Chapter XVIII: Front Matter (18)

At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the
change—at the cessation of movement. They shrank alarmedly back;
many sought the well. But this was only for a moment. I had not
counted in vain upon their voracity. Observing that I remained
without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon the
frame-work, and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal
for a general rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh
troops. They clung to the wood—they overran it, and leaped in
hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the pendulum
disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes they busied
themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed—they swarmed
upon me in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat;
their cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their
thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name,
swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy clamminess, my heart.
Yet one minute, and I felt that the struggle would be over.
Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in
more than one place it must be already severed. With a more than
human resolution I lay still.

Nor had I erred in my calculations—nor had I endured in vain. I
at length felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribands
from my body. But the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon
my bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. It had cut
through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung, and a sharp
sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape
had arrived. At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried
tumultuously away. With a steady movement—cautious, sidelong,
shrinking, and slow—I slid from the embrace of the bandage and
beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least, I was
free.

Free!—and in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped
from my wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison,
when the motion of the hellish machine ceased and I beheld it
drawn up, by some invisible force, through the ceiling. This was
a lesson which I took desperately to heart. My every motion was
undoubtedly watched. Free!—I had but escaped death in one form of
agony, to be delivered unto worse than death in some other. With
that thought I rolled my eves nervously around on the barriers of
iron that hemmed me in. Something unusual—some change which, at
first, I could not appreciate distinctly—it was obvious, had
taken place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and
trembling abstraction, I busied myself in vain, unconnected
conjecture. During this period, I became aware, for the first
time, of the origin of the sulphurous light which illumined the
cell. It proceeded from a fissure, about half an inch in width,
extending entirely around the prison at the base of the walls,
which thus appeared, and were, completely separated from the
floor. I endeavored, but of course in vain, to look through the
aperture.

As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the
chamber broke at once upon my understanding. I have observed
that, although the outlines of the figures upon the walls were
sufficiently distinct, yet the colors seemed blurred and
indefinite. These colors had now assumed, and were momentarily
assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that gave to
the spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have
thrilled even firmer nerves than my own. Demon eyes, of a wild
and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions,
where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid
lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard
as unreal.

_Unreal!_—Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the
breath of the vapour of heated iron! A suffocating odour pervaded
the prison! A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that
glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson diffused itself
over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted! I gasped for
breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my
tormentors—oh! most unrelenting! oh! most demoniac of men! I
shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. Amid the
thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the
coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its
deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from
the enkindled roof illumined its inmost recesses. Yet, for a wild
moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I
saw. At length it forced—it wrestled its way into my soul—it
burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. Oh! for a voice to
speak!—oh! horror!—oh! any horror but this! With a shriek, I
rushed from the margin, and buried my face in my hands—weeping
bitterly.

The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up,
shuddering as with a fit of the ague. There had been a second
change in the cell—and now the change was obviously in the form.
As before, it was in vain that I, at first, endeavoured to
appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long was
I left in doubt. The Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by
my two-fold escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the
King of Terrors. The room had been square. I saw that two of its
iron angles were now acute—two, consequently, obtuse. The fearful
difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning
sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form into that
of a lozenge. But the alteration stopped not here—I neither hoped
nor desired it to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my
bosom as a garment of eternal peace. “Death,” I said, “any death
but that of the pit!” Fool! might I have not known that into the
pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I
resist its glow? or, if even that, could I withstand its
pressure? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a
rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and
of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I
shrank back—but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward.
At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an
inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no
more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and
final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink—I
averted my eyes—

There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud
blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a
thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched
arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was
that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The
Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing,
but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of
legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he
do not wish to offend or to disgust. They are with propriety
handled only when the severity and majesty of Truth sanctify and
sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most intense of
“pleasurable pain” over the accounts of the Passage of the
Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of the Plague at London,
of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the
hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the Black Hole at Calcutta.
But in these accounts it is the fact——it is the reality——it is
the history which excites. As inventions, we should regard them
with simple abhorrence.

I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august
calamities on record; but in these it is the extent, not less
than the character of the calamity, which so vividly impresses
the fancy. I need not remind the reader that, from the long and
weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have selected many
individual instances more replete with essential suffering than
any of these vast generalities of disaster. The true
wretchedness, indeed—the ultimate woe——is particular, not
diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man
the unit, and never by man the mass——for this let us thank a
merciful God!

To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific
of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere
mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen
will scarcely be denied by those who think. The boundaries which
divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall
say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that
there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the
apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations
are merely suspensions, properly so called. They are only
temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism. A certain
period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets
in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver
cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably
broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?

Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, _a priori_ that
such causes must produce such effects——that the well-known
occurrence of such cases of suspended animation must naturally
give rise, now and then, to premature interments—apart from this
consideration, we have the direct testimony of medical and
ordinary experience to prove that a vast number of such
interments have actually taken place. I might refer at once, if
necessary, to a hundred well-authenticated instances. One of very
remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh
in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago,
in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a
painful, intense, and widely-extended excitement. The wife of one
of the most respectable citizens—a lawyer of eminence and a
member of Congress—was seized with a sudden and unaccountable
illness, which completely baffled the skill of her physicians.
After much suffering she died, or was supposed to die. No one
suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was not
actually dead. She presented all the ordinary appearances of
death. The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The
lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless.
There was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the
body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony
rigidity. The funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the
rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition.

The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three
subsequent years, was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term
it was opened for the reception of a sarcophagus; but, alas! how
fearful a shock awaited the husband, who, personally, threw open
the door! As its portals swung outwardly back, some
white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms. It was the
skeleton of his wife in her yet unmoulded shroud.

A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived
within two days after her entombment; that her struggles within
the coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the
floor, where it was so broken as to permit her escape. A lamp
which had been accidentally left, full of oil, within the tomb,
was found empty; it might have been exhausted, however, by
evaporation. On the uttermost of the steps which led down into
the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, with which,
it seemed, that she had endeavored to arrest attention by
striking the iron door. While thus occupied, she probably
swooned, or possibly died, through sheer terror; and, in failing,
her shroud became entangled in some iron-work which projected
interiorly. Thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect.

In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France,
attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion
that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. The heroine of the
story was a Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade, a young girl of
illustrious family, of wealth, and of great personal beauty.
Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor
_litterateur_, or journalist of Paris. His talents and general
amiability had recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by
whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her pride of birth
decided her, finally, to reject him, and to wed a Monsieur
Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence. After
marriage, however, this gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even
more positively ill-treated her. Having passed with him some
wretched years, she died—at least her condition so closely
resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. She was
buried——not in a vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village
of her nativity. Filled with despair, and still inflamed by the
memory of a profound attachment, the lover journeys from the
capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with
the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing
himself of its luxuriant tresses. He reaches the grave. At
midnight he unearths the coffin, opens it, and is in the act of
detaching the hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the
beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried alive. Vitality
had not altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses
of her lover from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death.
He bore her frantically to his lodgings in the village. He
employed certain powerful restoratives suggested by no little
medical learning. In fine, she revived. She recognized her
preserver. She remained with him until, by slow degrees, she
fully recovered her original health. Her woman’s heart was not
adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed to soften it. She
bestowed it upon Bossuet. She returned no more to her husband,
but, concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to
America. Twenty years afterward, the two returned to France, in
the persuasion that time had so greatly altered the lady’s
appearance that her friends would be unable to recognize her.
They were mistaken, however, for, at the first meeting, Monsieur
Renelle did actually recognize and make claim to his wife. This
claim she resisted, and a judicial tribunal sustained her in her
resistance, deciding that the peculiar circumstances, with the
long lapse of years, had extinguished, not only equitably, but
legally, the authority of the husband.

The “Chirurgical Journal” of Leipsic, a periodical of high
authority and merit, which some American bookseller would do well
to translate and republish, records in a late number a very
distressing event of the character in question.

An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust
health, being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very
severe contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible at
once; the skull was slightly fractured, but no immediate danger
was apprehended. Trepanning was accomplished successfully. He was
bled, and many other of the ordinary means of relief were
adopted. Gradually, however, he fell into a more and more
hopeless state of stupor, and, finally, it was thought that he
died.

The weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in
one of the public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday.
On the Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as
usual, much thronged with visitors, and about noon an intense
excitement was created by the declaration of a peasant that,
while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he had distinctly
felt a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by some one
struggling beneath. At first little attention was paid to the
man’s asseveration; but his evident terror, and the dogged
obstinacy with which he persisted in his story, had at length
their natural effect upon the crowd. Spades were hurriedly
procured, and the grave, which was shamefully shallow, was in a
few minutes so far thrown open that the head of its occupant
appeared. He was then seemingly dead; but he sat nearly erect
within his coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he
had partially uplifted.

He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there
pronounced to be still living, although in an asphytic condition.
After some hours he revived, recognized individuals of his
acquaintance, and, in broken sentences spoke of his agonies in
the grave.

From what he related, it was clear that he must have been
conscious of life for more than an hour, while inhumed, before
lapsing into insensibility. The grave was carelessly and loosely
filled with an exceedingly porous soil; and thus some air was
necessarily admitted. He heard the footsteps of the crowd
overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn. It was
the tumult within the grounds of the cemetery, he said, which
appeared to awaken him from a deep sleep, but no sooner was he
awake than he became fully aware of the awful horrors of his
position.

This patient, it is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in
a fair way of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the
quackeries of medical experiment. The galvanic battery was
applied, and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic
paroxysms which, occasionally, it superinduces.

The mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my
memory a well known and very extraordinary case in point, where
its action proved the means of restoring to animation a young
attorney of London, who had been interred for two days. This
occurred in 1831, and created, at the time, a very profound
sensation wherever it was made the subject of converse.

The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus
fever, accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited
the curiosity of his medical attendants. Upon his seeming
decease, his friends were requested to sanction a post-mortem
examination, but declined to permit it. As often happens, when
such refusals are made, the practitioners resolved to disinter
the body and dissect it at leisure, in private. Arrangements were
easily effected with some of the numerous corps of
body-snatchers, with which London abounds; and, upon the third
night after the funeral, the supposed corpse was unearthed from a
grave eight feet deep, and deposited in the opening chamber of
one of the private hospitals.

An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen,
when the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested
an application of the battery. One experiment succeeded another,
and the customary effects supervened, with nothing to
characterize them in any respect, except, upon one or two
occasions, a more than ordinary degree of life-likeness in the
convulsive action.

It grew late. The day was about to dawn; and it was thought
expedient, at length, to proceed at once to the dissection. A
student, however, was especially desirous of testing a theory of
his own, and insisted upon applying the battery to one of the
pectoral muscles. A rough gash was made, and a wire hastily
brought in contact, when the patient, with a hurried but quite
unconvulsive movement, arose from the table, stepped into the
middle of the floor, gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds,
and then—spoke. What he said was unintelligible, but words were
uttered; the syllabification was distinct. Having spoken, he fell
heavily to the floor.

For some moments all were paralyzed with awe—but the urgency of
the case soon restored them their presence of mind. It was seen
that Mr. Stapleton was alive, although in a swoon. Upon
exhibition of ether he revived and was rapidly restored to
health, and to the society of his friends—from whom, however, all
knowledge of his resuscitation was withheld, until a relapse was
no longer to be apprehended. Their wonder—their rapturous
astonishment—may be conceived.

The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is
involved in what Mr. S. himself asserts. He declares that at no
period was he altogether insensible—that, dully and confusedly,
he was aware of everything which happened to him, from the moment
in which he was pronounced dead by his physicians, to that in
which he fell swooning to the floor of the hospital. “I am
alive,” were the uncomprehended words which, upon recognizing the
locality of the dissecting-room, he had endeavored, in his
extremity, to utter.

It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these—but I
forbear—for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the
fact that premature interments occur. When we reflect how very
rarely, from the nature of the case, we have it in our power to
detect them, we must admit that they may frequently occur without
our cognizance. Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard ever
encroached upon, for any purpose, to any great extent, that
skeletons are not found in postures which suggest the most
fearful of suspicions.

Fearful indeed the suspicion—but more fearful the doom! It may be
asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well
adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental
distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression
of the lungs—the stifling fumes from the damp earth—the clinging
to the death garments—the rigid embrace of the narrow house—the
blackness of the absolute Night—the silence like a sea that
overwhelms—the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror
Worm—these things, with the thoughts of the air and grass above,
with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but
informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate
they can never be informed—that our hopeless portion is that of
the really dead—these considerations, I say, carry into the
heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and
intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must
recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth—we can dream
of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell.
And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest
profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred
awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly
depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated.
What I have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge—of my own
positive and personal experience.

For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular
disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in
default of a more definitive title. Although both the immediate
and the predisposing causes, and even the actual diagnosis, of
this disease are still mysterious, its obvious and apparent
character is sufficiently well understood. Its variations seem to
be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the patient lies, for a day only,
or even for a shorter period, in a species of exaggerated
lethargy. He is senseless and externally motionless; but the
pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces
of warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the
cheek; and, upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can
detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs.
Then again the duration of the trance is for weeks—even for
months; while the closest scrutiny, and the most rigorous medical
tests, fail to establish any material distinction between the
state of the sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death.
Very usually he is saved from premature interment solely by the
knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to
catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all,
by the non-appearance of decay. The advances of the malady are,
luckily, gradual. The first manifestations, although marked, are
unequivocal. The fits grow successively more and more
distinctive, and endure each for a longer term than the
preceding. In this lies the principal security from inhumation.
The unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme
character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be
consigned alive to the tomb.

My own case differed in no important particular from those
mentioned in medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent
cause, I sank, little by little, into a condition of
semi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this condition, without
pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think,
but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the
presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the
crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect
sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten.
I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell
prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and
silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could
be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with a
gradation slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure.
Just as the day dawns to the friendless and houseless beggar who
roams the streets throughout the long desolate winter night—just
so tardily—just so wearily—just so cheerily came back the light
of the Soul to me.

Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health
appeared to be good; nor could I perceive that it was at all
affected by the one prevalent malady—unless, indeed, an
idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep may be looked upon as
superinduced. Upon awaking from slumber, I could never gain, at
once, thorough possession of my senses, and always remained, for
many minutes, in much bewilderment and perplexity—the mental
faculties in general, but the memory in especial, being in a
condition of absolute abeyance.

In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of
moral distress an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked “of
worms, of tombs, and epitaphs.” I was lost in reveries of death,
and the idea of premature burial held continual possession of my
brain. The ghastly Danger to which I was subjected haunted me day
and night. In the former, the torture of meditation was
excessive—in the latter, supreme. When the grim Darkness
overspread the Earth, then, with every horror of thought, I
shook—shook as the quivering plumes upon the hearse. When Nature
could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that I
consented to sleep—for I shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking,
I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I
sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of
phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing,
hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.

From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in
dreams, I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I
was immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration
and profundity. Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead,
and an impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word “Arise!”
within my ear.

I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure
of him who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the
period at which I had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in
which I then lay. While I remained motionless, and busied in
endeavors to collect my thought, the cold hand grasped me
fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering
voice said again:

“Arise! did I not bid thee arise?”

“And who,” I demanded, “art thou?”

“I have no name in the regions which I inhabit,” replied the
voice, mournfully; “I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless,
but am pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder. My teeth chatter
as I speak, yet it is not with the chilliness of the night—of the
night without end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How
canst thou tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these
great agonies. These sights are more than I can bear. Get thee
up! Come with me into the outer Night, and let me unfold to thee
the graves. Is not this a spectacle of woe?—Behold!”

I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the
wrist, had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind;
and from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay; so
that I could see into the innermost recesses, and there view the
shrouded bodies in their sad and solemn slumbers with the worm.
But alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than
those who slumbered not at all; and there was a feeble
struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from out the
depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling
from the garments of the buried. And of those who seemed
tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast number had changed, in a
greater or less degree, the rigid and uneasy position in which
they had originally been entombed. And the voice again said to me
as I gazed:

“Is it not—oh! is it _not_ a pitiful sight?” But, before I could
find words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist, the
phosphoric lights expired, and the graves were closed with a
sudden violence, while from out them arose a tumult of despairing
cries, saying again: “Is it not—O, God, is it _not_ a very
pitiful sight?”

Phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night,
extended their terrific influence far into my waking hours. My
nerves became thoroughly unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual
horror. I hesitated to ride, or to walk, or to indulge in any
exercise that would carry me from home. In fact, I no longer
dared trust myself out of the immediate presence of those who
were aware of my proneness to catalepsy, lest, falling into one
of my usual fits, I should be buried before my real condition
could be ascertained. I doubted the care, the fidelity of my
dearest friends. I dreaded that, in some trance of more than
customary duration, they might be prevailed upon to regard me as
irrecoverable. I even went so far as to fear that, as I
occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to consider any very
protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid of me
altogether. It was in vain they endeavored to reassure me by the
most solemn promises. I exacted the most sacred oaths, that under
no circumstances they would bury me until decomposition had so
materially advanced as to render farther preservation impossible.
And, even then, my mortal terrors would listen to no reason—would
accept no consolation. I entered into a series of elaborate
precautions. Among other things, I had the family vault so
remodelled as to admit of being readily opened from within. The
slightest pressure upon a long lever that extended far into the
tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back. There were
arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and
convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach
of the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly
and softly padded, and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon
the principle of the vault-door, with the addition of springs so
contrived that the feeblest movement of the body would be
sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides all this, there was
suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope of
which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the
coffin, and so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse.
But, alas? what avails the vigilance against the Destiny of man?
Not even these well-contrived securities sufficed to save from
the uttermost agonies of living inhumation, a wretch to these
agonies foredoomed!

There arrived an epoch—as often before there had arrived—in which
I found myself emerging from total unconsciousness into the first
feeble and indefinite sense of existence. Slowly—with a tortoise
gradation—approached the faint gray dawn of the psychal day. A
torpid uneasiness. An apathetic endurance of dull pain. No
care—no hope—no effort. Then, after a long interval, a ringing in
the ears; then, after a lapse still longer, a prickling or
tingling sensation in the extremities; then a seemingly eternal
period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the awakening
feelings are struggling into thought; then a brief re-sinking
into non-entity; then a sudden recovery. At length the slight
quivering of an eyelid, and immediately thereupon, an electric
shock of a terror, deadly and indefinite, which sends the blood
in torrents from the temples to the heart. And now the first
positive effort to think. And now the first endeavor to remember.
And now a partial and evanescent success. And now the memory has
so far regained its dominion, that, in some measure, I am
cognizant of my state. I feel that I am not awaking from ordinary
sleep. I recollect that I have been subject to catalepsy. And
now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean, my shuddering spirit
is overwhelmed by the one grim Danger—by the one spectral and
ever-prevalent idea.

For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained
without motion. And why? I could not summon courage to move. I
dared not make the effort which was to satisfy me of my fate—and
yet there was something at my heart which whispered me it was
sure. Despair—such as no other species of wretchedness ever calls
into being—despair alone urged me, after long irresolution, to
uplift the heavy lids of my eyes. I uplifted them. It was
dark—all dark. I knew that the fit was over. I knew that the
crisis of my disorder had long passed. I knew that I had now
fully recovered the use of my visual faculties—and yet it was
dark—all dark—the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that
endureth for evermore.

I endeavored to shriek; and my lips and my parched tongue moved
convulsively together in the attempt—but no voice issued from the
cavernous lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some
incumbent mountain, gasped and palpitated, with the heart, at
every elaborate and struggling inspiration.

The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me
that they were bound up, as is usual with the dead. I felt, too,
that I lay upon some hard substance; and by something similar my
sides were, also, closely compressed. So far, I had not ventured
to stir any of my limbs—but now I violently threw up my arms,
which had been lying at length, with the wrists crossed. They
struck a solid wooden substance, which extended above my person
at an elevation of not more than six inches from my face. I could
no longer doubt that I reposed within a coffin at last.

And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub
Hope—for I thought of my precautions. I writhed, and made
spasmodic exertions to force open the lid: it would not move. I
felt my wrists for the bell-rope: it was not to be found. And now
the Comforter fled for ever, and a still sterner Despair reigned
triumphant; for I could not help perceiving the absence of the
paddings which I had so carefully prepared—and then, too, there
came suddenly to my nostrils the strong peculiar odor of moist
earth. The conclusion was irresistible. I was not within the
vault. I had fallen into a trance while absent from home—while
among strangers—when, or how, I could not remember—and it was
they who had buried me as a dog—nailed up in some common
coffin—and thrust deep, deep, and for ever, into some ordinary
and nameless grave.

As this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost
chambers of my soul, I once again struggled to cry aloud. And in
this second endeavor I succeeded. A long, wild, and continuous
shriek, or yell of agony, resounded through the realms of the
subterranean Night.

“Hillo! hillo, there!” said a gruff voice, in reply.

“What the devil’s the matter now!” said a second.

“Get out o’ that!” said a third.

“What do you mean by yowling in that ere kind of style, like a
cattymount?” said a fourth; and hereupon I was seized and shaken
without ceremony, for several minutes, by a junto of very
rough-looking individuals. They did not arouse me from my
slumber—for I was wide awake when I screamed—but they restored me
to the full possession of my memory.

This adventure occurred near Richmond, in Virginia. Accompanied
by a friend, I had proceeded, upon a gunning expedition, some
miles down the banks of the James River. Night approached, and we
were overtaken by a storm. The cabin of a small sloop lying at
anchor in the stream, and laden with garden mould, afforded us
the only available shelter. We made the best of it, and passed
the night on board. I slept in one of the only two berths in the
vessel—and the berths of a sloop of sixty or twenty tons need
scarcely be described. That which I occupied had no bedding of
any kind. Its extreme width was eighteen inches. The distance of
its bottom from the deck overhead was precisely the same. I found
it a matter of exceeding difficulty to squeeze myself in.
Nevertheless, I slept soundly, and the whole of my vision—for it
was no dream, and no nightmare—arose naturally from the
circumstances of my position—from my ordinary bias of thought—and
from the difficulty, to which I have alluded, of collecting my
senses, and especially of regaining my memory, for a long time
after awaking from slumber. The men who shook me were the crew of
the sloop, and some laborers engaged to unload it. From the load
itself came the earthly smell. The bandage about the jaws was a
silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head, in default of
my customary nightcap.

The tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for
the time, to those of actual sepulture. They were fearfully—they
were inconceivably hideous; but out of Evil proceeded Good; for
their very excess wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion.
My soul acquired tone—acquired temper. I went abroad. I took
vigorous exercise. I breathed the free air of Heaven. I thought
upon other subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books.
“Buchan” I burned. I read no “Night Thoughts”—no fustian about
churchyards—no bugaboo tales—such as this. In short, I became a
new man, and lived a man’s life. From that memorable night, I
dismissed forever my charnel apprehensions, and with them
vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had
been less the consequence than the cause.

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the
world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell—but
the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity
its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors
cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful—but, like the Demons in
whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must
sleep, or they will devour us—they must be suffered to slumber,
or we perish.

THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM

The garden like a lady fair was cut, That lay as if she slumbered in delight, And to the open skies her eyes did shut. The azure fields of Heaven were ’sembled right In a large round, set with the flowers of light. The flowers de luce, and the round sparks of dew That hung upon their azure leaves did shew Like twinkling stars that sparkle in the evening blue. —_Giles Fletcher_.

From his cradle to his grave a gale of prosperity bore my friend
Ellison along. Nor do I use the word prosperity in its mere
worldly sense. I mean it as synonymous with happiness. The person
of whom I speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the
doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet—of
exemplifying by individual instance what has been deemed the
chimera of the perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison
I fancy that I have seen refuted the dogma, that in man’s very
nature lies some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss. An
anxious examination of his career has given me to understand that
in general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity
arises the wretchedness of mankind—that as a species we have in
our possession the as yet unwrought elements of content—and that,
even now, in the present darkness and madness of all thought on
the great question of the social condition, it is not impossible
that man, the individual, under certain unusual and highly
fortuitous conditions, may be happy.

With opinions such as these my young friend, too, was fully
imbued, and thus it is worthy of observation that the
uninterrupted enjoyment which distinguished his life was, in
great measure, the result of preconcert. It is indeed evident
that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and then,
stands so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have
found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary success of
his life, into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for
those of pre-eminent endowments. But it is by no means my object
to pen an essay on happiness. The ideas of my friend may be
summed up in a few words. He admitted but four elementary
principles, or more strictly, conditions of bliss. That which he
considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely
physical one of free exercise in the open air. “The health,” he
said, “attainable by other means is scarcely worth the name.” He
instanced the ecstasies of the fox-hunter, and pointed to the
tillers of the earth, the only people who, as a class, can be
fairly considered happier than others. His second condition was
the love of woman. His third, and most difficult of realization,
was the contempt of ambition. His fourth was an object of
unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal,
the extent of attainable happiness was in proportion to the
spirituality of this object.

Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts
lavished upon him by fortune. In personal grace and beauty he
exceeded all men. His intellect was of that order to which the
acquisition of knowledge is less a labor than an intuition and a
necessity. His family was one of the most illustrious of the
empire. His bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women.
His possessions had been always ample; but on the attainment of
his majority, it was discovered that one of those extraordinary
freaks of fate had been played in his behalf which startle the
whole social world amid which they occur, and seldom fail
radically to alter the moral constitution of those who are their
objects.

It appears that about a hundred years before Mr. Ellison’s coming
of age, there had died, in a remote province, one Mr. Seabright
Ellison. This gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and,
having no immediate connections, conceived the whim of suffering
his wealth to accumulate for a century after his decease.
Minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of
investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of
blood, bearing the name of Ellison, who should be alive at the
end of the hundred years. Many attempts had been made to set
aside this singular bequest; their ex post facto character
rendered them abortive; but the attention of a jealous government
was aroused, and a legislative act finally obtained, forbidding
all similar accumulations. This act, however, did not prevent
young Ellison from entering into possession, on his twenty-first
birthday, as the heir of his ancestor Seabright, of a fortune of
four hundred and fifty millions of dollars. (*1)

When it had become known that such was the enormous wealth
inherited, there were, of course, many speculations as to the
mode of its disposal. The magnitude and the immediate
availability of the sum bewildered all who thought on the topic.
The possessor of any appreciable amount of money might have been
imagined to perform any one of a thousand things. With riches
merely surpassing those of any citizen, it would have been easy
to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionable
extravagances of his time—or busying himself with political
intrigue—or aiming at ministerial power—or purchasing increase of
nobility—or collecting large museums of virtu—or playing the
munificent patron of letters, of science, of art—or endowing, and
bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity. But
for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the
heir, these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to afford
too limited a field. Recourse was had to figures, and these but
sufficed to confound. It was seen that, even at three per cent.,
the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no less than
thirteen millions and five hundred thousand dollars; which was
one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand per month;
or thirty-six thousand nine hundred and eighty-six per day; or
one thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour; or six and
twenty dollars for every minute that flew. Thus the usual track
of supposition was thoroughly broken up. Men knew not what to
imagine. There were some who even conceived that Mr. Ellison
would divest himself of at least one-half of his fortune, as of
utterly superfluous opulence—enriching whole troops of his
relatives by division of his superabundance. To the nearest of
these he did, in fact, abandon the very unusual wealth which was
his own before the inheritance.

I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made
up his mind on a point which had occasioned so much discussion to
his friends. Nor was I greatly astonished at the nature of his
decision. In regard to individual charities he had satisfied his
conscience. In the possibility of any improvement, properly so
called, being effected by man himself in the general condition of
man, he had (I am sorry to confess it) little faith. Upon the
whole, whether happily or unhappily, he was thrown back, in very
great measure, upon self.

In the widest and noblest sense he was a poet. He comprehended,
moreover, the true character, the august aims, the supreme
majesty and dignity of the poetic sentiment. The fullest, if not
the sole proper satisfaction of this sentiment he instinctively
felt to lie in the creation of novel forms of beauty. Some
peculiarities, either in his early education, or in the nature of
his intellect, had tinged with what is termed materialism all his
ethical speculations; and it was this bias, perhaps, which led
him to believe that the most advantageous at least, if not the
sole legitimate field for the poetic exercise, lies in the
creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness. Thus it
happened he became neither musician nor poet—if we use this
latter term in its every-day acceptation. Or it might have been
that he neglected to become either, merely in pursuance of his
idea that in contempt of ambition is to be found one of the
essential principles of happiness on earth. Is it not indeed,
possible that, while a high order of genius is necessarily
ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed ambition?
And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton have
contentedly remained “mute and inglorious?” I believe that the
world has never seen—and that, unless through some series of
accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful
exertion, the world will never see—that full extent of triumphant
execution, in the richer domains of art, of which the human
nature is absolutely capable.

Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived
more profoundly enamored of music and poetry. Under other
circumstances than those which invested him, it is not impossible
that he would have become a painter. Sculpture, although in its
nature rigorously poetical was too limited in its extent and
consequences, to have occupied, at any time, much of his
attention. And I have now mentioned all the provinces in which
the common understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared it
capable of expatiating. But Ellison maintained that the richest,
the truest, and most natural, if not altogether the most
extensive province, had been unaccountably neglected. No
definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener as of the poet;
yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the
landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent
of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the
display of imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel
beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, by a vast
superiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. In
the multiform and multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he
recognised the most direct and energetic efforts of Nature at
physical loveliness. And in the direction or concentration of
this effort—or, more properly, in its adaptation to the eyes
which were to behold it on earth—he perceived that he should be
employing the best means—laboring to the greatest advantage—in
the fulfilment, not only of his own destiny as poet, but of the
august purposes for which the Deity had implanted the poetic
sentiment in man.

“Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth.” In
his explanation of this phraseology, Mr. Ellison did much toward
solving what has always seemed to me an enigma:—I mean the fact
(which none but the ignorant dispute) that no such combination of
scenery exists in nature as the painter of genius may produce. No
such paradises are to be found in reality as have glowed on the
canvas of Claude. In the most enchanting of natural landscapes,
there will always be found a defect or an excess—many excesses
and defects. While the component parts may defy, individually,
the highest skill of the artist, the arrangement of these parts
will always be susceptible of improvement. In short, no position
can be attained on the wide surface of the natural earth, from
which an artistical eye, looking steadily, will not find matter
of offence in what is termed the “composition” of the landscape.
And yet how unintelligible is this! In all other matters we are
justly instructed to regard nature as supreme. With her details
we shrink from competition. Who shall presume to imitate the
colors of the tulip, or to improve the proportions of the lily of
the valley? The criticism which says, of sculpture or
portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or idealized
rather than imitated, is in error. No pictorial or sculptural
combinations of points of human liveliness do more than approach
the living and breathing beauty. In landscape alone is the
principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it
is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has led him to
pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art. Having, I
say, felt its truth here; for the feeling is no affectation or
chimera. The mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations
than the sentiments of his art yields the artist. He not only
believes, but positively knows, that such and such apparently
arbitrary arrangements of matter constitute and alone constitute
the true beauty. His reasons, however, have not yet been matured
into expression. It remains for a more profound analysis than the
world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them.
Nevertheless he is confirmed in his instinctive opinions by the
voice of all his brethren. Let a “composition” be defective; let
an emendation be wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let
this emendation be submitted to every artist in the world; by
each will its necessity be admitted. And even far more than this;
in remedy of the defective composition, each insulated member of
the fraternity would have suggested the identical emendation.

I repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is the physical
nature susceptible of exaltation, and that, therefore, her
susceptibility of improvement at this one point, was a mystery I
had been unable to solve. My own thoughts on the subject had
rested in the idea that the primitive intention of nature would
have so arranged the earth’s surface as to have fulfilled at all
points man’s sense of perfection in the beautiful, the sublime,
or the picturesque; but that this primitive intention had been
frustrated by the known geological disturbances—disturbances of
form and color—grouping, in the correction or allaying of which
lies the soul of art. The force of this idea was much weakened,
however, by the necessity which it involved of considering the
disturbances abnormal and unadapted to any purpose. It was
Ellison who suggested that they were prognostic of death. He thus
explained:—Admit the earthly immortality of man to have been the
first intention. We have then the primitive arrangement of the
earth’s surface adapted to his blissful estate, as not existent
but designed. The disturbances were the preparations for his
subsequently conceived deathful condition.