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'I had occasion to see a young married woman, whose first indication of illness was a spectral delusion. She told me, that her apartment seemed suddenly to be filled with devils, and that her terror compelled her to quit the house with great precipitation. When she was brought back, she saw the whole staircase occupied by diabolical forms, and was in agonies of fear for several days. After this first impression wore off, she heard a voice tempting her to self-destruction, and prohibiting her from all exercises of piety. Such was the account given by her when she was sensible of the delusions, yet unable to resist the horror of the impression. When she was nearly recovered, I had the curiosity to question her, as I have interrogated others, respecting the forms of the demons with which they had been alarmed; but I never could obtain any other account than that they were small, very much deformed, and had horns and claws, like the imps of our terrific modern romances.

"I have been forced to listen with much gravity to a man partially insane, who assured me that the devil was lodged in his side, and that I should perceive him thumping and fluttering there, in a manner which would perfectly convince me of his presence.

"Another lunatic believed that he had swallowed the devil, and had retained him in his stomach. He resisted the calls of nature during several days, lest he should set the foul fiend at liberty. I overcame his resolution, however, by administering an emetic in his food."

Such are some of the grounds on which the alleged supernatural phenomena of the present day may be explained. But an inquirer may ask, do you reject supernaturalism altogether? To this we may be permitted to reply in the following fashion: There stands, in the hall of an old-fashioned country-seat, an eight-day clock. When the proper day has come, the master of the house opens the clock-door, and the creaking of the reluctant wheels is heard as the machinery takes a new start. The children of the family collect around him, and, careless of its intermediate movements, connect each future tick with the impulse received from their father's hand. On the other hand, innumerable ephemeral insects throng the mahogany-case. Their life runs not over sunset, and the memory of none with whom they converse goes back further than a day. “Had a beginning," we may fancy a skeptic among them to say: "Why, the clock is self-moving, and is governed by fixed immutable laws." On the other hand, those whose observation goes only to the epochs when the master-hand intervenes, see in each beat only the original impulse. Both are in the right. The clock moves intermediately under second causes,

but the machinery of which these causes consist is, from time to time, put in motion by an extrinsic power. And so it is in the world. The rocks unite with the scriptural text in bearing witness to certain grand windings up of the cosmical machinery. Human observation, however, is confined to a mere parenthesis between two of these interpositions. And in this parenthesis, we have, to the outer eye, in things objective, nothing before us but the regular march of second causes.

Now there is a priori a reason for all this. Were the world to be governed by direct miraculous interpositions alone, there would be no room for probation. Were it to be governed by second causes alone-in other words, were we to lose now the proof we have from geology and Scriptures of prior miraculous interventions-there would be no authentication of a revelation. For miracles are the sign-manual of the Omnipotent Himself, by which, in the sight of creation, He attests His presence. What we object to in Comte and the naturalists, therefore, is, that by rejecting miracles, they destroy the authentication of revelation. What we object to in Dr. Bushnell and the supernaturalists is, that by treating modern supernaturalism as miraculous, they destroy faith in any revelation at all.

Nor is this all. True growth in grace requires that miracles should cease. There is still a healing power in the Church, but it is a power that is not to be supernaturally coerced. Now, in this probationary stage is the period for patient, meek lovefor effort often baffled, often unobserved by the outer world, but always elevating the heart of the laborer for losing with God-for a tender and lowly care of the suffering and the afflicted. This is not to be done by us as the involuntary instruments of a supreme and arbitrary energy. A more Christ-like office is ours. We are to have the sweet consciousness of offering that sacrifice of which a machine would not be capable. In those whom the Lord now pleases to call, is seen not merely His supreme power, but His tender and patient love. Feeble sinners as they are, He condescends to dwell with them, and make them His co-workers, and this in their own poor human way. Perhaps in this is the greatest

splendor of grace, that it consents not to annihilate the will of the servant, but to accept him, in his soiled human dress, and to invite him to work side by side with angels clothed in light. Perhaps, also, this common power of love, diffused through the invisible Church, may be a stronger proof of the doctrines of the Cross than were the miracles of the first century. The latter prove Christ the risen King, shivering the tomb, and binding or bending the human will as if it were flax. The former proves Christ the suffering Saviour, as He walked with His disciples in Galilee-as He washed their feet-as He died for them. We may well then close with the following striking lines:

"Oh! mourn not that the days are gone,

The old and wondrous days,
When Faith's unearthly glory shone
Along our earthly ways:
When the Apostle's gentlest touch,

Wrought like a sacred spell,

And health came down on every couch
On which his shadow fell.

'The glory is not wholly fled

That shone so bright before;

Nor is the ancient virtue dead,

Though thus it works no more.
Still God-like power with goodness dwells,
And blessings round it move;
And Faith still works its miracles
Though now it works by love.

"It may not on the crowded ways
Lift up its voice as then;

But still with sacred might it sways
The stormy minds of men.

Grace still is given to make the faint

Grow stronger through distress;

And even the shadow of the saint

Retains its power to bless."

ARTICLE III.

Adam Bede. BY GEORGE ELIOT. New-York: Harper & Brothers. 1859.

THE battle of the giants has been fought, and "the Lakists" have conquered.

"This will never do," exclaimed Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, on the appearance of the Excursion. Never do to descend to such low life for subjects, if you would be a successful author. Never do to dilate interminably on the joys and the sorrows, the woes and the wounds of work-people, peasants and peddlers. No, never should a Scotch peddler be painted as a philosopher, packed with wisdom, and pointed with wit. Wisdom's ways are disgraced when illustrated by the observations of a vagabond with a back bent by the burden he has carried across the country from his youth.

Thus inveighed the embryo Lord in the interest of his future rank, and received the applause of a wide circle of assenting readers. But Wordsworth worked on. The poet heeded not the critic. He clung only the closer to his favorite themes, principles, and dramatis persona. Each essay of the poet aroused the ire of the polemic. But in spite of the scolding of the Reviewer, and notwithstanding the coldness of the public then, and the plentiful predictions of future oblivion, the old paths were trodden to the last. Author and critic are now alike oblivious both of praise and blame, and probably indifferent to all that passes beneath the sun. Their bodies lie in the common grave, where death feeds on them, and their souls have ascended to the skies, where we are fain to believe they "assay no middle flight."

While he lived, the Reviewer wielded the sceptre which distinguishes him whose right is recognized to reign as a monarch over the several provinces of literature. "While he

lived," we say, and yet not even to the end of his mortal life did he hold it with a firm grasp. How much it was relaxed, appears from the "note" with which he introduced his collected and revised copy of Critical Essays. In this it must have become painfully evident to his worshipful subjects how much he had fallen away from his former self, how much less confident he had grown in his affected infallibility, how he already entertained vague anticipations that he was to pay dear for his rash confidence in himself, and corresponding contempt for his chosen antagonist, because he had not horns to gore with, as hath a Reviewer.

If he did not live to see his sceptre actually pass into the hands of his enemy, he at least survived long enough to be a witness of his improved fortunes, and to be able to conjecture something of his coming greatness.

At length, the old king died and was buried. He was at least "a good hater," and so will find a friend in his predecessor-" the great bear," if in nobody else.

But scarcely had the throne become vacant, before it was quietly mounted by the life-long foe of its former possessor, whose personal reign was indeed short, but who may be sup posed" to sleep well," since the succession still continues in his family, and is likely to for a long time to come. And this is why we say, that "the war of the giants is ended."

The choleric old kings, brave knights, and beautiful princesses, may sleep their sleep, for the world has no further need of them, at least poets and novelists have not. The race, to them, is extinct, and their places are filled by those whom they hardly recognized as human, and would have agreed with the Edinburgh in denouncing as utterly destitute of every element of poetical feeling or interest-we mean such common clay as farmers, mechanics, and work-people are made of.

Here is a revolution indeed, one as great as the American or the French, and of the same significance, namely, that the age of princes is passing away, and that of the people is rapidly approaching. Heretofore, the many have lived and labored for the few; now, the few most highly gifted, feel it their vocation to labor for the elevation of the many.

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