the effect of natural causes, and yet it appears to be more rational to attribute it to a superior agency. Here, then, Dr. L., is a case widely different, it appears, from those you have witnessed, and which argues very little for the modish doctrine of the materiality of the soul.' Dr. Lettsom appeared puzzled with this relation, but did not attempt to make any remarks on it."

And well he might, for if animation were totally suspended, consciousness would have been suspended also.

TRANSMIGRATION.-ANALYSIS OF
TRANCE.

"Thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam."--Twelfth Night.

"Through all thy veins shall run

A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize
Each vital spirit."-Romeo and Juliet.

ASTR. You have granted me more than you desire, dear Evelyn. If life be restored, it had never deserted the body, and yet the mind had deserted it.

The mind and body, then, are both independent of each other. From this truth a metaphysical question of deep and wondrous interest arises: In what condition does the mind exist, during so long a period, uninfluencing and uninfluenced by the power of perception? I remember searching for some elucidation of this mystery among those ghost-stories of the Hebrews, founded on the "purgatorie of souls," in Stehelin's "Traditions of the Jews," but I rose from my reading unenlightened.

Profane curi

IDA. And ever will, Astrophel. osity must fail in such a study; adoration alone can sanctify this mystic question, on which theolo

gians and philosophers, even those devoutly confident in the sublime truths of immortality, have so essentially differed.

Like Astrophel, Paley inquires where is the soul during suspended vitality? and Priestley, where when the body was created? Hume, with the subtlety of the skeptic, asks how can the soul long be the same, seeing that, like the body, its particles are constantly changing? While Glanville thinks himself a wondrous wight as he prates of essential spissitude, a something that is more subtle than the body, contracting itself into a less ubi."

its

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Were this sublime secret fathomable by the deepest intellect, then would be unfolded things above, which are ordained to be ever mysteries to creatures on earth, such as the future existence of the spirit, and the nature of Paradise.

Although revelation has given us glimpses enough to satisfy humble devotion, what mind can decide on the exact nature and changes of its own future state? The negative answer is at once returned by the variety of these learned opinions: That the soul is, immediately after death, submitted to its reward or punishment. That its state after death is one of half happiness and misery, until it be again joined to its body on the resurrection, and then it shall enjoy or suffer the extremes of felicity or torment. That the soul rests in quiet unconsciousness until the day of judgment. And, lastly, that souls are purified by purgatory and comparative suffering, and then are admitted into the realms of perpetual enjoyment.

ASTR. Is it not strange that in this notion of purgatory, with slight variations, pagans, and Romanists, and Egyptians, and Brahmins so nearly accord? In the creed of the Brahmins there is

something of sublimity, whatever may be their error, and Ida will not chide if I repeat the essence of their creed, which Robertson has gathered from the "Baghvat Geeta."

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'Every intelligent nature, particularly the souls of men, they conceived to be portions separated from this great spirit; to which, after fulfilling their destiny on earth, and attaining a proper degree of purity, they would be again reunited. In order to efface the stains with which a soul, during its residence on earth, has been defiled by the indulgence of sensual and corrupt appetites, they taught that it must pass, in a long succession of transmigrations, through the bodies of different animals, until, by what it suffers and what it leaves in the various forms of its existence, it shall be so thoroughly refined from all pollution as to be rendered meet for being absorbed into the divine essence, and returns, like a drop, into that unbounded ocean from which it originally issued."

Aristotle, in taking up this notion of transmigration in his book "De Animâ,” says that "the soul was always joined to a body, sometimes to one, sometimes to another." And from this idea were taken the stories of Fadlallah and the Dervis, in the "Spectator," of the " Transmigrations of Indus," and the beautiful fable of "Psyche," or the soul, which, when a body died, could not live alone on earth, and so crept into another. Herodotus, in the second book of his history, has some allusions to the Egyptian creed; and, indeed, the fear of this transmigration was the origin of mummies among the Copts. Their belief that the soul (the immortality of which they very early, if not the first, decided) could not leave the body when entire, induced them to preserve that body as long as possible; and the mummy unrollers and hieroglyphic

readers must commit sad sacrilege by exposing their sacred dust to the decomposition of air.

When the body was dissolved, however, the soul entered that of some animal that instant born; and profane commentators have, on this creed, presumed to explain the sacred story of the "banishment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar." At the end of 30,000 years it again entered that of a man; and it is likely that their object in embalming was to have the soul re-enter the same body from choice and habit.

Simonides, four hundred years after the siege of Troy, ungallantly reversed this doctrine, deciding that "the souls of women were formed of the principles and elements of brutes." The Pythagorean system was, if not more courteous, at least more just.

"Thus all things are but altered, nothing dies;
And here and there th' imbodied spirit flies.
By time, or force, or sickness, dispossess'd,
And lodges, where it lights, in bird or beast;
Or hunts without, till ready limbs it find,
And actuates those according to their kind.
From tenement to tenement is toss'd,

The soul is still the same, the figure only lost."
This is from Dryden's translation of Chaucer.
And Burton's record is as follows:

"The Pythagoreans defend Metempsychosis and Palingenesia, that souls go from one body to another, epotâ prius Lethes nudâ, as men into wolves, beares, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in their lives, or participated in conditions:

'inque ferinas

Possumus ire domus pecudumque in corpora condi.' "Lucian's cock was first Euphorbus, a captaine: 'Ille ego (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli

Panthoides Euphorbus eram.'

And Plato, in Timæus and in Phædo—

Ev. Enough of Plato, dear Astrophel; or be

lieve, with me, that his philosophy on this point was merely figurative of the similarity of mind, or genius, or feature, between the dead and the living; as it was said of old, that the soul of Raphael had transmigrated to the body of Francesco Mazzola (Parmegiano), because his style and personal beauty so closely resembled those of the all but divine master of his art.

And pray what was the gist of that special astronomer, who affirmed that he " saw something written in the moon?" A wild romance only? No, forsooth. Pythagoras may classically vociferate

"errat, et illinc,

Huc venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus
Spiritus eque feris humana in corpora transit,
Inque feras noster."

But read farther, and you will find the high moral to be a severe injunction against flesh-eating:

"Then let not piety be put to flight,

To please the taste of glutton appetite;
But suffer innate souls secure to dwell,
Lest from their seats your parents you expel;
With rabid hunger feed upon your kind,

Or from a beast dislodge a brother's mind."

Think you this injunction will be obeyed, in the face of the " Almanac des Gourmands ?"

IDA. Evelyn is severe. May I tell him that among the records of the East he will find incidents blended with this idea which may almost consecrate the creed of a Pagan? As the honey is hung close to the poisoned sting of the bee, there may be a bright spot to illuminate the gloomy annals of superstition. The very belief in transmigration may impart an atom of mercy, even to an infidel; and where superstition, shorn of the light of Christianity, must prevail, it were better sure to foster that notion which may, even in one little sentiment, half humanize the heart.