I am perfectly aware of the predicament in which I am placing myself, when, in the present age of incredulity, I venture to commit to paper, in all sincerity of spirit and fulness of conviction, a deliberate and circumstantial account of an apparition. Impostor and visionary, knave and fool-these are the alternate horns of the dilemma on which I shall be tossed with sneers of contempt or smiles of derision; every delusion practised by fraud or credulity, from the Cocklane Ghost down to the Rev. Mr. Colton and the Sampford Spectre, will be faithfully registered against me, and I shall be finally dismissed, according to the temperament of the reader, either with a petulant rebuke for attempting to impose such exploded superstition upon an enlight ened public, or with a sober and friendly recommendation to get my head shaved, and betake myself to some place of safe custody with as little delay as may be. In the arrogance of my supposed wisdom, I should myself, only a few weeks ago, have probably adopted one of these courses towards any other similar delinquent, which will secure me from any splenetic feeling, however boisterous may be the mirth, or bitter the irony, with which I may be twitted and taunted for the following narration. I have no sinister purposes to answer, no particular creed to advocate, no theory to establish; and writing with the perfect conviction of truth, and the full possession of my faculties, I am determined not to suppress what I conscientiously believe to be facts, merely because they may militate against received opinions, or happen to be inconsistent with the ordinary course of human experience. The author of the Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth represents Berkeley as teaching us "that external objects are nothing but ideas in our minds; that matter exists not but in our minds; and that, independent of us and our faculties, the earth, the sun, and the starry heavens have no existence at all; that a lighted candle is not white, nor luminous, nor round, nor divisible, nor extended; but that, for anything we know, or can ever know to the contrary, it may be an Egyptian pyramid, the King of Prussia, a mad dog, the island of Madagascar, Saturn's ring, one of the Pleiades, or nothing at all." If this be a faithful representation of Berkeley's theory, it may be adduced as a striking illustration of the perversity of human reason that such a man should be deemed a philosopher, and persuade bishops and divines, in spite of the evidence of their senses, to adopt his notions and deny the existence of matter; while the poor wight who, in conformity to the evidence of his senses, maintains the existence of a disembodied spirit, is hooted and run down as a driveller and a dotard. Dr. Johnson's argument, that the universal belief in ghosts, in all ages and among all nations, confirms the fact of their apparition, is futile and inconclusive; for the same reasoning would establish the truth of necromancy, witchcraft, idolatry, and other superstitions: but the opposers of this belief not only brand as impostors all those who relate their own experiences of its confirmation; they not only repudiate the Agathodæmon of Socrates, and slight the averment of Scripture, that Saul desired the witch of Endor to raise up the spirits of those whom he should name, but they deny even the possibility of customary, and everything seems to harmonize with their infliction: but for the same reason that the solitude of a town is desolating and oppressive, while the loneliness of the country is soothing and grateful, I do feel the sadness of perpetual fogs and rains in July, although they excite no melancholy feeling at the season of their natural occurrence. To see one's favourite flowers laying down their heads to die; one's plantations strewed with leaves not shaken off in the fulness of age, but beaten to earth in the bloom of youth; here a noble tree laid prostrate, and there a valuable field of corn lodged in the swampy soil (which were familiar objects in July last), is sufficient to excite melancholy associations in the most cheerful temperament. Confessing that mine was not altogether proof against their influence, and leaving to the caviller and the sceptic the full benefit of this admission, I proceed to a simple the fact. To admit a posthumous existence in the next world, and reject the competency of nature to accomplish a similar mystery in this, is surely an unwarranted limitation of her powers. Who shall circumscribe the metamorphoses of our being? When we start from the antenatal void into existence, the change is certainly wonderful; but it is still more strange, startling, and incomprehensible when we quit life in the fulness of intellect and return into the invisible world. In the first case we advance from nonentity to a very confined state of consciousness, to an animal existence, for an infant has no mind. That celestial portion of our system is evolved by the painful elaboration of time and of our own efforts; it requires a series of years to perfect its inscrutable development: and is this sublime image and emanation of the Deity to be suddenly, instantly degraded into a clod of earth, an inert lump of matter, without under-statement of the fact which has elicited these going any intermediate state of existence be- preliminary observations. tween death and final resurrection? Abstract theory sanctions the supposition of ghosts; and by what authority do we gainsay those who solemnly declare that they have beheld them? They never appear, it is urged, to more than one person at a time, which is a strong presumption of individual falsehood or delusion. How so? this may be the law of their manifestation. If I press the corners of my eyes, I see consecutive circles of light, like a rainbow; nobody else can discern them-but will it be therefore maintained that I do not? It is notorious that in dreams objects are presented to us with even a more vivid distinctness than they assume to the visual organ; but it would be idle to assert that those configurations were not presented to us because they were invisible to others. Our waking eyes may indeed be made the "fools of our other senses, or else worth all the rest:" granted; but still you may give us credit for the sincerity of our relation, for we pretend not to describe apparitions that other men have seen, but those which we ourselves have witnessed. It may not be unimportant to remark, that so far from my being subject to the blue devils and vapours with which hypochondriacs and invalids are haunted, I possess that happy physical organization which insures almost uninterrupted health of body and mind, and which, in the elasticity and buoyancy of my spirit, renders the sensation of mere existence an enjoyment. Though I reside in the country, winter has for me no gloom: Nature has prepared herself for its rigours; they are Actuated by the disheartening dulness of the scene to which I have alluded, I had written to my friend, Mr. George Staples of Exeter, requesting him to walk over some day and dine with me, as I well knew his presence was an instant antidote to mental depression; not so much from the possession of any wit or humour as from his unaffected kindness and amiability, the exuberance of his animal spirits, the inexhaustible fund of his laughter, which was perpetually waiting for the smallest excuse to burst out of his heart, and the contagion of his hilarity, which had an instant faculty of communicating itself to others. On the day following the transmission of this letter, as I was sitting in an alcove to indulge my afternoon meditation, I found myself disturbed by what I imagined to be the ticking of my repeater; but recollecting that I had left it in the house, I discovered the noise proceeded from that little insect of inauspicious augury, the death-watch. Despising the puerile superstitions connected with this pulsation, I gave it no farther notice, and proceeded towards the house, when, as I passed an umbrageous plantation, I was startled by a loud wailing shriek, and presently a screech-owl flew out immediately before me. It was the first time one of those ill-omened birds had ever crossed my path; I combined it with the memento mori I had just heard, although I blushed at my own weakness in thinking them worthy of an association; and as I walked forward, I encountered my servant, who put a letter into my hand, which I observed to be sealed with black wax. It was from the clerk of my poor friend, informing me that he had been that morning struck by an apoplectic fit, which had occasioned his almost instantaneous death! The reader may spare the sneer that is flickering upon his features: I draw no inference whatever from the omens that preceded this intelligence; I am willing to consider them as curious coincidences, totally unconnected with the startling apparition which shortly afterwards assailed me. Indifferent as to death myself, I am little affected by it in others. The doom is so inevitable; it is so doubtful whether the parties be not generally gainers by the change; it is so certain that we enter not at all into this calculation, but bewail our deprivation, whether of society, protection, or emolument, with a grief purely selfish, that I run no risk of placing myself in the predicament of the inconsolable widow who was reproached by Franklin with not having yet forgiven God Almighty. Still, however, there was something so awful in the manner of my friend's death, the hilarity I had anticipated from his presence formed so appalling a contrast with his actual condition, that my mind naturally sunk into a mood of deep sadness and solemnity. Reaching the house in this frame of thought, I closed the library window-shutters as I passed, and entering the room by a glass-door, seated myself in a chair that fronted the garden. Scarcely a minute had elapsed when I was thrilled by the strange wailful howl of my favourite spaniel, who had followed me into the apartment, and came trembling and crouching to my feet, occasionally turning his eyes to the back of the chamber, and again instantly reverting them with every demonstration of terror and agony: mine instinctively took the same direction, when, notwithstanding the dimness of the light, I plainly and indisputably recog nized the apparition of my friend sitting motionless in the great arm-chair!! It is easy to be courageous in theory, not difficult to be bold in practice, when the mind has time to collect its energies; but, taken as I was by surprise, I confess that astonishment and terror so far mastered all my faculties, that, without daring to cast a second glance towards the vision, I walked rapidly back into the garden, followed by the dog, who still testified the same agitation and alarm. Here I had leisure to recover from my first perturbation; and, as my thoughts rallied, I endeavoured to persuade myself that I had been deluded by some conjuration of the mind, or some spectral deception of the visual organ. But, in either case, how account for the terror of the dog? He could neither be influenced by superstition, nor could his unerring sight betray him into groundless alarm, yet it was incontestable that we had both been appalled by the same object. Soon recovering my natural fortitude of spirit, I resolved, whatever might be the consequences, to return and address the apparition. I even began to fear it might have vanished; for Glanville, who has written largely on ghosts, expressly says"that it is a very hard and painful thing for them to force their thin and tenuous bodies into a visible consistence; that their bodies must needs be exceedingly compressed, and that therefore they must be in haste to be delivered from their unnatural pressure." I returned, therefore, with some rapidity towards the library; and although the dog stood immovably still at some distance, in spite of my solicitations, and kept earnestly gazing upon me, as if in apprehension of an approaching catastrophe, I proceeded onward, and turned back the shutters which I had closed, determined not to be imposed upon by any dubiousness of the light. Thus fortified against deception, I re-entered the room with a firm step, and there, in the full glare of day, did I again clearly and vividly behold the identical apparition, sitting in the same posture as before, and having its eyes closed. My heart somewhat failed me under this sensible confirmation of the vision; but, summoning all my courage, I walked up to the chair, exclaiming with a desperate energy— "In the name of heaven and of all its angels, what dost thou seek here?" when the figure, slowly rising up, opening its eyes, and stretching out its arms, replied-"A leg of mutton and caper sauce, with a bottle of prime old port, for such is the dinner you promised me." "Good God!" I ejaculated, "what can this mean? Are you not really dead?" "No more than you are," replied the figure: "some openmouthed fool told my clerk that I was, and he instantly wrote to tell you of it; but it was my namesake, George Staples of Castle Street, not me, nor even one of my relations; so let us have dinner as soon as you please, for I am as hungry as a hunter." The promised dinner being soon upon the table, my friend informed me, in the intervals of his ever-ready laughter, that as soon as he had undeceived his clerk, he walked over to Star Cross to do me the same favour; that he had fallen asleep in the arm-chair while waiting my return from the grounds; and as to the dog, he reminded me that he had severely punished him at his last visit for killing a OF THOSE WHO HAVE MADE GREAT FIGURES IN SOME PARTICULAR ACTION OR CIRCUMSTANCE OF THEIR LIVES. Alexander the Great, after his victory, at the straits of Mount Taurus, when he entered the tent, where the Queen and the Princesses of Persia fell at his feet. Socrates, the whole last day of his life, and particularly from the time he took the poison, until the moment he expired. Cicero, when he was recalled from his banishment, the people through every place he passed meeting him with shouts of joy and congratulation, and all Rome coming out to receive him. Regulus, when he went out of Rome attended by his friends to the gates, and returned to Carthage according to his word of honouralthough he knew he must be put to a cruel death, for advising the Romans to pursue their war with that commonwealth. Scipio the Elder, when he dismissed a beautiful captive lady presented to him after a great victory, turning his head aside to preserve his own virtue. The same Scipio when he and Hannibal met before the battle, if the fact be true. Cincinnatus, when the messengers sent by From Ten Miles from Town, with other Poems, by William Sawyer: London, 1867. the Senate to make him dictator, found him at the plough. Epaminondas, when the Persian ambassador came to his house, and found him in the midst of poverty. Virgil, when, at Rome, the whole audience rose up, out of veneration, as he entered the theatre. Mahomet the Great, when he cut off his beloved mistress's head on a stage erected for that purpose, to convince his soldiers, who taxed him for preferring his love to his glory. Cromwell, when he quelled a mutiny in Hyde Park. Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, at his trial. Cato, of Utica, when he provided for the safety of his friends, and had determined to die. Sir Thomas More, during his imprisonment, and at his execution. Marius, when the soldier sent to kill him in the dungeon was struck with so much awe and veneration that his sword fell from his hand. Douglas, when the ship he commanded was on fire, and he lay down to die in it, because it should not be said, that one of his family ever quitted their post. II. OF THOSE WHO HAVE MADE A MEAN CONTEMPTIBLE FIGURE IN SOME ACTION OR CIRCUMSTANCE OF THEIR LIVES. Antony, at Actium, when he fled after Cleopatra. Pompey, when he was killed on the sea-shore in Egypt. Nero and Vitellius, when they were put to death. his share of the Triumvirate. Lepidus, when he was compelled to lay down Cromwell, the day he refused the kingship out of fear. Perseus, King of Macedon, when he was led in triumph. Richard the Second of England, after he was deposed. King James the Second of England, when the Prince of Orange sent to him at midnight to leave London. King William the Third of England, when he sent to beg the House of Commons to continue his Dutch guards, and was refused. Queen Anne of England, when she sent Whitworth to Muscovy on an embassy of humiliation, for an insult committed here on that prince's ambassador. The Lord Chancellor Bacon, when he was convicted of bribery. The late Duke of Marlborough, when he was forced, after his own disgrace, to carry his duchess's gold key to the queen. The old Earl of Pembroke, when a Scotch lord gave him a lash with a whip at Newmarket, in presence of all the nobility, and he bore it with patience. King Charles the Second of England, when he entered into the second Dutch war; and in many other actions during his whole reign. Philip the Second of Spain, after the defeat of the Armada. The Emperor Charles the Fifth, when he resigned his crown, and nobody would believe his reasons. King Charles the First of England, when, in gallantry to his queen, he thought to surprise her with a present of a diamond buckle, which he pushed into her breast, and tore her flesh with the tongue; upon which she drew it out, and flung it on the ground. Fairfax, the parliament general, at the time of King Charles' trial. Julius Cæsar, when Antony offered to put a diadem on his head, and the people shouted for joy to see him decline it; which he never offered to do, till he saw their dislike in their countenances. Coriolanus, when he withdrew his army from Rome, at the entreaty of his mother. Hannibal, at Antiochus' court. Beau Fielding, at fifty years old, when in a quarrel upon the stage he was run into his breast, which he opened and showed to the ladies, that he might move their love and pity; but they all fell a laughing. The Count de Bussy Rabutin, when he was recalled to court after twenty years' banishment into the country, and affected to make the same figure he did in his youth. TO THE LARK. SWIFT. [Mrs. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, born in Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, 29th June, 1743; died 9th March, 1825. She was the only daughter of the Rev. John Aikin, D. D. Her husband was latterly pastor of the Unitarian Congregation, Newington Green, London. Although she employed her pen on diverse subjects, she is chiefly remembered by her educational and devotional works for the young.] Mount, child of morning, mount and sing, And sound thy shrill alarms: Bathed in the fountains of the dew Thy sense is keen, thy joys are new; The wide world opens to thy view, And spreads its earliest charms. Far shower'd around, the hill, the plain And youth's exulting pride. Thy little bosom knows no ill, 'Twas thus my earliest hopes aspired, -Alas! th' unbidden sigh will rise. How glorious rose life's morning star; How danced the heavenly train! Truth beckon'd from her radiant throne, And Fame held high her starry crown, While Hope and Love look'd smiling down, Nor bade my toils be vain. Too soon the fond illusion pass'd;- It melted from my gaze. Still o'er my soul, though changed and dead, One ray not yet withdrawn; Sing on! sing on! What heart so cold, When such a tale of joy is told, But needs must sympathize! -Oh! could I mount with thee on high |