upon this side of the threshold, an experience new and peculiar, and overwhelmingly interesting. Persons who were approaching their last hour have desired, after taking leave of their friends, to be left to themselves, and not to be interrupted; as if they felt that an untried scene was claiming all their souls. The hands have been clasped, as in rapt devotion; the eyes have been fixed as in intense contemplation; a smile of inexpressible peace, or a shade of deep sorrow, or yet deeper anguish, has lingered till the end; or even has left its trace upon the features of the dead. There is, indeed, much room for interpretations from the fancy or the affections of the spectators at such a season. But one who has watched many deathbeds will hardly be deceived; and the experience of the deathbed itself is not wanting. Schiller, a little before his death, with a kind of reviving look, said, "Many things are becoming to me plainer and clearer." There seems to be, in the frequent declaration of the dying, that they now see the world and eternity as they had not seen them in life, something more than a merely religious significance. They probably feel that the intellect, when it is not oppressed by its remaining connection with the body, is indeed expanded through the looseness of that connection. The same fact may in part explain the ancient and common notion that the dying had prophetic knowledge. Some conclusions may be derived from the experience of those who have been seemingly dead, and have recovered. For, notwithstanding that they recovered, they had been in the space between this living world and the world of real death. Those who have been drowned have declared, that in the moment of sinking the events of a lifetime came before their recollection, as if in one vast map of a superhuman memory. Then, with a gentle passage, rather pleasurable than painful, their breath went out, and they glided into unconsciousness. Men who have been hanged, and resuscitated, spoke of the first convulsive struggle, the flashing lights that seemed to swim around the brain, and the subsidence into repose, as all less painful than the revival. There has been a remarkable consent, amongst those who have seemingly died, as to the last images which hovered before the soul as it fell asleep. They have heard a rush of great waters, over which their way seemed to lie. "The world to come," says Schubert, "seems still to speak to the spirit of man in that same great language of figures, of which all visible nature is the work and expression." This assent has appeared amongst persons of different nations, different education, and even different religions, as in the instance of the Mexican princess, Papanzin, related by Clavigero, and beautifully versified by Sands. Others have seemed to themselves only to fall asleep and to awake in some wondrous scene, where they have remained till their resuscitation. Such was the remarkable experience of Tennent. Doctor Nelson, the author of the excellent treatise on the Cause and Cure of Infidelity, was long a medical practitioner; and he speaks of a striking distinction which he had observed between those who seemed to be dying, and yet recovered, and those who actually died; a distinction in their experience, even when all things besides had equally appeared to foretoken the end. He compares it with the descent into a deep valley, before ascending a hill which commands a vast prospect. Those who approached death as near as could be with out dying, had descended into the valley only; those who died had, even before they passed the summit of the hill, some prospect beyond. "It seems," says Newton, "as if the weakness of the bodily frame gave occasion to the awakening of some faculty, till then dormant in the soul, by which invisibles are not only believed but seen, and unutterables are heard and understood." However such evidence from such men be regarded in its highest bearings, it rests upon an accurate observation of mental phenomena in the sick and dying. A wonderful resemblance has been noticed in the dreadful objects which fill the fancy of those who die under delirium tremens, as well as of many whose departure is made terrible by great anguish of conscience. They see black figures, serpents, horrid forms, every wild, spectral appearance. A similar uniformity is observed in the softer and more pleasing pictures which float before the imagination of many, who wander in tranquil pastures, approach bright cities, obtain glimpses of celestial messengers, or catch the sound of unearthly music. The mind reverts with a peculiar readiness to the associations of childhood; and the recollection of early friends has the vividness of sight. "Touching was the scene, says a sketch of the death of the poet Hillhouse, as the warm affections of that noble heart wandered forth in remembrance to the opening scenes of life, and the friends of childhood who had already gone." Shakspeare makes the dying Falstaff "babble of green fields;" and, at the same time, mingles horrid images with the remorse of the aged debauchee. However strangely the grotesque and the terrible are there united, it is but the copy of nature. A person, who was himself a freethinker, assured a clerical friend of mine, that in the southern part of the United States, he had repeatedly been present with men of loose habits in their last moments; that they again and again said that they saw the Evil one; and, what was very remarkable, that they all described him alike, as a strange, black figure. The same observation has been made by Doctor Nelson. It is but a single instance of that general uniformity of psychological phenomena which is witnessed in the time. of departure. Confining our view to these phenomena, we may thus describe the process which is passing within. Except when the brain is directly oppressed, the mind evinces no decay, but rather acts with greater clearness and intensity, and emits some flashes of a higher intelligence. The recollections of a whole life, the consciousness of spiritual existence, and all which is mightiest and deepest in our nature, become brighter, even in opposition to extreme bodily languor. In the immediate vicinity of death, the mind enters on an unaccustomed order of sensations, a region untrodden before, from which few, very few travellers have returned, and from which those few have brought back but vague remembrances; sometimes accompanied with a kind of homesickness for the higher sphere of which they had then some transient prospect. Here, amidst images, dim images, of solemnity or peace, of glory or of terror, the pilgrim pursues his course alone, and is lost to our eye. XXXIV. Bigher Agencies in Death. "On all, the unutterable stillness lies, Of that dread hour when man must meet his God, WILLIAMS. A VERY deep conviction of something in death which extends beyond death, has always disposed the human. mind to associate with it an interest on the side of higher and invisible agencies. It has been believed, also, to call out in the soul itself more hidden and mysterious connections with the unseen universe. The mind, in some states, can even weaken and dissolve the links that bind it to the body; and the exhibition of such a power might well prepare us for disclosures still more wonderful. Death from a broken heart is not a fiction. It has too often occurred to leave us at liberty to sport with so frail a vessel as the life of man. The excitement of strong passion has many a time resulted in the sudden. and fatal rupture of some one of the channels of circulation. Men have thus fallen dead under mighty irritation, or from sudden fright, or even, it is said, in excess of joy. A violent passion hurried on the death of Henry the Second of England; and the Emperor Valentinian fell senseless in a fit of anger, and never arose. Some have sunk in the moment of uttering blasphemy, or perjury; and perhaps the providential |