* "A stranger came recommended to a merchant's house at Lubeck. He was hospitably received; but, the house being full, he was lodged at night in an apartment handsomely furnished, but not often used. There was nothing that struck him particularly in the room when left alone, till he happened to cast his eyes on a picture, which immediately arrested his attention. It was a single head; but there was something so uncommon, so frightful and unearthly, in its expression, though by no means ugly, that he found himself irresistibly attracted to look at it. In fact, he could not tear himself from the fascination of this portrait, till his imagination was filled by it, and his rest broken. He retired to bed, dreamed, and awoke from time to time, with the head glaring on him. In the morning, his host saw by his looks that he had slept ill, and inquired the cause, which was told. The master of the house was much vexed, and said that the picture ought to have been removed; that it was an oversight; and that it always was removed when the chamber was used. The picture, he said, was, indeed, terrible to every one; but it was so fine, and had come into the family in so curious a way, that he could not make up his mind to part with it, or to destroy it. The story of it was this:-'My father,' said he, 'was at Hamburgh on business, and while dining at a coffee-house, he observed a young man of a remarkable appearance enter, seat himself alone in a corner, and commence a solitary meal. His countenance bespoke the extreme of mental distress, and every now and then he turned his head quickly round, as if he heard something, then shudder, grow pale, and go on with his meal after an effort as before. My father saw this same man at the same place for two or three successive days, and at length became so much interested about him, that he spoke to him. The address was not repulsed, and the

This is the story which Mr. Washington Irving has dressed up very prettily in the first volume of his "Tales of a Traveller," pp. 84-119; professing in his preface that he could not remember whence he had derived the anecdote.-ED.

stranger seemed to find some comfort in the tone of sympathy and kindness which my father used. He was an Italian, well informed, poor, but not destitute, and living economically upon the profits of his art as a painter. Their intimacy increased; and at length the Italian, seeing my father's involuntary emotion at his convulsive turnings and shudderings, which continued as formerly, interrupting their conversation from time to time, told him his story. He was a native of Rome, and had lived in some familiarity with, and been much patronised by, a young nobleman; but upon some slight occasion they had fallen out, and his patron, besides using many reproachful expressions, had struck him. The painter brooded over the disgrace of the blow. He could not challenge the nobleman, on account of his rank; he therefore watched for an opportunity, and assassinated him. Of course he fled from his country, and finally had reached Hamburgh. He had not, however, passed many weeks from the night of the murder, before one day, in the crowded street, he heard his name called by a voice familiar to him: he turned short round, and saw the face of his victim looking at him with a fixed eye. From that moment he had no peace at all hours, in all places, and amidst all companies, however engaged he might be, he heard the voice, and could never help looking round; and, whenever he so looked round, he always encountered the same face staring close upon him. At last, in a mood of desperation, he had fixed himself face to face, and eye to eye, and deliberately drawn the phantom visage as it glared upon him; and this was the picture so drawn. The Italian said he had struggled long, but life was a burden which he could now no longer bear; and he was resolved, when he had made money enough to return to Rome, to surrender himself to justice, and expiate his crime on the scaffold. He gave the finished picture to my father, in return for the kindness which he had shown to him."

999

I have no doubt that the Jews believed generally in

IV

a future state, independently of the Mosaic law. The
story of the witch of Endor is a proof of it. What
we translate "witch," or "familiar spirit," is, in the
Hebrew, Ob, that is, a bottle or bladder, and means a
person whose belly is swelled like a bottle by divine
inflation. In the Greek it is ἐγγαστρίμυθος, a ventrilo-
quist. The text (1 Sam., ch. xxviii.) is a simple rec-
ord of the facts, the solution of which the sacred his-
torian leaves to the reader. I take it to have been a
trick of ventriloquism, got up by the courtiers and
friends of Saul, to prevent him, if possible, from haz-
arding an engagement with an army despondent and
oppressed with bodings of defeat. Saul is not said to
have seen Samuel; the woman only pretends to see
him. And then what does this Samuel do? He merely
repeats the prophecy known to all Israel, which the
true Samuel had uttered some years before. Read
Captain Lyon's account of the scene in the cabin with
the Esquimaux bladder, or conjurer; it is impossible
not to be reminded of the witch of Endor. I recom-
mend
you
also to look at Webster's admirable treatise
on Witchcraft.

The pet texts of a Socinian are quite enough for his confutation with acute thinkers. If Christ had been a mere man, it would have been ridiculous in him to call himself "the Son of man ;" but being God and man, it then became, in his own assumption of it, a peculiar and mysterious title. So, if Christ had been a mere man, his saying, "My Father is greater than I," (John, xv., 28) would have been as unmeaning. It would be laughable enough, for example, to hear me say, "My 'Remorse' succeeded, indeed; but Shakspeare is a greater dramatist than I." But how immeasurably more foolish, more monstrous, would it not be for a man, however honest, good, or wise, to say, "But Jehovah is greater than I!"

MAY 8, 1824.

Plato and Xenophon-Religions of the Greeks-Egyptian Antiquities-Milton-Virgil.

Socrates

PLATO's works are logical exercises for the mind. Little that is positive is advanced in them. may be fairly represented by Plato in the more moral parts; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is Pythagoras. Xenophon's representation of his master is quite different.

Observe the remarkable contrast between the religion of the tragic and other poets of Greece. The former are always opposed in heart to the popular divinities. In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, and the mysterious religions of Greece, represented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and Eschylus. The ancients had no notion of a fall of man, though they had of his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old. mythus, and for the most part in Eschylus, is the Redeemer and the devil jumbled together.

I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian antiquities. Every thing really, that is, intellectually, great in that country seems to me of Grecian origin.

I think nothing can be added to Milton's definition or rule of poetry,—that it ought to be simple, sensuous, and impassioned; that is to say, single in conception, abounding in sensible images, and informing them all with the spirit of the mind.

Milton's Latin style is, I think, better and easier than his English. His style in prose is quite as characteristic of him as a philosophic republican, as Cowley's is of him as a first-rate gentleman.

If

you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?

JUNE 2, 1824.

Granville Penn and the Deluge-Rainbow.

I CONFESS I have small patience with Mr. Granville Penn's book against Buckland. Science will be superseded, if every phenomenon is referred in this manner to an actual miracle. I think it absurd to attribute so much to the Deluge. An inundation, which left an olive-tree standing, and bore up the ark peacefully on its bosom, could scarcely have been the sole cause of the rents and dislocations observable on the face of the earth. How could the tropical animals, which have been discovered in England and in Russia in a perfectly natural state, have been transported thither by such a flood? Those animals must evidently have been natives of the countries in which they have been found. The climates must have been altered. Assume a sudden evaporation upon the retiring of the Deluge to have caused an intense cold, the solar heat might not be sufficient afterward to overcome it. I do not think that the polar cold is adequately explained by mere comparative distance from the sun.

You will observe, that there is no mention of rain previously to the Deluge. Hence it may be inferred that the rainbow was exhibited for the first time after God's covenant with Noah. However, I only suggest this.

The Earth, with its scarred face, is the symbol of the Past; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity.

JUNE 5, 1824.

English and Greek Dancing-Greek Acoustics. THE fondness for dancing in English women is the reaction of their reserved manners. It is the only way in which they can throw themselves forth in natural liberty. We have no adequate conception of the