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future or stimulating real progress. There is an innate force and power in it that will compel men to belief and reverence; and unless tradition and historic revelation are accepted, the inward craving which remains is hard to satisfy. Education, culture, and reasoning may purify and strengthen that sense; but if it is attempted to expel or deaden it, at the critical moments of personal or national life it is sure to reappear; or its innate power is shown by the enormous structure of mystical or supernatural belief which it will support. The spread of Mr Mill's sceptical atheism has been followed by a perfect"simoom of sacerdotal usurpation." The spirit of undue disbelief stimulates the spirit of credulity and emotional observances. The sentiment of religion is obviously inextinguishable; and those who attempt to discard it from our schools, or crush and baffle it in society, will find that their efforts hereafter as heretofore result in an access of superstition, a tightening of formularies, and the spread of sensuous services. These are the defences and outward coverings behind which the religious sentiment intrenches itself from the withering influence of the atheistical spirit. Religion is mysterious, but it is a fact; and its opponents find their overwhelming obstacles in human nature itself.

If all wisdom were the result of hard reasoning, only to be reached by the vigorous use of that wonderful analytic apparatus with which James Mill equipped his son, the world might then be ruled by philosophers. The use of this Autobiography is, that it shows not merely the dissolvent influence of such an equipment upon a man's moral and spiritual being, but also the enormous loss of power which it involves. Mill's training helped to make him a man of science, but it unfitted him for life, and rendered him a child in

the hands of men and women of far inferior talent, but with a little of that penetration and shrewdness which had been sacrificed in him. It excluded the instinctive knowledge of his fellows, and all sense of the providence of God. The gap which his philosophy makes in all that human nature requires to feed upon, resembles the rent which such training makes in a man's capacity. It demolishes the home, it desecrates religion, it destroys society. And as for intellect and learning, it contracts the intelligence and confines the sympathies. The sum of human knowledge and wisdom is derived from the growing experience of what the human spirit has felt and suffered and endured, as well as from the productions of human reason. The power which an inveterate habit of analysis gives is not to be despised, but it cannot displace the power of practical experience, of intuitive insight into character, of a well-balanced mind in a well-ordered body, of firm faith, and of the habitual strengthening of judgment and conscience by the light of the best which others have said and thought. The infant prodigy which came forth fully armed from his father's arsenal, contributed in his later years his share to the knowledge and advancement of mankind. But when we are asked to revere in him a new leader of thought, a man whose views are to be accepted as a new religion, we say that they are the product of a man who dealt with ideas, words, and images which he had no means of verifying, except at second hand; between whom and the world a great gulf was fixed; whose mind and life were out of harmony, from his earliest infancy, with any condition of life ever yet heard of or experienced. Sincerity is stamped upon every page of this Autobiography. The motive for

writing it is undeniably publicspirited. It conciliates more of kindly feeling and sympathy than its author in his lifetime ever inspired, except from a devoted band of almost fanatical worshippers, who probably imbibed from him the earliest ideas which they ever possessed, before the critical faculty had been duly formed within them by the light of increasing knowledge. But the book proves, beyond all doubt, that the life of the philosopher was an anomaly; that his intellectual, and even his moral being, was a thing of unnatural growth; and that though a master of logic and the possessor of powerful and highly trained reasoning faculties, he was bred and remained in such thorough isolation from the world and the society which he was intended to regenerate, that he was helplessly dependent upon others for a correct view of the facts of life. The audacity with which his startling theories were propounded, was equalled by the contempt with which he overlooked the most obvious and fatal objections. He demonstrated that in order to limit population, legal restrictions should be placed upon marriage; but he forgot the possibility of illegitimate children. The philosophy, as usual, went no further than the institution. And in his social theories, men and women are

angels or slaves, according as he is demonstrating their fitness for "liberty," or the effects of the slavery which he says they have so long endured. In other words, he too often made his facts square with his theory, instead of reversing the operation.

Such is the man whom freethinkers and youthful Radicals delighted to honour as the regenerator of the world. He was neither in advance nor in the rear of his age, but simply never belonged to it. The few people and institutions which he knew, he clung to with superstitious veneration; the rest belonged to a world which he viewed through the haze of his own conceptions. His life had no playful childhood, no ripening manhood, and no experienced old age. At fourteen he was turned out of his father's workshop, finished and complete. The father had fulfilled the purpose which he had pursued with unrelenting rigour. The son lived on to accomplish the father's purposes in the world of science and abstract thought, and to demonstrate by his life and all the painful deficiencies of his character and capacities, that, although by forced development an athlete may be made in mental as well as muscular power, insulted nature will adjust the balance by the losses which it inflicts.

NOTE RELATING TO THE STORY OF THE MISSING BILLS - AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY," PUBLISHED IN OUR NUMBER FOR NOVEMBER 1873.

HAVING found ourselves quite unable to send a separate reply to every correspondent who has desired further information concerning this story, we subjoin, for the benefit of our readers generally, the substance of such replies as we would have desired to send. Our numerous correspondents on this subject may, we think, be separated into three divisions-1. Those who are satisfied that there was nothing supernatural in the occurrences at all, and who rather reproach us for publishing the case without a protest against its being credible as narrated. 2. Those who would like to have more particulars concerning the apparitions; some, apparently in a sceptical spirit, desiring to institute a cross-examination of the witnesses, while others are manifestly anxious for minor details of a matter in which they feel deep interest. 3. Those who, entirely accepting the narrative as it stands, desire us to say whether such and such a point may not have been inadvertently omitted, as that point alone is wanting to bring the story into harmony with what happened to their grandmothers or other members of their families.

To the first class, who contend that if Mr Lathom had not dreamed a dream there would have been no pother about the matter, and who desire us to say honestly whether it isn't certain that the young man had a dream-perhaps remarkable, but still simply a dream,-we can only reply that Mr Lathom himself, who is certainly the best evidence on this point, would never for a moment allow that he had been deceived by a dream. He was often

enough asked, it seems, by those whom he allowed to question him on the subject, whether he could be certain that he was awake, and his replies were always distinctly in the affirmative. This, we know, will hardly satisfy some people, who would deny other people senses at all, when those senses presume to reveal anything which is at variance with certain crotchets. The objections are a complete justification of the silence which Mr Lathom and Mr Waddington agreed to maintain immediately after the events.

The second division appear to forget that there no longer exist means of probing the testimony, except so far as some of the questions now asked were anticipated in family conversations. We can't say how far Mr Lathom may have kicked the packet along the floor, whether he may not have first encountered it at some distance from the spot where his visitant vanished. We don't know what he had for supper, or whether he supped at all.

or

He certainly did not chew opium in his later days, and it is extremely unlikely that he ever did so: correspondents who speak of this "well known Eastern practice" should consider that the habits of Australia and of China are very dissimilar, although both countries are in the East. There is not the slightest ground for supposing that the bills so mysteriously discovered, after a certain number of months or days, turned to tinder or rags; and certainly Mr Lathom, as he grew old and rich, expressed not the slightest apprehension that he had received an uncanny loan, repayment of which was likely to be

exacted on the contrary, he looked forward to the grave as the only bed where he could be at rest-the only place where he could lay down an intolerable burden of care. The belief of his relatives is, that he did not at all in his mind connect Probity Burdon with the spectre until months after its appearance. No reason can be given for the figure not looking towards Robert, nor for its bearing a lamp, which our correspondents are probably right in supposing that it might have dispensed with, it having, no doubt, other means of seeing its way. There was no attempt to seize the mysterious lady, no thought of clasping her tenderly in his arms, which caused her to vanish: we have not the least authority for saying that she would have remained and spoken if she had been more delicately dealt with, and if profane language had not been used. Mr Lathom was brought up sharply by his nose coming into contact with the wall, or something that stood against the wall, and too disconcerted to say exactly how things happened about that minute. The Jew cannot possibly be alive now, unless he writes wandering before his name. Whether he let fall his mantle on any one who could throw light on the strange story, our contributor does not know. It is not known who received the rent for the Jew's house after Lathom left it, which he did soon after he heard of Probity's death: it has long been pulled down, and a railway runs over the site.

Replying to inquirers of the third kind, we say, once for all, that no agent of ours has been grubbing in the muniment-room of any family, old or new. If the writer of any particular letter insinuating a charge of this kind could but see the letters of other writers, he would be convinced that there is oftentimes a

strong likeness between ghostly legends, and that it is quite possible to be able to tell one without pirating from his archives. The gentleman whose great-aunt followed a ghost into the woods, and came back with her shoes and dress smeared with red clay, which gave the first intimation of the whereabouts of one of the richest iron-mines in the country, has had no wrong done him. And we do not admit even resemblance to our story in the case where a gentleman was commanded by an apparition to marry a supposed poor girl, who turned out afterwards to be a great heiress. Dr Smollett is more likely to have invaded the secrets of this last family than ourselves, for he does distinctly make an apparition order Commodore Trunnion to "turn out and be spliced, or lie still and be

-;" on which occasion it was the spirit, and not the ghost-seer, that was a little forcible in the mode of expression. So far as we can ascertain, there was no peculiar odour in the apartment, no noise as of waving wings, and the ghost did not raise its arm with a warning gesture before disappearing. So far was Lathom from feeling horror or even a shudder, that he distinctly noted how much more calmly he bore the sight than he thought possible. In short, not one of the additional incidents suggested to us belongs to our story.

And here our notice might end, were it not that from among the stories sent us as resembling ours, we have been so much struck with three, that we think our readers also might like to know the outlines of them.

The first occurred about twenty years since to an officer of the army, who is still alive. He had arrived at a station on the South American continent, and taken possession of a one-storied house, his official resi

dence. Soon he found it to be a subject partly of perplexity and partly of jesting at the mess, that the last occupant (indeed we believe several former occupants) of the house had been troubled by the visits of an apparition, supposed to be a young lady who died there many years before. Of course he was congratulated on the pleasure that was in store for him; but the prospect did not alarm him much; and as time wore on, and he remained unmolested, he was very indifferent about the matter, and had a cheerful answer to make always to them who bantered him about the ghost. So far, good; but his tribulation was coming. He retired to rest one night in the rainy season, as serene as ever, and sank off to sleep as a young fellow with a clear conscience would do. But a tropical rain descending on the shingles of his roof rudely disturbed his slumber. He woke up, heard the rain, wished it at-well, perhaps at Jericho, if there happened to be a

drought in the Holy Land at that time-and turned over with the resolve of going to sleep again in spite of the deluge and its din. But as he formed this resolution, he was aware of a gentle light in the chamber, and, looking forth from his bed, he saw, much as Mr Lathom did, a female figure, shrouded and bearing a lamp, passing across the room. For a second or two he lay astonished; then, as the legend of the house occurred to him, he sprang from the bed, exclaiming "'s ghost by

." The figure eluded him, and the light disappeared. He felt his way back to bed and calmly slept again; at which he was much surprised, as he never thought himself able to bear such a sight without being strongly affected by it. The thing told upon him afterwards, though, and he had to get leave of absence and make a short excursion to get rid of the effects.

The second narrative we give entire as it reached us :

TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.'

DEAR SIR,- A friend of mine has just sent me this month's number of your Magazine,-and yesterday I read in it an interesting little story called "The Missing Bills-an Unsolved Mystery." Had it not been prefaced by an assurance of its truth, and a hint that what sometimes seems supernatural may not be so, I should have passed it over as a pleasing fiction; but while awake during the dark hours of this morning, recalling it to my mind, its circumstances seemed rather to bring the story within the bounds of solution --at all events, of possibility-extraordinary as they were. An honest and industrious young man, the son of a surgeon, who in former days had conferred a great obligation on a Jew, had the loan of that Jew's house for a period, accompanied with a promise

THURLESTONE RECTORY, KINGSBRIDGE,

DEVONSHIRE, 14th November 1873. that he would certainly repay the obligation he had received-in some way. The young man, in course of business, became involved in great difficulties, and applied to a friend in Australia, whose daughter he was probably to marry, for some money, which, if it arrived in time, would save him from bankruptcy. The money, in bills, was sent at once; but, for safety's sake, these bills were made out in triplicate, and each packet was directed in rather a singular manner, but all exactly the same. The bearer of the first packet, named Karl Müller, was wrecked, and supposed to have been lost; yet, strange to say, the packet of which he was the bearer found its way in a mysterious manner to the floor of the bedroom in which the young man slept in the Jew's house, just in time to rescue

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