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“These images were, as you may suppose, sufficiently annoying, yet they came and went without exciting any emotions of terror. But a change at length came over them, an awful distinctness and a semblance of reality, which, operating upon nerves weakened and diseased, shook the very depths of my spirit with a superstitious awe, and against which reason and philosophy, for a time, struggled in vain.

“My mind had for some days been dwelling with considerable solicitude upon an intimate friend, residing in a distant city. I had heard that he was extremely ill, indeed, that his life was despaired of; and I may mention that at this period all my mind’s operations were dilatory; there were no sudden emotions; passion seemed exhausted; and when once any new train of thought had been suggested, it gradually incorporated itself with those which had preceded it, until it finally became sole and predominant, just as certain plants of the tropical islands wind about and blend with and finally take the place of those of another species. And perhaps to this peculiarity of the mental economy, the gradual concentring of the mind in a channel, narrowing to that point of condensation where thought becomes sensible to sight as well as feeling, may be mainly attributed the vision I am about to describe.

“I was lying in my bed, listless and inert; it was broad day, for the easterly light fell in strongly through the parted curtains. I felt, all at once, a strong curiosity, blended with an unaccountable dread, to look upon a small table which stood near the bedside. I felt certain of seeing something fearful, and yet I knew not what; there was an awe and a fascination upon me, more dreadful from their very vagueness. I lay for some time hesitating and actually trembling, until the agony of suspense became too strong for endurance. I opened my eyes and fixed them upon the dreaded object. Upon the table lay what seemed to me a corpse, wrapped about in the wintry habiliments of the grave, the corpse of my friend.

[William Hone, celebrated for his antiquarian researches, has given a distinct and highly interesting account of spectral illusion, in his own experience, in his Every Day Book. The artist Cellini has made a similar statement.]

“For a moment, the circumstances of time and place were forgotten; and the spectre seemed to me a natural reality, at which I might sorrow, but not wonder. The utter fallacy of this idea was speedily detected; and then I endeavored to consider the present vision, like those which had preceded it, a mere delusion, a part of the phenomena of opium eating. I accordingly closed my eyes for an instant, and then looked again in full expectation that the frightful object would no longer be visible. It was still there; the body lay upon its side; the countenance turned full towards me,–calm, quiet, even beautiful, but certainly that of death:

‘Ere yet Decay’s effacing fingers
Had swept the lines where Beauty lingers’

and the white brow, and its light shadowy hair, and the cold, still familiar features lay evident and manifest to the influx of the strengthening twilight. A cold agony crept over me; I buried my head in the bed-clothes, in a child-like fear, and when I again ventured to look up, the spectre had vanished. The event made a strong impression on my mind; and I can scarcely express the feeling of relief which was afforded, a few days after, by a letter from the identical friend in question, informing me of his recovery of health.

“It would be a weary task, and one which you would no doubt thank me for declining, to detail the circumstances of a hundred similar visitations, most of which were, in fact, but different combinations of the same illusion. One striking exception I will mention, as it relates to some passages of my early history which you have already heard.