LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN FOSTER. Let those take a warning who indulge sentiments, | do not know whether I told you how much I nau- "I should nauseate the place (Frome) if I had been habituated to it a century. At first I felt an intense loathing; I hated every house, timber, stone, and brick in the town, and almost the very trees, fields, and flowers in the country round. I have indeed long since lost all attachment to this world as a locality, and shall never regain it. Neither, indeed, for this do I care; we shall soon I now seldom, comleave it forever. paratively, think of politics; when I do, it is with a hatred of the prevailing system, which becomes but more intense by time."-Vol. i., p. 304. "When I see people good and sensible, I am This glad of it for their sake, not for my own.' is precisely the indication of a mind's having reached the line of demarcation between the world of love and the world of unlove, or hatred. He who has actually passed that border-in the glad," even for "their wrong direction, is not " sakes," when he encounters those who are distinguished by wisdom and goodness;-not glad, for He who he writhes, stung with his own venom. lives on the bright side of the border is glad, not severally, as if first for his own sake, and then for theirs, but with a suffused, indiscriminating joyousness, the same in element as that of a brighter world, where there is a "fulness of joy," in which all that is restrictive is drowned. Foster's character was in very great danger at this period; yet a hopeful revulsion seems to have commenced-a symptom, or an incidental cause of which was a returning converse with nature. "I have done more justice to the beautiful season this year than in many former ones; for I have taken many solitary walks, and, with a book and pencil in my hand, have done my best to catch all the ideas, images, objects, and reflections that the most beautiful aspects and scenes of nature could supply. I have felt it of some consequence to me, if I am to write again, to assemble as many natural facts and images as possible, to supply what may be called colors to writing. I must increase the stock, or else I shall soon be out, as I have expended a great deal of material on what is already written. "Into company I cannot actually take this book and pencil, but I endeavor to seize fast every remarkable circumstance, and each disclosure of character that I witness, and then, when I return to my room, they go by dozens into my book. I keep to my text on the subject of forming new friendships; I am quite too old for it. When I see people good and sensible, I am glad of it for their sake, not for my own."-Vol. i., p. 324. "I never have been more enchanted with a summer since I left whatever part of creation or chaos I lived in in former ages, and came to this our green orb. I took frequent solitary walks; even as matter of duty, I did it sometimes, when the attraction of pleasure might have failed to overThose come my great indisposition to move. walks were commonly in the retired fields and woody lanes, of which I found a number this last summer in this neighborhood, some of them very beautiful, as well as extremely quiet. There are, besides, two or three extremely beautiful valleys As to the town itself, I not far from this town. versed with her with inexpressible luxury; I have This returning converse with nature was a sort At length, however, those channels of the heart through which life's blood had flowed feebly to sustain the social sentiments, became invigorated by a thorough reanimation of the loving faculty. Foster was soon to be united to the woman of his choice-a companion "mete for him"-an intellectualist, and one, we should presume, very much of his own order-even the "Friend" to whom the Essays were addressed. It is curious to hear him, a few weeks previous to his marriage, greeting the spring in new strains of pleasure. Heretofore, it was not the verdant glories of June that could avail to entice him from his lumber room; but now, behold him! within a mile of the "nauseated" Frome, thus revelling amid the beauties, not of June, not of May, not of April, but of March, and even of the first week in March ; "Frome, March 3, 1808. "Yes! the spring does open upon me with a fascination which I have not felt before, notwithstanding that I have often felt a kind of worship of nature on the return of that delightful season, with its flowers, birds, and genial gales. This once I certainly do feel in its first indications a deeper charm than I did even in my youth, when I was as full of fancy and sentiment as any poet. For several years I have been much less susceptible of the vernal impressions, and have considered myself as advancing fast towards the state of feeling which I recollect P, a few years since, described himself to me as having reached-the state of feeling no impression at all. And no doubt it is from the new and adventitious cause, that I have felt such luxury in the beautiful days which we have had for a week past."-Vol. i., p. 352. This marriage he was then in his thirty-seventh year-appears to have been thoroughly a happy The very same sort of feeling that is inspired, at the moment while we write, by the sudden falling of a plentiful rain after a long and ominous drought, is awakened by the altered tone of Foster's Memoirs, from the period of his marriage. During the arid, scorching time of his solitary existence-when the heavens over him were brass, and the earth under his feet iron-the fields did not seem worth walking in. Frome was "nauseated," and the good folks in it were shunned, if not abominated. But now, a while after, when reporting a visit to Frome," accompanied by Mrs. Foster"-oh! what miracles of moral cure are latent in those three consonants!-he says:-"I revisited, at their houses, a number of the good people I had once preached to, especially the poor people, who manifested a lively pleasure in seeing me again.' No doubt of it: they had probably been used to think Mr. Foster "rather a particular man in his ways-wonderful shy, and not everybody's liking in the pulpit;" but they had always felt sure that " the root of the matter was in him," and that he had a kind heart too; but now, who could help loving him, and "Mrs. Foster as well." one; nor was it rendered otherwise by the person- | reached its maturity; he had firmly taken his al sufferings and the domestic sorrows that at-place, too, in literature; and those depths of tended the lapse of years. It occurred just time thought he had plunged into, (enriching his writenough in his history to save Foster from the mis- ings) which a man with a wife at his side-not erable fate which had seemed to threaten him-that being a Xantippe-is little likely to attempt; and, of being eaten alive by his own cyclopean and moreover, the moody recluse was still in a state to pampered imagination. Far more happy now than be recoverable as a man. heretofore, he could, and did, without effort, put himself in the way of those kindly sentiments towards himself, of which, spite of himself, his amiable qualities and real worth had made him the object. Some months after his marriage he visited Frome, and thus reports his reception :"At Frome I was received with the most animated kindness, both among the richer and poorer class of my acquaintance-a kindness to which I could not make an adequate return in the way of giving much of my company, as I had determined not to stay more than three days. I felt the propriety, even as a matter of appearance, of not being like a rambler from home, besides the impatience of affection to be again with my dear, domestic associate. I returned to her at the time I had determined, found her well, and was welcomed with inexpressible tenderness. The felicity of thus rejoining her seemed to me to exceed even the joy of being first united to her. Nearly four months have now elapsed since that time, and on both sides the affectionate complacency has very sensibly increased. We both every day express our gratitude to Heaven for having given us to each other, and we hope that it will continue a cause of the most lively gratitude as long as we A beautiful feature of Foster's personal characlive, and also in a state after death. I most en-ter, and a very prominent one too, as well as an tirely believe that no man on earth has a wife more infallible criterion of the genuineness of his moral fondly affectionate, more anxious to promote his sentiments, is his filial piety. From the first to happiness, or more dependent for her own on his the last, and long after he had begun to call himtenderness for her. In the greatest number of self an old man, his letters to his "honored paopinions, feelings, and concerns, we find ourselves rents," if they do not conspicuously exhibit his perfectly agreed; and when anything occurs on intellect, yet are such as prove theirs to have been which our judgments and dispositions differ, we find we can discuss the subject without violating tenderness, or in the least losing each other's esteem, even for a moment. Greater trials of our mutual affection and respect than any that have yet occurred, will undoubtedly arise in the course of life, if it is considerably protracted; but the experiment thus far has given us a stronger confidence in the perpetuity of tenderness and harmony than it was possible for us to have previously to any experiment at all.”—Vol. i., p. 373. their rank and education considered, of an undsual sort. What must that old woman have been, if indeed letters, such as some of those addressed by Foster to his then very aged mother, could have been intended by him to meet her level of thought! These letters, conjoined with the pertinent fact that to the last, and through years when his income was narrow and precarious, he "contributed liberally to the support of his parents," exhibit him in a light which sheds a steady effulgence upon his character as a great writer and a man of genius. "My wife and the brats are still well," he says; and "papa," having in his nature all the needful elements of paternal philosophy, early learned to adjust his habits to his new position. What would the now-vaunted "holy celibacy" have done for Foster? Had he lived in the times of its influence, he would doubtless have plunged into that horrible pit, and would there have become a monster-not indeed of wickedness, but Those brats are just now making a great noise, of misery. None but those who have dipped into and running about to make themselves warm, in the memoirs of monkery can understand, just in a the house under me. I have noticed the curious case like Foster's, what is the infinite moral value fact of the difference of the effect of what other of ordinary expressions such as these that follow. people's children do and one's own. In the situa -Writing soon after the birth of a son, he says:tions I have formerly been in, any great noise and "Physically, the chap is deemed, I understand, as promising as his neighbors. My wife is still extremely well for the time, and I hope will soon be restored to her full health and strength. It is she that I care fifty times more about than I should about any infant.' Nevertheless, he was not the abstracted, or the indifferent father which literature sometimes renders a man. Let the reader look to the Letters, which we cannot cite, relative to the illness and death of this son. Married life was a new birth to Foster, and it overtook him precisely at the right moment; for at length his mind had racket of children would have extremely incommoded me if I wanted to read, think, or write. But I never mind as to any such matter of convenience how much din is made by these brats, if it is not absolutely in the room where I am at work. When I am with them, I am apt to make them, and join in making them, make a still bigger tumult and noise, so that their mother sometimes complains that we all want whipping together. As to liking freaks and vivacity, I do not feel myself much older than I was twenty years since. I have a great dislike to all stiff, and formal, and unnecessary gravity. If it were not so, I should be to children | one whose violences of opinion did not spring from quite an old man, and could have no easy compan- rancor of the heart, but from the ungoverned veheionship with them. It must be a great evil for mence of his indignation against wrong, and from parents to have with their children an immovable, the undisciplined turbulence of his imagination. puritanical solemnity, especially when the dispro-Such opinions, therefore, while they are not worth portion in age is so unusually great as in my case. anybody's picking up and boasting of, cannot, conBut I feel no tendency to this; of course, to avoid sistently with candor or fairness, be cited in eviit is no matter of effort or self-denial."-Vol. i.,dence against either himself or his party. p. 387. The editor, we think, might well have gratified Foster's correspondence, as presented in these the curiosity of the reader, by supplying a few volumes and it is not for us to conjecture why the characteristic notices of Foster's correspondents, list does not include names which we had presumed at least of such of them as do not now survive. we should meet with-does not boast the recom- We must not attempt to supply this deficiency, mendation of having been carried on with the chief unless it were in relation to one, the letters to spirits of the age. But, and incidentally from this whom bring Foster out as a social being, and as a very cause, it is of a sort that sheds upon his per- Christian, and as an intellectualist, more fully, sonal character a peculiar grace. The one quality perhaps, than any other parcel of the (published) that pervades these letters-shining full in a large correspondence. We mean Josiah Hill. Josiah proportion of them-is the beautiful simplicity, the Hill, whom, in due deference to the statistics of artlessness, the humility, of a man who never "Conference," we must consent to designate as thought of himself as "great writers" and "great" a preacher in the Wesleyan connexion," might, men' are too apt to do. Not by any means comparable to Cowper's, Foster's letters are nevertheless equal to them on the one ground of their thorough genuineness, and in the total absence of egotism and consequence. A large proportion of them turn upon personal or domestic matters-his own feelings, his habits, his engagements, (as do Cowper's ;) but not one of them betrays the disguised selfist;-not one indicates the anxiety of a man who is tormented with the apprehension that his friends are underrating his importance, or do not yield him, in their thoughts, the place which he thinks due to him, as a public personage. ance. seeing him only in the street (we mean thirty years ago) or meeting him in a select party, have passed for anything as soon as for a Methodist minister. He became such, in fact, we rather think, because a calculus of Arminianism, too deep-seated within his ample brain to be extracted, conjoined with a severe conscientiousness, forbade his exercising the functions of the Christian ministry within any Evangelic communion holding a Calvinistic creed; and the "seventeenth article," as he read it, must have kept him out of the Established Church. Richard Baxter, much rather than John Wesley, (we hope no offence,) was his Rabbi. But it was Foster's correspondents were, for the most part, delightful to hear in what way, and with what fine his early personal friends, and most, or all of them, tact, he would bring Christianity clear and clean were, more or less decisively his inferiors, intellect- out of Wesleyanism, and present it, intelligibly ually. Nevertheless, in not one of these letters is and attractively, to a congregation of Cornish minthere any note of arrogance; not a line is there, ers. Even the old women liked, and, if we should the plain English of which would be-"I hope credit their audible "amens," understood Josiah you know who I am; don't be too familiar; don't Hill, little suspecting the largeness of the soul that presume upon the accident of our early acquaint- lodged itself, and that sported, unbeknown to them, I am John Foster, the Essayist." The within the walls of that ample forehead !-woe to very same quality-the same indication of real him, if aged class-readers could have looked in at greatness-shows itself, though under a varied the large windows of his blue eyes, and read the condition, in those of the letters that are addressed unuttered mind of their teacher! and yet, even to men of intelligence and accomplishments-that such would have found there no just ground of is to say, to his quasi equals, such as Joseph offence, could they have deciphered the entire Hughes, W. Anderson, Josiah Hill, and Daniel Parken. No asserting of himself, no elbowing for his seat at the head of the table, shows itself in these letters. In truth, and still more strikingly than his letters to his early friends, they serve to show that Foster's habitual converse with his own heart had been such as to bring him into a mood utterly abhorrent of all pretension and self-complacency; while his communion with infinite wisdom, and his daily meditation of things "unseen and eternal," suffused through his moral nature much of that "humbleness of mind" which we are wont to attribute to the beings of a higher sphere. Such was Foster! We say, such was Foster, thinking, as we do, of those who will be snatching some paltry controversial advantages-some occasions of ranting, from these volumes. He was We do not know why we should conceal an expression of disappointment in not finding the name of Josiah Conder in these volumes. Unless we are quite in error, Foster's letters to the then Editor of the Eclectic were of a kind to be eagerly read by the public, and for which room might, with manifest advantage, have been made, by the exclusion of some pages that are puerile in the first volume, or of passages that are sophistical and unseemly in the second. man. He was "theirs" in truth and sincerity, although not theirs after the fashion, and according to the notions, of a customary Wesleyan superintendant and preacher. The sage wearers of those portentous Cornish broad brims, some of whom, thirty years ago, still remembered "good John's" preaching in the hollow near Gulval, or Huel Abraham, and who admired "Josiah Hill," knowing not a thousand th part of him, would perhaps have denounced him to "Conference" had they known a little more; and yet these, even these, would again have loved him, and listened to him as an angel, had it been possible to them to know the whole. But how agreeable, how tranquillizing, and, at times, how elevating, were the hours he gave to those who, as he thought, could understand him, and whom he could trust! Well fitted was he, we should think, to be Foster's companion and correspondent. The many domestic afflictions which he passed through, after the time of his intimacy with Foster, seem-so we should suppose, judging from the tone and topics of the letters in these volumes, to have abated very much of the spring and energy of his understanding, such as it was at the period when he could report that "Mrs. Hill and the | have an utter repugnance to say returned homechildren were all quite well." Death-death-that name is applicable no longer. You may be and death again, inasmuch as it could not render sure I am grateful for your kind sympathy and sughim more serious than before, at length quelled his gestions of consolation; not the less so for its being intellect not that he became imbecile; but, as to too true, that there is a weight on the heart which its vivacity, his mind bled out at these open wounds. the most friendly human hand cannot remove. This imperfect notice, and we are not qualified to The melancholy fact is, that my beloved, inestimacomplete it, may perhaps serve to engage the ble companion, has left me. It comes upon me— reader's attention the more for this portion of the in evidence, how varied and sad! and yet, for a correspondence. The letters themselves are not moment, sometimes, I feel as if I could not realize on the whole, we must admit, such as a man of it as true. There is something that seems to say, Foster's intelligence might be expected to address Can it be that I shall see her no more-that I shall to a friend, like Josiah Hill. Some of them are still, one day after another, find she is not here, prosing-many are too lugubrious; and yet all that her affectionate voice and look will never acindicate a sincere and serious piety, and a thor- cost me; the kind grasp of her hand never more be oughly cordial temper, as a friend. But it is evi- felt; that when I would be glad to consult her, dent that, with his heavily burdened animal system, make an observation to her, address to her some his want of elasticity and cheeriness, he needed all expression of love, call her “my dear wife," as I the stimulus of "going to press" to put his facul- have done so many thousand times; it will be in ties fully in movement. The dreaded and long vain-she is not here? Several times a consideraprocrastinated labor of writing, even to a highly ble number-even since I followed her to the tomb, intellectual friend, brought with it far more of the a momentary suggestion of thought has been, as oppressive sense of a painful duty to be acquitted, one and another circumstance has occurred, “* I will than it did of easy pleasurable excitement. And tell Maria of this." Even this very day, when I hence it is that a large proportion of the "Corre- parted with Dr. Stenson, who, out of pure kindspondence," while it will be read with a vivid ness, accompanied me a long stage on the road, pleasure by those who have already become inti- there was actually, for a transient instant, a lapse mate with Foster as the essayist, and the Eclectic of mind into the idea of telling her how very kind reviewer, will seem flat or vapid to those who have he had been. I have not suffered, nor expect to no such preoccupation of the mind in his favor. feel any overwhelming emotions, any violent excesses of grief; what I expect to feel is, a long repetition of pensive monitions of my irreparable loss; that the painful truth will speak itself to me again, and still again, in long succession; often in solitary reflection, (in which I feel the most,) and often as objects come in my sight, or circumstances arise, which have some association with her who is gone. The things which belonged to her with a personal appropriation; things which she used or particularly valued; things which she had given me, or I had given her; her letters or my own to her; the corner of the chamber where I know she used to pray; her absence-unalterable absence at the hour of family worship, of social reading, of the domestic table; her no more being in her place to receive me on my return home from occasional absence; the thought of what she would have said, or how she would have acted, on subjects or occasions that come in question; the remembrance how she did speak or act in similar instances-all such things as these will renew the pensive emotions, and tell me still again what I have lost-what that was, and how great its value, which the sovereign Disposer has, in his unerring wisdom, taken away. Yes; it is He that has taken away what it was He that gave me, and what was so dear and valuable to me; and I would not, I think I do not, rebel against his dispensation; I would not even repine or complain beyond that degree which he will regard with a merciful compassion. I should, and would be, thankful for having been indulged with the possession so long. Certainly, neither of us would, if such an exception might be made to an eternal law, recall our dear departed companions from their possession of that triumph over sin, and sorrow, and death, to which they have been exalt ed. However great our deprivation, how transcendently greater is their advancement in the condition of existence! And we should be unworthy to be loved by them still, as I trust that, even at this very hour, we are, if we could for a moment entertain such a wish.'"-Vol. ii., p. 209. He protests, indeed, (vol. ii., p. 53,) that letter writing did not cost him the painful toil, the utter misery, which, in "ninety-nine cases out of a hundred," attended his literary occupations. But if he did not, in these instances, undergo so much torture, it was because he made no effort to provoke his sluggish faculties; and the consequence is, that these letters-read with no reference to the author, do but incidentally betray the secret that the writer was so distinguished an author. And if, when no special circumstance relating to himself, or to his friend, roused his mind to action, he is often dull-when some such circumstance-a death, for instance, of one dear to his friend, or to himself, did awaken and powerfully move him, it was not his intellect but his heart that was stirred it was not the author, but the man, that then took up the pen. Everything in Foster's nature was so thoroughly genuine, and he so absolutely the creature of his moral instincts, that to have written a letter, on a sorrowful occasion, bright with mind, and such as would read well in a book, was what he was no more likely to do than he was to dance at a funeral. His consolatory letters to his friends, as well as those announcing to them his own domestic griefs, might easily be matched in the fam; ily records of many a private circle. Many a man, and many a woman, who could not have written one page of what Foster has printed, has, under the stimulus of sorrow, written what he, in sorrow, could never have approached; for, in sorrow, his mind, accustomed to obey an impulse altogether of another order, woke not up-acted not at all:-his mind-the author-mind, knew too well its subordination to the soul, to dare to intrude ever upon the sacred seasons of deep emotion. The tenderness of his affections lulled, on such occasions, both imagination and reason. "On Foster's return to Stapleton he wrote immediately to Mr. Hill, with whom his friendship had acquired a deeper and melancholy interest, from the striking coincidences in their domestic trials. I have returned hither,' he says, but The ruling idea in Foster's mind, as a religious man-the centre towards which his thoughts re- | she of God and the Saviour of the world-how does verted, was the condition of the soul immediately she review and estimate the course of discipline on its quitting the body. Religious men, of a through which she had been prepared for the happy thoughtful turn, and of a higher and more elastic state where she finds herself-in what manner does animal temperament, look onward to that bright she look back on death, which she has so recently immortality wherein, and under happier auspices, passed through-and does she plainly understand the spirit incarnate is to set forward anew upon the the nature of a phenomenon so awfully mysterious high way of action, acquisition, service. Foster's to the view of mortals? How does she remember meditative wing faltered as if in front of the preci- and feel respecting us, respecting me? Is she aspitous bulwarks of Paradise-not daring to soar to-sociated with the spirits of her departed son, and ward the empyreal noon. We read this sort of two children who died in infancy? Does she infeeling always when his imagination would go for-dulge with delight a confident anticipation that we ward toward eternity, in such passages as the fol- shall, after a while, be added to her society? If lowing:she should think of it as, with respect to some of us, many years, possibly, before such an event, does that appear a long time in prospect, or has she begun to account of duration according to the great laws of eternity? Earnest imaginings and still, there is no answer, no revelation. The mind comes again and again up close to the thick black veil; but there is no perforation, no glimpse. She that loved me, and I trust loves me still, will not, cannot, must not answer me. I can only imagine her to say, 'Come and see; serve our God so that you shall come and share, at no distant time.'"— Vol. ii., p. 230. 66 Any view of eternity is overwhelming to thought, but peculiarly to the thought that we, that this very soul shall exist forever. Sometimes, even apart from the idea of retribution, it seems almost fearful. How can I sustain an endless ex-questionings like these arise without end; and still, istence? How can I prolong sentiment and action forever and ever? What may or can become of me in so stupendous a predicament? What an accumulation of miracles to preserve my faculties, my being, from becoming exhausted and extinct!' How can there be an undecaying, ever new, and fresh vitality and animation, to go powerfully along with an infinite series of objects, changes, excitements, activities?"-Vol. ii., p. 376. "The deep interest of the subject has led me to But although melancholic enough in tempera- think more, and to read a little more, concerning ment, he was far too much the intellectualist, and that mysterious hades. How strange that Revelatoo devout, in a scriptural sense, to stop short at tion itself has kept it so completely veiled. Many the grave: he was no moping frequenter of church-things in that economy probably could not be made yards; he did not haunt charnel-houses; he did not gather wise saws from the sexton's lips. The strong tendency of his mind toward actuality led him to lay hold of that which was the nearest ;that condition of the soul which those who had recently left him, and who were vividly present to his feelings, had now undergone. The state of the dead was his recurrent theme-the home of his meditations, from the first to the last, as when, in prospect of his own dissolution, believed to be not very remote, and on hearing of the death of a friend, he exclaimed:-"They don't come to tell us," (the secrets of the invisible world,) and then, after a short silence, emphatically striking his hand upon the table, he added, with a look of intense seriousness," But we shall know some time." intelligible to us in this our grossly material condition; but there are many questions which could be distinctly and intelligibly answered. How striking to consider that those who were so lately, with us, asking those questions in vain, have now the perfect experimental knowledge. I can image the very look with which my departed Maria would sometimes talk or muse on this subject. The mystery, the frustration of our inquisitiveness, was equal to us both. What a stupendous difference now! And in her present grand advantage she knows with what augmented interest of solemn and affectionate inquisitiveness my thoughts will be still directed, and in vain, to the subject. But she knows why it is proper that I should for a while continue still in the dark-should share no part of her new and marvellous revelation."-Vol. ii., p. 238. Very many passages might be cited from these volumes, bearing upon this one subject, and in which, with not much variety of thought, the one A very remarkable letter, addressed to his friend feeling of baffled and astounded curiosity is ex- Hughes, of whose nearly approaching end he had pressed. A letter also, or essay, "On the Inter-been informed, contains the following passages: mediate State," expounds the same feeling, and "But oh my dear friend, whither is it that serves rather to state forcibly the supposed difficul- you are going? Where is it that you will be in a ty connected with our utter ignorance of the world few short weeks or days hence? I have affecting of souls, than to throw light upon the general sub-cause to think and to wonder concerning that unject, considered as an article of Christian belief. The death of his wife-not his wife merely, but his soul's companion and intimate, naturally gave a deep intensity to his customary meditations on this ground. seen world; to desire, were it permitted to mortals, one glimpse of that mysterious economy, to ask innumerable questions to which there is no answer-what is the manner of existence of employment of society-of remembrance-of an"Can it be-how is it-what is it that we are ticipation of all the surrounding revelations to our now not inhabitants of the same world-that each departed friends? How striking to think, that has to think of the other as in a perfectly differ- she, so long and so recently with me here, so beent economy of existence? Whither is she gone-loved, but now so totally withdrawn and absent, in what manner does she consciously realize to her- that she experimentally knows all that I am in self the astonishing change-how does she look at vain inquiring! herself as no longer inhabiting a mortal tabernacle —in what manner does she recollect her state as only a few weeks since-in what manner does she think, and feel, and act, and communicate with other spiritual beings—what manner of vision has "And a little while hence, you, my friend, will be an object of the same solemn meditations and wandering inquiries. It is most striking to consider-to realize the idea that you, to whom I am addressing these lines, who continue yet among |