From All The Year Round. UNDEVELOPED IMPRESSIONS. BEYOND the region of positive ideas and emotions, there lies, in the minds of all persons who have any sensitiveness of perception, a strange ghostly tract of unexplored country, full of shadowy suggestions of thoughts and feelings, and lit by the faint spectral light of what may perchance be the Aurora of some higher knowledge now on its way to us. Debased by charlatanism and absurdity as the socalled "spiritualism" of the present day undoubtedly is, some service may be done by hinting to the thoughtless that there may be possible associations which give an apparently supernatural color to the ordinary transactions of life. middle of the night with the whole of it, from the first note to the last," running in our heads.” Persons have been known to remember facts in their sleep which they had tried hard to recover when awake, but had never succeeded in doing. Coleridge composed a poem in his sleep, and Tartani a piece of music, which he conceived was far superior to anything he had written or heard at other times; so that it would appear that the state of somnolency has sometimes a stimulating, as well as a sedative, effect on the mental powers. But this is not so astonishing and beyond explanation as the sudden and gratuitous recollection of events which have long passed out of view, and which are in themselves too unimportant to have made any deep Has the reader never experienced the impression at the time of their occurrence. Is strange tricks which memory occasionally it that every experience in life, even the most plays with him? He is engaged on some- frivolous, leaves an indelible print on the thing which utterly engrosses his mental mental organism, and that, although this powers. Perhaps it is a very serious subject print may seemingly fade out, it is still such as necessarily precludes any levity of there, like writing in invisible ink, and only ideas; perhaps he is working, and thinking awaits some exciting cause to bring it out of nothing but his work; perhaps he is writ- clearly and legibly? But, if so, what is the ing, with a concentration of intellect. Sud- exciting cause, none being cognizable? What denly there bursts into the middle of his mysterious hand touches the spring that thoughts some recollection of an incident those forgotten doors? that happened five-and-twenty or thirty years That every impression remains, seems cerago; a reminiscence of his childhood; a trivial tain, if we can depend on what is recorded circumstance, which was forgotten the day of the experiences of persons on the threshold after it happened, and which has never once of death. Those who have been recovered crossed his mind since. It may be said that from drowning or hanging say that, previous a connecting link exists between the subject to the advent of unconsciousness, they have occupying the mind at the time, and the rec- seen a species of panorama of their whole ollection which suddenly arises out of the previous existence, of which not the smallest long sealed-up vaults and catacombs of the incident, thought, or feeling has been lost; past. But, if so, the link is of such ex- and it is thence inferred that all human bequisite fineness as to defy detection. No ings at the moment of dissolution experience analogy of the most distant or fantastic kind this awful resurrection of the dead past. can be traced between the two sets of ideas. Yet that the phenomenon does not invariably The unbidden recollection starts up with a attend the act of drowning, is manifest from sort of goblin wilfulness and inappropriate the very interesting and detailed account left ness. It is wonderful that you should think us by Dr. Adam Clarke, in his Autobiograof the circumstance at all; still more won-phy, of his narrow escape from death in the derful that you should think of it at that particular moment. Yet there it is; unaccountably obtruding itself into the midst of thoughts to which it bears no relationship, or none which can be traced by mortal wit. Analogous to this is that freak of the brain which probably all of us have experienced, when, after vainly endeavoring for a long while to recollect some tune, we wake in the opens river Ban, when a boy. He states that his feeling was simply one of intense happiness and placidity, combined with "a general impression of a green color, such as of fields or gardens," and that his first and only pain was when he was taken out of the water, and his lungs were once more inflated with atmospheric air. But he may not have reached the point at which the memory is preternaturally excited. It is not difficult to believe that the last action of the brain ner playground; that every individual object may be a supreme resumption of its own im- there present used to start up before me with pressions. The concentration of a whole life all the distinctness of actual vision, and to in a single moment or two is indeed marvel- an extent of detail which no effort of memory lous; but the sense of time seems to have could accomplish without this assistance; and very little to do with the actual duration of that nothing but the visible objects of the scene time. The idea of eternity, or of the lapse presented themselves on these occasions." of infinite ages is often experienced in the As the flavor died away, the vision would course of a dream which can only have lasted fade from the mental sight, but would be ina very short period. This is especially the stantly renewed by tasting the herb once case with opium-eaters; but it will occur more. It is easy to refer the explanation of even to those who never indulge in that per- such facts to mere association of ideas. ilous narcotic. Moslem writers affirm that the miraculous journey of Mahomet from Mecca to Jerusalem, and thence through the whole of the seven heavens, was performed in so infinitesimal a fraction of time that the prophet, on awaking from his trance, was able to arrest the fall of a water-jar which the angel Gabriel had knocked over with his wing in the act of their departure. Another Oriental legend tells of an infidel caliph, who, doubting the truth of this relation, was directed by a certain conjurer to plunge his head in a bucket of water, and withdraw it with the greatest speed possible. He did so, and in that momentary interval had a dream or vision of a long life abounding in vicissitudes and extraordinary inci- suggestive. We have known an instance of dents. These, of course, are fables; but they are based upon psychological mysteries such as are known to exist. An unhealthy or depressed bodily condition has doubtless much to do with mystical impressions. To the man who goes to bed early and rises early, the time of sunrise is invigorating and inspiriting; but to him who has been up all night, especially when pursuing intellectual work, the return of light is often peculiarly mournful, oppressive, and spectral. It is the true ghost season far more than midnight; and especially so in the hushed and empty thoroughfares of a great city, with its vast circles of suspended life. The empty street, stretching before you in dim perspective, is a phantom land at such moments; the familiar holds strange intercourse with the unfamiliar, and is weirdly a man who, returning home early one summer morning from a night of mental labor, was oppressed by an intense and preternatural sense of a hundred years in advance; that is to say, by some singular, unbidden trick of the mind, he seemed to contemplate the existing time-himself and all-as something that had passed for a century. Fatigue was the cause of this; but the fancy opens a strange glimpse into the vague and shadowy regions of morbid experience. Hardly less wonderful is the connection between particular odors and specific recollections or trains of ideas. Thousands have felt this, and it is one of the most beautiful instances of what may be called the magic of memory. Hazlitt used to refer to a remark made by Mr. Fearn, a metaphysical writer of his time, to the effect that certain associations of ideas always brought back to him, The most astounding and solemn feeling with the vividness of an actual impression on of this nature is the impression, amounting the sensorium, the smell of a baker's shop in at the moment to conviction, that we have Bassora. This is just the reverse of the or- lived before in some remote age, and that all dinary experience; but we can readily un- the circumstances and accessories now surderstand it. The late Mr. P. G. Patmore, rounding us, even to the most minute and inwho records this circumstance in his work enti- significant, surrounded us at that former tled "My Friends and Acquaintance," avers period. Lord Lindsay, in his Letters from that, in his own case, tastes were even more the East, describes this feeling with a literal powerful than smells in producing similar ef- exactness which will be at once recognized fects. "I could never taste green mustard by all who have ever undergone it. He says: and cress," he writes, "without its calling "We saw the river Kadisha, like a silver up to my mind, as if by magic, the whole thread, descending from Lebanon. The whole scene of my first school-days, when I used to scene bore that strange and shadowy resem 66 grow it in my little bit of garden in the in-blance to the wondrous landscape delineated sophical among the ancient Greeks held the same view. Pythagoras professed to have a distinct recollection of his former lives; and Plato said that the knowledge which we seem to acquire for the first time is only the recol in Kubla Khan that one so often feels in ac-ity;" and the opinion is one which runs tual life, when the whole scene around you through the whole philosophy and religion appears to be reacting after a long interval; of the world, especially of the Eastern races. your friend seated in the same juxtaposition, The Brahmins and Buddhists teach that the the subjects of conversation the same, and soul has already passed through many preshifting with the same 'dream-like ease 'vious conditions, and will pass through many that you remember at some remote and in- more ere it attains the blissful state of abdefinite period of pre-existence. You always solute repose and personal non-existence reknow what will come next, and sit spell-sulting from its re-absorption into the Deity, bound, as it were, in a sort of calm expec- from whom it emanated. The more philotancy." It would have been more correct to say that we seem to know what will come next, for it is certainly doubtful whether we really know it. But the effect on the mind is that of an absolute foreknowledge, so that when anything is said, it appears to be pre-lection of what the soul knew before its subcisely what was anticipated. The feeling is, mersion in matter, and its assumption of the in truth, as Lord Lindsay admirably expresses human form. Some of the Hellenic philosoit, one of “calm expectancy," and, apart phers contended that the endless repetition from the sense of strangeness, is rather sooth- of the same mode of existence, though at vast ing and agreeable than unpleasant. This, intervals of time, is an absolute necessity, however, is supposing that it be not pro- because, there being only a certain number longed. When it continues to haunt the of things in the universe, there can only be a mind, it becomes horribly oppressive, and is certain number of combinations, and, when a clear sign that cerebral disorder has set in. those are exhausted, the same course must Sir Walter Scott was thus troubled towards begin over again. After this theory, the apthe latter end of his life, when he was over-parent recollection of what is passing around worked and harassed by difficulties. He us may be no delusion, but a genuine, though states in his diary for February, 1828, that abnormal, exercise of the memory. he was afflicted one day at dinner-time by a sense of pre-existence so strong as to resemble a mirage or a calenture; and he adds: "There was a vile sense of want of reality in all I did and said." The mind was evidently overtasked, and, had it been less strong, might have broken down altogether. Tennyson, in one of his earlier volumes, has a sonnet, in which he describes this singular mental condition with the finely or ganized apprehension of a poet A wonderful instance of apparent recollection of a previous life is related of himself by William Hone, the author of the Everyday Book. He says that one day he had to make a call in a part of London which was quite unknown to him. He was shown into a room to wait, and, on looking round, remarked, to his astonishment, that every object appeared familiar. It then occurred to him that there was a very peculiar knot in the shutter; and he determined to test the reality of the im "As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood, pression by examining into the fact. He And ebb into a former life, or seem To lapse far back in a confuséd dream If one but speaks, or hems, or stirs his chair, therefore turned back the shutter, and found the knot. Previously to this, he had been a materialist; but the incident impressed him with the belief that there must be something" beyond matter, and he finally became a member of a religious sect. The reduplication of this world is another strange speculation that has from time to time appeared on the intellectual horizon. Pythagoras and various ancient writers affirmed that there was a globe resembling our earth, and called Antichthon, which was conWordsworth refers to the belief in pre-ex- stantly moving round the sun, though always istence in his magnificent " Ode on Immortal- | invisible to us, because invariably on the op 66 it is -as thou art thinking of him." The writer gives us no reason for believing this wild and spectral dream: we are simply to take it on faith. It is certainly a bewildering idea. posite side of the solar orb to ourselves. A | a living reality. At the very moment that few years ago, we came across a singular book thou art reading this volume, thy namesake professing to give an account of the Neo- too is reading these very words in the same Christian religion, which is shortly to sup-book, published there by another mysterious plant the older form; and we there discov- Man like me, even by my very Self, existing ered this old tradition of Antichthon repro- there under the same form. Thy living porduced on a larger and still more amazing trait there is now thinking of thee with the scale. The anonymous writer says that the same stupid levity, or with the same awful whole solar system is repeated at a distance impression in the same manner, whatever from us in space so enormous that, "to express it with ordinary arithmetical figures, the writing would occupy a line twenty miles long." He goes on to say, that "the earth of that distant system has a surface divided, as ours is, into five parts, called Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania. There is also a Rome, a London, a Paris, a New York, a Pekin; all the cities, towns, and villages, inhabited by us here below. The very houses are made after the same architectural pattern, and of the same size as ours: so are the animals, the trees, the stones. In that remote world there is a man of my name, of my age, with my moral and intellectual character, with my own physical features. The other men there resemble also on all points my fel-ready appeared on the stage of the world as low-men here below. There is, indeed, some exceedingly small difference between them and us, which the All-seeing Deity can perceive; but they resemble us more perfectly than the reflected image in the looking-glass resembles our face. And, although our reflected image is a vain appearance, they are The same author adopts the old opinion that the soul of man is embodied several times in different individualities. Thus, Napoleon the Third has been Lycurgus, Aristotle, St. Paul, Odin, Haroun-al-Raschid, Roger Bacon, Mahomet (the Turkish Sultan who took Constantinople), Descartes, William the Third of England, Robespierre, etc. — altogether a very illustrious line. Our own queen was formerly Andromache, Hector's wife. And the conductor of this journal has al Nahum, Seleucus Nicator, Catullus, Theodorus Duca, Boleslaus, Edward the Third of are the fancies of a single mind, and cannot England, and Rembrandt. These, however, claim the serious investigation due to impressions, however vague, which are common to a considerable proportion of the human race. The Life of William Chillingworth, Author |ligion," and founder, along with others, of the of "The Religion of Protestants," etc. By P. Latitudinarian School in the English Church, Des Maizeaux. Edited, with Notes and Illustra- used to act as a kind of informer to his godfather tions, by the late James Nichols, Editor of "Ful- Laud, telling him what went on in the Univerler's Church History," etc. (Tegg. Pp. 364.) sity, and getting his fellow-collegians into scrapes. -This is a republication of the Life of Chil- It is the part of real biography to investigate lingworth originally published by Des Maiz- such stories and such seeming inconsistencies and eaux in 1725, but with additional notes. The wrinkles of character; but in Des Maizeaux Life is by no means such a Life of Chillingworth there is nothing of this-nothing but introductory as there might be-giving very little of the cx- eulogy of Chilingworth's strong intellect and ternal facts and circumstances of Chillingworth's noble character; and then a skeleton of his life, life, but very large accounts of his opinions, etc., with masses of appended extracts about him and with extracts from his writings, and from the from him, jumbled in such a way as to make writings of other controversialists. Still, in its rather confused reading to those who are not kind, it is full and painstaking, and may be use- already Chillingworth-bitten. Yet Chillingworth ful. Neither Des Maizeaux nor his editor seems was a truly remarkable man, a clear account of to have been aware of certain rather ugly anec-whom might be most readable and valuable in dotes respecting Chillingworth at that time of the present state of English theological and his life when he was living at Oxford, after his ecclesiastical opinion. The early history of " Tolreturn from his abberration into the Roman eration" in this country-nay, the very exposiCatholic Church - anecdotes which, if true, tion of Toleration-might be associated with his would make out that this "great reasoner in re-biography.-Reader. From The Spectator. MR. GOLDWIN SMITH ON JEWISH SLAVERY.* question, of which they were only too glad to become the spokesmen. And we fear it is impossible to deny that they were in the main upper and mid on THIS volume asks one of the most pertinent right in their view. The country has changed, say, the questions which has been put to the British or rather, we should public in these last few years. We are hear-dle classes have changed their faith as to ing strange things about the great volume, slavery; and Mr. Carlyle's doctrines " which has been the strong meat of this Brit- the nigger question are at once those of ish nation for these last three hundred such dissimilar journals as the Times, the Saturday Review, and the Daily Telegraph. years, then in the strength of which our fathers, generation after generation of them, with much It was high time that every man who held faithful and honest toil laboring to this end, the old English faith strongly, and could get have achieved for us the place we hold in the a fair chance of a hearing, should speak out. world. A time has come when the attention Many have done so; none, we must say, more of learned and serious men is—as we hold, by ably or more righteously than Mr. Goldwin the direct leading of the Spirit of Truth-Smith in the little book now before us. He irresistibly drawn to the question of inspira- meets the question fairly in the face at the tion, and to the critical consideration of the outset. If it be so, he says, if slavery is only component parts of the sacred volume. Who wrong as luxury is wrong, if the Bible is on that really loves his Bible, and knows what all fours with the Fugitive Slave Law, is in it (a curiously rare accomplishment, by "the law of England which takes away the the way, this latter) will not heartily rejoice slave from his master directly his feet touch that it should be so? But behind these seri- English soil is a robber's law. The great ous inquirers come a motley crowd of all kinds, Act of Emancipation, of which we speak so some of them professing (like the Bishop of proudly, was a robber's act." But is it so? Manchester) the deepest reverence for the let- This is the question to which Mr. Goldwin ter, others professing reverence for neither Smith addresses himself. His argument, letter nor spirit, for no person or thing in shortly stated, is, that the true spiritual life this or any other world, but all alike, whether of the world commenced in the Hebrew race, as champions or enemies, doing what in them "under an earthly mould of national life similies to discredit the Bible, and to make it say lar, in all respects, political, social and literThe Jewish what it does not say, and responsible for that ary, to those of other nations. which it repudiates. From such as these we nation, in short, was a nation, not a miracle." do hear, as above stated, from time to time, God's method of education is gradual. strange things, but surely never stranger than code of laws provided by him for the Jews from the writer in the Times, who, while ad"takes the rude institutions of a primitive vocating the cause of the Southern States, people including slavery, as they stand, not boldly claimed St. Paul as a supporter of the changing society by a miracle. But while it Fugitive Slave Law, and maintained that the takes these institutions as they stand, it does Bible enjoins the slave at the present day to not perpetuate, but reforms them, and lays return to his master, and that slavery is only on them restrictions tending to their gradual wrong as luxury is wrong. abolition-much less does it introduce any barbarous institution or custom for the first time." This position Mr. Smith proceeds to illustrate by other instances leaving slavery on one side for the present. He shows that amongst all primitive nations we find such customs as the avenger of blood, the right of asylum, polygamy, the exercise of a power of life and death by parents over children; and in each of these, and other instances, he points out how the Mosaic code softens and raises the customs, in use amongst the group of Oriental nations to which the Jews belonged. Even in the short space which he is able to Now the Times is wise in its generation. True, it is the great representative journal of the money-power, and, therefore, so far as it has any calculable hias on any subject, has one against the laboring class all over the world. But, for all that, the conductors of the Times would never have come out in this decided and somewhat startling line, if they had not thought that they perceived in this country a change of feeling upon the slavery *Does the Bible Sanction American Slavery? By Goldwin Smith. Oxford and London: J. H. and Jas. Parker. 1863. The |