The Eastern prediction, "The child shall die an hundred years old," is thus illustrated by Addison: In the Koran it is said that the angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning, to give him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the prophet took a distinct view of, and after having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed. All this, says the Koran, was transacted in so small a space of time, that Mahomet, on his return, found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher which was thrown down at the very instant that the angel carried him away, before the water was spilt ! Apparent death is not always accompanied by a suspension of consciousness. In the Psychological Magazine, No. 5, we read that a young lady, after lying ill for some time, to all appearance died. She was laid in her coffin, and the day of her funeral was fixed. When the lid of the coffin was about to be screwed down, a perspiration was observed on the body; life soon appeared, and at length she opened her eyes, and uttered a most pitiable shriek. She said it seemed to her, as if in a dream she was really dead; yet she was perfectly conscious of all that happened around her in this dreadful state. She distinctly heard her friends speaking, and lamenting her death,-at the side of her coffin. She felt them pull on the dead clothes, and lay her in them. This feeling produced a mental anxiety which was indescribable: she tried to cry, but her soul was without power, and could not act on her body. She had the contradictory feeling as if she were in her body, and yet not in it, at one and the same time. It was equally impossible for her to stretch out her arm, or to open her eyes, or to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so." The internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height, when the funeral hymns were being sung, and when the lid of the coffin was about to be screwed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the one that gave activity to her soul, and caused it to operate on her corporeal frame. Phenomena of Death. HOURS FATAL TO LIFE. A WRITER in the Quarterly Review states: "We have ourselves ascertained the hour of death in 2,880 instances of all ages, and have arrived at interesting conclusions. We may remark that the population from which the data are derived is a mixed population in every respect, and that the deaths occurred during a period of several years. If the deaths of the 2,880 persons had occurred indifferently, at any hour during the twenty-four, 120 would have occurred at each hour. But this was by no means the case. There are two hours in which the proportion was remarkably below this, two minima in fact, namely, from midnight to one o'clock, when the deaths were 53 per cent. below the average, and from noon to one o'clock, when they were 20 per cent. below. From three to six o'clock A.M. inclusive, and from three to seven o'clock P.M. there is a gradual increase; in the former 23 per cent. above the average; in the latter of 5 per cent. The maximum of deaths is from five to six o'clock A.M. when it is 40 per cent. above the average; the next, during the hour before midnight, when it is 25 per cent. in excess; a third hour of excess is from nine to ten o'clock in the morning, being 17 per cent. above the average. From ten A.M. to three o'clock P.M. the deaths are less numerous, being 16 per cent. below the average, the hour before noon being the most fatal. From three o'clock P.M. to seven P.M. the deaths rise to 5 per cent. above the average, and then fall from that hour to eleven P.M. averaging 63 per cent. below the mean. During the hours from nine to eleven in the evening there is a minimum of 6 per cent. below the average. Thus, the least mortality is during the mid-day hours, namely, from ten to three o'clock; the greatest during early morning hours, from three to six o'clock. About one-third of the total deaths noted were children under five years of age, and they show the influence of the latter still more strikingly. At all the hours from ten in the morning until midnight the deaths are at or below the mean: the hours from ten to eleven A.M. four to five P.M. and nine to ten P.M. being minima, but the hour after midnight being the lowest maximum: at all the hours from two to ten A.M. the deaths are above the mean, attaining their maximum at from five to six A.M. when it is 45 per cent. above. Premonitions of Death. 121 PREMONITIONS OF DEATH. The first symptom of approaching death with some is the strong presentiment that they are about to die. Ozanam, the mathematician, while in apparent health, rejected pupils from the feeling that he was on the eve of resting from his labours; and he expired soon after of an apoplectic stroke. Fletcher, the divine, had a dream which shadowed out his impending dissolution, and believing it to be the merciful warning of Heaven, he sent for a sculptor and ordered his tomb. "Begin your work forthwith," he said, at parting, "there is no time to lose." And unless the artist had obeyed the admonition, death would have proved the quicker workman of the two. The case of Wolsey was singular. After his arrest by the Earl of Northumberland, the Cardinal proceeded from Cawood Castle towards London on his mule, but by the way he was attacked with dysentery. As he entered the gate of the monastery at Leicester, he said, "Father Abbot, I am come to lay my bones among you;" and so the event proved: the monks carried him to his bed, upon which, three days afterwards, he expired. The morning before he died he asked Cavendish, his gentleman-usher, the hour, and was answered, "Past eight." "Eight of the clock?" replied Wolsey, "that cannot be; eight of the clocknay, nay, it cannot be eight of the clock, for by eight of the clock shall you lose your master." The day he miscalculated, the hour came true. On the following morning, as the clock struck eight, his troubled spirit passed from life. Cavendish and the bystanders thought he must have had a revelation of the time of his death; and from the way in which the fact had taken possession of his mind, we suspect that he relied on astrological prediction, which had the credit of a revelation in his own esteem. Shakspeare has little altered the words Wolsey used on his death-bed, though they were spoken to Kingston, the lieutenant of the Tower, and not, as in the play, to Cromwell : Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served the King, he would not in mine age Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. i. It is unnecessary, as well as uncharitable, to suppose, what there is no proof of, that Wolsey died of poison, either by himself or others. The obvious and proximate cause of his death was affliction. A great heart opprest with indignities, and beset with dangers, at length gave way, and Wolsey received the two last charities of a death-bed and a grave, with many circumstances affectingly told by Cavendish, in the Abbey of Leicester. Of "The Renowned Confessor," Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who died in 1589, in the Tower of London, where he was imprisoned for high treason, we find an impressive narrative, in the Life of him, edited from the original MSS. by the late Duke of Norfolk, and published in 1857. The Earl's piety was remarkable. He constantly rose in the morning at five o'clock, and "as soon as he was risen out of bed, he fell down upon his bare knees, and breath'd forth in secret his first Devotions to Almighty God, his eyes and hands lifted up to heaven. With his kneeling in that manner then and at other times, his knees were grown very hard and black." "In those times which were allotted to walking or other recreation, his discourse and conversation either with his Keeper, or the Lieutenant, or his own servants, was either tending to Piety, or some profitable discourse, as of the lives and examples of holy men, of the sufferances and constancy of the martyrs of ancient times, from which he would usually deduce some good document or other as of the facility of a virtuous life, after a man had once overcome his sensuality; of the happiness of those that suffered anything for our Saviour's sake, with such like; to which purpose he had writ with his own hand upon the wall of his chamber this Latin sentence: Quanto plus afflictionis pro Christo in hoc sæculo, tanto plus gloriæ cum Christo in futuro. The more affliction we endure for Christ in this world, the more glory we shall obtain with Christ in the next." The Earl's last moments are thus pathetically described: The last night of his life he spent for the most part in prayer, sometimes saying his Beads, sometimes such Psalms and Prayers as he knew by heart. And oftentimes used these holy Aspirations: O Lord into thy hands I commend my spirit. Lord thou ar't my hope; and life. Very frequently, moreover, indicating the holy names of Jesus and Mary. Seeing his servants in the morning stand by his bedside weeping in a mournful manner, he ask'd them what o'clock it was; they answering that it was eight, or there about. Why then, said he, I have almost run out my course, and come to the end of this miserable and mortal life, desiring them not to weep for him since he did not doubt by the grace of God but all would go well with him. Which being said, he return'd to his Prayers upon his Beads again, though then with a very slow, hollow, and fainting voice, and so continued as long as he was able to draw so much breath as was sufficient to sound out the names of Jesus and the glorious Virgin, which were the last words which he was ever heard to speak. The last minute of his last hour being now come, lying on his back, eies firmly fixt towards Heaven, and his long lean consumed armes out of the bed, his hand upon his breast laid in cross one upon the other, about twelve o'clock at noon, in which hour he was also born into this world, arraign'd, condemn'd, and adjudg'd unto death, upon Sunday the 19th of October, 1595, (after almost 11 years Imprisonment in the Tower) in a most sweet manner without any sign of grief or groan, only turning his head a little aside, as one falling into a pleasing sleep, he surrender'd his happy soul into the hands of Almighty God, who to his so great glory had created it. Some have thought, and perhaps not improbably, that he had some Premonitions of Death. 123 fore knowledge of the day of his death, because about seven or eight dayes before making certain notes (understood only by himself) in his Calendar, what Prayers and Devotions he intended to say upon every day of the week following, on Monday, Tuesday, &c.: when he came to the Sunday on which he dy'd, he there made a pause, saying, Hitherto and no further: this is enough: and so writ no more, as his servants who then heard his words, and saw him write, have often testified. In the following chapter occurs this curious record: I forgot to note in the due place, that upon the night precedent to the Earl's arraignment and condemnation, a Nitingale was heard to sing with great melody in a Jessamine tree all ye night long in the Garden of Arundel House, where his Countess and children then did remain, the which may seem the more strange in regard the like was neither before, nor since that time ever heard in that place. Another thing as strange did happen in the Tower soon after his death; for two tame stags which the Lieutenant kept there for his pleasure falling into a fury, never desisted knocking their horns against the walls till their brains being beaten out they dy'd." Foote, the dramatist, shortly prior to his death, stood contemplating the picture of a brother author, and exclaimed, his eyes full of tears, "Poor Weston!" In the same dejected tone he added, after a pause: "Soon shall others say, 'Poor Foote!"" and, to the surprise of his friends, a few days proved the justice of his prognostication. While performing at the Haymarket theatre, he was seized with paralysis on the stage: he shortly after went to Brighton, returned to London, set out for Paris, but died on his way, at Dover. The expectation of the event had a share in producing it; for a slight shock completes the destruction of prostrate energies. Another great artist, in a different department, convinced that his hand was about to lose its cunning, chose a subject emblematical of the coming event. His friends inquired the nature of his next design, and Hogarth replied, "The End of All Things." "In that case," rejoined one, "there will be an end of the painter." What was uttered in jest was answered in earnest, with a solemn look and a heavy sigh: "There will," he said, "and the sooner my work is done the better." He commenced next day, laboured upon it with unremitting diligence, and when he had given it the last touch, seized his palette, broke it in pieces, and said: "I have finished." The print was published in March, under the title of "Finis," and in October the curious eyes which saw the manners in the face were closed in the dust. Our ancestors, who were prone to look in the air for causes which were to be found upon the earth, attributed these intimations to various supernatural agencies. John Hunter has solved the mystery, if mystery it can be called, in a single sentence. "We sometimes," he says, "feel within ourselves that we shall not live; for the living powers become weak, and the nerves communicate the intelligence to the |