Page images
PDF
EPUB

That form, which ladies once could praise,
Would now inspire them with a panic;
Get Byron's belt, or Worcester's stays,
Or else you'll soon be Aldermanic.

At sight of that dismantled top,

My very heart, I must confess, aches: Once famous as a Brutus crop,

You now are balder than Lord Essex.

Since Wayte's decease your teeth decline:Finding no beautifier near 'em,

Time's tooth has mumbled two of thine; Well may they call him-" edax rerum.”

Behold! your cheeks are quite bereft

Of their two laughter-nursing dimples, And pretty substitutes they've left(Between ourselves) a brace of pimples !

The fashions which you used to lead,
So careless are you, or so thrifty,
You most neglect when most you need,
A sad mistake when nearing Fifty.—

Stop, stop, cries Body-let us pause
Before you reckon more offences,
Since you yourself may be the cause
Of all these dismal consequences.

The sword, you know, wears out the sheath;
By steam are brazen vessels scatter'd ;
And when volcanoes rage beneath,

The surface must be torn and shatter'd.

Have not your passions, hopes, and fears,
Their tegument of clay outwearing,
Done infinitely more than years,

To cause the ravage you're declaring ?

If you yourself no symptoms show

Of age,-no wrinkles of the spirit:
If still for friends your heart can glow,
Your purse be shared with starving merit :

If yet to sordid sins unknown,

No avarice in your breast has started:
If you have not suspicious grown,

Sour, garrulous, or narrow-hearted:

You still are young, and o'er my face

(Howe'er its features may be shaded)
Shall throw the sunshine of your grace,
And keep the moral part unfaded.
Expression is the face's soul,

The head and heart's joint emanation;
Insensible to Time's controul,

Free from the body's devastation.

If you're still twenty, I'm no more :-
Counting by years, how folks have blunder'd!
Voltaire was young at eighty-four,

And Fontenelle at near a hundred !

ACCOUNT OF AN APPARITION,

Seen at Star-Cross, in Devonshire, the 23d of July, 1823.

""Tis true, 'tis certain, man, though dead, retains
Part of himself; th' immortal mind remains:
The form subsists without the body's aid,
Aërial semblance and an empty shade."

POPE.

I AM perfectly aware of the predicament in which I am placing myself, when, in the present age of in

credulity, I venture to commit to paper, in all sincerity of spirit and fulness of conviction, a deliberate and circumstantial account of an Apparition. Impostor and visionary, knave and fool-these are the alternate horns of the dilemma on which I shall be tossed with sneers of contempt, or smiles of derision; every delusion practised by fraud or credulity, from the Cocklane Ghost down to the Reverend Mr. Colton and the Sampford Spectre, will be faithfully registered against me, and I shall be finally dismissed, according to the temperament of the reader, either with a petulant rebuke for attempting to impose such exploded superstition upon an enlightened public, or with a sober and friendly recommendation to get my head shaved, and betake myself to some place of safe custody with as little delay as may be. In the arrogance of my supposed wisdom, I should myself, only a few weeks ago, have probably adopted one of these courses towards any other similar delinquent, which will secure me from any splenetic feeling, however boisterous may be the mirth, or bitter the irony, with which I may be twitted and taunted for the following narration. I have no sinister purposes to answer, no particular creed to advocate, no theory to establish; and writing with the perfect conviction of truth, and the full possession of my faculties, I am determined not to suppress what I conscientiously believe to be facts, merely because they may militate against received opinions, or happen to be inconsistent with the ordinary course of human experience.

The author of the Essay on the Nature and Immu

tability of Truth, represents Berkeley as teaching us, "that external objects are nothing but ideas in our minds; that matter exists not but in our minds; and that, independent of us and our faculties, the earth, the sun, and the starry heavens, have no existence at all; that a lighted candle is not white, nor luminous, nor round, nor divisible, nor extended; but that, for any thing we know, or can ever know to the contrary, it may be an Egyptian pyramid, the King of Prussia, a mad dog, the island of Madagascar, Saturn's ring, one of the Pleiades, or nothing at all." If this be a faithful representation of Berkeley's theory, it may be adduced as a striking illustration of the perversity of human reason, that such a man should be deemed a philosopher, and persuade bishops and divines, in spite of the evidence of their senses, to adopt his notions and deny the existence of matter; while the poor wight who, in conformity to the evidence of his senses, maintains the existence of disembodied spirit, is hooted and run down as a driveller and a dotard. Dr. Johnson's argument, that the universal belief in ghosts, in all ages and among all nations, confirms the fact of their apparition, is futile and inconclusive; for the same reasoning would establish the truth of necromancy, witchcraft, idolatry, and other superstitions : but the opposers of this belief not only brand as impostors all those who relate their own experiences of its confirmation; they not only repudiate the Agatho-dæmon of Socrates, and slight the averment of Scripture, that Saul desired the Witch of Endor to raise up the spirits of those whom he should name;

but they deny even the possibility of the fact. To admit a posthumous existence in the next world, and reject the competency of nature to accomplish a similar mystery in this, is surely an unwarranted limitation of her powers. Who shall circumscribe the metamorphoses of our being? When we start from the antenatal void into existence, the change is certainly wonderful; but it is still more strange, startling, and incomprehensible, when we quit life in the fulness of intellect, and return into the invisible world. In the first case, we advance from nonentity to a very confined state of consciousness, to an animal existence, for an infant has no mind. That celestial portion of our system is evolved by the painful elaboration of time and of our own efforts; it requires a series of years to perfect its inscrutable developement; and is this sublime image and emanation of the Deity to be suddenly, instantly degraded into a clod of earth, an inert lump of matter, without undergoing any intermediate state of existence between death and final resurrection? Abstract theory sanctions the supposition of ghosts; and by what authority do we gainsay those who solemnly declare that they have beheld them? They never appear, it is urged, to more than one person at a time, which is a strong presumption of individual falsehood or delusion. How so?-this be the law of their manifestation. If I If I press the corners of my eyes, I see consecutive circles of light, like a rainbow; nobody else can discern them—but will it be therefore maintained that I do not? It is notorious, that in dreams objects are presented to us

may

« PreviousContinue »