The Philosophy of Mystery

Ida. These stories are, indeed, painfully interesting; but tell us, Evelyn, is it so certain that the shaft of Azrael had irretrievably struck these unhappy creatures of whom you speak? Is it not to be feared that instances of premature sepulture have too often occurred from want of scientific discernment? On the exhumation of the Cimetière des Innocents at Paris, during the Napoleon dynasty, the skeletons were many of them discovered in attitudes indicating a struggling to get free: indeed some, we are assured, were partly out of their coffins.

To avert this awful catastrophe it was the custom, in the provinces of Germany, to place a bell-rope in the hand of a corpse for twenty-four hours before burial. We may look on this, perhaps, as one natural source of romance and mystery; for the ringing of bells by the dead has been a favourite omen of the ghostly legends.

Ev. Alas! even my own professional study and duties have not been free from these melancholy scenes; and if I make not your gentle heart to tremble, fair Castaly, I will recount some of those unhappy instances of fatality, to which the errors and neglect of man may doom his fellow-mortal.

Miss C—— (of C—— Hall, in Warwickshire,) and her brother were the subjects of typhoid fever. She seemed to die, and her bier was placed in the family vault. In a week her brother died also, and when he was taken to the tomb, the lady was found sitting in her grave-clothes on the steps of the vault; having, after her waking from the trance, died of terror or exhaustion.

A girl, after repeated faintings, was apparently dead, and was taken, as a subject, into the anatomical theatre of the “Salpetrière,” at Paris. During the night, faint groans were heard in the theatre, but no search was made. In the morning, it was evident that the girl had attempted to disengage herself from the winding-sheet, one leg being thrust from off the trestles, and an arm resting on an adjoining table.

A slave girl of Canton, named Leaning, apparently died. She was placed in a coffin, the lid of which remained unfastened, that her parents might come and see the corpse. Three days after the apparent death, while the remains were being conveyed to the grave, a noise or voice was heard proceeding from the coffin, and on removing the covering, it was found the woman had come to life again.

In 1838, at Tonnieus, in the Lower Garonne, as the graveman threw earth on a coffin he also heard groans. Much terrified, he ran away, and a crowd assembled. On opening the coffin, the face of the buried man was distorted, and he had disengaged his arms from the folds of his winding sheet.

Cast. When I was at Breslau, in 1835, (and this is not one of Astrophel’s fictions,) a nun of the Ursuline Convent was placed in her coffin in the church. At midnight, the sisters assembled to chaunt the vigils over the body of their sainted sister. While the holy hymn was echoing through the oratory, the nun arose, tottered to the altar, knelt before the cross, and prayed. The sisters with a cry of horror awoke the abbess; and on her arrival, the nun again arose, and lay down in her coffin. The physician of the convent was speedily summoned, but, on his arrival, he found her dead.

Ida. Like many sublimities of nature, these mysteries have been profaned by unholy imitation; as for instance, the reanimation of the nuns in the opera of “Robert le Diable.” But there is an awful romance mingled with the history of those melancholy creatures, from whose inanimate clay the immortal spirit was thought to have parted, still more impressive. That instinctive, that inexpressible dread, with which we contemplate a corpse, is nothing in comparison with that thrill of astonishment which overwhelms us, when a body becomes (as in the miraculous recall of Lazarus) reanimated; when a spirit appears to visit us from the dead. Yet this is not fear, for we know it cannot injure us; it is a feeling that we are with something beyond ourselves spiritual, which had seemed to have endured a transfiguration, and been admitted into the order of angelic beings. There must be something of the supernatural which creates this fearful wonder; an impression on the heart that is an especial influence of the Deity. Else should we not behold with dread, instead of a sacred pleasure, the success of our efforts in cases of suspended animation?

This visitation from another world is one of the surest indications of our spirituality; and like the reanimation of soul and mind, and consciousness, from deep and undreaming sleep, lighting up the body into brilliancy and beauty, might drown a sceptic’s reasoning in a flood of holy faith, and overwhelm him with the belief of immortality.

Cast. It is this combination of vitality and death—so seemingly a paradox—that forms the basis of many of our deepest romances; as the “Spectre Life in Death,” in the Ancient Mariner, of the melancholy Coleridge,—himself a wild visionary of the first order. If I remember, he is writing of a spectre ship. —