Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847
TextTRUE LOVE
Exquisite Miss Millionaire!
Hear a lover's genuine prayer:
Let the world adore your charms,
Swan-like neck, or snowy arms,
Rosy smile, or dazzling glance,
Making all our bosoms dance;
For your purse alone I care,
Exquisite Miss Millionaire!
Ringlets blackest of the black,
Ivory shoulders, Grecian back,
Tresses so divinely twined,
That we long to be the wind,
Waiting till the lady's face
Turns, to give the coup de grace.
All those spells to me are air.
Truth is truth, Miss Millionaire.
Let them talk of finger-tips,
Pearly teeth, or coral lips,
Cheeks the morning rose that mock,
Still there is a charm in Stock!
Solid mortgage, five per cent,
Freehold with "improving" rent,
Russia bond, and railroad share,
Steal my soul, Miss Millionaire.
Let your rhymers (all are crackt)
Rave of cloud or cataract;
On the Rhine, or Rhone, or Arve,
Let romancers stroll and starve.
Cupid loves a gilded cage,
(Let me choose your equipage,)
Passion pants for Portman Square,
(Be but mine,) Miss Millionaire.
There you'll lead a London life,
More a goddess than a wife;
Fifty thousand pounds a-year
Making our expenses clear;
Giving, once a-week, a fête,
Simply to display our plate.
Never earth saw such a pair,
Exquisite Miss Millionaire!
But a steeple starts up from its green thickets; not one of the hideous objects which the architects of our district churches perpetrate, to puzzle the passer-by as to the purpose of its being,—whether a brewer's chimney, or a shot-tower,—a perch for city pigeons, or a standing burlesque on the builders of the nineteenth age of the fine arts in England. This steeple is an old grey turret, ivy-mantled, modest, and with that look of venerable age which instinctively makes us feel, that it has witnessed memorable things in its time.
And it has witnessed them. On the slope of the hill above this church once waved the banners of a king, and the opposing banners of his nobles: the one receiving the lesson, that kings have duties as well as their subjects; and the others enforcing the lesson by the sight of lines and columns of the stout bowmen and billmen of the Norman chivalry.—On this spot, just this day six hundred and thirty years ago, was held the grand conference between John and the Barons.
Further inland, but rising on the view, is Swainscomb, the hill on which the Danish armies encamped, in their pirate rovings of the British seas, and their invasions of the Thames.
What a contrast between the green landscape of this moment, and the camp of Sweno. All before me was the luxury of cultivation, the yellowing crop, the grazing cattle, the cottage smoke curling slowly upward on the back-ground of noble beech, ash, and sycamore. On the summit, the sun gleamed on a rectory house, half buried in roses, where the most learned of our Orientalists perused the Koran in the peace of a Mahometan paradise, and doubtless saw, on the dancing waters of the mighty river at his feet, perpetual visions of houris.
Yet those pastures once echoed with the barbarian cries of the Cimbric warriors; tents of seal-skin and white bear fur covered the hill; the smokes of savage feasting and Scandinavian sacrifice clouded the skies; and on the summit, surrounded by iron guards and spectral-looking priests, stood the magic standard of the north, the image of the Raven, which flapped its wings on the coming of battle, and gave the oracular cry of victory.
But, what sounds of harmony sweep along the water! I see a range of showy figures on the shore; it is a whole brass band, seducing us, in the style of the syrens of old, to bring our ship to an anchor, and hazard the enchantments of the most delicious of tea-gardens.—We are within a hundred yards of the pier of Rosherville.
Within five minutes, we might be roaming through this paradise of the Thames, climbing rustic slopes carpeted with flowers, or gazing at a menagerie, where the monkeys bound, chatter, and take apples out of your hand; or sipping coffee of the most fragrant growth, or dancing the polka under alcoves of painted canvass, large enough to manœuvre a brigade of the Horse-guards. By day the scene is romantic, but by night it is magical. By day the stranger roams through labyrinths of exotic vegetation, but by night he is enchanted with invisible music, dazzled with fireworks, and goes to his pillow to dream of the Arabian Nights. Honour to the name of Jeremiah Rosher, the discoverer of the "capabilities" of this Garden of the Hesperides. He found it a lime quarry, and made it a bower of Armida. If, as the great moralist said, "the man who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, is a benefactor to mankind," what honours should be paid to the genius, which substituted human beings for lime-burners, and made the élite of the east end of the mighty metropolis dance by thousands, where nothing but the top of a thistle ever danced before. There have been more "first affections" awakened in the rambles through the shades of Rosherville than in fifty Almacks, and five hundred times more matches in consequence, than ever took refuge in Gretna; and all this—for a shilling!
As we neared the pier, I observed a small but elegant yacht, lying to; with several groups of dark-featured and cloak-covered men listening, with all the eagerness of foreign gesture, to the brazen harmony. My Italian compagnon de voyage, instantly bounded from his seat, ran to the ship's side, and held a rapid dialogue with the crew of the little vessel. They were just from Rome, and were bringing over the newly appointed Archbishop from the Vatican! The novelty of the voyage did not seem to agree with the pleasurable faculties of those sons of "Bella Italia," for nothing could be conceived more deplorable than their physiognomies.
The scene reminded me of one which I had witnessed at Naples, on the arrival of the first steam-boat from Rome, conveying the Cardinal Legate to the Court of his Majesty of the Two Sicilies.
I disdain all the formalities of poetry. Let others prepare their parchment-bound portfolios, throw their visages into the penseroso, fling their curls back from their brows, unbutton their shirt-collars, and, thus Byronised, begin. To me all times and places are the same.—The inspiration rushes on me, and I pour out my "unpremeditated song" in the original rapture of Bardism!
THE CARDINAL'S VOYAGE
I have seen some queer things,
Both in people and kings,
Since first I began as a dreamer;
But I ne'er thought to hear
Any thing half so queer
As a Cardinal's trip in a steamer.
I once saw a Rabbi,
The prince of the shabby,
In a gale of wind playing the screamer,
Till we plumped him o'erboard,
Towed along by a cord,
For a bath at the tail of the steamer.
'Tis true, the Chinese
Looked as black as their teas,
When battered by brave Sir John Bremer:
But John Chinaman's slaughter
Was all milk and water,
To the havoc on board of the steamer.
On a coil of the cable,
Right under the table,
With the glass at 500 of Reaumur,
Busy "making his soul,"
As he felt every roll,
Lay his Highness, on board of the steamer.
Around him ten chaplains,
And none of them saplings,
Lay pale as a quarantine streamer.
With six dozen of monks,
All as helpless as trunks,
All rolling about in the steamer.
As she steered down the Tiber,
It shook every fibre
Of the conclave from forehead to femur;
But, 'twas when in her glee,
She got sight of the sea,
That she showed them the tricks of the steamer.
At Civita Vecchia,
Oh, mie orecchie!
What howls called the Saints to redeem her.
But she darted along
Like a stone from a thong,
In the style of a true British steamer.
She now ruled the roast,
As she sprang from the coast,
Through such surges no buckets could teem her:
The Lipari Isles
Got but very few smiles
From the brethren on board of the steamer.
"As sure as we're born,
We'll ne'er see Leghorn."
"Peccavi!" cried out every schemer:
The whole of the friars.
In that court were "criers,"
While thundered the wheels of the steamer.
I'd not stand in their shoes,
As they passed Syracuse,
Where thy frigate lay moored, Captain Seymour:
At the top of their throats
Yelling out for thy boats,
While teeth to the wind went the steamer.
As they swept by Messina—
Thy birth-place, Christina!—
Old Etna was scarce such a beamer:
In vain they cried—"Stop!"
With a blaze at her top,
Like a pillar of flame rushed the steamer.
She bounced by Charybdis,
With limestone which ribb'd is;
A touch from a pebble might seam her;
Made a curtsey to Scylla,
As the Turks say, "Bismillah,"
'Twas a very close shave for the steamer.
But the surges grew brown,
And the night hurried down,
And they saw in each flash a death-gleamer;
While the peals from the clouds,
And the wind in the shrouds,
Made them all very sick of the steamer.
When they made Capri's lights
It redoubled their frights,
And the friars all bellowed—"Tenemur!"
One and all made confessions,
(E'en popes have transgressions,)
There was some heavy work in the steamer.
But they soon smelt the apples
And fish-shops of Naples,
And the cargo began to esteem her—
"No witch in a sieve,
They could ever believe,
Had sailed half so fast as the steamer."
Could my pen give a sketch
Of each wo-begone wretch,
Like Gilray, H. B., or old Damer,
You should have the whole troop
That lay stretched on the poop,
As up by the mole dashed the steamer.
Were I Guizot, or Florian,
Or "Oxford Historian,"
Or "Orator" like Dr Cremer,
In my grand paragraphs,
You should have all the laughs
Of the mob as they rushed from the steamer!
LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS
II.—VAMPYRISM
Dear Archy,—In acknowledging my former letter, you express an eager desire to learn, as you phrase it, "all about vampyrs, if there ever were such things." I will not delay satisfying your curiosity, wondering only how my friend, your late tutor, Mr H., should have left you in a state of uncertainty upon a point on which, in my time, schoolboys many years your juniors had fully made up their minds.
"Were there ever such things as vampyrs?" tantamne rem tam negligenter? I turn to the learned pages of Horst for a luminous and precise definition of the destructive and mysterious beings, whose existence you have ventured to consider problematical.
"A vampyr is a dead body, which continues to live in the grave, which it leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the living, whereby it is nourished, and preserved in good condition, instead of becoming decomposed like other dead bodies."
Upon my word, you really deserve—Since Mr George Combe has clearly shown in his admirable work "On the Constitution of Man, and its adaptation to the world around him," that ignorance is a statutable crime before Nature, and punishable, and punished by the laws of Providence,—you deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr H. your substitute, which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of the nocturnal visit of a vampyr. Your scepticism will abate pretty considerably, when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye—when you are conscious, as you lie motionless with terror, of his nearer and nearer approach,—when you feel his face, fresh with the smell of the grave, bent over your throat, while his keen teeth make a fine incision in your jugular, preparatively to his commencing his plain, but nutritive repast.
You would look a little paler the next morning, but that would be all for the moment; for Fischer informs us, that the bite of a vampyr leaves in general no mark upon the person. But he fearfully adds, "it (the bite) is nevertheless speedily fatal, unless the bitten person protect himself by eating some of the earth from the grave of the vampyr, and smearing himself with his blood." Unfortunately, indeed, these measures are only of temporary use. Fischer adds, "if through these precautions the life of the victim be prolonged for a period, sooner or later he ends with becoming a vampyr himself; that is to say, he dies, and is buried, but continues to lead a vampyr life in the grave, nourishing himself by infecting others, and promiscuously propagating vampyrism."
Now this is no romancer's dream. It is a succinct account of a superstition, which to this day survives in the east of Europe, where little more than a century ago it was frightfully prevalent. At that epoch, vampyrism spread like, an epidemic pestilence through Servia and Wallachia, causing innumerable deaths, and disturbing all the land with apprehension of the mysterious visitation, against which no one felt his life secure.
This is something like a good solid practical popular delusion. Do I believe it?—to be sure I do; the facts are matter of history. The people died like sheep, and the cause and method of their dying was, in their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died, frightened out of their lives; as men have died, whose pardon has been proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject would be worth examining; but there is more in it than that, as the following o'er true tale will convince you, the essential parts of which are attested by perfect documentary evidence.
It was in the spring of 1727 that there returned from the Levant to the village of Meduegna, near Belgrade, one Arnod Paole, who, in a few years of military service and varied adventure, had amassed enough to purchase him a cottage, and an acre or two of land in his native place, where he gave out he meant to pass the remainder of his days. He kept his word. Arnod had yet scarcely reached the prime of manhood; and though he must have encountered the rough, as well as the smooth of life, and have mingled with many a wild and reckless companion, yet his natural good disposition, and honest principle, had preserved him unscathed amid the scenes he had passed through. At all events, such were the thoughts expressed by his neighbours, as they discussed his return and settlement among them in the stube of the village Hof. Nor did the frank and open countenance of Arnod, his obliging habits, and steady conduct, argue their judgment incorrect. Nevertheless, there was something occasionally, noticeable in his ways, a look and tone that betrayed inward inquietude. Often would he refuse to join his friends, or on some sudden plea abruptly quit their society. And he still more unaccountably, and as it seemed systematically, avoided meeting his pretty neighbour, Nina, whose father occupied the next tenement to his own. At the age of seventeen, Nina was as charming a picture as you could have seen, of youth, cheerfulness, innocence, and confidence in all the world. You could not look into her limpid eyes, which steadily returned your gaze, without seeing to the bottom of the pure and transparent spring of her thoughts. Then why did Arnod shrink from meeting her? He was young, had a little property, had health and industry, and he had told his friends he had formed no ties in other lands. Why, then, did he avoid the fascination of the pretty Nina, who seemed a being made to chase from any brow the clouds of gathering care? But he did so. Yet less and less resolutely; for he felt the charm of her presence; who could have done otherwise? and how could he at last resist—he didn't—the impulse of his fondness for the innocent girl who often sought to cheer his fits of depression?
And they were to be united; were betrothed; yet still an anxious gloom would fitfully overcast his countenance even in the sunshine of those hours.
"What is it, dear Arnod, that makes you sad? it cannot be on my account, I know; for you were sad before you ever noticed me; and that I think," and you should have seen the deepening rose upon her cheek, as she added, "surely first made me notice you."
"Nina," he answered, "I have done, I fear, a great wrong in trying to gain your affections. Nina, I have a fixed impression that I shall not live; yet, knowing this, I have selfishly made my existence necessary to your happiness."
"How strangely you talk, dear Arnod! Who in the village is stronger and healthier than you? You feared no danger when you were a soldier; what danger do you fear as a villager of Meduegna?"
"It haunts me, Nina."
"But, Arnod, you were sad before you thought of loving me. Did you then fear to die?"
"Ah, Nina, it is something worse than death:" and his vigorous frame shook with agony.
"Arnod, I conjure you, tell me."
"It was in Cossova this fate befel me. Here we have hitherto escaped the terrible scourge. But there they died, and the dead visited the living. I experienced a first frightful visitation, and I fled, but not till I had sought his grave, and exacted the dread expiation from the vampyr."
Nina uttered a piercing cry, and fell senseless. Afterwards, they found a consolation in the length of time, now months, that had elapsed, since Arnod had left Cossova, during which no fearful visitant had again approached him; and they fondly began to hope that gave them security. For the poor girl well knew from many a village tale the danger to which Arnod had been exposed.
It is a strange world. The ills we fear often never befall us: the blows that reach us are for the most part unforeseen ones. One day, about a week after this conversation, Arnod missed his footing and fell from the top of his loaded hay-wagon. He was picked up stunned and insensible. They carried him home; where, after lingering some hours, he died; was buried; but not forgotten.
Twenty or thirty days after his decease, says the perfectly authenticated report of these transactions, several in the neighbourhood made complaints that they had been haunted by the deceased Arnod; and four of the number (among whom, there being nothing in the report to the contrary, I am afraid we may include poor Nina) died. To put a term to this fearful evil, the villagers were advised by their Heyduke, who had had before some experience in such matters, to disinter the body of Arnod Paole. This step was accordingly taken forty days after his burial.
"The body," says the report, "was found in a perfectly fresh state, with no sign of decomposition. Fresh blood had recently escaped from its mouth, with which its shirt was wet. The skin (the epidermis, no doubt) had separated together with the nails, and there were new skin and nails underneath. As it was perfectly clear from these signs that he was a vampyr, conformably to the use established in such cases, they drove a stake through his heart.
"Whereupon he gave an audible groan, and a quantity of blood flowed from him. The same day his body was burned to ashes, which were returned to the grave."
The authorities further staked and burned the bodies of the four others, who were supposed to have been infected by Arnod: but no mention is made of the condition in which they were found.
The adoption of this decisive, measure did not, however, entirely extinguish the evil, which continued still to hang about the village. About five years afterwards it had again become rife and very prevalent, and many again died of it. Whereupon the authorities determined to make a general clearance of the vampyrs in the churchyard of Meduegna, and for that purpose they had all the graves to which suspicion was directed, opened, and their contents dealt with conformably to the state in which they were found, of which the following is the medical report, here and there abridged only:—
1. A woman of the name of Stana, 20 years of age, who had died 3 months before of a 3 days' illness following her confinement. She had before her death avowed that she had anointed herself with the blood of a vampyr, to liberate herself from his persecution. Nevertheless she, as well as her infant, whose body through careless interment had been half-eaten by dogs, both had died. Her body was entirely free from decomposition. On opening it, the chest was found full of recently effused blood. The heart and blood-vessels contained no coagulated blood, and the bowels had exactly the appearances of sound health. The skin and nails of the hands and feet were loose and came off, but underneath lay new skin and nails.
2. A woman of the name of Miliza, who had died at the end of a 3 months' illness. The body had been buried 90 and odd days. In the chest was liquid blood. The viscera were as in the former instance. The body was declared by the Heydukes who recognised it, to be in better condition and fatter than it had been in the woman's legitimate lifetime.
3. The body of a child of 8 years old, that had likewise been buried 90 days; it was in the vampyr condition.
4. The son of a Heyduke, named Milloc 16 years old. The body had lain in the grave 9 weeks. He had died after 3 days' indisposition, and was in the condition of a vampyr.
5. Joachim, likewise a Heyduke's son, 17 years old. He had died after a 3 days' illness; had been buried 8 weeks and 4 days; was found in the vampyr state.
6. A woman of the name of Rusha, who had died of an illness of 10 days' duration, and had been buried 6 weeks, in whom likewise fresh blood was found in the chest.
[The reader will understand, that to see blood in the chest it is first necessary to cut the chest open.]
7. The body of a girl of 10 years of age, who had died 2 months before. It was likewise in the vampyr state, perfectly undecomposed, with blood in the chest.
8. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried 7 weeks before; and that of her infant, 8 weeks old, buried only 21 days. They were both in a state of decomposition, though buried in the same ground, and closely adjoining the others.
9. A servant of the Heyduke of the place, by name Rhade, 23 years old; he had died after an illness of 3 months' duration, and the body had been buried 5 weeks. It was in a state of decomposition.
10. The body of the Heyduke Stanco, 60 years of age, who had died six weeks before: there was much blood and other fluid in the chest and abdomen, and the body was in the vampyr condition.
11. Milloc, a Heyduke, 25 years old. The body had been in the earth 6 weeks. It was in the perfect vampyr condition.
12. Stanjoika, the wife of a Heyduke, 20 years old; had died after an illness of three days, and had been buried 18 days. The countenance was florid, and of a high colour. There was blood in the chest and in the heart. The viscera were perfectly sound. The skin remarkably fresh.
The document which gives these particulars is signed by three regimental surgeons, and formally countersigned by the lieutenant-colonel and a sub-lieutenant, it bears the date of June 7, 1732, Meduegna near Belgrade. No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, nor of its general fidelity; the less so, that it does not stand alone, but is supported by heaps of parallel evidence, only less rigorously verifiable. It appears to me to establish beyond a question, that, where the fear and belief of vampyrism is prevailing, and there occur several deaths after short illnesses, the bodies, when disinterred, weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses, from which life has only recently departed.
What inference shall we draw from this fact?—that vampyrism is true in the popular sense, and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned corpses had some mysterious way of preternaturally nourishing themselves? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let us content ourselves for the present with a notion less monstrous, but still startling enough: That the bodies, which were found in the so-called vampyr state, instead of being in a new and mystical condition, were simply alive in the common way; that, in short, they were the bodies of persons who had been buried alive; and whose life was only extinguished by the ignorance and barbarity of those who disinterred them. In the following sketch of a similar scene to that above described, the truth of this inference comes out with terrific force and vividness.
Erasmus Francisi, in his remarks upon the description of the Archdukedom of Krain, by Valvasor, speaks of a man of the name of Grando, in the district of Kring, who died, was buried, and became a vampyr, and as such was exhumed for the purpose of having a stake thrust through him.
"When they opened his grave, after he had been long buried, his face was found with a colour, and his features made natural sorts of movements, as if the dead man smiled. He even opened his mouth, as if he would inhale fresh air. They held the crucifix before him, and called in a loud voice, 'See, this is Jesus Christ who redeemed your soul from hell, and died for you.' After the sound had acted on his organs of hearing, and he had connected, perhaps, some ideas with it, tears began to flow from the dead man's eyes. Finally, when, after a short prayer for his poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his head, the corpse uttered a screech, and turned and rolled just as if it had been alive, and the grave was full of blood."
Alive, then, the bodies surely were. And it is from this position, as a starting point, that we must follow and unravel the whole mystery, if we dare.
Not that there is any particular virulence in this superstition, but that all superstitions are awkward things to deal with. They have their own laws, and run through definite stages, but always menace those who meddle with them. A superstition waxes and flourishes—that is its first stage; it then wanes in public opinion, is discredited, and is declared obsolete; that is stage the second. Eventually comes more enlightenment; its wonders are again admitted, but explained; the false in it separated from the true; this is its third and last period. And it may be remarked, that society is never safe against the reproduction of a superstition, till it has gone through this third stage (analogous to the disinterment and dissection of a vampyr); till then, it is always capable of "walking" again. But, which is singular, to the end the operation of explaining a superstition is unsafe, that is to say, if you step a quarter of an inch before the sagacious nose of the public. Of course, if any one should attempt to explain away a flourishing superstition, he would encounter, not martyrdom, perhaps, any more, but the persecution of opinion certainly, and the ban of society. But if he ventures upon the same process, even with one that is already put down, he is liable to be viewed and attacked as a credulous person, disposed to revive forgotten rubbish; for he has unwittingly affronted public opinion by asserting that to be worth examining, which society had proclaimed an error. Doubly wo to him if his explanation contain some startling novelty! But, courage! again,—
The bodies disinterred and found in the so-called vampyr state, were then alive.
But how could they, you ask, be alive after an interment of days or weeks? How is it possible they could lie without air, boxed up in a manner which would certainly kill a strong and healthy person in a few minutes or hours, and yet retain their vitality? I will not bring forward as favourable cases in point, the instances of frogs and toads that have been discovered in rocks, where they must have been encased for years or centuries, alive: first, because, although they are true, you might equally question these; secondly, because a human being cannot compete in vitality with a cold-blooded reptile. I shall content myself with falling back upon the evidence already adduced. The disinterred bodies proved, by their appearance, some even by their behaviour, that they were alive; and I shall retort upon you the question, how came you not to know that bodies could live under such circumstances a considerable length of time, and that many cases have transpired in which, totally apart from vampyrism, bodies have been found turned over in the coffin, through efforts made by them, when, after their burial, they had unhappily recovered consciousness?
But what, then, was the pathological condition in which these persons continued to exist, after they had ceased to appear alive?
It is just one of the profitable results of examining the superstition before us, that the above question becomes explicitly propounded, and its solution demanded of physiologists. Its solution cannot fail of being full of interest, but it is yet, unluckily, a desideratum, or, like the principle which gives motion to the divining rod, as yet only indicated and partially outlined.
What is wanted is direct scientific examination, and verification by competent persons, of all the phenomena the body presents in these strange circumstances. In the absence, however, of recorded observation, let us imagine how the thing might come about.
The series of effects surmised would not begin in the heart; analogy leads us to suppose that primary interruption of the heart's action for a very brief period is fatal. Somewhere in the Indian seas, death is inflicted by a backward blow with the elbow on the region of the heart; a sudden angina is produced, which is promptly fatal. Neither, upon similar showing, can it commence in obstructed breathing. Then the commencement of the changes must be sought in the brain. Now it is analogically by no means very improbable, that the functions of the nervous system admit of being brought to a complete stand-still, the wheels of the machinery locking, as it were, of a sudden, through some influence directly exerted upon it, and that this state of interrupted function should continue for a very considerable period, without loss of power of recovery. Nor would it be contrary to analogy that such an arrest of activity in the nervous system should stop, more or less completely, the act of breathing and the action of the heart, without at the same time the consequences following which result from either of these changes, when they are primary. The heart, when not acting by order, need not be supposed to lose its contractile force and tendency. The blood, though not moving, being in contact with living vessels, need not coagulate. There is no physiological absurdity in supposing such a general arrest of function, originating in the nervous system, and continuing an indefinite period without life being extinguished. If a swimmer be taken with cramp and sink, he is irretrievably dead in five minutes. But if he sink from a fit of epilepsy, he may remain a longer time under water, yet recover. But epilepsy is a form of loss of consciousness beginning in the nervous system—a kind of fit which may, under certain circumstances, be thus preservative of life. So may we presume, that in the singular cases we are considering, the body is but in another and deeper fit, which suspends the vital phenomena, and reduces its vitality to that of the unincubated egg, to simple life, without change, without waste or renewal. The body does not putrefy, because it is alive; it does not waste or require nourishment, because every action is stilled within it.