IDA. Like many sublimities of nature, these mysteries have been profaned by unholy imitation; as for instance, the reanimation of the nuns in the opera of “Robert le Diable.” But there is an awful romance mingled with the history of those melancholy creatures, from whose inanimate clay the immortal spirit was thought to have parted, still more impressive. That instinctive, that inexpressible dread, with which we contemplate a corpse, is nothing in comparison with that thrill of astonishment which overwhelms us, when a body becomes (as in the miraculous recall of Lazarus) _reanimated_; when a spirit appears to visit us from the dead. Yet this is not _fear_, for we know it cannot injure us; it is a feeling that we are with something beyond ourselves spiritual, which had seemed to have endured a transfiguration, and been admitted into the order of angelic beings. There must be something of the supernatural which creates this fearful wonder; an impression on the heart that is an especial influence of the Deity. Else should we not behold with _dread_, instead of a sacred _pleasure_, the success of our efforts in cases of suspended animation? This visitation from another world is one of the surest indications of our spirituality; and like the reanimation of soul and mind, and consciousness, from deep and undreaming sleep, lighting up the body into brilliancy and beauty, might drown a sceptic’s reasoning in a flood of holy faith, and overwhelm him with the belief of immortality. CAST. It is this combination of vitality and death—so seemingly a paradox—that forms the basis of many of our deepest romances; as the “Spectre Life in Death,” in the Ancient Mariner, of the melancholy Coleridge,—himself a wild visionary of the first order. If I remember, he is writing of a spectre ship.— ——“Betwixt us and the sun. And straight the sun was fleck’d with bars— (Heaven’s mother send us grace!) As if through a dungeon-grate he peer’d With broad and burning face. Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud,) How fast she neers and neers. Are those _her_ sails that glance in the sun, Like restless gossameres? Are those _her_ ribs, through which the sun Doth peer, as through a grate? And is that woman all her crew? Is that a Death—and are there two? Is Death that woman’s mate? Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold, Her skin was as white as leprosy, The night-mare Life in Death was she, Who thicks man’s blood with cold.” EV. It is melancholy that a noble mind should be so perverted by poppy-juice. And yet the Mahometan beats him hollow at this sort of burlesque.