not, in a merely natural way, borne me to the shore, and the retrocession of the tide (for it was then ebbing), left me exposed to the open air, I cannot tell. My preservation must have been the effect of natural causes; and yet it appears to be more rational to attribute it to a superior agency. Here then, Dr. L., is a case widely different, it appears, from those you have witnessed, and which argues very little for the modish doctrine of the materiality of the soul.’ Dr. Lettsom appeared puzzled with this relation, but did not attempt to make any remarks on it.” And well he might; for if animation were _totally suspended_, consciousness would have been suspended also. TRANSMIGRATION.—ANALYSIS OF TRANCE. “Thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras, ere I will allow of thy wits; and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam.” TWELFTH NIGHT. “Through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize Each vital spirit.” ROMEO AND JULIET. ASTR. You have granted me more than you desire, dear Evelyn. If life be _restored_, it had never _deserted_ the body, and yet the mind _had_ deserted it. The mind and body, then, are both independent of each other. From this truth, a metaphysical question of deep and wondrous interest arises. _In what condition does the mind exist, during so long a period, uninfluencing and uninfluenced by the power of perception?_ I remember searching for some elucidation of this mystery among those ghost-stories of the Hebrews, founded on the “purgatorie of souls” in Stehelin’s “Traditions of the Jews,” but I rose from my reading unenlightened. IDA. And ever will, Astrophel. Profane curiosity must fail in such a study; adoration alone can sanctify this mystic question, on which theologians and philosophers, even those devoutly confident in the sublime truths of immortality, have so essentially differed. Like Astrophel, Paley inquires where is the soul during suspended vitality? and Priestly, where when the body was created? Hume, with the subtlety of a sceptic, asks how can the soul long be the same, seeing that, like the body, its particles are constantly changing? While Glanville thinks himself a wondrous wight, as he prates of its “_essential spissitude_, a something that is more subtle than body, contracting itself into a _less ubi_.” Were this sublime secret fathomable by the deepest intellect, then would be unfolded things above, which are ordained to be ever mysteries to creatures on earth; such as the future existence of the spirit, and the nature of Paradise.