistol, had removed the corpse from the coffin, and had taken its place in the robes of the dead.

The following case is not so distressing; though nothing can justify such dangerous amusements:-The lord of an old Hungarian castle proposed that his friend, a Major of French Huzzars, should sleep in a room which had the reputation of being haunted. The officer consented; loaded his pistols, went to bed, and was soon asleep. Roused, however, by a sudden noise, he saw three ladies dressed in green, singing a chorus of solemn music. For a time he listened with pleasure; but as the songsters refused to cease, or to change the tune, or to answer a word, he lost his patience, grasped his pistols, and threatened to fire if they did not stop within five minutes. The time expired;

hymn. At last he fired and missed. Again he fired, but the ladies still sang on. And the gallant Frenchman swooned away, and lay three weeks in a dangerous fever! Now, in all this there was nothing but trick and deception. The Hungarian nobleman had a concave mirror, such as jugglers use. When a person stands near such a mirror, his reflected image is thrown forward several yards in the empty air. Such a glass was placed in a

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