XXII. In the first impulse of his fear He strove to hide the maiden's faceIn vain he drew the curtain's fold, In vain he strove her veil to place, Still from his reaching hand she rose, Tall and more tall her stature grows. XXIII. "Oh, mother! mother!" hollow sounds, "Me, from my narrow silent bed, Hither a wondrous doom hath driven : Your priests, their mummery song have said, But, oh! it hath no weight in heaven! In vain your mystic spells ye prove! The grave is cold-but chills not love! XXV. "I was his doomed and destined bride In days, while Venus' fane still stood, But ye your former vows belied, And sealed your late-learned creed in blood; Alas! no heavenly power stood by, When thou didst doom thy child to die! XXVI. "And hither from the grave I roam To seek the joys denied in life; Hither, to seek my spouse I come To drain his veins, a vampire wife! His doom is past his fate severeFor Madness hath been Bride-maid here! XXVII. "Young man, thy life is o'er-the pain Is on thee that must end in death; Round thee still hangs my fatal chain Thy ringlet I must bear beneath. Farewell! farewell! away! away! Yonder the morning rises gray! XXVIII. "Hear, mother, hear a last request, And when the funeral flames arise, ON THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MENTAL IMPRESSIONS. In your Number for last September "Mr Coleridge, therefore, thinks it probable, that all thoughts are in themselves imperishable, and that, if the intelligent faculty should be rendered more comprehensive, it would require only a different and apportioned organization; the body celestial, instead of the body terrestrial, to bring before every human soul the collective experience of its whole past existence. And all this," he adds, "perchance, is the dread book of judgment, in whose mysterious hieroglyphics every idle word is recorded." The idea suggested in this last clause regarding the book of judgment is striking, and we think, that as well as by other circumstances, it is considerably favoured by an expression in scripture. It is said, Rev. xx. 12. " That when the small and great stand before God the books shall be opened." We do not see how the plural number books would have been used unless it were meant as a figurative expression for the minds or memories of those who are to appear in judgment.* The mere probability, however, of this, taken in connection with the imperishableness of our ideas, is enough to make the most inconsiderate pause, and is greatly calculated to excite to moral circumspection. The consideration, that the soul is, in its every movement, subjected to a strict and indelible registry, is surely appalling; but it is still more so to learn, that the process of recording is effected It may be mentioned, that Jeremy Taylor entertained this opinion as to the book of remembrance out of which we are to be judged; for in his sermon, his awful sermon, on "Christ's Advent to Judgment," in alluding to the dead he says, "Their debt-books are sealed up till the day of account." Again, Our conscience shall be our accuser; but this signifies these two things, 1st, That we shall be condemned for the evil which we have done, and shall then remember God by his power wiping away the dust from the tables of our memory" 66 by one of our own faculties, one inde pendent of the will; that the very act of the mind in thinking is the act of registry; and consequently, that every man bears about in his own bosom the growing chronicle of his shame or glory. It is painful to anticipate the scrutiny of an omniscient judge; but it is an aggravation of that feeling, to think that our own minds will be the instrument of revealing and exposing all. That every circumstance of our then past life, whether mental or outward, will, at the dictate of the Almighty, rush forth and stand as apparent as our outward forms or features now do to each other. It is not of this however, but of the doctrine of the imperishableness of our ideas alone, that we would speak. To demonstrate that our ideas are imperishable, is, of course, impossible. The nature of such a subject does not admit of any one perfectly decisive argument; still, however, it is an opinion which, under slight limitations, we are inclined to maintain. Impressions which the mind receives in sleep, and in some kinds of madness, often, we have no doubt, forever away like the forms of va pass pour; but we conceive, that all moral ideas at least, if not all ideas whatever which a man receives whilst awake, and in a state of perfect rationality, are indelibly impressed on the mind, and are perishable only so far as the mind is so. Amongst others the following are the best reasons we can give for such an article of faith.* 1st, The circumstance of our not being able by any effort to recall a forgotten idea is no proof, forms indeed no presumption that the idea is altogether lost; for often after endeavouring long, but wholly in vain, to recall what we once knew, by and bye it spontaneously presents itself to the mind. 2dly, Often ideas and impressions long forgotten return suddenly and unexpectedly upon us, and quickly We have not read Mr Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, where Mr C. adduces perhaps better arguments on this point than have occurred to us. again vanish without our being able to retain them. They seem to be out of the controul of the will, coming and passing away like the wind, as they list, without our being able to tell how. What we allude to will be best understood by the following passage from the original and energetic Foster: "In some occasional states of mind, we can look back much more clearly, and to a much greater distance, than at other times. I would advise to seize those short intervals of illumination which sometimes occur without our knowing the cause, and in which the genuine aspect of some remote event, or long-forgotten image, is recovered with extreme distinctness by vivid spontaneous glimpses of thought, such as no effort could have commanded; as the sombre features and minute objects of a distant ridge of hills become strikingly visible in the strong gleams of light which transiently fall on them. An instance of this kind occurred to me but a few hours since, while reading what had no perceptible connection with a circumstance of my early youth, which probably I have not recollected for many years, and which had no unusual interest at the time that it happened. That circumstance came suddenly to my mind with a clearness of representation which I was not able to retain for the length of an hour, and which I could not, by the strongest effort, at this instant renew. I seemed almost to see the walls and windows of a particular room, with four or five persons in it, who were so perfectly restored to my imagination, that I could recognise not only the features, but even the momentary expressions of their countenances, and the tones of their voices." Every man must have experienced in himself instances like this of involuntary resuscitation of mental images. Such instances show that there are images and ideas existing in the mind of which it is unconscious, but which, like the electric fluid unsuspectedly concealed in a summer evening cloud, requires only an appropriate medium of attraction to gleam forth. This be ing the case, may we not say, that if one set of ideas, which seemed to have gone for ever from the mind, is recalled by some accidental or external circumstance, all ideas, whose impressions were originally at least as strong, would recur, were but their respective associations by some object or occurrence awakened. 3dly, By a man of ordinary information, a small proportion only, out of the vast multitude of ideas which he meets with in conversation, or in the course of his reading, are felt as quite new, the remaining great majority then are not new to him from their being of the nature of reminis cences, or ideas already existing in the mind, though it may be long forgotten, and which perhaps never would have been remembered again in life, but for their being resuggested; this shews, if not that ideas are imperishable, at least that a vast proportion of that knowledge which we imagine ourselves to have lost, has not perished, but remains, though in a latent state, in the mind. 4thly, We are to be judged at last by every action, and word, and thought, and feeling of our life,* at least by those that have a moral character or relation. Many of these, however, we have in the meanwhile quite forgot, and may never again remember here; many which will go perhaps considerably to influence our ultimate destiny; but if they are not merely forgotten, but actually effaced from the tablets of the mind, how are they to be recognised as our own when arrayed either for or against us, at the great bar of judgment. To say that the Almighty, by some arbitrary miraculous act, if we may so express ourselves, can give the consciousness of their being our own, is to say what is true; but surely it is more agrecable to the general analogy of the means by which the Almighty effects his purposes, to suppose, that the ideas are not effaced from the mind; and that the soul, in another state of existence, will be so far delivered from its present impediments, and deadening influences, as to be alive to every impression ever made upon itt, or be able distinctly, and at * Matthew xii. 36. Rom. ii. 6. and 16. 2 Cor. v. 10. Eccles. xii. 14. + We know a person who experienced on one occasion an approach to this superinpressions and emotions. He had fallen into duced energy of mind, in regard to past ima river, and being unable to swim, was in great danger of being drowned. In the first plunge under water, from which he recovered almost immediately, it seemed as every thing, according to his own declaration, in his previous life, that was in any way improper, had rushed upon his memory in all its original vividness. Many an occurrence and circumstance flashed upon * On a Man's Writing Memoirs of Him- him in the lightning of that moment which self, Letter I. he had long forgot. once, to remember every circumstance of its existence here when stated. These arguments, however, amount only to the probable, and one stubborn fact directly opposed to them would set them all aside. Your correspondent adduces what he considers to be such a fact. A case in which he reckons the deepest impressions upon the mind were wiped away. We allude to the story of the woman who was executed at Oxford. We were told lately of an occurrence nearly similar in its main circumstances to that event. In Sheffield, about the year 1740, a man, after being executed, was placed in a coffin, and conveyed so far in a cart towards the place where it was proposed to inter the body. When not far from the spot, the attendants dispersed to shelter themselves from a heavy shower of rain which had overtaken them. On their return to the cart, the coffin was empty, and, after a little search, the deserter from the grave was found alive in a neighbouring house. The man had conducted himself on the day of execution very much as others do on like occasions; but on being questioned by those who afterwards visited him, among whom was the father of the gentleman who narrated the story to us, as to his feelings on that day, he said that he remembered being brought out of prison, but had not the least recollection of being taken to the place of execution,* or of what took place there. Here then, as in the affair mentioned by your correspondent, there seems to be a complete effacement of the deepest impressions. I shall now state a case which, in its nature, is evidently the same with these two, but which is just so far varied in its circumstances, as to enable us to assign a different cause for the phenomenon in question than that given by your correspondent. The late Dr S. of Paisley, at one period of his life was struck with the palsy, which made him for some time quite an invalid. In that situation his mind seemed unimpaired. He conversed just as at other times with his friends, and particularly reasoned much and ingeniously on the nature of his disease. In the course of about a month he had much recovered in *Formerly the place of execution was at some distance from that of confinement. health, but, to the astonishment of his friends, they found that the Doctor was then unconscious of any one thing that had occurred from the time he was first affected.* Now, in this instance, whatever shock there was to affect the mind happened at the commencement of the period unretained by the memory; so that in place of ideas being, in a natural way, received into the mind, and afterwards annihilated, it appears that, in consequence of bodily disease, the mind was so peculiarly affected as to be unable to retain any impressions made upon it; although that circumstance had so little impeded the exercise of the other faculties, during the short continuance of the disease, as to have remained unobserved by the Doctor's attendants and friends. In a word, the case comes under the head of partial mental derangement. It is on the same principle that we would explain the fact of the woman at Oxford and the man at Sheffield, forgetting even that they had been hanged. The woman seems, on the day of her trial, most likely on hearing the result of it, to have been so far overcome as to fall into that peculiar mental incapacity which Dr S. had experienced, and which is compatible, for a time at least, with apparent soundness of mind. The man seems to have been overpowered in a similar manner in the act of taking him from prison for execution. This surely is a more natural account of matters than that proposed by your correspondent, who imagines that the memory, by some great and sudden shock, lost its more recent and deepest impressions, whilst it remained, as to every former one, unimpaired. We know that, from various causes, the memory is often much injured, sometimes nearly destroyed, but that, by any violence, a few of its most impressive ideas should be obliterated, whilst the rest, even the faintest, remained unaffected, is what we cannot conceive. But the following fact we think to be still more decisive in the question. A gentleman now deceased, who resided in the neighbourhood of Dublin, some years before his death sud The gentleman upon whose authority this is narrated, was Dr S.'s intimate friend, and was often with him in his sickness. In this situation there was, of course, no mental progress felt; and as a curious yet necessary consequence of this, he had no sense of the progress of time. He imagined himself living still in one particular day, realizing almost the eternal now of the poets.* We remember, a good many years ago, of observing, in a religious periodical work, a very curious account of a person having lost all recollection of his past life, and afterwards suddenly regaining it. The substance of the statement is given as follows: was one morn The Rev. William Tennant of Freehold in the state of New Jersey, America, being in a bad state of health at the time, ing conversing with his brother in Latin, when he fainted and apparently died away. After the usual time he was laid out on a board, according to the custom of the country, and the neighbourhood were invited to attend his funeral next day." His physician, returning from the country in the evening, examined the body, and was Is not the justness of Mr Locke's explanation, how we have our notion of succession and duration, confirmed by such an instance as this? To the paper from which this is taken is attached the following note:-" We understand that this memoir, which we abridge from the Assembly's Missionary Magazine, printed in America, is from the pen of a learned Layman, the intimate friend of Mr Tennant. This narrative may, therefore, be relied on as authentic." not satisfied of its being exanimate; and on being told that "one of the persons who had assisted in laying it out, thought he had observed a little tremor of the flesh under the arm, he endeavoured to ascertain the truth," and was so far convinced that some life yet remained, that " he insisted that the people, who had been invited to the funeral should be requested not to attend." Mr T. continued in this state of suspended animation for three days. On the third day the people again assembled to the funeral, when Mr T. showed evident signs of life, opened his eyes, and gave a heavy groan. He was gradually restored, but it was long ere he regained good health. A considerable time after his resuscitation, and when able to take notice of what passed around him, he observed his sister one day reading, and asked her what she had in her hands. She answered that she was reading the bible. He replied, what is the bible? I know not what you mean. She reported this to her other brother, and "Mr T. was found, on examination, to be totally ignorant of every transaction of his past life. He could not read a word, nor did he seem to have any idea of what it meant. As soon as he became capable of attention, he was taught to read and write, wards began to learn the Latin language as children usually are taught, and afterunder the tuition of his brother. One day as he was reciting a lesson in Cornelius Nepos, he suddenly started, clapped his hands to his head, as if something had hurt him, and made a pause. His brother asked him what was the matter. He said, that he felt a sudden shock in his head, and it now seemed to him as if he had read that book stored, and he could speak the Latin as before. By degrees his recollection was refluently as before his sickness. His memory so completely revived, that he regained a perfect knowledge of the past transactions of his life." Admitting the truth of this statement, for which we by no means vouch, it shows that there might be no actual obliteration of ideas in the case of the resuscitated criminal at Oxford, even though it had been proved that the effect on her memory had been occasioned wholly by the violence sustained in the act of execution. |