gave rise to a famous lawsuit, in which it was strenuously debated whether her burial had not released her à vinculo matrimonii, so as to render her second spousals valid. But whether the bride of Machates was a dead or a living one, the nature of the skeleton lady who danced at the wedding of Alexander III. King of Scotland, according to that grave historian Hector Boethius, can hardly admit of a question, any more than of the skeleton knight, of whom mention is made in one of the ballads of that equally grave chronicler and contemporary of our own, Matthew Lewis, Esq. We would cite, to the same purpose, another story of " a certain Frenchman of noble family," related by our friend Thomas Heywood, in the curious work already mentioned, only, that, as we cannot with perfect decency relate it in his own words, we content ourselves with referring to the place, (page 542, 543.) The short story of "the Storm," which is added to the collection by the English translator of the others, is said by him to be "founded on an incident similar in its features, which was some time since communicated to me by a female friend of very deserved literary celebrity, as having actually occurred in this country;" and it forms a very fit companion to those by the side of which it is now placed. "The Spectre-barber," which is the last in the volume, is of a ludicrous cast, but not unentertaining. The idea of a familiar spirit or goblin (here indeed it is the ghost of a departed barber) who makes it his amusement to shave such persons as happen to come within the reach of his jurisdiction, is supported by classical authority. The younger Pliny mentions a well-attested occurrence of this nature in his epistles, (Lib. 16. Ep. 27.) The operation seems, it is true, to demand something more of real flesh and blood in the agent than is usually attributed to spectres; but perhaps we labour under an error on this subject, and that real substantial phantoms, like the Vampires of Hungary and Moravia, and the Vroucholachis of the modern Greeks, are more common in their appearance than we are at all aware of. That spirits may be fattened by good living, and again reduced to circumstances more befitting their ghostly character, by an alteration of diet, is a fact of which we have the most unquestionable evidence; and, if they have one, it is fair to conclude they may, upon occasion, be invested with all the other properties of common humanity. We wish it were consistent with the limits we must prescribe to a disquisition of this nature to quote from our most excellent author, Thomas Heywood, aforesaid, the whole of his very edifying history of the " Spirit of the Buttery;" but if our present author ever adds to his collection of "Tales of the Dead," we would earnestly recommend it to him, as a fit companion for the tale which has given us occasion to introduce the mention of it. It is to be found, set down at full length " in most delicate verse," at page 557-9, of the work so often referred to. We have taken occasion, from the publications before us, to justify our decided anti-ferriarism by examples; and we have surely advanced enough, and more than enough, to prove that the philosophical principle of " Hallucination" will not answer its turn; at best, not in one out of a dozen commonly alleged instances of spectral apparitions. For the sake of that noble faculty of our souls, the imagination, we are not ashamed to confess, that we take greater pleasure in hearing of one story of the sort which defies the attempt of a probable natural solution, than twenty of which the physician or moralist may pique himself upon being able to finish the explanation. There is too much philosophy stirring in our days, and has been for this last century at least; too much for the free indulgence of our poetical power. Nay, we are not sure but we may call the whole world at present a world of accountants and botanists, with at least as much justice as Bonaparte used to call this nation a nation of shopkeepers. We cordially wish, for the happiness of the rising generation, that some things at least may still remain unexplained for their forces to work upon. Let us not, however, be misunderstood, lest in our zeal for the interests of the imagination, we may be conceived to turn rebels to the established empire of reason. That the last wish we expressed may be carried into effect as far as we have any power or influence, we will leave our own opinions in that enviable state of mys tery which may exercise the imaginations of posterity, whenever posterity shall take the trouble (as doubtless will one day be the case) to inquire into them. But, for the satisfaction of the botanists and accountants, we will so far declare it, as that, notwithstanding our dissent from Dr Ferriar, we are still not altogether of the persuasion of another physician, eminent in his day, whose words we nevertheless think very fit for the winding-up of this desultory treatise. "It is a riddle to me," says Sir Thomas Brown (Religio Medici 6th edition, p. 24.) "how so many learned heads should so far forget their metaphysics, and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the existence of spirits. Those that, to confute their incredulity, desire to see apparitions, shall questionless never behold any; the devil hath them already in a heresie as capital as witchcraft, and to appear to them were but to convert them." tial. And people who, before his condemnation, were as assured of the murderer's guilt as if they had seen him with red hands, began now to conjure up the most contradictory and absurd reasons for believing in the possibility of his innocence. His own dark and sullen silence seemed to some, an indignant expression of that innocence which he was too proud to avow,some thought they saw in his imperturbable demeanour, a resolution to court death, because his life was miserable, and his reputation blasted,—and others, the most numerous, without reason or reflection, felt such sympathy with the criminal, as almost amounted to a negation of his crime. The man under sentence of death was, in all the beauty of youth, distinguished above his fellows for graceful accomplishments, and the last of a noble family. He had lain a month in his dungeon, heavily laden with irons. Only the first week he had been visited by several religionists, but he then fiercely ordered the jailor to admit no more 66 men of God,"-and till the eve of his execution, he had lain in dark so EXTRACTS FROM GOSSCHEN'S DIARY. litude, abandoned to his own soul. No I. [The following striking narrative is translated from the MS. Memoirs of the late Rev. Dr Gottlieb Michael Gosschen, a Catholic clergyman of great eminence in the city of Ratisbonne. It was the custom of this divine to preserve, in the shape of a diary, a regular account of all the interesting particulars which fell in his way, during the exercise of his sacred profession. Two thick small quartos, filled with these strange materials, have been put into our hands by the kindness of Count Frederick von Lindénbäumenberg, to whom the worthy father bequeathed them. Many a dark story, well fitted to be the groundwork of a romance,—many a tale of guilty love and repentance, many a fearful monument of remorse and horror, might we extract from this record of dungeons and confessionals. We shall from time to time do so, but sparingly, and what is still more necessary, with selection.] EDITOR. NEVER had a murder so agitated the inhabitants of this city as that of Maria von Richterstein. No heart could be pacified till the murderer was condemned. But no sooner was his doom sealed, and the day fixed for his execution, than a great change took place in the public feeling. The evidence, though conclusive, had been wholly circumstan It was near midnight when a message was sent to me by a magistrate, that the murderer was desirous of seeing me. I had been with many men in his unhappy situation, and in no case had I failed to calm the agonies of grief, and the fears of the world to had sat with him at his father's table come. But I had known this youth-I knew also that there was in him a strange and fearful mixture of good and evil-I was aware that there were circumstances in the history of his genitors not generally known-nay, proin his own life that made him an object of awful commiseration-and I of the enormity of his guilt, but a still went to his cell with an agitating sense more agitating one of the depth of his misery, and the wildness of his misfortunes. I entered his cell, and the phantom struck me with terror. He stood erect in his irons, like a corpse that had risen from the grave. His face, once so beautiful, was pale as a shroud, and drawn into ghastly wrinkles. His black-matted hair hung over it with a terrible expression of wrathful and savage misery. And his large eyes, which were once black, glared with a light in which all colour was lost, and seemed to fill the whole dungeon with their flashings. I saw his guilt-I saw what was more terrible than his guilt his insanity-not in emaciation only not in that more than death-like whiteness of his face—but in all that stood before me the figure, round which was gathered the agonies of so many long days and nights of remorse and phrenzy-and of a despair that had no fears of this world or its terrors, but that was plunged in the abyss of eternity. For a while the figure said nothing. He then waved his arm, that made his irons clank, motioning me to sit down on the iron frame-work of his bed; and when I did so, the murderer took his place by my side. A lamp burned on a table before us -and on that table there had been drawn by the maniac-for I must indeed so call him— a decapitated human body-the neck as if streaming with gore-and the face writhed into horrible convulsions, but bearing a resemblance not to be mistaken to that of him who had traced the horrid picture. He saw that my eyes rested on this fearful mockery-and, with a recklessness fighting with despair, he burst out into a broken peal of laughter, and said, " to-morrow will you see that picture drawn in blood!" He then grasped me violently by the arm, and told me to listen to his confession, and then to say what I thought of God and his eternal Providence. "I have been assailed by idiots, fools, and drivellers, who could understand nothing of me nor of my crime,-men who came not here that I might confess before God, but reveal myself to them, and I drove the tamperers with misery and guilt out of a cell sacred to insanity. But my hands have played in infancy, long before I was a murderer, with thy gray hairs, and now, even that I am a murderer, I can still touch them with love and with reverence. Therefore my lips, shut to all beside, shall be opened unto thee. "I murdered her. Who else loved her so well as to shed her innocent blood? It was I that enjoyed her beauty-a beauty surpassing that of the daughters of men,-it was I that filled her soul with bliss, and with trouble, it was I alone that was privileged to take her life. I brought her into sin-I kept her in sin-and when she would have left her sin, it was fitting that I, to whom her heart, her body, and her soul belonged, should suffer no divorcement of them from my bosom, as long as there was blood in her's,—and when I saw that the poor infatuated wretch was resolved-I slew her ;-yes, with this blessed hand I stabbed her to the heart. "Do you think there was no pleasure in murdering her? I grasped her by that radiant, that golden hair, I bared those snow-white breasts,― I dragged her sweet body towards me, and, as God is my witness, I stabbed, and stabbed her with this very dagger, ten, twenty, forty times, through and through her heart. She never so much as gave one shriek, for she was dead in a moment,-but she would not have shrieked had she endured pang after pang, for she saw my face of wrath turned upon her, she knew that my wrath was just, and that I did right to murder her who would have forsaken her lover in his insanity. "I laid her down upon a bank of flowers,—that were soon stained with her blood. I saw the dim blue eyes beneath the half-closed lids,—that face so changeful in its living beauty was now fixed as ice, and the balmy breath came from her sweet lips no more. My joy, my happiness, was perfect. I took her into my arms-madly as I did on that night when first I robbed her of what fools called her innocencebut her innocence has gone with her to heaven-and there I lay with her bleeding breasts prest to my heart, and many were the thousand kisses that I gave those breasts, cold and bloody as they were, which I had many million times kissed in all the warmth of their loving loveliness, and which none were ever to kiss again but the husband who had murdered her. "I looked up to the sky. There shone the moon and all her stars. Tranquillity, order, harmony, and peace, glittered throughout the whole universe of God. Look up, Maria, your favourite star has arisen.' I gazed upon her, and death had begun to change her into something that was most terrible. Her features were hardened and sharp,-her body stiff as a lump of frozen clay,-her fingers rigid and clenched,-and the blood that was once so beautiful in her thin blue veins was now hideously coagulated all over her corpse. I gazed on her one moment longer, and, all at once, I recollected that we were a family of madmen. Did not my father perish by his own hand? Blood had before been shed in our house. Did not that warrior ancestor of ours die raving in chains? Were not those eyes of mine always unlike those of other men? Wilder at times fiercer-and oh! father, saw you never there a melancholy, too woful for mortal man, a look sent up from the darkness of a soul that God never visited in his mercy? "I knelt down beside my dead wife. But I knelt not down to pray. No: I cried unto God, if God there be "Thou madest me a madman! Thou madest me a murderer! Thou foredoomedst me to sin and to hell! Thou, thou, the gracious God whom we mortals worship. There is the sacrifice! I have done thy will,-I have slain the most blissful of all thy creatures; -am I a holy and commissioned priest, or am I an accursed and infidel murderer ?' "Father, you start at such words! You are not familiar with a madman's thoughts. Did I make this blood to boil so? Did I form this brain? Did I put that poison into my veins which flowed a hundred years since in the heart of that lunatic, my heroic ancestor? Had I not my being imposed, forced upon me, with all its red-rolling sea of dreams; and will you, a right holy and pious man, curse me because my soul was carried away by them as a ship is driven through the raging darkness of a storm? A thousand times, even when she lay in resigned love in my bosom, something whispered to me, Murder her! It may have been the voice of Satan-it may have been the voice of God. For who can tell the voice of heaven from that of hell? Look on this bloodcrusted dagger-look on the hand that drove it to her heart, and then dare to judge of me and of my crimes, or comprehend God and all his terrible decrees! "Look not away from me. Was I not once confined in a madhouse? Are these the first chains I ever wore? No. I remember things of old, that others may think I have forgotten. Dreams will disappear for a long, long time, but they will return again. It may have been some one like me that I once saw sitting chained, in his black melancholy, in a madhouse. I may have been only a stranger passing through that wild world. I know not. The sound of chains brings with it a crowd of thoughts, that come rushing upon me from a dark and far-off world. But if it indeed be true, that in my boyhood I was not as other happy boys, and that even then the clouds of God's wrath hung around me,-that God may not suffer my soul everlastingly to perish. "I started up. I covered the dead body with bloody leaves, and tufts of grass, and flowers. I washed my hands from blood-I went to bed-I sleptyes, I slept-for there is no hell like the hell of sleep, and into that hell God delivered me. I did not give myself up to judgment. I wished to walk about with the secret curse of the murder in my soul. What could men do to me so cruel as to let me live? How could God curse me more in black and fiery hell than on this green and flowery earth? And what right had such men as those dull heavy-eyed burghers to sit in judgment upon me, in whose face they were afraid to look for a moment, lest one gleam of it should frighten them into idiocy? What right have they, who are not as I am, to load me with their chains, or to let their villain executioner spill my blood? If I deserve punishment-it must rise up in a blacker cloud under the hand of God in my soul. "I will not kneel-a madman has no need of sacraments. I do not wish the forgiveness nor the mercy of God. All that I wish is the forgiveness of her I slew; and well I know that death cannot so change the heart that once had life, as to obliterate from THINE the merciful love of me! Spirits may in heaven have beautiful bosoms no more; but thou, who art a spirit, wilt save him from eternal perdition, whom thou now knowest God created subject to a terrible disease. If there be mercy in heaven, it must be with thee. Thy path thither lay through blood: so will mine. Father! thinkst thou that we shall meet in heaven. Lay us at least in one grave on earth." In a moment he was dead at my feet. The stroke of the dagger was like lightning, and THESE are two very delightful and instructive little volumes. Mr Lamb is without doubt a man of genius, and of very peculiar genius too; so that we scarcely know of any class of lite rature to which it could with propriety be said that he belongs. His mind is original even in its errors; and though his ideas often flow on in a somewhat fantastic course, and are shaded with no less fantastic imagery, yet at all times they bubble freshly from the fountain of his own mind, and almost always lead to truth. It is pleasant to know and to feel that we have to do with a man of originality. Much may be learned even from the mistakes of such a writer; he can express more by one happy word than a merely judicious or learned man could in a long dissertation; and the glimpses and flashes which he flings over a subject, shews us more of its bearings than a hundred farthing candles ostentatiously held up by the hands of formal and pragmatical literati. Mr Lamb, however, never has been, and we are afraid never will be, a very popular writer. His faults are likely to be very offensive to ordinary readers; while his merits are of so peculiar a kind, that it requires a peculiar taste to feel them justly. We are sorry, too, to observe among his admirers persons whose favourable opinion will be apt to prejudice the public against him; and we wish that the Editor of the Examiner and Mr Hazlitt had not affected to love and admire that which we are sure they cannot at all understand. Mr Hunt says, with his usual vulgar affectation, "Charles Lamb, a single one of whose speculations on humanity, unostentatiously scattered about in comments and magazines, is worth all the half-wayhouse gabbling of critics on the establishment;" and Mr Hazlitt places him, as a critic, far above William Schlegel. The truth is, that Charles Lamb is felt to be a man of genius, and these two pretenders would fain claim alliance with him. Probably his good nature endures their quackery; but even his simplicity is not thus to be deceived. And though he lives, we believe, in famous London The Works of Charles Lamb. 2 vols foolscap 8vo. C. & J. Ollier, London. VOL. III. city, and has a little too much of a town air about him, we do not find in his volumes any interchange of civilities with these sons of sedition. Once, and once only, he alludes to Hunt, in some very beautiful verses, addressed to the child of that person when in prison with his unhappy father; but to "pimpled Hazlitt," notwithstanding his "coxcomb lectures" on Poetry and Shakspeare, he does not condescend to say one syllable. Mr Lamb's Parnassus is not in the kingdom of Cockaigne. We have said that there is something very peculiar in the genius of this writer. His mind has not a very wide range; but every thing it sees rises up before it in vivid beauty. He is never deceived by mere seeming magnitude. He tries every thing by the standard of moral worth. Splendid common-places have no charm for the simplicity of his mind. He has small pleasure in following others along the beaten high-road. He diverges into green lanes and sunshiny glades, and not seldom into the darker and more holy places of undiscovered solitude. He never utters any of that dull or stupid prosing that weighs down the dying Edinburgh Review,-never any of those utterly foolish paradoxes which Hazlitt insidiously insinuates into periodical publications,-never any of those flagitious philippics against morality and social order that come weekly raving from the irascible Hunt. There is in him a rare union of originality of mind with delicacy of feeling and tenderness of heart. His understanding seems always to be guided by the kindliest affections, and they are good and trusty guides; so that there is not in these two volumes a single sentiment or opinion which does not dispose us to love the pureminded and high-souled person who breathes them out with such cordial sincerity. We are aware that by these remarks we have by no means succeeded in giving our readers a very distinct notion of Mr Lamb's peculiar merits as an author; but we shall enable them to form one for themselves, from various specimens, both of his prose and verse. The style of his prose seems to us exceedingly beautiful; sometimes, perhaps, savouring of affectation, or at least of too studious an imitation of those rich elder writers of 4. G |