very familiar. It is also told, on the best authority, that an English gentleman had the power, and exercised it in the presence of the celebrated John Hunter, to throw himself into the state of apparent death, with almost every sign of an actual cessation of circulation, respiration, and the other processes of life. But after various trials, one was fatal; for, he awoke no

more.

All such unusual phenomena may yet prove little more, as to the nature of death, than the common occurrences of fainting and temporary insensibility. If these continued, as under unfavourable circumstances they might continue, the result would soon be death. A warrior, fainting on the field of battle from loss of blood, would revive under the care of friends; but would perish, should he remain beneath a heap of slaughtered men and horses. Life, for a little season, hovers where it can be recalled: it has not forsaken its former sphere, but it is on the wing. Should death actually occur, the moment could not be fixed, except it were at the moment when the faintness came on; and this was obviously not the true moment. Minutes or hours may elapse before the anchor is quite cut loose. The utmost extension of this state is in the cases of apparent death, which sometimes end in revival, but perhaps more often in actual dissolution. There may be no greater mystery in this than in sleep, in common faintness, in catalepsy, in the magnetic slumber: all are mysterious, and all our nature is, like every work of God, a mystery to created intellects. The practical danger of premature burial is but the very slightest, and is easily made impossible. For there are signs enough of dissolution, which cannot be mistaken, and should be awaited.

It is said by Irenæus, that through fasting and prayer the dead were raised, even in his time; but in the same age, Autolycus, a heathen, challenged Theophilus of Antioch to point to a single instance. Certain it is, that such power was exercised by the apostles. From actual death came back the children for whom Elijah and Elisha prayed; the man who touched the bones of Elisha; the daughter of Jairus; the son of the widow of Nain; Dorcas, and Eutychus, and Lazarus. As, however, the interval was not longer than that which is stated to have been known between the moment of seeming death and the revival, we may well conclude that the spirit still remained in that intermediate condition from which it might yet return, without ever being consciously mingled with the departed in their own appropriate world. From that world, it would seem that none has come back to dwell in the body, except One, and perhaps a few who attended Him into His glory, as first-fruits of the general harvest.

XXXII.

Corruption of the Body after Death.

"I will not have the church-yard ground
With bones all black and ugly grown,
To press my shivering body round,
Or on my wasted limbs be thrown.
With ribs and skulls I will not sleep,
In clammy beds of cold blue clay,
Through which the ringed earth-worms creep,
And on the shrouded bosom prey."

CRABBE.

FROM real death the body hastens to corruption. The blood, which had been withdrawn from the extremities, now flows from veins which may have been opened, but which till now refused it a passage. It is not circulation, but dissolution, of the blood; but it sometimes gives a strange colour to the cheek. Gases engendered by the commencement of corruption soon swell the abdomen; the surface of the body becomes slightly darkened from its perfect paleness; and the outermost integument of the skin is dissolved.

It is now the time for interment; and the remainder of the process of decay is commonly to be hidden within the bosom of the earth. For seven or eight centuries, the interment of Christians was usually on the day of their death; as, indeed, Christianity most flourished then in the warmer climates. If, through the calamities of war, or through accidental desertion, the body

was exposed, a natural provision, kindly though shocking,

"Allured from far

The wolf and raven, and to impious food
Tempted the houseless dog."

In temperate climates, the stage at which nature forbids a longer view of the dead, is reached about the third day; but it is hastened by great heat, by dampness, by pestilential diseases, by poisons, and by lightning and tempests. Cold, on the other hand, a stream of air, salts, metallic oxides, and various other substances, retard decay. Through causes like these, human bodies have been found in a strange state of preservation, under glaciers, in mines, in vaults peculiarly exposed to a dry air, and even in the sandy deserts. Travellers in Europe visit many places where these natural mummies have been preserved for centuries.

One of the first productions of the grave is phosphorus, which has been seen in tombs, and on the walls of dissecting-rooms. Indeed, inflammable air has issued from cemeteries; and not only the dead body, but even the living, when the living has been corrupted by habits. of excessive drinking, is known to have taken fire spontaneously. Such gases are of a very poisonous nature; and dissection has communicated a dangerous infection. to the operator, when the dead matter has found its way into the blood through some slight wound.

After this stage of corruption, follows that in which alkalies and similar substances are formed, which consume like those that, for such a purpose, have been sometimes deposited in populous burial-places, or with the bodies of beasts. At a still later period, oily and fat substances are generated, and all unpleasant effluvia disappear. The bones remain still later, and, latest of

all parts, the teeth and hair; and at length these also are dissolved, and nothing distinguishes the dust of men from the surrounding soil, in which the worm has its habitation.

All this, in some soils, is accomplished with an amazing rapidity. In Yucatan, it is the custom to collect, after some months, the bones of the dead, and place them with those of their neighbours who have gone before, all in one heap, exposed to public view; and as they are buried without coffins, the decay is so speedy that only a few months need intervene. At the great burial-place in Naples, where the vaults are three hundred and sixty-five, and one is opened every day of the year, quick-lime is thrown in; and at the expiration of the year, scarcely the least relic of the human frame is apparent. But, in other circumstances, not only has the skull of Whitefield, seventy years from his death, been handled by a careless traveller; not only has that of Milton, at the end of a century, been dragged to the light of day; but the lineaments of kings who had been buried for centuries have been seen once more. The almost gigantic body of William the Conqueror, after it had been entombed four hundred and fifty years, was found almost entire. When the tombs of the French princes at St. Denys were rifled by the Revolutionary populace, the features of Henry the Fourth were perfect, while the body of his son, Louis the Thirteenth, was dry, like a mummy; for both had beer: embalmed. Of King Pepin, after a thousand years, there remained then but a handful of dust. It is very

common to disinter human bones from spots where they have not been known to have been buried within the memory of man; but when ancient mounds have been opened, which had indisputably been raised over the