Dear Archy,—In acknowledging my former letter, you express an eager desire to learn, as you phrase it, "all about vampyrs, if there ever were such things." I will not delay satisfying your curiosity, wondering only how my friend, your late tutor, Mr H., should have left you in a state of uncertainty upon a point on which, in my time, schoolboys many years your juniors had fully made up their minds.

"Were there ever such things as vampyrs?" tantamne rem tam negligenter? I turn to the learned pages of Horst for a luminous and precise definition of the destructive and mysterious beings, whose existence you have ventured to consider problematical.

"A vampyr is a dead body, which continues to live in the grave, which it leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the living, whereby it is nourished, and preserved in good condition, instead of becoming decomposed like other dead bodies."

Upon my word, you really deserve—Since Mr George Combe has clearly shown in his admirable work "On the Constitution of Man, and its adaptation to the world around him," that ignorance is a statutable crime before Nature, and punishable, and punished by the laws of Providence,—you deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr H. your substitute, which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of the nocturnal visit of a vampyr. Your scepticism will abate pretty considerably, when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye—when you are conscious, as you lie motionless with terror, of his nearer and nearer approach,—when you feel his face, fresh with the smell of the grave, bent over your throat, while his keen teeth make a fine incision in your jugular, preparatively to his commencing his plain, but nutritive repast.

You would look a little paler the next morning, but that would be all for the moment; for Fischer informs us, that the bite of a vampyr leaves in general no mark upon the person. But he fearfully adds, "it (the bite) is nevertheless speedily fatal, unless the bitten person protect himself by eating some of the earth from the grave of the vampyr, and smearing himself with his blood." Unfortunately, indeed, these measures are only of temporary use. Fischer adds, "if through these precautions the life of the victim be prolonged for a period, sooner or later he ends with becoming a vampyr himself; that is to say, he dies, and is buried, but continues to lead a vampyr life in the grave, nourishing himself by infecting others, and promiscuously propagating vampyrism."

Now this is no romancer's dream. It is a succinct account of a superstition, which to this day survives in the east of Europe, where little more than a century ago it was frightfully prevalent. At that epoch, vampyrism spread like, an epidemic pestilence through Servia and Wallachia, causing innumerable deaths, and disturbing all the land with apprehension of the mysterious visitation, against which no one felt his life secure.

This is something like a good solid practical popular delusion. Do I believe it?—to be sure I do; the facts are matter of history. The people died like sheep, and the cause and method of their dying was, in their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died, frightened out of their lives; as men have died, whose pardon has been proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject would be worth examining; but there is more in it than that, as the following o'er true tale will convince you, the essential parts of which are attested by perfect documentary evidence.

It was in the spring of 1727 that there returned from the Levant to the village of Meduegna, near Belgrade, one Arnod Paole, who, in a few years of military service and varied adventure, had amassed enough to purchase him a cottage, and an acre or two of land in his native place, where he gave out he meant to pass the remainder of his days. He kept his word. Arnod had yet scarcely reached the prime of manhood; and though he must have encountered the rough, as well as the smooth of life, and have mingled with many a wild and reckless companion, yet his natural good disposition, and honest principle, had preserved him unscathed amid the scenes he had passed through. At all events, such were the thoughts expressed by his neighbours, as they discussed his return and settlement among them in the stube of the village Hof. Nor did the frank and open countenance of Arnod, his obliging habits, and steady conduct, argue their judgment incorrect. Nevertheless, there was something occasionally, noticeable in his ways, a look and tone that betrayed inward inquietude. Often would he refuse to join his friends, or on some sudden plea abruptly quit their society. And he still more unaccountably, and as it seemed systematically, avoided meeting his pretty neighbour, Nina, whose father occupied the next tenement to his own. At the age of seventeen, Nina was as charming a picture as you could have seen, of youth, cheerfulness, innocence, and confidence in all the world. You could not look into her limpid eyes, which steadily returned your gaze, without seeing to the bottom of the pure and transparent spring of her thoughts. Then why did Arnod shrink from meeting her? He was young, had a little property, had health and industry, and he had told his friends he had formed no ties in other lands. Why, then, did he avoid the fascination of the pretty Nina, who seemed a being made to chase from any brow the clouds of gathering care? But he did so. Yet less and less resolutely; for he felt the charm of her presence; who could have done otherwise? and how could he at last resist—he didn't—the impulse of his fondness for the innocent girl who often sought to cheer his fits of depression?

And they were to be united; were betrothed; yet still an anxious gloom would fitfully overcast his countenance even in the sunshine of those hours.

"What is it, dear Arnod, that makes you sad? it cannot be on my account, I know; for you were sad before you ever noticed me; and that I think," and you should have seen the deepening rose upon her cheek, as she added, "surely first made me notice you."

"Nina," he answered, "I have done, I fear, a great wrong in trying to gain your affections. Nina, I have a fixed impression that I shall not live; yet, knowing this, I have selfishly made my existence necessary to your happiness."

"How strangely you talk, dear Arnod! Who in the village is stronger and healthier than you? You feared no danger when you were a soldier; what danger do you fear as a villager of Meduegna?"

"It haunts me, Nina."

"But, Arnod, you were sad before you thought of loving me. Did you then fear to die?"

"Ah, Nina, it is something worse than death:" and his vigorous frame shook with agony.

"Arnod, I conjure you, tell me."

"It was in Cossova this fate befel me. Here we have hitherto escaped the terrible scourge. But there they died, and the dead visited the living. I experienced a first frightful visitation, and I fled, but not till I had sought his grave, and exacted the dread expiation from the vampyr."

Nina uttered a piercing cry, and fell senseless. Afterwards, they found a consolation in the length of time, now months, that had elapsed, since Arnod had left Cossova, during which no fearful visitant had again approached him; and they fondly began to hope that gave them security. For the poor girl well knew from many a village tale the danger to which Arnod had been exposed.

It is a strange world. The ills we fear often never befall us: the blows that reach us are for the most part unforeseen ones. One day, about a week after this conversation, Arnod missed his footing and fell from the top of his loaded hay-wagon. He was picked up stunned and insensible. They carried him home; where, after lingering some hours, he died; was buried; but not forgotten.

Twenty or thirty days after his decease, says the perfectly authenticated report of these transactions, several in the neighbourhood made complaints that they had been haunted by the deceased Arnod; and four of the number (among whom, there being nothing in the report to the contrary, I am afraid we may include poor Nina) died. To put a term to this fearful evil, the villagers were advised by their Heyduke, who had had before some experience in such matters, to disinter the body of Arnod Paole. This step was accordingly taken forty days after his burial.

"The body," says the report, "was found in a perfectly fresh state, with no sign of decomposition. Fresh blood had recently escaped from its mouth, with which its shirt was wet. The skin (the epidermis, no doubt) had separated together with the nails, and there were new skin and nails underneath. As it was perfectly clear from these signs that he was a vampyr, conformably to the use established in such cases, they drove a stake through his heart.

"Whereupon he gave an audible groan, and a quantity of blood flowed from him. The same day his body was burned to ashes, which were returned to the grave."

The authorities further staked and burned the bodies of the four others, who were supposed to have been infected by Arnod: but no mention is made of the condition in which they were found.

The adoption of this decisive, measure did not, however, entirely extinguish the evil, which continued still to hang about the village. About five years afterwards it had again become rife and very prevalent, and many again died of it. Whereupon the authorities determined to make a general clearance of the vampyrs in the churchyard of Meduegna, and for that purpose they had all the graves to which suspicion was directed, opened, and their contents dealt with conformably to the state in which they were found, of which the following is the medical report, here and there abridged only:—

1. A woman of the name of Stana, 20 years of age, who had died 3 months before of a 3 days' illness following her confinement. She had before her death avowed that she had anointed herself with the blood of a vampyr, to liberate herself from his persecution. Nevertheless she, as well as her infant, whose body through careless interment had been half-eaten by dogs, both had died. Her body was entirely free from decomposition. On opening it, the chest was found full of recently effused blood. The heart and blood-vessels contained no coagulated blood, and the bowels had exactly the appearances of sound health. The skin and nails of the hands and feet were loose and came off, but underneath lay new skin and nails.

2. A woman of the name of Miliza, who had died at the end of a 3 months' illness. The body had been buried 90 and odd days. In the chest was liquid blood. The viscera were as in the former instance. The body was declared by the Heydukes who recognised it, to be in better condition and fatter than it had been in the woman's legitimate lifetime.

3. The body of a child of 8 years old, that had likewise been buried 90 days; it was in the vampyr condition.

4. The son of a Heyduke, named Milloc 16 years old. The body had lain in the grave 9 weeks. He had died after 3 days' indisposition, and was in the condition of a vampyr.

5. Joachim, likewise a Heyduke's son, 17 years old. He had died after a 3 days' illness; had been buried 8 weeks and 4 days; was found in the vampyr state.

6. A woman of the name of Rusha, who had died of an illness of 10 days' duration, and had been buried 6 weeks, in whom likewise fresh blood was found in the chest.

[The reader will understand, that to see blood in the chest it is first necessary to cut the chest open.]

7. The body of a girl of 10 years of age, who had died 2 months before. It was likewise in the vampyr state, perfectly undecomposed, with blood in the chest.

8. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried 7 weeks before; and that of her infant, 8 weeks old, buried only 21 days. They were both in a state of decomposition, though buried in the same ground, and closely adjoining the others.

9. A servant of the Heyduke of the place, by name Rhade, 23 years old; he had died after an illness of 3 months' duration, and the body had been buried 5 weeks. It was in a state of decomposition.

10. The body of the Heyduke Stanco, 60 years of age, who had died six weeks before: there was much blood and other fluid in the chest and abdomen, and the body was in the vampyr condition.

11. Milloc, a Heyduke, 25 years old. The body had been in the earth 6 weeks. It was in the perfect vampyr condition.

12. Stanjoika, the wife of a Heyduke, 20 years old; had died after an illness of three days, and had been buried 18 days. The countenance was florid, and of a high colour. There was blood in the chest and in the heart. The viscera were perfectly sound. The skin remarkably fresh.

The document which gives these particulars is signed by three regimental surgeons, and formally countersigned by the lieutenant-colonel and a sub-lieutenant, it bears the date of June 7, 1732, Meduegna near Belgrade. No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, nor of its general fidelity; the less so, that it does not stand alone, but is supported by heaps of parallel evidence, only less rigorously verifiable. It appears to me to establish beyond a question, that, where the fear and belief of vampyrism is prevailing, and there occur several deaths after short illnesses, the bodies, when disinterred, weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses, from which life has only recently departed.

What inference shall we draw from this fact?—that vampyrism is true in the popular sense, and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned corpses had some mysterious way of preternaturally nourishing themselves? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let us content ourselves for the present with a notion less monstrous, but still startling enough: That the bodies, which were found in the so-called vampyr state, instead of being in a new and mystical condition, were simply alive in the common way; that, in short, they were the bodies of persons who had been buried alive; and whose life was only extinguished by the ignorance and barbarity of those who disinterred them. In the following sketch of a similar scene to that above described, the truth of this inference comes out with terrific force and vividness.

Erasmus Francisi, in his remarks upon the description of the Archdukedom of Krain, by Valvasor, speaks of a man of the name of Grando, in the district of Kring, who died, was buried, and became a vampyr, and as such was exhumed for the purpose of having a stake thrust through him.

"When they opened his grave, after he had been long buried, his face was found with a colour, and his features made natural sorts of movements, as if the dead man smiled. He even opened his mouth, as if he would inhale fresh air. They held the crucifix before him, and called in a loud voice, 'See, this is Jesus Christ who redeemed your soul from hell, and died for you.' After the sound had acted on his organs of hearing, and he had connected, perhaps, some ideas with it, tears began to flow from the dead man's eyes. Finally, when, after a short prayer for his poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his head, the corpse uttered a screech, and turned and rolled just as if it had been alive, and the grave was full of blood."

Alive, then, the bodies surely were. And it is from this position, as a starting point, that we must follow and unravel the whole mystery, if we dare.

Not that there is any particular virulence in this superstition, but that all superstitions are awkward things to deal with. They have their own laws, and run through definite stages, but always menace those who meddle with them. A superstition waxes and flourishes—that is its first stage; it then wanes in public opinion, is discredited, and is declared obsolete; that is stage the second. Eventually comes more enlightenment; its wonders are again admitted, but explained; the false in it separated from the true; this is its third and last period. And it may be remarked, that society is never safe against the reproduction of a superstition, till it has gone through this third stage (analogous to the disinterment and dissection of a vampyr); till then, it is always capable of "walking" again. But, which is singular, to the end the operation of explaining a superstition is unsafe, that is to say, if you step a quarter of an inch before the sagacious nose of the public. Of course, if any one should attempt to explain away a flourishing superstition, he would encounter, not martyrdom, perhaps, any more, but the persecution of opinion certainly, and the ban of society. But if he ventures upon the same process, even with one that is already put down, he is liable to be viewed and attacked as a credulous person, disposed to revive forgotten rubbish; for he has unwittingly affronted public opinion by asserting that to be worth examining, which society had proclaimed an error. Doubly wo to him if his explanation contain some startling novelty! But, courage! again,—

The bodies disinterred and found in the so-called vampyr state, were then alive.

But how could they, you ask, be alive after an interment of days or weeks? How is it possible they could lie without air, boxed up in a manner which would certainly kill a strong and healthy person in a few minutes or hours, and yet retain their vitality? I will not bring forward as favourable cases in point, the instances of frogs and toads that have been discovered in rocks, where they must have been encased for years or centuries, alive: first, because, although they are true, you might equally question these; secondly, because a human being cannot compete in vitality with a cold-blooded reptile. I shall content myself with falling back upon the evidence already adduced. The disinterred bodies proved, by their appearance, some even by their behaviour, that they were alive; and I shall retort upon you the question, how came you not to know that bodies could live under such circumstances a considerable length of time, and that many cases have transpired in which, totally apart from vampyrism, bodies have been found turned over in the coffin, through efforts made by them, when, after their burial, they had unhappily recovered consciousness?

But what, then, was the pathological condition in which these persons continued to exist, after they had ceased to appear alive?

It is just one of the profitable results of examining the superstition before us, that the above question becomes explicitly propounded, and its solution demanded of physiologists. Its solution cannot fail of being full of interest, but it is yet, unluckily, a desideratum, or, like the principle which gives motion to the divining rod, as yet only indicated and partially outlined.

What is wanted is direct scientific examination, and verification by competent persons, of all the phenomena the body presents in these strange circumstances. In the absence, however, of recorded observation, let us imagine how the thing might come about.

The series of effects surmised would not begin in the heart; analogy leads us to suppose that primary interruption of the heart's action for a very brief period is fatal. Somewhere in the Indian seas, death is inflicted by a backward blow with the elbow on the region of the heart; a sudden angina is produced, which is promptly fatal. Neither, upon similar showing, can it commence in obstructed breathing. Then the commencement of the changes must be sought in the brain. Now it is analogically by no means very improbable, that the functions of the nervous system admit of being brought to a complete stand-still, the wheels of the machinery locking, as it were, of a sudden, through some influence directly exerted upon it, and that this state of interrupted function should continue for a very considerable period, without loss of power of recovery. Nor would it be contrary to analogy that such an arrest of activity in the nervous system should stop, more or less completely, the act of breathing and the action of the heart, without at the same time the consequences following which result from either of these changes, when they are primary. The heart, when not acting by order, need not be supposed to lose its contractile force and tendency. The blood, though not moving, being in contact with living vessels, need not coagulate. There is no physiological absurdity in supposing such a general arrest of function, originating in the nervous system, and continuing an indefinite period without life being extinguished. If a swimmer be taken with cramp and sink, he is irretrievably dead in five minutes. But if he sink from a fit of epilepsy, he may remain a longer time under water, yet recover. But epilepsy is a form of loss of consciousness beginning in the nervous system—a kind of fit which may, under certain circumstances, be thus preservative of life. So may we presume, that in the singular cases we are considering, the body is but in another and deeper fit, which suspends the vital phenomena, and reduces its vitality to that of the unincubated egg, to simple life, without change, without waste or renewal. The body does not putrefy, because it is alive; it does not waste or require nourishment, because every action is stilled within it.

But this must be a dull subject of speculation for you, and your mind is perhaps wandering thence to more practical views. It has struck you possibly, not without an uncomfortable misgiving, that this obscure, but unpleasant event may happen to yourself, and what on earth is there to prevent your being buried alive?

If you wish individually to be as safe as possible, leave by will to some eminent surgeon, not your habitual attendant, £50, and his railway expenses, &c., to be paid him for opening your body, when you are certainly dead; £25 if he opens you, finds you alive, and succeeds in sewing you up, and keeping you so; £200, on the contrary, to be expended in indicting him for manslaughter if you die under his hands. I do not venture to affirm that with all these precautions you would be perfectly safe. The eminent Vesalius, surgeon, and a favourite of the Emperor Charles V., with all his experience and knowledge, was unlucky enough to open a Spanish nobleman by mistake, while he was yet alive. The consequences, no doubt, were more serious than they would be now. Vesalius hardly escaped the claws of the Inquisition, and died during his expiatory pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

If, more comprehensively, you should wish to save others, as well as yourself, from this awful risk, and have a friend in the legislature, urge him, or otherwise Mr Wakley, to move for the insertion in any convenient bill a clause to appoint in every district a qualified officer to license burials; he had better not be a practising doctor, but his office might embrace necroscopic inquiries for the coroner, and the registrarship of births and deaths.

In either case, I would recommend you to offer publicly a premium of £500, to be paid at the expiration of three years, for the best treatise upon the signs of death; the same being calculated to form a useful body of instruction, as yet wanting, either for your private surgeon, or the new officials.

In England, indeed, our decent respect for the dead, which leads us to postpone interment as long as possible, is a tolerable security against being buried alive. The coffin is seldom closed upon the remains, before decomposition has already commenced. That is death's certain seal; nor, in the present state of our knowledge, special cases of course excepted, is it right to consider life surely extinct, till the impress of that seal is perceptible to the senses.

On the Continent, generally, the interval observed before burial is far too short for safety. They calculate that in France from twenty to thirty are annually interred alive, computing from the number of those who, after supposed death, come to life before the funeral is completed. I cannot help imagining that this seeming death must be much less frequent in England than in some other countries; (is that owing to the more vigorous practice for which English medical men are celebrated, they either cure or kill?) In Germany, interment is forbidden by law for three days after death. And there is a curious and humane provision in the grave-houses attached to the cemeteries of some of the principal towns: Bodies which are brought too soon, not having performed the three days' quarantine, are received and lodged, being disposed upon tressles, with rings on their toes and fingers which are attached to bell-pulls. The corpse thus, on coming to itself, may have immediate attendance merely by ringing for it; some one is always there on the watch. But the humanity of this arrangement, though perfect as long as it lasts, is finite in duration. As soon as the seventy-two hours prescribed by law are expired, it is another thing. The body is then legally dead, and must comport itself accordingly. At any rate, it is at its own risk if it behaves otherwise than as a corpse, and gives itself any airs of vitality. This is appalling enough, and would certainly justify any body, if it could, in getting out at nights and turning vampyr.

And now, to return again to our inquiry. We have got thus far. The bodies found in the so-called vampyr state are alive. They are in a sort of fit, the possible duration of which is undetermined. The same fit may occur, and does occur continually, with no reference to the superstition of vampyrism. But where the belief in vampyrism is rife, these fits are more prevalent, and spread sometimes like an epidemic.

The question naturally follows, how is this malady, viewing it as one in these cases, propagated?

At such seasons, it is far from improbable that there is some physical cause in operation, some meteorological influence perhaps, electrical or otherwise, disposing the system to be a readier prey to the seizure. As certain constitutions of the year alter the blood and lead to fever or cholera, why should not others render the nervous system irritable and proner to derangement?

Then it is well known that fright will bring on certain kinds of fits—in women hysteric fits, in the youth of either sex epileptic fits; and certainly no ghastlier terror can there be than the accredited apprehension of vampyrism. And it deserves remark, that impressions upon the mind are known to be capable of shaping particular kinds of fits, and especially of exciting and determining the features of sensorial illusions, that seem adjuvants in vampyrism.

We are able to creep yet a step nearer to the mark. There is great reason to believe that some human beings have had the power of throwing themselves into the state of seeming death, voluntarily. In Gooch's surgical works, there is an account of a Colonel Townsend, who asserted this of himself, and challenged Gooch to witness the performance. And you may read in the narrative of Gooch, how he and two or three other competent witnesses saw Colonel Townsend dispose himself to favour the invasion of this fit, and how he gradually fell into a state apparently devoid of animation. A very few years ago there was a story in the papers of a native in India, who undertook for a reward to do the same feat, and to allow himself to be buried for a stipulated period. A gentleman, certainly not of a credulous turn in general, told me he was in India at the time with his regiment; and, though not on the spot, that he knew the parties who brought the conjuror to work; and that he believed they positively buried him, and, at the end of the time agreed upon, disinterred him, and found him alive. But be this story true or false, the case of Colonel Townsend remains to show the thing asserted to have been possible—and this remark may be safely added: Whatever change of the kind the will can bring about, can be twice as readily wrought by fear or a disturbed imagination.

You are, I hope, or fear rather, by this time satiated with the marvellous and with the subject. What!—yet another question? Ay. How came this superstition to arise?

The answer is ready. In those days the belief in ghosts was absolute, and a vampyr was a sort of ghost. When an ignorant person, that is, when any one in those days became the subject of a sensorial illusion representing a human being, to a certainty he identified the creation of his fancy as somebody he had seen or heard of; then he would tell his acquaintances that the ghost of such a person haunted him. If the fright brought on a fit, or seemed to cause his death, the neighbours would remember how he had before been haunted. Then, in any case, what more natural than to disinter the body of a supposed visitant, to know why he is unquiet in the grave? Then, if once a body so disinterred were found in the fresh and undecomposed state, the whole delusion would start into existence. The violence used would force blood from the corpse; and that would be construed into the blood of a victim. The absence of a scar on the throat of the victim, would throw no difficulty in the way to the vampyr theory, because vampyrs enjoyed the ghostly character, and all its privileges. Supposing, again, that at any time chance had brought to light a body interred alive, and lying still in this fit, the whole yarn of superstition might again have been spun from that clue.

Do you want more than this? I shall begin to think you at heart superstitious. I tell you it is contrary to the rules of inductive logic, to look for, or to use more principles than are sufficient for the reasonable explanation of phenomena. Yet you urge, do you, that it is no less unphilosophical, in an obscure and unsettled inquiry, wholly to exclude the consideration of unlikely possibilities?—Well! it is nothing to me. Have it your own way: suppose, if you like, that the man in the grave had something to do with spreading the disease, and that his nervous system, in its abnormal state, could put itself in relation with that of another person at a distance. If you like it, have it so. In one sense, it simplifies the matter. But though I cannot deny your supposition to be possible, you will excuse me if I profess to hold the solution, which I have myself given, to be sufficient.

Well! there is an end of the subject, at all events; and I accept your thanks for having told you all I know about vampyrism. I deserve them more than you are aware. At the churchyard in Meduegna, my dear Archy, I had you thoroughly in my power. I saw how your curiosity was raised, and that an picture I had drawn would have been accepted by you with avidity; and I must confess it did at one moment occur to me, to describe to you the exact dress and deportment of the three regimental surgeons, or Feldscherers, (a handsome word signifying field-barbers), John Flickinger, Isaac Stegel, and John Fredrick Baumgartner, as well as the behaviour and remarks of a drummer boy, who held the instrument case during the intermortem examination, an event he witnessed for the first time. But I would not abuse my advantage; so I let you off cheaply with the sole fabrication of Nina, and the personal characteristics of Arnod Paole, of whom unfortunately nothing has come down to posterity, but that he was haunted by a vampyr at Cossova, fell from a hay-cart at Meduegna, and died, and lived a vampyr himself.

LETTER III.

SPIRITS, GOBLINS, GHOSTS.

Dear Archy.—On what subject shall I next address you? Elves, goblins, ghosts, real and unreal; dreams, witchcraft, second-sight? Bless me! the field of marvels seems more thronged, as I approach it closer. The spirits I have evoked begin to scare me with their numbers. How on earth shall I ever get them fairly laid? But some, I see, can now only limp along—they are scotched already; I will begin with finishing these. Yet they deserve gentle treatment. They sprang from our nature, which seems expressly made to procreate and rear them. Thick, within and around us, lie the rich veins of illusive suggestion from which they spring.

The thing nearest us is our mental constitution, the world of consciousness. It is of it we first learn, though it be the last we understand. It is that through which we perceive and apprehend all other things; and nothing becomes part of our knowledge but as it has been shaped and coloured by its magic reflexion. Nay, more, it is not only our mirror but our archetype for every thing. So we spiritualise the material universe, and afterwards, by an incongruous consistency, anthropomorphise spirit.

Reason in vain reclaims against this misuse of analogy. Feeling, imagination, instinct are too many for her; and any mood, from fun to earnest, from nonsense to sublimity, may hear a responsive note when this chord is touched.

Address to that ingenuous young American a remark upon the slightness of the legs of her work-table,—she blushes—her lively fancy has given them personality. Were she a wealthier miss, she would give them, besides, neat cambric trowsers with lace borders. With less refinement, and with inexcusable warmth, I take shame to myself for having bestowed a kick upon a similar mahogany limb, which had, however, begun the contest by breaking my shin.

To the poet's eye, nature is instinct with life. Greece may be "living Greece no more"—in the soul of her people; but her immortal plains, and streams, and hills have their own vitality.

You go to visit them; they meet you half-way: "spectatum veniunt."

Amid the Alps—with glacier, torrent, forest around—you still evoke the fancied spirit of the scene, though it be but

And where, in sublimer grandeur, snowclad, upreared against the nearer sun, are seen the towering Andes; to the poet's eye, the Cordillera lies no huge backbone of earth; but lives, a Rhoetus or Enceladus of the West, and

This is but the calm, the dignified, the measured march of poetical conception. No wonder, when superstition steps in to prick on imagination, that all should vividly team with spirit life. Or that on Walpurgis' night, bush and streamlet and hill bustle and hurry, with unequal pace, towards the haunted Brocken: the heavy ones lag, indeed, a little, and are out of breath—

No wonder that to the dreamer's eye, in tranquil scenes of sylvan solitude the fawn of yore skipped in the forest dell, the dryad peeped from behind the shadowy oak, the fay tripped lightly over the moonlit sward.

But enough, and too much, of "your philosophy." Yet there are those still who may be the wiser for it. Let me sketch you a believer in the creed it would dispel.

He was a Spanish West-Indian—in his active years had been an extensive planter and slave-owner in Porto Rico. His manners were grave and dignified, as due to himself; courteous, as not denying equal or superior worth in others. He had seen the world, and spoke of it habitually with a fine irony. We had many a walk together. He was nervous about his health. One day, as our path lay along the banks of the Rhine, his conversation took this turn:—

"Do you believe in spirits?" he asked me; and upon my intimating the polite but qualified assent which suited the tone in which the question was put—"It may be superstition," he continued, "but I am often inclined to think that the pucks and goblins, which, as they say, once haunted these scenes, are not entirely visionary beings. You may smile—but this has happened, nay, often, happens, to me in my walks. I see a big clod before me in the path, and form the intention of avoiding it; when close to it, I step to one side, when pr-r-rt, my toe strikes against it."

I edged slightly away from my companion with the disagreeable impression that he was gone mad.

He went on;—"When I lived in the West Indies, the children of the slaves, about my house, were treated with great kindness and indulgence. They would come about my table at dessert, and often had little presents given them. So they grew into objects of affection. But, out of several, some, of course, took ill and died. I cannot tell you what grief it caused me. Then this has happened several times, after the death of one or other of my little favourites:—a bird has flown into the hall, and into my sitting-room, and has hovered near me, and, after a while, has flown away. For a few days it has regularly returned, and then finally disappeared. I thought it was tenanted by the spirit of my lost favourite, which had come to bid me farewell."

I drew nearer again to my companion. I felt I was in all events safe from violence from him. And I contrasted, with humiliation, his beautiful superstition with the commonplace remembrance of a school-boy conviction of my own, one dark night, upon Blackheath, that a direction-post was a ghost.

My friend had not, indeed, always been a dreamer: and although this is no place to narrate his course of daring and hazardous adventure, on which I am therefore silent, yet I wish to be allowed to re-establish his credit for intelligence, by reporting the answer which he made, on another occasion, to a question, as to what he thought of the emancipation of the Negroes in our colonies. "The principle," answered my friend, "was good, but you were in too great a hurry. Before giving them freedom, you should have made them fit for it. They were not impatient. Slavery is an African institution. Some outlay of public money, and extreme care and prudence in your measures, would have enabled you to secure their humane treatment in the interval. As fast as they became innoculated with the wants and habits of civilised life, you might have made freedmen of the most advanced, and given them official occupation, or allotted them land under proper conditions. One sheep would have followed another. The fag-end you might have emancipated together. Thirty or forty years, and a million of money, would have done the thing. The results would have been, from first to last, beneficial to the colonists. It would have set an example which other nations could have followed. It would have been a noble return for having, temporarily, used the race as unmitigated slaves. It would have been an act of enlightened philanthropy. It would have become statesmen. What you did reads and works like the puerile suggestion of a school-boy's theme. What you are further doing, to suppress, by force, the trade in slaves, would have been worthy my distinguished countryman whose biography has immortalised Cervantes. Humanity would smile at it, but that she shudders and sickens."

But, to leave the region of dreams, which are no longer realisable, let us shift the scene.

The churchyard has its nightly terrors. One heard of corpse-lights seen dancing over graves—but over some alone. A few only had witnessed this; but they had no doubt on the matter. Things looked "uncanny;" but time did not pause, and the story was forgotten. Even when the tale was fresh, what was it but superstition? Who of those who hugged its sympathetic terrors by the Christmas fireside, thought they could be true on the bright frosty morning of the morrow? It was mere fancy. There was nothing in it. Yet there was something. And now and then a striking and mysterious event would occur to bring back the old idea. There was a cottage, (this I heard of a certainty,) in a hamlet I could name, to which a bad report attached. A room in it was haunted. More than one who had slept there had seen, at midnight, the luminous apparition of a little child standing upon the hearth-stone. At length suspicion became active. The hearth-stone was raised, and there were found, buried beneath it, the remains of an infant. A story was now divulged, how the former tenant and a female of the neighbourhood had, a very few years before, abruptly left the village. The apparition here was real and significant enough.

But tales like these, though true, gradually lose the sharpness of their evidence for want of an accredited contemporary narrator, and so become valueless. But time brings round every thing.

And at length a marvellous narrative, to the same effect with the above, made its appearance in a trustworthy German work, P. Kieffer's Archives, the complete authentication of which caused it to make a deep impression. The narrative was communicated by Herr Ehrman of Strasburg, the son-in-law of the well-known German writer Pfeffel, from whom he received it.

The ghost-seer was a young candidate for orders, eighteen years of age, of the name of Billing. He was known to have very excitable nerves,—had already experienced sensorial illusions, and was particularly sensitive to the presence of human remains, which made him tremble and shudder in all his limbs. Pfeffel, being blind, was accustomed to take the arm of this young man, and they walked thus together in Pfeffel's garden, near Colmar. At one spot in the garden Pfeffel remarked, that his companion's arm gave a sudden start, as if he had received an electric shock. Being asked what was the matter, Billing replied, "nothing." But, on their going over the same spot again, the same effect recurred. The young man being pressed to explain the cause of his disturbance, avowed that it arose from a peculiar sensation which he always experienced when in the vicinity of human remains; that it was his impression a human body must be interred there; but that if Pfeffel would return with him at night, he should be able to speak with more confidence. Accordingly, they went to the garden together when it was dark, and as they approached the spot, Billing observed a faint light over it. At two paces from it, he stopped and would go no further; for he saw hovering over it, or self-supported in the air, its feet only a few inches from the ground, a luminous female figure, nearly five feet high, with the right arm folded on her breast, the left hanging by her side. When Pfeffel himself stepped forward and placed himself about where the figure was, Billing said it was now on his right hand, now on his left, now behind, now before him. When Pfeffel cut the air with his stick, it seemed as if it went through and divided a light flame, which then united again. The visit, repeated the next night, in company with some of Pfeffel's relatives, gave the same result. They did not see any thing. Pfeffel, then, unknown to the ghost-seer, had the ground dug up, when there was found at some depth, beneath a layer of quicklime, a decomposing human body. The remains were removed, and the earth carefully replaced. Three days afterwards, Billing, from whom this whole proceeding had been kept concealed, was again led to the spot by Pfeffel. He walked over it now without experiencing any unusual impression whatever.

This extraordinary phenomenon, it is now generally known, has been completely elucidated through the discoveries of Von Reichenbach, to which, in a former letter, I had occasion to make allusion.

You are probably aware, that the individuals whose nerves Von Reichenbach found to be so sensitive to the proximity of crystals, magnets, &c., would, in the dark, see flames issuing from the same substances. Then, in the progress of his inquiries, Von Reichenbach found that chemical decomposition was a rich source of the new power he had discovered, by its action on the nerves. And being acquainted with the story of the ghost in Pfeffel's garden at Colmar, it occurred to him as not unlikely, that Billing had just been in the same condition with his own sensitive patients, and that graves very likely would present to all of them a luminous aura; and that thus the mystery might find a very simple explanation.

Accordingly, Miss Reichel, one of his most sensitive subjects, was taken at night to an extensive burying-ground, near Vienna, where many interments take place daily, and there were some thousand graves. The result did not disappoint Von Reichenbach's expectations. Whithersoever Miss Reichel turned her eyes, she saw masses of flame. This appearance manifested itself most about recent graves. About very old ones it was not visible. She described the appearance as resembling less bright flame than fiery vapour, something between fog and flame. In several instances, the light extended four feet in height above the ground. When Miss Reichel placed her hand in it, it seemed to her involved in a cloud of fire. When she stood in it, it came up to her throat. She expressed no alarm, being accustomed to the appearance.

The mystery has thus been entirely solved. For it is evident that the spectral character of the luminous apparition in the two instances I have narrated had been supplied by the imagination of the seers. So the superstition has vanished, leaving, as is usual, a very respectable truth behind it.

It is indeed a little unlucky for this new truth, which reveals either a new power in nature or an unexpected operation of familiar ones, that the phenomena which attest it are verifiable by a few only who are possessed of highly sensitive temperaments. And it is the use of the world to look upon these few as very suspicious subjects. This is unjust. Their evidence, the parties having otherwise a character for honesty, should be accepted with the same faith and the same distrust with which all evidence is to be viewed; with neither more nor less than in other cases. Nothing should be received in scientific inquiry which it is not compulsory on our understanding to believe. It is not a whit more difficult in these than in other cases to obtain inductive certainty. Nature is not here peculiarly coy or averse from being interrogated.

Philosophers occasionally regret the limited number of their senses, and think a world of knowledge would flow from their possessing but one more. Now, persons of highly-wrought nervous systems have what is equivalent to a new sense, in their augmentation of natural sensibility. But philosophers will not accept this equivalent. They must have the boon from nature their own way, or not at all.

To turn elsewhere.—We may now look into a broader seam of illusive power—one which lies entirely within ourselves, and needs no objective influence to bring its ghost-producing fertility into play. Let me exemplify it in operation.

A young gentleman, who has recently left Oxford, told me, that he was one evening at a supper-party in college, when they were joined by a common friend on his return from hunting. They expected him, but were struck with his appearance. He was pale and agitated. On questioning him, they learned the cause. During the latter part of his ride home, he had been accompanied by a horseman, who kept exact pace with him, the rider and horse being facsimiles of himself and the steed he rode, even to the copy of a newfangled bit he sported that day for the first time. The apparition vanished on his entering the town. He had, in fact, seen his double or fetch, and it had shaken his nerves pretty considerably. His friends advised him to consult the college tutor, who failed not to give him some good advice, and hoped the warning would not be thrown away. My informant, who thought the whole matter very serious, and was disposed to believe the unearthly visit to have been no idle one, added, that it had made the ghost-seer, for the time at all events, a wiser and better man.

In more ignorant times, the appearance of one's fetch was held to be of very alarming import, and to menace either death or serious personal harm. Now, it is known to be one of the commonest forms in which sensorial illusions shape themselves. And these are matters of every-day occurrence.

It would seem, that when the blood is heated or the nervous system over-strained, we are liable to attach reality to the mere productions of the imagination. There must be few who have not had personal experience of this affection. In the first night of a febrile attack, and often in the progress of fever, the bed-hangings appear to the patient swarming with human faces, generally of a disagreeable and menacing expression. With some, opium will produce a host of similar visitants. In much illness, I have often myself taken this drug, and always hoped it would provide me a crop of apparitions that I might analyse. But I was disappointed; opium I found to give me only a great tranquillity and clearness of thought. Once or twice only have I had a vision, and that but a transitory landscape. I used in vain to look upon that black mixture which lies before one in the dark, and try to make its fragmentary lights arrange themselves into definite shapes. And I have imaged to my mind familiar scenes or faces, (as in the daytime a strong conception will half realise such,) but they were not more distinct then than formerly,—ideas only and perfectly transient. But, as I have said, once or twice I have had the satisfaction of seeing a bright and coloured landscape spread before my view; yet unlike reality, and more resembling a diorama, occupying a rectangle on the black mixture before my eyes. It was not a known and familiar scene, but a brilliant sketch, made out of materials I remembered, but could not by a deliberate effort have combined so effectively. It was a spontaneous throe of the imagination, which had force to overpersuade the organs of perception.

How well did Shakspeare understand this creative power of the fancy!—the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, and his test—"come, let me clutch thee!" are physiologically perfect. Nor less perfect or true to nature, is the conception of the ghost of Banquo haunting the kingly murderer. The ghost, it is obvious, however, should not in the play appear bodily. The audience are in the position of the guests at the royal supper-table, who saw it not. I wonder how in Shakspeare's time the stage-directions ran upon this point. Probably as now. Though Shakspeare wrote for all times, he was probably wise enough to act for the present. Or perhaps, with no disrespect to his unequalled genius, he understood not the principles of which he exactly portrayed the workings, and was, like Shelley's poet,

So, some say the sun may be dark as another planet; and that the spots on it are its common earth seen through the gaps in its luminous atmosphere.

To the world, the alpha and omega of this piece of philosophy were furnished by the publication of the case of Nicolai, the bookseller of Berlin. Its details were read before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, in 1799. The substance ran thus. Nicolai had had some family troubles which much annoyed him. Then, on the 21st of February 1791, there stood before him, at the distance of ten paces, the ghost of his eldest son. He pointed at it, directing his wife to look. She saw it not, and tried to convince him that it was an illusion. In a quarter of an hour it vanished. In the afternoon, at four o'clock, it came again. Nicolai was alone. He went to his wife's room—the ghost followed him. About six other apparitions joined the first, and they walked about, among, and through each other. After some days the apparition of his son stayed away; but its place was filled with the figures of a number of persons, some known, some unknown to Nicolai—some of dead, others of living persons. The known ones were distant acquaintances only. The figures of none of Nicolai's habitual friends were there. The appearances were almost always human: exceptionally, a man on horseback, with dogs and birds would present themselves. The apparitions came mostly after dinner, at the commencement of digestion. They were just like real persons; the colouring a thought fainter. The apparitions were equally distinct whether Nicolai was alone or in society, by day as in the dark, in his own house or those of others; but in the latter case they were less frequent, and they very seldom presented themselves in the streets. During the first eight days they seemed to take very little notice of each other, but walked about like people at a fair, only here and there communing with each other. They took no notice of Nicolai, or of his remarks about them to his wife and physician. No effort of his would dismiss them, or bring an absent one back. When he shut his eyes, they sometimes disappeared, sometimes remained; when he opened his eyes, they were there as before. After a week they became more numerous, and began to converse. They conversed with each other, and then addressed him. Their remarks were short and unconnected, but sensible and civil. His acquaintances inquired after his health, and expressed sympathy for him, and spoke in terms comforting him. The apparitions were most conversible when he was alone; nevertheless they mingled in the conversation when others were by, and their voices had the same sound as those of real persons. This illusion went on thus from the 24th of February to the 20th of April; so that Nicolai, who was in good bodily health, had time to become tranquillised about them, and to observe them at his ease. At last they rather amused him. Then the doctors thought of an efficient plan of treatment. They prescribed leeches: and then followed the denouement to this interesting representation. The apparitions became pale and vanished. On the 20th of April, at the time of applying the leeches, Nicolai's room was full of figures moving about among each other. They first began to have a less lively motion; shortly afterwards their colours became paler—in another half hour fainter still, though the forms still remained. About seven o'clock in the evening, the figures had became colourless, and they moved scarcely at all, but their outline was still tolerably perfect. Gradually that became less and less defined. At last they disappeared, breaking into air, fragments only remaining, which at last all vanished. By eight o'clock all were gone, and Nicolai subsequently saw no more of them.

Other cases are on record in which there was still greater facility of ghost-production than Nicolai evinced. One patient could, for instance, by thinking of a person, summon his apparition to join the others. He could not, however, having done this, subsequently banish him. The sight is the sense most easily and frequently tricked; next, the hearing. In some extraordinary cases the touch, also, has participated in the delusion.

Herr von Baczko, already subject to visual hallucinations, of a diseased nervous system, his right side weak with palsy, his right eye blind, and the vision of the left imperfect, was engaged one evening, shortly after the battle of Jena, as he tells us in his autobiography, in translating a brochure into Polish, when he felt a poke in his loins. He looked round, and found that it proceeded from a Negro or Egyptian boy, seemingly about twelve years of age. Although he was persuaded the whole was an illusion, he thought it best to knock the apparition down, when he felt that it offered a sensible resistance. The Negro then attacked him on the other side, and gave his left arm a particularly disagreeable twist, when Baczko pushed him off again. The Negro continued to visit him constantly during four months, preserving the same appearance, and remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and, after finally appearing as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl's head, he took his leave.

The illusion and its principle having been thus elucidated, it is hardly worth while to look into its operation in tales of vulgar terror. But it is highly interesting to trace its effects on minds of a high order, when its suggestions have been received and interpreted as the visits and communications of superior beings. You have heard, I dare say, my dear Archy, of the mysticism of Schwedenborg. Now that they are explained, the details of his hallucinations are highly gratifying to one's curiosity.

Schwedenborg, the son of a Swedish clergyman of the name of Schwedberg, ennobled as Schwedenborg, was, up to the year 1743, which was the fifty-fourth of his age, an ordinary man of the world, distinguished only in literature, having written many volumes of philosophy and science, and being Professor in the Mineralogical school, where he was much respected. On a sudden, in the year 1743, he believed himself to have got into a commerce with the world of spirits, which so fully took possession of his thoughts, that he not only published their revelations, but was in the habit of detailing, with the greatest equanimity, his daily chat with them. Thus he says, "I had a conversation the other day on that very point with the Apostle Paul," or with Luther, or some other dead person. Schwedenborg continued in what he believed to be daily communion with spirits till his death, in 1772. He was, without doubt, in the fullest degree convinced of the reality of his spiritual commerce. So in a letter to the Wirtemburg prelate, Oetinger, dated November 11, 1766, he uses the following words:—"If I have spoken with the Apostles? To this I answer, I conversed with St Paul during a whole year, particularly on the text, Romans iii. 28. I have three times conversed with St John, once with Moses, and a hundred times with Luther, who allowed that it was against the warning of an angel that he professed 'fidem solam,' and that he stood alone upon the separation from the Pope. With angels, finally, have I these twenty-two years conversed, and converse daily.

"Of the angels," he says, "they have human forms, the appearance of men that I have a thousand times seen; for I have spoken with them as a man with other men, often with several together; and have seen nothing in the least to distinguish them from ordinary men." [They had evidently just the appearance of Nicolai's visitors.] "Lest any one should call this an illusion, or imaginary perception, it is to be understood that I am accustomed to see them, when perfectly myself wide awake, and in full exercise of my observation. The speech of an angel or of a spirit sounds like, and as loud as, that of a man, but it is not heard by the bystanders; the reason is, that the speech of an angel or a spirit finds entrance first into a man's thoughts, and reaches his organs of hearing from within outwards." This is indeed cum ratione insanire! how just an analysis of the illusion, when he is most deceived by it!

"The angels who converse with men, speak not in their own language, but in the language of men, and likewise in other languages which are inwardly known to man, not in languages which he does not understand." Schwedenborg here took up the angels, and to explain their own ideas to them observed, that they most likely appeared to speak his mother tongue, because, in fact, it was not they who spoke, but himself by their suggestion. The angels held out, however, and went away unconvinced.

"When approaching, the angels often appear like a ball of light; and they travel in companies so grouped together—they are allowed so to unite by the Lord—that they may act as one being, and share each others' ideas and knowledge; and in this form they bound through the universe, from planet to planet."

I will, in conclusion, add another different, but equally interesting sketch.

"It is now seven years ago," so spoke, before her judges, the simple, but high-minded Joan of Arc—"the beginning of the year 1431; it was a summer day, towards the middle hour, I was about thirteen years old, and was in my father's garden, that I heard for the first time, on my right hand towards the church, a voice, and there stood a figure in a bright radiance before my eyes. It had the appearance and look of a right good and virtuous man, bore wings, was surrounded with light on all sides, and by the angels of Heaven. It was the Archangel Michael. The voice seemed to me to command respect; but I was yet a child, and was frightened at the figure, and doubted very much whether it was the archangel! I saw him and the angels as distinctly before my eyes as I now see you, my judges." With words of encouragement the archangel answered to her, that God had taken pity upon France, and that she must hasten to the assistance of the king. At the same time he promised her that St Catherine and St Margaret would shortly visit her; he told her that she should do what they commanded her, because they were sent by God to guide and conduct her. "Upon this," continued Joan, "St Catherine and St Margaret appeared to me, as the angel had foretold. They ordered me to get ready to go to Robert de Beaudricourt, the king's captain. He would several times refuse me, but at last would consent, and give me people, who would conduct me to the king. Then should I raise the siege of Orleans. I replied to them that I was a poor child, who understood nothing about riding on horseback and making war. They said I should carry my banner with courage; God would help me, and win back for my king his entire kingdom. As soon as I knew," continued Joan, "that I was to proceed on this errand, I avoided, as much as I could, afterwards taking part in the sports and amusements of my young companions."——"So have the Saints conducted me during seven years, and have given me support and assistance in all my need and labours; and now at present," said she to her judges, "no day goes by, but they come to me."——"I seldom see the Saints that they are not surrounded with a halo of light; they wear rich and precious crowns, as it is reasonable they should. I see them always under the same forms, and have never found in their discourse any discrepancies. I know how to distinguish one from the other, and distinguish them as well by the sound of their voices as by their salutation. They come often without my calling upon them. But when they do not come, I pray to the Lord that he will send them to me; and never have I needed them but they have visited me."

Such is part of the defence of the high-spirited Joan of Arc, who was taken prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy on the 23d of May 1430—sold by him for a large sum to the English, and by them put on her trial as a heretic, idolatress, and magician—condemned, and finally burned alive, the 30th of May 1431. Ill-fated heroine! I seem to be thinking of writing her epitaph, but I am considering only that there is more to come out of her evidence. For although her heavenly visitants were simply sensorial illusions, there yet remains something unexplained. How came she to foresee the path she was destined to follow? The inquiry would launch us on a broad and wild sea of conjecture, for the navigation of which we have not yet the requisite charts on board, and it grows late—so good-night, dear Archy.