It was fifteen leagues from

a cart which her father drove, while her sister sat by her supporting her back. The moment the steeple of Notre Dame de Liesse was in sight she uttered an exclamation, and said that her leg was getting well. She alighted from the car without assistance, and no longer requiring the help of her crutches, she ran into the church. When she returned home the villagers gathered about her, scarcely believing that it was indeed the girl who had left them in such a wretched state, now they saw her running and bounding along, no longer a cripple, but as active as any among them.

does, who was at the time very sanguine about | certainly recover. the effect of nitrous acid gas in paralytic cases. Carlepont where she lived. She was placed in Anxious that it should be imbibed by one of his patients, he sent an invalid to Sir Humphry Davy, with a request that he would administer the gas. Sir Humphry put the bulb of the thermometer under the tongue of the paralytic, to ascertain the temperature of the body, that he might be sure whether it would be affected at all by the inhalation of the gas. The patient, full of faith from what the enthusiastic physician had assured him would be the result, and believing that the thermometer was what was to effect the cure, exclaimed at once that he felt better. Sir Humphry, anxious to see what imagination would do in such a case, did not attempt to undeceive the man, but saying that he had done enough for him that day, desired him to be with him the next morning. The thermometer was then applied as it had been the day before, and for every day during a fortnight-at the end of which time the patient was perfectly cured.

Perhaps there is nothing on record more curious of this kind than the cures unwittingly performed by Chief-justice Holt. It seems that for a youthful frolic he and his companions had put up at a country inn; they, however, found themselves without the means of defraying their expenses, and were at a loss to know what they should do in such an emergency. Holt, however, perceived that the innkeeper's daughter looked very ill, and on inquiring what was the matter, learned that she had the ague; when, passing himself off for a medical student, he said that he had an infallible cure for the complaint. He then collected a number of plants, mixed them up with various ceremonies, and inclosed them in parchment, on which he scrawled divers cabalistic characters. When all was completed, he suspended the amulet round the neck of the young woman, and, strange to say, the ague left her and never returned. The landlord, grateful for the restoration of his daughter, not only declined receiving any payment from the youths, but pressed them to remain as long as they pleased. Many years after, when Holt was on the bench, a woman was brought before him, charged with witchcraft: she was accused of curing the ague by charms. All she said in defense was, that she did possess a ball which was a sovereign remedy in the complaint. The charm was produced and handed to the judge, who recognized the very ball which he had himself compounded in his boyish days, when out of mere fun he had assumed the character of a medical practitioner.

Many distinguished physicians have candidly confessed that they preferred confidence to art. Faith in the remedy is often not only half the cure, but the whole cure. Madame de Genlis tells of a girl who had lost the use of her leg for five years, and could only move with the help of crutches, while her back had to be supported: she was in such a pitiable state of weakness, the physicians had pronounced her case incurable. She, however, took it into her head that if she was taken to Notre Dame de Liesse she would

Not less extraordinary are the cures which are effected by some sudden agitation. An alarm of fire has been known to restore a patient entirely or for a time, from a tedious illness: it is no uncommon thing to hear of the victim of a severe fit of the gout, whose feet have been utterly powerless, running nimbly away from some approaching danger. Poor Grimaldi in his declining years had almost quite lost the use of his limbs owing to the most hopeless debility. As he sat one day by the bed side of his wife, who was ill, word was brought to him that a friend waited below to see him. He got down to the parlor with extreme difficulty. His friend was the bearer of heavy news which he dreaded to communicate: it was the death of Grimaldi's son, who, though reckless and worthless, was fondly loved by the poor father. The intelligence was broken as gently as such a sad event could be: but in an instant Grimaldi sprung from his chair—his lassitude and debility were gone, his breathing, which had for a long time been difficult, became perfectly easy-he was hardly a moment in bounding up the stairs which but a quarter of an hour before he had passed with extreme difficulty in ten minutes; he reached the bed-side, and told his wife that their son was dead; and as she burst into an agony of grief he flung himself inte a chair, and became again instantaneously, as it has been touchingly described, "an enfeebled and crippled old man."

The imagination, which is remarkable for its ungovernable influence, comes into action on some occasions periodically with the most precise regularity. A friend once told us of a young relation who was subject to nervous attacks: she was spending some time at the sea-side for change of air, but the evening-gun, fired from the vessel in the bay at eight o'clock, was always the signal for a nervous attack: the instant the report was heard she fell back insensible, as if she had been shot. Those about her endeavored if possible to withdraw her thoughts from the expected moment: at length one evening they succeeded, and while she was engaged in an interesting conver sation the evening-gun was unnoticed. By-andby she asked the hour, and appeared uneasy when she found the time had passed. The next evening it was evident that she would not let her attention be withdrawn: the gun fired, and she swooned away: and when revived, another faint

MYSTERIES.

ing fit succeeded, as if it were to make up for the omission of the preceding evening! It is told of the great tragic actress Clairon, who had been the innocent cause of the suicide of a man who destroyed himself by a pistol-shot, that ever after, at the exact moment when the fatal deed had been perpetrated-one o'clock in the morningshe heard the shot. If asleep, it awakened her; if engaged in conversation, it interrupted her; in solitude or in company, at home or traveling, in the midst of revelry or at her devotions, she was sure to hear it to the very moment.

The same indelible impression has been made in hundreds of cases, and on persons of every variety of temperament and every pursuit, whether engaged in business, science, or art, or rapt in holy contemplation. On one occasion Pascal had been thrown down on a bridge which had no parapet, and his imagination was so haunted forever after by the danger, that he always fancied himself on the brink of a steep precipice overhanging an abyss ready to engulf him. This illusion had taken such possession of his mind

| and anxieties were for his people. He spoke in high terms of his chancellor, his attorney-general, and all his officers of state, and of the dignitaries of the church: he recommended them to his kingdom, and trusted they might all retain the high offices which they now held. He spoke on the subject with a dignified calmness well becoming the solemn leave-taking of a monarch; but when he came to speak of the crown he was about to relinquish forever his feelings were quite overcome, and the tears rolled down his cheeks: "I leave it," said he, "to my people, and to him whom they may elect as my successor!" This remarkable scene is recorded in some of the notices of deaths for the year 1788. The delusion, though most painful to his friends, was far from an unhappy one to its victim: his feelings were gratified to the last while thinking he was occupied with the good of his fellow-creaturesan occupation best suited to his benevolent disposition.

that the friends who came to converse with him" were obliged to place the chairs on which they seated themselves between him and the fancied danger. But the effects of terror are the best known of all the vagaries of imagination.

MYSTERIES!

BELIEVE nothing that I do not under

stand," is the favorite saying of Mr. Pet

tipo Dapperling, a gentleman who very much
prides himself on his intellectual perspicacity.
Yet ask Mr. Pettipo if he understands how it is
that he wags his little finger, and he can give
you no reasonable account of it. He will tell
you (for he has read books and “studied” anat.
omy), that the little finger consists of so many
jointed 'bones, that there are tendons attached
to them before and behind, which belong to cer-
And this is
tain muscles, and that when these muscles are
made to contract, the finger wags.
nearly all that Mr. Pettipo knows about it! How
it is that the volition acts on the muscles, what
volition is, what the will is-Mr. Pettipo knows
not. He knows quite as little about the Sensa-
tion which resides in the skin of that little finger

and surfaces-why it detects heat and cold-in what way its papillæ erect themselves, and its pores open and close-about all this he is entirely in the dark. And yet Mr. Pettipo is under the necessity of believing that his little finger wags, and that it is endowed with the gift of sensation, though he in fact knows nothing whatever of the why or the wherefore.

A very remarkable case of the influence of imagination occurred between sixty and seventy years since in Dublin, connected with the celebrated frolics of Dalkey Island. It is said Curran and his gay companions delighted to spend a day there, and that with them originated the frolic of electing "a king of Dalkey and the adjacent islands," and appointing his chancellor and all the officers of state. A man in the middle rank of life, universally respected, and remarkable alike for kindly and generous feelings and a convivial spirit, was unanimously elected to fill the throne. He entered with his whole heart into all the humors of the pastime, in which the citi--how it is that it feels and appreciates forms zens of Dublin so long delighted. A journal was kept, called the "Dalkey Gazette," in which all public proceedings were inserted, and it afforded great amusement to its conductors. But the mock pageantry, the affected loyalty, and the pretended homage of his subjects, at length began to excite the imagination of “King John,” as he was called. Fiction at length became with him reality, and he fancied himself "every inch a king." His family and friends perceived with dismay and deep sorrow the strange delusion which nothing could shake he would speak on no subject save the kingdom of Dalkey and its government, and he loved to dwell on the various projects he had in contemplation for the benefit of his people, and boasted of his high prerogative: he never could conceive himself divested for one moment of his royal powers, and exacted the most profound deference to his kingly authority. The last year and a half of his life were spent in Swift's hospital for lunatics. He felt his last hours approaching, but no gleam of returning reason marked the parting scene: to the very last instant he believed himself a king, and all his cares

We must believe a thousand things that we can not understand. Matter and its combinations are a grand mystery-how much more so, Life and its manifestations. Look at those far-off worlds majestically wheeling in their appointed orbits, millions of miles off: or, look at this earth on which we live, performing its diurnal motion upon its own axis, and its annual circle round the sun! What do we understand of the causes of such motions? what can we ever know about them, beyond the facts that such things are so? To discover and apprehend facts is much, and it is nearly our limit. To ultimate causes we can never ascend. But to have an eye open to receive facts and apprehend their relative value-that is a great deal—that is our

duty; and not to reject, suspect, or refuse to ac- But lo! here is a wonderful little plant-touch cept them, because they happen to clash with it, and the leaves shrink on the instant: one leaf our preconceived notions, or, like Mr. Pettipo Dap- seeming to be in intimate sympathy with the rest, perling, because we “can not understand” them. | and the whole leaves in its neighborhood shrink"O, my dear Kepler!" writes Galileo to his ing up at the touch of a foreign object. Or, take friend, "how I wish that we could have one the simple pimpernel, which closes its eye as the hearty laugh together! Here at Padua is the sun goes down, and opens as he rises again— principal Professor of Philosophy, whom I have shrinks at the approach of rain, and expands in repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the fair weather. The hop twines round the pole in moon and planets through my glass, which he the direction of the sun, andpertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! And to hear the Professor of Philosophy at Pisa lecturing before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations to charm the new planets out of the sky!"

Rub a stick of wax against your coat-sleeve, and it emits sparks: hold it near to light, fleecy particles of wool or cotton, and it first attracts, then it repels them. What do you understand about that, Mr. Pettipo, except merely that it is so? Stroke the cat's back before the fire, and you will observe the same phenomena. Your own body will, in like manner, emit sparks in certain states, but you know nothing about why it is so.

Pour a solution of muriate of lime into one of sulphate of potash-both clear fluids; but no sooner are they mixed together than they become nearly solid. How is that? You tell me that an ingredient of the one solution combines with an ingredient of the other, and an insoluble sulphate of lime is produced. Well! you tell me a fact; but you do not account for it by saying that the lime has a greater attraction for the sulphuric acid than the potash has: you do not understand how it is-you merely see that it is so. You must believe it.

ever.

But when you come to Life, and its wonderful manifestations, you are more in the dark than You understand less about this than you do even of dead matter. Take an ordinary everyday fact: you drop two seeds, whose component parts are the same, into the same soil. They grow up so close together that their roots mingle and their stalks intertwine. The one plant produces a long slender leaf, the other a short flat leaf-the one brings forth a beautiful flower, the other an ugly scruff-the one sheds abroad a delicious fragrance, the other is entirely inodorous. The hemlock, the wheatstalk, and the rose-tree, out of the same chemical ingredients contained in the soil, educe, the one deadly poison, the other wholesome food, the third a bright consummate flower. Can you tell me, Mr. Pettipo, how is this? Do you understand the secret by which the roots of these plants accomplish so much more than all your science can do, and so infinitely excel the most skillful combinations of the philosopher? You can only recognize the factbut you can not unravel the mystery. Your saying that it is the "nature" of the plants, does not in the slightest degree clear up the difficulty. You can not get at the ultimate fact-only the proximate one is seen by you.

"The sunflower turns on her god when he sets, The same look that she turned when he rose."

Do we know any thing about these things, further than they are so?

A partridge chick breaks its shell and steps forth into its new world. Instantly it runs about and picks up the seeds lying about on the ground. It had never learned to run, or to see, or to select its food; but it does all these on the instant. The lamb of a few hours' old frisks about full of life, and sucks its dam's teat with as much accuracy as if it had studied the principle of the airpump. Instinct comes full-grown into the world at once, and we know nothing about it, neither does the Mr. Dapperling above named.

When we ascend to the higher orders of animated being-to man himself-we are as much in the dark as before-perhaps more so. Here we have matter arranged in its most highly-organized forms-moving, feeling, and thinking. In man the animal powers are concentrated; and the thinking powers are brought to their highest point. How, by the various arrangements of matter in man's body, one portion of the nervous system should convey volitions from the brain to the limbs and the outer organs-how another part should convey sensations with the suddenness of lightning—and how, finally, a third portion should collect these sensations, react upon them, store them up by a process called Memory, reproduce them in thought, compare them, philosophize upon them, embody them in books—is a great and unfathomable mystery!

Life itself! how wonderful it is! Who can understand it, or unravel its secret! From a tiny vesicle, at first almost imperceptible to the eye, but gradually growing and accumulating about it fresh materials, which are in turns or ganized and laid down, each in their set places, at length a body is formed, becomes developed— passing through various inferior stages of being

those of polype, fish, frog, and animal—until, at length, the human being rises above all these forms, and the law of the human animal life is fulfilled. First, he is merely instinctive, then sensitive, then reflective-the last the greatest, the crowning work of man's development. But what do we know of it all? Do we not merely see that it is so, and turn aside from the great mystery in despair of ever unraveling it!

The body sleeps? Volition, sensation, and thought, become suspended for a time, while the animal powers live on; capillary arteries working, heart beating, lungs playing, all without an effort-voluntarily and spontaneously. The shadow of some recent thought agitates the

brain, and the sleeper dreams. Or, his volition | the fire was spreading fast. He was restless, and may awake, while sensation is still profoundly went out often; he said that the house of one asleep, and then we have the somnambule, walk- of his friends, whom he named, was already in ing in his sleep. Or, volition may be profoundly ashes, and that his own was in danger. At eight asleep, while the senses are preternaturally ex- o'clock, after he had been out again, he joyfully cited, as in the abnormal mesmeric state. Here exclaimed, "Thank God, the fire is extinguished we have a new class of phenomena, more won- the third door from my house." This statement derful because less usual, but not a whit more of Swedenborg's spread through the town, and mysterious than the most ordinary manifestations occasioned consternation and wonder. The govof life. ernor heard of it, and sent for Swedenborg, who described the particulars of the fire-where and how it had begun, in what manner it had ceased, and how long it had continued. On the Monday evening, two days after the fire, a messenger arrived from Gottenburg, who had been dispatched during the time of the fire, and the intelligence he brought confirmed all that Swedenborg had said as to its commencement: and on the following morning the royal courier arrived at the governor's with full intelligence of the calamity, which did not differ in the least from the relation which Swedenborg had given immediately after the fire had ceased on the Saturday evening.

We are astonished to hear men refusing to credit the evidence of their senses as to mesmeric phenomena, on the ground that they can not "understand" them. When they can not understand the commonest manifestations of life-the causation of volition, sensation, or thought-why should they refuse belief on such a ground? Are the facts real? Are these things so? This should be the chief consideration with us. Mysteries they may be; but all life, all matter, all that is, are mysteries too. Do we refuse to believe in the electric telegraph. because the instantaneous transmission of intelligence between points a thousand miles apart seems at first sight fabulous, and, to the uninitiated, profoundly mysteA circumstance has occurred while the writer rious? Why should not thought-the most won- was engaged in the preparation of this paper, derful and subtle of known agencies-manifest | which is of an equally curious character, to say itself in equally extraordinary ways? the least of it. The lady who is the subject of it We do not know that what the mesmerists call is a relation of the writer, and is no believer in clairvoyance is yet to be held as established by the Mysteries of Mesmerism." It may be resufficient evidence. Numerous strongly authen-marked, however, that she is of a very sensitive ticated cases have certainly been adduced by per- and excitable nervous temperament. It happensons whose evidence is above suspicion-as, for ed, that on the night of the 30th of April, a instance, by Swedenborg (attested by many im- frightful accident occurred on the Birkenhead, partial witnesses), by Goethe, by Zschokke, by Lancashire, and Cheshire Railway, in conseTownshend, by Martineau, and others; but the quence of first one train, and then another, runevidence seems still to want confirmation. Only, ning into the trains preceding. A frightful we say, let us not prejudge the case let us wait scene of tumult, mutilation, and death ensued. patiently for all sorts of evidence. We can not It happened that the husband of the lady in argue à priori that clairvoyance is not true, any question was a passenger in the first train; more than the Professor at Padua could argue, though she did not know that he intended to go with justice, that the worlds which Galileo's to the Chester races, having been in Liverpool telescope revealed in the depths of space, were that day on other business. But she had scarceall a sham. That truth was established by ex- ly fallen asleep, ere, half-dozing, half-awake, she tended observation. Let us wait and see wheth- saw the accident occur-the terror, the alarm, er this may not yet be established, too, by similar and the death. She walked up and down her chamber in terror and alarm the whole night, and imparted her fears to others in the morning. Her husband was not injured, though greatly shaken by the collision, and much alarmed; and when he returned home in the course of the following day, he could scarcely believe his wife when she informed him of the circumstances which had been so mysteriously revealed to her in connection with his journey of the preceding day!

means.

Some of the things which the mesmerists, who go the length of clairvoyance, tell us, certainly have a very mysterious look; and were not sensation, thought, and all the manifestations of Life (not yet half investigated) all alike mysterious, we might be disposed to shut our eyes with the rest, and say we refused to believe, because we "did not understand."

But equally extraordinary relations to the same effect have been made by men who were neither mesmerists nor clairvoyantes. For instance, Kant, the German writer, relates that Swedenborg once, when living at Gottenburg, some three hundred miles from Stockholm, suddenly rose up and went out, when at the house of one Kostel, in the company of fifteen persons. After a few minutes he returned, pale and alarmed, and informed the party that a dangerous fire had just broken out in Stockholm, in Sude-malm, and that

Zschokke, an estimable man, well known as a philosopher, statesman, and author, possessed, according to his own and contemporary accounts. the most extraordinary power of divination of the characters and lives of other men with whom he came in contact. He called it his "inward sight," and at first he was himself quite as much astonished at it as others were. Writing of this feature himself, he says: "It has happened to me, sometimes, on my first meeting with strap

gers, as I listened silently to their discourse, that | CLARA CORSINI.—A TALE OF NAPLES. their former life, with many trifling circumstances

therewith connected, or frequently some particu-A

YOUNG French traveler, named Ernest Leroy, on arriving at Naples, found himself during the first few days quite confused by the multitude of his impressions. Now as it was in search of impressions that he had left his beloved Paris, there was nothing, it should seem, very grievous in this; and yet in the midst of his excitement there occurred intervals of intolerable

lar scene in that life, has passed quite tarily, and, as it were, dream-like, yet perfectly distinct, before me. During this time, I usually feel so entirely absorbed in the contemplation of the stranger life, that at last I no longer see clearly the face of the unknown, wherein I undesignedly read, nor distinctly hear the voices of the speakers, which before served in some meas-weariness of spirit-moments when he looked ure as a commentary to the text of their features. upon the Strada Toledo with disgust, wished For a long time I held such visions as delusions himself any where but in San Carlos, sneered at of the fancy, and the more so as they showed me Posilippo, pooh-poohed Vesuvius, and was gen even the dress and motions of the actors, rooms, erally skeptical as to the superiority of the Bay furniture, and other accessories. By way of over the Bosphorus, which he had not seen. All jest, I once, in a family circle at Kirchberg, re- this came to pass because he had set out on the lated the secret history of a seamstress who had principle of traveling in a hurry, or, as he exjust left the room and the house. I had never pressed it, making the most of his time. Every seen her before in my life; people were aston- night before going to bed he made out and wrote ished and laughed, but were not to be persuaded down a programme of next day's duties assign that I did not previously know the relations of ing so many hours to each sight, and so many which I spoke, for what I had uttered was the minutes to each meal, but forgetting altogether literal truth; I, on my part, was no less aston- to allow himself any opportunity for repose or ished that my dream-pictures were confirmed by digestion. the reality. I became more attentive to the subject, and when propriety admitted it, I would relate to those whose life thus passed before me, the subject of my vision, that I might thereby obtain confirmation or refutation of it. It was invariably ratified, not without consideration on their part. I myself had less confidence than any one in this mental jugglery. So often as I revealed my visionary gifts to any new person, I regularly expected to hear the answer: 'It was not so.' I felt a secret shudder when my auditors replied that it was true, or when their astonishment betrayed my accuracy before they spoke." Zschokke gives, numerous instances of this extraordinary power of divination or wak-propriate occasions; and he never had leisure to ing clairvoyance, and mentions other persons whom he met, who possessed the same marvelous power.

The "Posthumous Memoirs of La Harpe" contain equally extraordinary revelations, looking forward, instead of backward, as in Zschokke's case, into the frightful events of the great French Revolution, the sightseer being Cazove, a well-known novel writer, who lived previous to the frightful outbreak. Mary Howitt, in her account of the extraordinary "Preaching Epidemic of Sweden," recites circumstances of the same kind, equally wonderful; and the Rev. Mr. Sandy and Mr. Townshend's books on mesmerism are full of similar marvels. Among the various statements, the grand point is, how much of them is true? What are the facts of mesmerism? To quote the great Bacon: "He who hath not first, and before all, intimately explained the movements of the human mind, and therein most accurately distinguished the course of knowledge and the seats of error, shall find all things masked, and, as it were, enchanted; and, until he undo the charm, shall be unable to interpret." How few of us have yet arrived at this enviable position. Autobiography of Zschokke, p. 119-170.

Thus he had come from Paris viá Milan, Florence, and Rome, to Naples-the whole in the space of three weeks, during which, as will be easily imagined, he had visited an incredible number of churches, galleries, temples, and ruins of every description. In order to profit as much as possible by his travels he had arranged beforehand five or six series of ideas, or meditations as he called them: one on the assistance afforded by the fine arts to the progress of civilization, another consisting of a string of sublime commonplaces on the fall of empires and the moral value of monumental history; and so on. Each of these meditations he endeavored to recall on ap

reflect, that for any instruction he was deriving from what he saw he might as well have stopped at home. However, having some imagination and talent, he frequently found himself carried away by thoughts born of the occasion, and so irresistibly, that once or twice he went through a whole gallery or church before he had done with the train of ideas suggested by some previous sight, and was only made aware that he had seen some unique painting or celebrated windows of stained-glass by the guide claiming payment for his trouble, and asking him to sign a testimonial doing justice to his civility and great store of valuable informntion. It is only just to state that M. Ernest never failed to comply with either of these demands.

When, however, as we have said, he had been two or three days in Naples, and had rushed over the ground generally traversed by tourists, our young traveler began to feel weary and disgusted. For some time he did not understand what was the matter, and upbraided himself with the lack of industry and decline of enthusiasm, which made him look forward with horror to the sum mons of Giacomo, his guide, to be up and doing. At length, however, during one sleepless night