66 6

Speak openly, dearest, or I can no longer believe in your friendship. Do we then shut up our heart from a heart that is ours?'

"Her complaint was a nightmare, of the same character as the Duchess of Devonshire's. It could, however, be ascribed to no use or abuse of magnetism, for she had a mortal dread, an insuperable horror of magnetism. I might say she regarded it with execration, were not the word out of place in reference to a character marked by so much moderation as hers. I can assure you that she was, at all times, of the purest sincerity. Harbour, therefore, no suspicion of the truth of her recital, of which I will endeavour to omit nothing, and to which you may be sure I shall add nothing of my own.

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As soon as her women had left her bed-chamber, and her curtains were closed, she was sensible of a feverish oppression; she rang, but nobody came. She opened her curtains a little to avoid suffocation, and there presented itself the following strange illusion.

"First, she remarked on the hearth a clear coal-fire; she heard the foldingdoors open, which connected her bedroom with the adjoining apartment; and hereupon she heard an obstinate, rasping cough.

"Now came into the room a very tall woman, miserably clad, ragged and filthy; her head was covered with a linen cloth, which yet did not prevent horns being seen on her forehead. These horns were only a finger's length, and like those of a young cow; they were not sharp, and one was somewhat shorter than the other, and appeared as if the end had been forcibly broken off, leaving only a stump. This very repulsive person went directly to the fire, which she began to stir.

"In the room, and chiefly about the bed, was a legion of frightful figures, which, in profound silence, changed themselves into formless things, and presented themselves again under new

shapes, with continually varying form and size.

cold

The hero of this nightly drama was a little monster of a child, which had the whooping cough; it coughed like a diable enrhume-a devil with a (which it was)-and it was at length led into the chamber, with measured steps, with every appearance of great importance, and an infinity of precautions. It was conducted by a sort of medical devil, who in features resembled the Dowager Marquise de Beauharnais, and its retinue consisted of a multitude of demons, who lavished upon it caresses and endearments, befondlings and befawnings, to no end. Among these goblin lackeys were no monstrous figures like those which floated every where in the chamber, and met the eye, wherever it turned, like a living ghostly tapestry; but there were faces so diabolically foolish, so idiotic-parasitic, so abject, toady and lickspittle, that it was a thing to make one desperate. The young sufferer, whom they made sit on a sofa-cushion at the fire-side, was of the size of a child from five to six years old. He wore a habit of blue taffety, he was swollen like a boil, but very pale; his head was of enormous bigness; he had red hair, standing quite straight and stiff up from the roots, and you saw on his forehead buds of horns, which looked like snail-shells.

'Between the friends of this little monster and its physician (who was so like the Marquise de Beauharnais) there took place regularly every evening a noisy discussion, carried on with prodigious animation in an unintelligible language, broken in upon only by the fits of passion and the whooping of the little wretch with his cough. The proceedings became more and more confused and tumultuous, till all was uproar, hubbub, and fantastic chaos, in the course of which Madame de B. was dragged out of her bed. A kind of giant, with a white beard, lifted her up by the hair of the head, and, holding her in a perpendicular direction, impinged her again and again on the floor until her knees bent. Her legs were then laid back, and bent upwards with such violence, that the joints were put out, causing the cruelest pain in both knees; and the legs, doubled up along the back in this fashion, were made fast to her body by means of a small chaine à tourniquet, of which they made her a kind of girdle. They did not omit to set both her hands on her hips, taking care at the same time to keep the arms well out from the body, in order to round them off into the form of handles. The next thing was to stuff into her throat, in a rude and quite inhuman

manner, white onions, roots of marsh... mallows, sticks of licorice, bundles of couch-grass, apples cut in four, and lumps of dried figs. To this were added brown honey and honey of Narbonne, which they brought into her mouth and gullet by means of wooden spatulas, and then came large handfuls of quatrefleurs-whatever that is-which, as she said, choked her worse than all the rest. Her torment was only somewhat lightened when they let an extraordinary quantity of water down her throat by means of a leaden tunnel.

They then took her by her two handles, like a paving-rammer (one would say like a coffee-pot, only that a coffec-pot of her shape and of such a capacity was never seen on earth), and put her on the fire to boil all the night, like a pipkin of tisane. 'No,' said she, with a sigh, and weeping at the recollection of her torments, even while the absurdity of the whole made it impossible for her not to laugh; 'no, never has mortal had to endure a misery like what I suffer night after night. I think I hear myself bellow for anguish and then the tall woman begins and says"Go, you foolish body! you are only too happy to suffer for this sweet angel!" Sometimes we have lectures or dissertations of that unworthy wretch of a physician, that enrage me outright-namely, when he undertakes to demonstrate to all those devils-while they laugh till the tears come in their eyes at the rareness of the joke that I have nothing to suffer but what a water-kettle has to suffer as such, and am no more to be pitied than any other pipkin or pot, on the ground, as he says, that I have in me the requisite quantity of fluid, not to burn. "Oh! if I had not supplied her with the mass of water required by the laws of physic to prevent a complete desiccation-ce serait different that would be quite a different affair! In that case, I grant you, she would have a right to complain; but you are all well aware that vessels filled with liquid receive no damage from being placed on the fire." In short, it is enough to drive one mad, suppose one were really nothing but an earthen pot! and just this hellish pedant, with his science and his self-complacency, is my worst torment, to say nothing of his likeness to my mother-in-law, which amounts to perfect illusion.'

"Is it possible-is it really true,' cried I, that you can have so very odd and tormenting a dream with such surprising regularity?'

"I swear to you,' replied she, all these incredible, absurd particulars, and long talk, with which I have wearied you, about what I seem to myself to feel, to see, and to hear, are true to the

minutest details: the very same dream, the very same sufferings, await me, night after night. You know that I never tell stories, and you see how this kind of life has brought me down. I suffer so horribly from it all, that I am come to the determination not to go to bed any more."

It is a pity that Madame de B. has not told us whether the dream ever went so far as the pouring out of the decoction, and how the little sick devil took his physic. We are informed by a poet, whose name, as far as we are aware, has not reached posterity, that,

"When the devil was sick,

The devil a monk would be:"

but that was, no doubt, a grown-up devil, and it would perhaps be too much to expect to find such very serious impressions in an imp of six years old.

Cazotte at last cured the Comtesse B. of her nightmare, and all that she could say of the means he used was, that he had pronounced certain forms of prayer, at the same time touching her hands. Perhaps he used the particular prayer which, as we know, our fathers had against this visitation, and which was termed the "nightspell." After his death, (he was guillotined in 1792,) his noble patient was visited, if not by the same plague, yet by others not less distressing, in consequence of which she had adopted the custom of sleeping in an armchair this made strangers think her a little mad, but those who knew her better, did her more justice.

That the "spiriting," the infernal farce which visited this afflicted lady every night, was mere play of her own phantasy, is hard to believe. Hallu

cination and monomania are words which seem to say a great deal, but in reality leave the ground of such things unfathomed. That Madame de B., with the first feverish oppression, instead of falling into a healthy natural sleep, came into a condition of ecstacy, a certain half-sleep, (intersomnium,) with opening of the inward eye and that to this the lying in bed was more favourable than the sitting in the arm-chair, a position which lessened the afflux of blood towards the epigastric region-all this we are warranted to assume, and so far acquire a clear view of the matter, in its psychological and physiological aspects.

But let us not be blind to the connexion of the natural with the spiritual.

The domain of evil as of good, the kingdom of darkness, as well as the kingdom of light, is every where close to us, and seizes the opportunity offered it of coming into play. Such opportunity is presented by various abnormal conditions of body. We have already suggested that physical causes, congestions, nervous disturbance, &c., may co-exist and cooperate with causes of a more mysterious nature. In fact, physical and spiritual conditions are not, by any sound philosophy, to be separated, though they are to be distinguished. As conceptions, they must not be confounded; but as agencies, they are never to be looked for or assumed apart.

But men cannot see the wood for the trees. Coleridge did not believe in ghosts: he had seen too many. Your unbeliever on principle will not believe even his own senses. Let a ghost appear to him-he will relate the occurrence to his friends as a "singular case of spectral illusion." Let the ghost speak to him—he will tell you that "the case was the more remarkable, inasmuch as the illusion extended itself to the sense of hearing." Let it sit on him, squelch him, pinch, or pommel him black and blue-strong in unbelief, even this staggers him not: he has his "congestion" to flee to, and his "plastic power of phantasy," all very good as far as it goes, but which does not go far enough. Let him awake out of a nightmare dream, and with eyes open to all around him, see the fiend that vexed his slumbers still hovering near, as if reluctantly retiring from its hellish sport-will this sight convince him that his dream "was not all a dream?" Let Doctor Abercrombie answer :

"The analogy between dreams and spectral illusions, is beautifully illustrated by an anecdote which I received lately from the gentleman to whom it occurred, an eminent medical friend. Having sat up late one evening, under considerable anxiety about one of his children who was ill, he fell asleep in his chair, and had a frightful dream, in which the prominent figure was an immense baboon. He awoke with the fright, got up instantly, and walked to a table which was in the middle of the room. He was then quite awake and

quite conscious of the articles around him; but close by the wall, in the end of the apartment, he distinctly saw the baboon, making the same horrible grimaces which he had seen in his dream, and the spectre continued visible for about half a minute."--Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers.

"The analogy between dreams and spectral illusions !" This is the very heroism of unbelief! What is a ghost to do, to get himself believed in? Once more we say, men cannot see the wood for the trees.

The reader doubtless knows the story of the lady whose lover came to her bed-side at midnight, and made known to her that he had in that hour been waylaid and murdered by a rival. The lady desired some sign which should certify her next morning that what she had seen in the night was no dream, whereupon the apparition laid its fingers upon her wrist. She felt as if branded in the place with a hot iron. The next morning the marks of the fingers appeared as if burnt into her flesh; and this mark she bore to the day of her death, so that she was obliged to wear a black velvet arm-band, to hide the ghostly token from curious eyes.

The

Here also, questionless, as in the case of Madame V., of N., the Provence parliamenteer's wife, and the nun Emmerich, we shall be told of "the plastic force of the dreaming soul," "the magic of phantasy," "the poetic shaping powers," "the miraculous artist within us," &c., &c. cases, evidently enough, are cognate. To the same family belongs the case of a lady, mentioned by Dr. Abercrombie, who, going into a dark room, distinctly saw before her the figure of death as a skeleton, with his arm uplifted, and a dart in his hand. He aimed a blow at her with the dart, which seemed to strike her on the left side. The same night she was seized with fever, accompanied by symptoms of inflammation in the left side; but recovered after a severe illness. To which we may add the case of a gentleman subject to epileptic fits, mentioned by Doctor Gregory, in whom the paroxysms were preceded by the appearance of an old woman in a red cloak, who came up to him, and struck him on the head with her crutch, upon which he presently fell down in the fit.

This old woman in the red cloak has, by the way, been seen by so many different persons, at different times, that we are almost forced to suppose her a real, objectively-subsistent entity. Dr. Dewar, of Stirling, tells us of a blind lady, who never walked out without seeing a little old woman with a red cloak and a crutch, who seemed to walk before her. And an apparition of just such an old woman, in a red cloak and with a crutch, is related with great minuteness in the " Diary of a late Physician." That it is the same old woman in all these cases we can doubt as little as that Dr. Abercrombie's friend's baboon is identical with the Duchess of Devonshire's ape.

But supposing all such cases to find their explanation in physiological and psychological grounds, and to be referable wholly to subjective influences, what are we to say to pins, needles, pieces of glass, &c. conveyed by spirits into people's bodies, out of which they afterwards come by the mouth, or otherwise? Will the "magic of phantasy" go the length of getting up a pinmanufactory in our inside? Is "the artist within us" a needle-maker ? Does the "dreaming soul," perhaps, fabricate such articles of hardware out of the iron contained in the blood? Or do spirits, as Paracelsus thinks, "lay hold into man, without opening the skin, as the lightning acts on the sword without affecting the scabbard, or as a man can take a stone in his hand, and thrusting the same into the water, draw out his hand again, and leave the stone in the water, and yet no one sees the hole that the hand made, nor is there any indication that somewhat has been thrust in ?" For men are, according to this writer, to spirits what water is to men: thus, men are a mean term between spirits and water, and we might say, if this were the place for a sorry jest, that men are the medium through which spirits and water often come together.

Pastor Rutzing, of Kleinau, in Altmark, tells us that the tutor of two young gentlemen, sons of the Count von Reuss, was so beset by an invisible power, when taking a walk with his pupils in the court of the castle of Koestritz, after dinner, that he "could by no means walk straightforward, but was hurried away with irresistible vehemence in a sidelong direction." This occurred more than once, so that he

was obliged to give up accompanying the young counts in their after-dinner walk. This might, perhaps, be accounted for on natural principles; but what are we to make of what followed? One day, as he passed alone through a room of the castle, he was suddenly forced by an invisible power to stand still. There was then driven through his foot by an invisible hand a wooden nail or peg, and that with such force, that he was pinned fast to the floor, and stood there unable to move from the spot, until, at his cries for help, some one came, and, not without some trouble, got him loosed. The poor

man, who was personally known to Pastor Rutzing, continued lame all his life.

Was that imagination? The power of thought might have produced the hole in the man's foot, but where did the wooden peg come from?

After all, is it not a frightfuller thought that our own soul can people its environment with goblins and demons, than that such come near it from a sphere of their own? Were it

not better for me to be able to say, when mopping and mowing fiends, or gibbering phantoms surround me

These subsist apart from me-they have no part in me, nor I in them;" than to be obliged to think-" These are projected aspects of my own spirit, multiplied reflections of my inner self: they are creations of a power within me, over which I have no control;yea, I myself am the abyss out of which they ascend, and which may yet pour them forth, myriads upon myriads, ever ghastlier, ever loathlier ?" Heavens! are we, strictly speaking, nothing more than portals, spiracles of the infernal pit? Have we within us the true "devil's ladder," or wellstaircase, winding down into bottomless gulfs and the "blackness of darkness," by which all shapes of night, all hellish spectres, all monstrous and malignant things, come and go between their world and ours? If we will not be afraid of ghosts, have we to be afraid of ourselves? To this has the march of intellect brought us? To come back with this message to us went the schoolmaster abroad? Then let such march of intellect, say we, end in a Russian retreat; and, as for such a schoolmaster-the reader and we will bar him out.

THIS is a thoughtful, well-considered, and thoroughly earnest book. It probably will do much good, for we know no writer who so fastens on the thoughts of his readers a painful and oppressive sense of the responsibility under which-whether we act or forbear from acting—we find ourselves placed, with respect to those in any relation of dependence of us. The ef

fect of the book in this respect, is one wholly independent of the particular details of improvement, which it suggests, and is not unlikely to bring back to many readers the first feeling with which they have read Clarkson's History of the Slave Trade, or Foster's Essay on Popular Ignorance— works which, where they do not rouse the mind into sleepless exertion, actually dispirit and paralyze it by forcing on us the thought that we ought to be more actively employed in the warfare with the evils of earth than in indolently reading or writing books. It is the great praise of the author of this volume, that where the book is read, he is likely to rouse many fellow-labourers, to assist in the exertions in which he is engaged.

The attention of the employers of labour to the interests of those who are called the lower classes, is certainly far greater at present than it has hitherto been; but the separation between ranks of society is greater than ever. We are truly told, that the tendency of modern society is each day becoming more and more exclusive. The family circle is drawn "within narrower and narrower limits. The great lord has put away his crowd of retainers. The farmer, in most cases, does not live with his labouring men, and the master has less social intercourse with his domestics." other words, the enjoyments of home are better understood, and it is the object of the author of this volume to impress on the higher classes, in these changed circumstances, the duty of

In

providing other comforts, in lieu of those which have been lost, for the humbler classes of society. They, too, should have their enjoyments; they should be so educated as to have the feeling of home-comforts awakened in their mind; they, too, should have their homes.

In every amelioration of the condition of the humble and the poor, our author sees a new development of the principles of Christianity. The humanizing spirit that has already triumphed over a hundred forms of giant oppression, is now, as at all times, making itself felt in many directions. The wisdom from above and from within, is making itself felt around. "Its voice may come out of strange bodies

such as systems of ethics or of politics. Men may call it as they please-it goes on, doing its appointed work, conquering and to conquer.'

There can be no doubt, that public attention to the condition of the labouring part of the population, is now given in a degree before unknown. We speak not of charity, of poor-laws, or any of the means by which the state or benevolent individuals seek to assist

the poor. We speak of direct attention given to the absolute rights of a class of men who have been too long neglected. Society has been roused into exertion on these subjects. Some late movements, for the purpose of providing public baths and places of exercise in the vicinity of great towns, give promise of better times approaching. There have also been several reports of parliamentary commissioners, on subjects connected with the health and well-being of the labouring classes, replete with suggestions for legislation. The object of the little book in our hands is, to distinguish what is properly the subject of legislative interference from that which we can do ourselves, and ought at once to do.

That our house should be felt by