fourth of these classes is not evident, or else the third

might certainly be enlarged.

Persons who had been drowned have recovered, after remaining even for hours in the water. A man apparently dead from a grievous wound revived, though twenty-four hours were past. Recovery after suffocation has been particularly frequent. One Anne Green, who was hanged in 1650, at Oxford, on being cut down, was accidentally observed to be warm; and lived many years after. The appearance of death by apoplexy has sometimes proved deceptive, when almost every sign had long been manifest. Very seldom, if ever, has the state of seeming but unreal dissolution continued beyond the third day; still, it is said, that the seventh, and even the ninth, has witnessed restoration. During such periods, the substance of the body remains uninjured by the outward elements. The process of recovery, too, goes on; and they who have reposed upon the bier have arisen and walked.

To some who have thus revived, all which passed in the interval has seemed but as a deep sleep, or a state of fainting. Others, without the slightest power of motion, have yet retained some consciousness, and have even heard around them the preparations for burial. But often, the soul has been in a kind of entrancement. It preserves, after recovery, faint impressions of a sphere of existence distinct from those of its ordinary waking and of its ordinary dreams.

Several examples of seeming death are mentioned by Pliny; one, of a person who revived on the funeral pyre. Varro relates, amongst others, that of his own. aunt. In modern times, they have been observed by men of the highest attainments in medical science, and narrated by very eminent writers. The case of Tennent is

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