therefore, was to tell him, that under these circumstances I must treat him as a person labouring under a disease, and prescribe medicines accordingly. "Very well," replied he, "but you will see not only that your medicines will not do me any good, but that they will not operate at all."

There was no time to be lost, for I had only twenty-four hours left to effect a cure. I therefore judged it best to employ powerful remedies in order to release him from this bondage of his imagination. With this view a very strong emetic and cathartic were administered, and blisters applied to both thighs. He submitted to every thing, but with the assurance that his body was already half dead, and the remedies would be of no use. Accordingly, to my utter astonishment, I learned when I called in the evening, that the emetic had taken but little or no effect, and that the blisters had not even turned the skin red. He now triumphed over our incredulity, and deduced from this inefficacy of the remedies the strongest conviction that he was already little better than a corpse. To me the case began to assume a very serious aspect. I saw how powerfully the state of the mind had affected the body, and what a degree of insensibility it had produced; and I had just reason to apprehend that an imagination, which had reduced the body to such extremity, was capable of carrying matters to still greater lengths.

All our enquiries, as to the cause of his belief, had hitherto proved abortive. He now disclosed to one of his friends, but in the strictest confidence, that the preceding evening, on quitting his room, he had seen a figure in white, which beckoned to him, and at the same moment a voice pronounced the words :-"The day after to-morrow, at nine in the morning, thou shalt die!" and the fate thus predicted nothing could enable him to escape. He now proceeded to set his house in order, made his will, and gave particular directions for his funeral, specifying who were to carry and who to follow him to the grave. He even insisted on receiving the sacrament—a wish, however, which those about him evaded complying with. Night came on, and he began to count the hours he had yet to live, till the fatal nine the next morning, and every time the clock struck, his anxiety evidently increased. I began to be apprehensive for the result; for I recollected instances in which the mere imagination of death had really produced a fatal result. I recollected also the feigned execution, when the criminal, after a solemn trial, was sentenced to be beheaded, and when, in expectation of the fatal blow, his neck was struck with a switch, on which he fell lifeless to the ground, as though his head had been really cut off: and this circumstance gave me reason to fear that a similar result might attend this case, and that the striking of the hour of nine might prove as fatal to my patient as the blow of the switch on the above-mentioned occasion. At any rate the shock communicated by the striking of the clock, accompanied by the extraordinary excitement of the imagination and the general cramp, which had determined all the blood to the head and the internal parts, might produce a most dangerous revolution, spasms, fainting-fits, or hæmorrhages; or even totally overthrow reason, which had already sustained so severe an attack.

What was then to be done? In my judgment every thing depended on carrying him, without his being aware of it, beyond the fatal mo

ment; and it was to be hoped that as his whole delusion hinged upon this point, he would then feel ashamed of himself and be cured of it. I therefore placed my reliance on opium, which, moreover, was quite appropriate to the state of his nerves, and prescribed twenty drops of laudanum with two grains of hen-bane to be taken about midnight. I directed, that if, as I hoped, he overslept the fatal hour, his friends should assemble round his bed, and on his awaking, laugh heartily at his silly notion, that, instead of being allowed to dwell upon the gloomy idea, he might be rendered thoroughly sensible of its absurdity. My instructions were punctually obeyed: soon after he had taken the opiate, he fell into a profound sleep, from which he did not awake till about eleven o'clock the next day. "What hour is it?" was his first question on opening his eyes; and when he heard how long he had overslept his death, and was at the same time greeted with loud laughter for his folly, he crept ashamed under the bedclothes, and at length joined in the laugh, declaring that the whole affair appeared to him like a dream, and that he could not conceive how he could be such a simpleton. Since that time he has enjoyed the best health, and has never had any similar attack.

Many instances are known of persons who, though not ill, have predicted their death in one or in a few days, and have died exactly at the time which they foretold. In former ages, when it was the fashion with the great to keep an astrologer and to consult the stars respecting the time of their death, many illustrious personages expired in the year and month predicted by their soothsayers, and the belief in their prophetic faculty was thereby not a little strengthened. In this, however, I find nothing extraordinary, and, indeed, contemporary writers explain the matter in a perfectly natural way. The good folks actually died of the prophecy; and this is one of the cases in which the prediction of a thing is the only cause why it really happens. It requires more than ordinary levity or strength of mind, to be told by a person whom we regard as possessing superior intelligence, that it is a mathematical certainty that we shall die at a stated time, without being shocked and filled with anxiety for the result. Every day that brings us nearer to the dreaded moment must augment our uneasiness, and the derangement of health inseparably connected with it. Fear is the most subtle, the most fatal of poisons: it paralyses all the faculties; it destroys the noblest energies of our nature, and keeps the nervous system in a state of such constant tension, that it cannot but be considered, if not as itself a disease, at least as the most dangerous foundation for diseases. Should we be attacked in this mood with any slight indisposition, it may be exceedingly aggravated by the depression of the spirits and the prostration of the animal powers; and in this manner a cold may degenerate into a most malignant, nay fatal, nervous fever. Thus it is, that in times of general calamity, in epidemic diseases, and in long sieges, fear so dreadfully augments the mortality, because each is apprehensive of experiencing the same fate which he sees diffused far and wide around him.

I knew an instance of a man, who was by no means superstitious, and for whom some person had, in his youth, done the disservice to cast his nativity and to predict the year of his death. He laughed at the prophecy till the specified year arrived; he then began to be ma

nifestly more pensive, and the idea which had formerly been a subject of mirth became an incessant torment to him. Without betraying his real cause of alarm, he went from one physician to another to consult them on the state of his health, and to stifle the voice of imagination by the opinions of the faculty. He resorted to all sorts of preservatives; every conceivable cause of disease was obviated; and the ominous year only wanted a month of its completion, when he was seized with an ordinary fever, and at the same time with the horrors of death. The whole virulence of the disease was thereby determined to the head and nerves, and on the fifth day he was carried off by apoplexy.

I mean not to assert that there may not be cases in which the soul has a real presentiment, nay a decided certainty, of approaching dissolution. These occur chiefly in lingering disorders, when the vital powers decline by slow degrees, and the inward feeling of our physical existence may in a manner calculate daily the sum of the loss. Here a presentiment of the period when the little remaining store must be completely exhausted, when the oil in the lamp shall be quite burned out, seems to be possible enough. I shall never forget a friend, who was so reduced by pulmonary consumption that a breath seemed capable of extinguishing the feeble flame, and whose dissolution was every moment expected. He was himself a physician; and in this agonizing state he fixed the duration of his life at twenty-four hours, desired his watch to be hung up to his bed, counted every hour, and with steadfast look accompanied the hand to the completion of the twenty-fourth, when he closed his eyes for ever.

From the influence of the imagination, it is easy to conceive how discases, especially those of the mind and the nerves, may have their periods, and be, in the strictest sense of the term, the fashion. Every age has, it is well known, its peculiar form and mode of thinking, and its own prevailing ideas, which at length become identified with ourselves. Nothing is more natural than that this form should communicate itself to our feelings, and particularly express itself in diseases of the nerves and of the representative faculty. To this is added a secret sympathy of the imagination, by means of which even defects and diseases of the mind easily excite imitation, and become really catching. By way of illustration, I need instance only the contagious influence of yawning. In this manner we may account for it why certain diseases of this class should be generally prevalent for a time, and then disappear; and why others, though the physical causes are the same, yet never appear again in the same form.

There are many remarkable instances of this kind. How long did the disease which manifested itself in the notions of witchcraft, and persons being possessed by the devil, prevail universally!-and yet, merely through a change in our way of thinking, and the different direction given to the imagination, it has gone quite out of fashion. People were so accustomed to regard every wicked thought as the suggestion of the devil, and every unusual sound at night as his voice, and to believe him to be continually behind the scenes, that at length this idea became the predominant one; the imagination was incessantly occupied with it; and hence unusual inward feelings of illness might easily be taken, by those to whom they occurred, for Satanic

impulses and agency, and they seriously believed themselves to be bewitched and possessed. It is astonishing what firm hold this conviction had taken of some, and how they retained it even on the scaffold and at the stake. We find incontestible evidence that many were as certain of their guilt as their judges; and that the judges, as well as the unfortunate wretches condemned by them, were seized, in fact, with one and the same disease. The only difference was, that those were active, and these passive. It is, indeed, a pleasing occupation to compare the symptoms of those diseases attributed to infernal agency with the nervous complaints of our days, and the then way of thinking with the present; for it teaches us to admire the progress of natural philosophy and of the cultivation of the human mind, and gives us some idea of the blessed influence of genuine illumination.

One of the most singular fashionable diseases was that which caused people to believe themselves to be transformed into beasts. We find traces of it in the remotest antiquity. It is not improbable that many of the mythological fables may have originated in this source. The celebrated instance of King Nebuchadnezzar might have had a similar origin, and his extraordinary history may be reduced to this, that, deranged with inordinate pride, he fancied himself a brute, ran away, and with this notion actually lived several years among the beasts of the field, till at length, cured perhaps by the air and herbage, he recovered his reason and returned to his residence. But this disease was not properly in fashion till the 12th, 13th, and 14th century, when it received the distinctive appellation of Lycanthropy. In those times there were numbers of people who were sometimes seized with the extraordinary paroxysm of fancying themselves to be wolves. It was in fact a state of ecstasy or trance, in which the more delicate nervous system of the nineteenth century would perhaps have heard the voices of angels. Living at that time among wolves, people heard those animals howling, assumed in imagination the nature of wolves, and in idea acted accordingly. When they came to themselves, they related all that they had been doing in their dreams, just as if it had really happened. Many were even affected to such a degree, that they not only had visions, but actually ran away, wandered about for several days together in the forests, stealing lambs, devouring them raw, and conducting themselves exactly like wolves. At length this infatuation increased to such a pitch, that people firmly believed not merely that a man could fancy himself a wolf, but that he could actually transform himself into one. Hence the writers of those times gravely relate, that whole flocks of such wolf-men prowled about the country, that whole villages were seized with this mania, and that when a person killed a wolf, he could never be sure whether it was a real wolf or a man in the shape of a wolf; nay, it was even observed that the wounds inflicted on a supposed wolf very often appeared afterwards on the person of a man. At length it was deemed advisable to attribute this species of insanity also to the agency of the Devil, to anathematize the poor wolf-men, and to burn all that could be caught; and as the wolves themselves meanwhile gradually became more rare, and the imagination ceased to be so much engaged with them, this singular infatuation at length subsided entirely.

THE WILD HUNTSMAN.

THY rest was deep at the slumberer's hour,
If thou didst not hear the blast

Of the savage horn, from the Mountain-tower,"
When the Wild Night-Huntsman past,
And the roar of the stormy chase went by,
Through the dark unquiet sky!

The deer sprang up from their mossy beds,
When they caught the piercing sounds,

And the oak-boughs crash'd to their antler'd heads,
As they flew from the viewless hounds;
And the falcon soar'd from her craggy height,
Away through the rushing night!

From the chieftain's hand the wine-cup fell,
At the castle's festive board,

And a sudden pause came o'er the swell

Of the harp's triumphal chord.

And the Minnesinger'st joyous lay

In the hall died fast away.

The convent's chaunted rite was stay'd,

And the hermit dropp'd his beads,

And the forest rang through its deepest shade,
With the neigh of the phantom steeds;

And the church-bells peal'd to the rocking blast,
As the Wild Night-Huntsman past!

The storm hath swept with the chase away,
There is stillness in the sky;

But the mother looks on her son to-day,

With a troubled heart and eye,

And the maiden's brow hath a shade of care,

'Midst the gleam of her golden hair!

The Rhine flows bright, but its waves ere long

Must hear a voice of war,

And a clash of spears our hills among,

And a trumpet from afar;

And the brave on a bloody turf must lie,
For the Huntsman hath gone by !‡

F. H.

The ruined Castle of Rodenstein, whence the Wild Huntsman is supposed to issue with his train, and traverse the air to the opposite Castle of Schnellerts.

+ Minnesinger, love-singers; the wandering minstrels of Germany were so called. It is a popular belief in the Odenwald, that the passing of the Wild Huntsman announces the approach of war,