who was now no more. As the reader had enjoyed the intimacy of the deceased to a considerable degree, he was deeply interested in the publication, which contained some particulars relating to himself and other friends. A visitor was sitting in the apartment, who was also engaged in reading. Their sitting-room opened into an entrance-hall, rather fantastically fitted up with articles of armor, skins of wild animals, and the like. It was when laying down his book, and passing into this hall, through which the moon was beginning to shine, that the individual of whom I speak saw right before him, in a standing posture, the exact representation of his departed friend, whose recollection had been so strongly brought to his imagination. He stopped for a single moment, so as to notice the wonderful accuracy with which fancy had impressed upon the bodily eye the peculiarities of dress and position of the illustrious poet. Sensible, however, of the delusion, he felt no sentiment save that of wonder at the extraordinary accuracy of the resemblance, and stepped onward towards the figure, which resolved itself, as he approached, into the various materials of which it was composed. These were merely a screen occupied by great-coats, shawls, plaids, and such other articles as are usually found in a country entrance-hall. The spectator returned to the spot from which he had seen the illusion, and endeavored with all his power to recall the image which had been so singularly vivid. But this he was unable to do. And the person who had witnessed the apparition, or, more properly, whose excited state had been the means of raising it, had only to return into the apartment, and tell his young friend under what a striking hallucination he had for a moment labored.'

"Most persons, under such circumstances, would have declared unhesitatingly that the ghost of the departed had appeared to them, and they would have found great multitudes who would have believed it. When the imagination has such power to recall the images of the absent, is it at all wonderful

that many persons should attribute such appearances to supernatural visitations? Had the poet himself been in the place of the screen, he probably would not have been more vividly present. How many, then, of the causes of vulgar fear are to be attributed to the effect of imagination!

"A lady was once passing through a wood, in the darkening twilight of a stormy evening, to visit a friend who was watching over a dying child. The clouds were thick, the rain beginning to fall; darkness was increasing; the wind was moaning mournfully through the trees. The lady's heart almost failed her as she saw that she had a mile to walk through the woods in the gathering gloom. But the reflection. of the situation of her friend forbade her turning back. Excited and trembling, she called to her aid a nervous resolution, and pressed onward. She had not proceeded far, when she beheld in the path before her the movement of some very indistinct object. It appeared to keep a little distance in advance of her, and as she made efforts to get nearer to see what it was, it seemed proportionably to recede. The lady began to feel rather unpleasantly. There was some pale white object certainly discernible before her, and it appeared mysteriously to float along at a regular distance, without any effort at motion. Notwithstanding the lady's good sense and usual resolution, a cold chill began to come over her. She made every effort to resist her fears, and soon succeeded in drawing nearer the mysterious object, when she was appalled at beholding the features of her friend's child, cold in death, wrapped in its shroud. She gazed earnestly, and there it remained distinct and clear before her eyes. She considered it a monition that her friend's child was dead, and that she must hasten on to her aid. But there was the apparition directly in her path. She must pass it. Taking up a little stick, she forced herself along to the object, and behold, some little animal scampered away. It was this that her excited imagination had transformed into the corpse of an infant in its wind

ing-sheet. The vision before her eyes was undoubtedly as clear as the reality could have been. Such is the power of imagination. If this lady, when she saw the corpse, had turned in terror and fled home, what reasoning could ever have satisfied her that she had not seen something supernatural? When it is known that the imagination has such a power as this, can we longer wonder at any accounts which come to us of unearthly appearances ? "

LESSON LXV.

Illusions from Derangement of the Eyes.

*

CHAMBERS'S MISCELLANY.

In the first of this series of articles, it was shown that spectral appearances produced by mental disorder were really formed or daguerreotyped on the eye; but an unsound state of the eye itself may also cause these phantoms. Dr. Abercrombie mentions two cases strikingly illustrative of this fact. In one of these, a gentleman of high mental endowments, and of the age of eighty, enjoying uninterrupted health, and very temperate in his habits, was the person subject to the illusions. For twelve years this gentleman had daily visitations of spectral figures, attired often in foreign dresses, such as Roman, Turkish, and Grecian, and presenting all varieties of the human countenance, in its gradations from childhood to old age. Sometimes faces only were visible, and the countenance of the gentleman himself not unfrequently appeared among them. One old and arch-looking lady was the most constant visitor, and she always wore a tartan plaid of an antique cut. These illusory appearances were rather amusing than other. wise, being for the most part of a pleasing character. The

second case mentioned by Dr. Abercrombie was one even more remarkable than the preceding. "A gentleman of sound mind, in good health, and engaged in active business, has all his life been the sport of spectral illusions, to such an extent that, in meeting a friend on the street, he has first to appeal to the sense of touch before he can determine whether or not the appearance is real. He can call up figures at will by a steady process of mental conception, and the figures may either be something real, or the composition of his own fancy." Another member of the family was subject to the same delusive impressions.

These very curious cases indicate, we think, a defective condition of the retina, which may be held as one distinct and specific source of spectral deceptions. That defective condition seems to consist in an unusual sensitiveness, rendering the organ liable to have figures called up upon it by the stimulus of the fancy, as if impressed by actual external objects. In this way the spectral illusions seem to have been habitually caused in the two cases described. There the defect in the retina was the fundamental or ultimate cause of their existence, and the fancy of the individual the power which regu lated their frequency and character.

Slighter cases of this nature are of comparatively common Occurrence cases in which the retina is for a short time so affected as to give the impression of an apparition. Every one is aware that a peculiarly bright or shining object, if long gazed upon, does not leave the retina as soon as the eye is withdrawn from it. It remains upon the nerve for a considerable time afterwards, at least in outline, as may be observed by closing the eyelids on such occasions. This retentive power, when aided by the imagination, and perhaps by a little bodily derangement with which the senses sympathize, may be carried so far as to produce an actual and forcible spectral illusion. A gentleman, who had gazed long and earnestly on a small and beautiful portrait of the Virgin and Child, was startled,

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immediately on turning his eye from the picture, by seeing a woman and infant, at the other end of his chamber, of the full size of life. A particular circumstance, however, disclosed in a moment the source of the appearance. The picture was a three parts' length, and the apparitional figures also wanted the lower fourth of the body, thus showing that the figures had merely been retained on the tablet of the eye. But the retina may retain an impression much longer than in this case; or rather may recall, after a considerable time, an impression that has been very vividly made at the first. A celebrated oculist in London lately mentioned to us that he had been some time ago waited on by a gentleman who labored under an annoying spectral impression in his eye. He stated that, having looked steadfastly on a copy of the Lord's Prayer, printed in minute characters within a circle the size of a sixpence, he had ever since had the impression of the Lord's Prayer in his eye. On whatever object he turned his organs of vision, there was the small round copy of the Lord's Prayer present, and partly covering it.

It appears, then, from the cases described, that the eye, through defectiveness of its parts, or through the power of the retina in retaining or recalling vivid impressions, may itself be the main agent in producing spectral illusions. From one particular circumstance, we may generally tell at once whether or not the eye is the organ in fault on such occasions. In Dr. Abercrombie's cases, the spectral figures never spoke. This is equivalent to a positive indication that the sense of hearing was not involved in the derangement; in short, that the eye, and not the whole of the senses, or general system, constituted the seat of the defect.