There is a fiction in Sale’s notes to the “Koran.” During the building of his magnificent temple, King Solomon sleeps in death. He remains supported by his staff, on which he had been leaning, until a worm eats away the prop, and the body falls prostrate to the ground. But we need not go to the East for our specimens. Even in the year 1839, in our Emerald Isle of superstition, they would have us believe a miracle of this kind. In a field near Lurgan, a man, called Farland, had received money from a widow, wherewith to pay her rent;—this he failed to do. On her remonstrance and declaration, she was asked to name her witnesses. She answered,—“No one but God and herself.” “Then,” rejoined the man, “your God was asleep at the time.” The attestation of three witnesses records, that he was instantly struck in a trance as he was resting on his spade, and in that attitude he had ever since continued! CAST. And is it not a blot on the page of science, that so many ill-fated creatures are thus, through an error, doomed to dissolution? Say, gentle Evelyn, has not your philosophy discovered some mode of discernment between life and death, which would smile the philanthropist on to patient watching? EV. To a degree. But it were vain to offer here precepts for such discrimination, which, sooth to say, are not yet absolute. The rosy tint of complexion may remain for some time, and even perspiration may break forth, _after death_; or the body may assume the _most deathlike_ aspect, and yet vitality is only _in abeyance_. Among our recoveries, it is true, there are many _spontaneous_ rousings, and this especially if deep impression has been the cause of trance. Listen to the following, from a journal of 1834:—“The wife of Thomas Benson, livery-lace maker, of Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, being suddenly taken ill, to all appearance expired; and, when every symptom of life had fled, the body was duly laid out. On the following night, between nine and ten o’clock, whilst the undertaker was in the house receiving instructions for the funeral, to the astonishment and terror of the whole family, Mrs. Benson came down stairs, having been in a trance nearly thirty hours. Her situation has so terribly shocked her, that but faint hopes are entertained of her recovery.” It is melancholy to know how often these cases are abandoned _to nature_; but science may do much, and _should do_ more, to relieve them; although we possess not the wondrous phial of Renatus, nor have developed the creative mysteries of Prometheus or Frankenstein. Yet the recovery of François de Civille, was almost as great a wonder. He was thrown, at the siege of Rouen, into insensibility. He was, in this state, carried home by his servant. During a week he became warm, but exhibited no other sign of life. He was, at this period, flung out of a window by the besiegers, and cast upon a dunghill, where he lay naked for three or four days. Yet, even after this, he was restored to life.