shall kiss. I am thinking of these, my old friend, and cannot help regretting that these things are all gone by for ever; even mortal pains seem not to be pains to me now; the past is every thing to man; good or bad, he loves it, and clings to it, or hates it, but for ever he remembers it. One's existence consists in what has been, very seldom in what is. Memory scars the soul, and leaves a brand mark upon the forehead. We remember the joys and loves of life with regret, because they no longer endure-because the young blood has grown old, and the full pulse weak. We remember also the evils of the past with pain, and we grow indignant when pondering over by-gone wrongs, and ashamed of those degrading sufferings. Good or evil as our days may have been, the recollection is fraught with sorrow, for the good days return no more, and the evil have entered like iron into the soul."

"Well, but how do you account for it that I am at this moment talking to you?"

"You must be either asleep or dead, as I have said before."

"Nay, but I am not asleep; I can feel, walk, and converse-all real actions, but sleep, is an illusion."

"What is life, then, but an illusion, wherein

you see, feel, walk, and converse? You can explain no more of the one than of the other. Now, your existence and experience are just as real in a dream as during a life; only sleep often ceases, and you have an idea of its limits; were it to endure as long as life, it would appear as real and positive as life. My past life seems now to me very much as a dream of yesternight does to you, and yet in your dream you walked and felt exactly as I did while living.”

Well, so far, all seems to me to be as unsatisfactory as possible. Why do I meet you here, on Olympus? Why were you not manifest to me before? Have you power and privilege to visit the living? Have I, for the first time in my life, the fortune to speak face to face with the dead ?"

"Now," said he, "you are growing wild and unreasonable. It is quite impossible for me to solve the mysteries of life, sleep, and death. This I know, that they are each of them separate states, but each equally real. Are you quite sure you are not asleep now? No, you are not. If you were, it would not be perfect sleep. Again, I like to hear a man talk as you do on these matters. You say sleep is illusive; now, pray tell me one single fact in life that is not equally illusive. You do not know what matter is-you

do not know what spirit is-all that you are aware of is through sensation, and even of this medium you know nothing. You cannot explain the mechanism of living-of the existence of a single pebble at your feet-of the habitation of the soul, or whether you have one or not, or even what it is. And is it for one so hedged in on every side by mystery and doubt to question me thus? You eat, and your food becomes spirit, and where does this spirit dwell? You die, and turn to dust, and then where does this spirit dwell? In the clouds, think you? In the vacuum of space? Is it matter? If so, you know not what it is. Is it spirit? If so, it is nothing. How you mortals befool yourselves when you question the dark fates! Go; eat, drink, marry, love your brother, and enjoy life, this is the way of the world, and a very wise way it is. Believe bread and meat to be two substantial, solid substances; so long as your consciousness is satisfied all is well, for it is this magic consciousness alone that makes the flittings of a dream as substantial as the flittings of a life. It is the insubstantial mind that creates the substantial body. Take mind away, and where is substance, or solidity, or body, or anything else?"

"In reply to all this I can only say, that I am silenced on every point, and satisfied on none."

CHAPTER III.

"I feel myself the being that I was-
It is the soul that builds itself a body."

SCHILLER.

Now there is nothing very wonderful in having met a ghost; and, therefore, without presuming to answer the cavils of Atheists and Sceptics on this point, let us try to explain the probability and reasonableness of the foregoing rencontre. It seems but natural that the instinctive desire which we possess to continue our intercourse with those we love, should continue even after this passing breath shall have left our bodies, and all material communication shall have ceased. The ever-living self, bondaged for awhile in this body of death, may retain, after its liberation to a future state, some remembrances of, and affections for things on earth; nor are we anywhere taught that such desires are forbidden; and yet there exist men who, while they acknowledge the existence of soul, and the eternity of our nature, still deny the

possibility of this immortal soul having any after access to this world. And pray upon what grounds? Is there anything so very improbable in the supposition that because a man has passed the threshold of this life he should never return over that threshold again-that after he has ascended to the higher life, he should not have power to descend to the lower-that because he has entered upon a more extended range of being, that this range should not also include the lesser? These are they who fear a haunted room or a churchyard at night—these are they who dread being alone with death-who tremble to pass a night in the same room with a corpse. And this is so because the conviction of instinct is above the conviction of intellect. Why does he shudder in beholding that still form stretched in death-array in one corner of his bed chamber? Nay, it is dead-it cannot speak—it is bloodless, cold, strengthless. Why does he shrink away, he, so confident in his definitions of matter and spirit? But he is reasonable enough to suppose the spirit so lately departed should once more settle on its old tenement-glare from the eye, and start from the shroud. Or suppose, without farther contact with that familiar mansion wherein it had so long lived, it should haunt the old rooms and well known places, sweep

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