230 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



good ; but when we come to that scene which shews us the death 

 and destruction of one, we stand amazed at the power which the 

 other sometimes appears suddenly to acquire. As, rising above the 

 wreck of the body, the mind calls together its wandering faculties 

 and, collecting them into a focus, shines forth with a brilliancy and 

 splendour which illumine but for a moment and then pass away 

 into a more extended field of inquiry, where our limited senses are 

 unable to follow her. It is this degree of mental excitement which, 

 at a moment when the material and immaterial portions of our 

 nature are about to separate, produces these hallucinations, of which 

 many instances have been recorded. It is a state not between 

 death and existence, but between this present degree of it, and one 

 far more exalted. The mind travels by anticipation into the un- 

 seen world, and from many circumstances of visions at these periods 

 we might be almost led to suppose that a part of its glories were, 

 in some instances, revealed to it. The memoirs of Lady Fanshawe 

 furnish a remarkable example of this : she was so near dissolution 

 that her friends supposed her actually dead. The struggling breath, 

 the quivering lip, and tremulous motion of the body, indicated that 

 the change had not, as yet, taken place. From the use of some 

 remedies she was partially restored, and being so, she affirmed that 

 she had been perfectly sensible to all that had passed around her, 

 but that she had been visited by two in white raiment, from whom 

 she had solicited a continuance of her existence for fifteen years. 

 It was granted ; and her friends asserted that she did actually die 

 that day fifteen years. This is one of those remarkable and rare 

 coincidences between the vigour of the Imagination and the actual 

 occurrence of facts that have at all times puzzled and misled the 

 vulgar ; and, indeed, well-authenticated narratives of this kind, 

 which this decidedly was, are Gordian knots at which even the 

 learned shake their heads, and attempt not to untie. These kinds 

 of hallucinations frequently deceive the senses of the dying. Shak- 

 speare, with exquisite taste, has cast the halo of his genius around 

 the death-bed of Catherine of Arragon, in deluding her with a 

 vision of this character. 



" Saw you not, even now, a blessed group 

 Invite me to a banquet, whose bright faces 

 Cast thousand beams upon me, like the sun ? 

 They promised me eternal happiness, 

 And brought me garlands, Griffith, which I feel 

 I am not worthy yet to wear, but shall assuredly." 



