Imatges de pàgina
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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 Reverend 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 petulent rebuke for attempting to impose such exploded superstition upon an enlightened 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 pur poses 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 Berkely 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 any thing we know, or can ever know to the contrary, it may be an Egyptian pyra

mid, 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 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 Agatho-dæmon 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 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 ante-natal 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 undergoing any intermediate state of existence between 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 these 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 ensures 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 customary, and every thing seems to harmonise 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 plantation 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 statement of the fact which has elicited these preliminary observations.

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 hila. rity, 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 further notice, and pro

ceeded 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 appaling 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

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