which he had at the fame time been using, becomes affociated with it: and in that struggle of rage, which in thefe diftempered dreams almost conftantly precedes the helpless terror by the pain of which we are finally awakened, he imagines that he hurls it at the intruder, or not improbably in the first instant of awakening, while yet both his imagination and his eyes are poffeffed by the dream, he actually hurls it. Some weeks after, perhaps, during which interval he had often mused on the incident, undetermined whether to deem it a vifitation of Satan to him in the body or out of the body, he discovers for the first time the dark spot on his wall, and receives it as a fign and pledge vouchfafed to him of the event having actually taken place. Such was Luther under the influences of the age and country in and for which he was born. Conceive him a citizen of Geneva, and a contemporary of Voltaire: suppose the French language his mother-tongue, and the political and moral philosophy of English free-thinkers re-modelled by Parifian fort efprits, to have been the objects of his ftudy;-conceive this change of circumftances, and Luther will no longer dream of fiends or of anti-Chrift- but will he have no dreams in their place? His melancholy will have changed its drapery; but will it find no new costume wherewith to clothe itfelf? His impetuous temperament, his deep working mind, his busy and vivid imaginations-would they not have been a trouble to him in a world, where nothing was to be altered, where nothing was to obey his power, to cease to be that which it had been, in order to realize his pre-conceptions of what it ought to be? His fenfibility, which found objects for itself, and shadows of human suffering in the harmless brute, and even in the flowers which he trod upon - might it not naturally, in an unfpiritualized age, have wept, and trembled, and diffolved, over scenes of earthly paffion, and the struggles of love with duty? His pity, that so easily paffed into rage, would it not have found in the inequalities of mankind, in the oppreffions of governments and the miseries of the governed, an entire instead of a divided object? And might not a perfect conftitution, a government of pure reason, a renovation of the focial contract, have easily supplied the place of the reign of Christ in the new Jerusalem, of the restoration of the visible Church, and the union of all men by one faith in one charity? Henceforward then, we will conceive his reafon employed in building up anew the edifice of earthly fociety, and his imagination as pledging itself for the poffible realization of the structure. We will lofe the great reformer, who was born in an age which needed him, in the philofopher of Geneva, who was doomed to mifapply his energies to materials the properties of which he misunderstood, and happy only that he did not live to witness the direful effects of his own system. ESSAY III. Pectora cui credam? quis me lenire docebit MILTON PETRARCH: MILTON. HE two following effays I devote to elucidation, the firft of the theory of Luther's apparitions ftated perhaps too briefly in the preceding effay; the fecond for the purpose of removing the only obftacle, which I can discover in the next fection of the Friend, to the reader's ready comprehension of the principles, on which the arguments are grounded. First, I will endeavour to make my ghoft theory more clear to thofe of my readers, who are fortunate enough to find it obfcure in confequence of their own good health and unshattered nerves. The window of my library at Kefwick is oppofite to the fire-place, and looks out on the very large garden that occupies the whole flope of the hill on which the house stands. Confequently, the rays of light tranfmitted through the glass, that is, the rays from the garden, the oppofite mountains, and the bridge, river, lake, and vale interjacent, and the rays reflected from it, of the fire-place, &c., enter the eye at the fame moment. At the coming on of evening, it was my frequent amusement to watch the image or reflection of the fire, that seemed burning in the bushes or between the trees in different parts of the garden or the fields beyond it, according as there was more or less light; and which still arranged itself among the real objects of vifion, with a distance and magnitude proportioned to its greater or leffer faintnefs. For ftill as the darkness increased, the image of the fire leffened and grew nearer and more diftinct; till the twilight had deepened into perfect night, when all outward objects being excluded, the window became a perfect looking-glafs fave only that my books on the fide shelves of the room were lettered, as it were, on their backs with stars, more or fewer as the sky was less or more clouded, the rays of the stars being at that time the only ones transmitted. Now fubftitute the phantom from Luther's brain for the images of reflected light, the fire for inftance, and the forms of his room and its furniture for the transmitted rays, and you have a fair resemblance of an apparition, and a juft conception of the manner in which it is seen together with real objects. I have long wished to devote an entire work to the subject of dreams, visions, ghosts, and witchcraft, in which I might first give, and then endeavour to explain, the most interesting and best attested fact of each, which has come within my knowledge, either from books or from personal testimony. I might then explain in a more fatisfactory way the mode in which our thoughts, in ftates of morbid flumber, become at times perfectly dramatic,-for in certain forts of dreams the dulleft wight becomes a Shakespeare,and by what law the form of the vifion appears to talk to us its own thoughts in a voice as audible as the shape is visible; and this too oftentimes in connected trains, and not seldom even with a concentration of power which may easily impose on the foundest judgments, uninstructed in the optics and acoustics of the inner sense, for revelations and gifts of prescience. In aid of the present case, I will only remark, that it would appear incredible to perfons not accustomed to these fubtle notices of self-observation, what small and remote refemblances, what mere hints of likeness from fome real external object, especially if the shape be aided by colour, will fuffice to make a vivid thought confubftantiate with the real object, and derive from it an outward perceptibility. Even when we are broad awake, if we are in anxious expectation, how often will not the moft confused founds of nature be heard by us as articulate founds? For instance, the babbling of a brook will appear for a moment the voice of a friend, for whom we are waiting, calling out our own names. A fhort meditation, therefore, on the great law of the imagination, that a likeness in part |