The figure of the deceased person never appeared to me after the first dreadful day; but several other figures showed themselves afterward very distinctly; sometimes such as I knew; mostly, however, of persons I did not know; and among those known to me, were the semblance of both living and deceased persons, but mostly the former; and I made the observation, that acquaintances with whom I daily conversed never appeared to me as phantasms ; it was always such as were at a distance. When these apparitions had continued some weeks, and I could regard them with the greatest composure, I afterward endeavored, at my own pleasure, to call forth phantoms of several acquaintance, whom I for that reason represented to my imagination in the most lively manner; but in vain. For, however accurately I pictured to my mind the figures of such persons, I never once could succeed in my desire of seeing them externally; though I had some short time before seen them as phantoms, and they had perhaps afterward unexpectedly presented themselves to me in the same manner. The phantasms appeared to me in every case involuntarily, as if they had been presented externally, like the phenomena in nature, though they certainly had their origin internally; and, at the same time, I was always able to distinguish with the greatest precision phantasms from phenomena. Indeed, I never once erred in this, as I was in general perfectly calm and selfcollected on the occasion. I knew extremely well, when it only appeared to me that the door was opened and a phantom entered, and when the door really was opened and any person came in. It is also to be noted, that these figures appeared to me at all times, under the most different circumstances, equally distinct and clear. Whether I was alone or in company, by broad daylight equally as in the night-time, in my own as well as in my neighbor's house; yet when I was at another person's house they were less frequent, and when I walked the public streets they very seldom appeared. When I shut my eyes, sometimes the figures disappeared, sometimes they remained, even after I had closed my eyes. If they vanished in the former case, on opening my eyes again the same figures appeared which I had seen before. I sometimes conversed with my phy sician and my wife, concerning the phantasms which at the time hovered around me; for in general the forms appeared oftener in motion than at rest. They did not always continue present-they frequently left me altogether, and again appeared for a shorter or longer space of time, singly or more at once; but, in general, several appeared together. For the most part, I saw human figures of both sexes; they commonly passed to and fro as if they had no connection with each other, like people at a fair, where all is bustle; sometimes they appeared to have business with one another. Once or twice I saw amongst them persons on horseback, and dogs and birds; these figures all appeared to me in their natural size, as distinctly as if they had existed in real life, with the several tints on the uncovered parts of the body, and with all the different kinds of colors of clothes. But I think, however, that the colors were somewhat paler than they are in nature. None of the figures had any distinguishing characteristic; they were neither terrible, ludicrous, nor repulsive: most of them were ordinary appearances-some were even agreeable. On the whole, the longer I continued in this state, the more did the number of phantasms increase, and the apparitions become more frequent. About four weeks afterward, I began to hear them speak: sometimes the phantasms spoke with one another, but for the most part they addressed themselves to me: those speeches were in general short, and never contained anything disagreeable. Intelligent and respected friends often appeared to me, who endeavored to console me in my grief, which still left deep traces in my mind. This speaking I heard most frequently when I was alone; though I sometimes heard it in company, intermixed with the conversation of real persons; frequently in single phrases only, but sometimes even in connected discourse. Though at this time I enjoyed rather a good state of health, both in body and mind, and had become so very familiar with these phantasms, that at last they did not excite the least disagreeable emotion, but, on the contrary, afforded me frequent subjects for amusement and mirth; yet, as the disorder sensibly increased, and the figures appeared to me for whole days together, and even during the night, if I happened to awake, I had recourse to several medicines, and was at last again obliged to have recourse to the application of leeches. This was performed on the 20th of April, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon. I was alone with the surgeon; but during the operation the room swarmed with human forms of every description, which crowded fast one on another: this continued till half-past four o'clock, exactly the time when the digestion commences. I then observed that the figures began to move more slowly; soon afterward the colors became gradually paler, and every seven minutes they lost more and more of their intensity, without any alteration in the distinct figure of the apparitions. At about half-past six o'clock, all the figures were entirely white, and moved very little, yet the forms appeared perfectly distinct; by degrees they became visibly less plain, without decreasing in number, as had often formerly been the case. The figures did not move off, neither did they vanish-which also had usually happened on other occasions. In this instance they dissolved immediately into air; of some, even whole pieces remained for a length of time, which also by degrees were lost to the eye. At about eight o'clock, there did not remain a vestige of any of them, and I never since experienced any appearance of the same kind. Twice or thrice since that time, I have felt a propensity, if I may be so allowed to express myself, of a sensation, as if I saw something, which in a moment again was gone. I was even surprised by this sensation whilst writing the present account, having, in order to render it more accurate, perused the papers of 1791, and recalled to my memory all the circumstances of that time. So little are we sometimes, even in the greatest composure of mind, masters of our imagina tion. These remarkable facts furnish a strong refutation of ghost stories, even where sensible evidence is affirmed for them. The morbid excitability of the optic nerve which affected Nicolai may often exist with less exasperation; its illusive paroxysms may be but occasional and very brief. A single and momentary instance, in this extreme form, may occur in the course of a long life. It may take a different aspect, recalling some familiar face, perhaps of the departed, or some SOCRATES IN THE MIDST OF THE ALL other teachers, both before and afterward, "either took money for their lessons, or at least gave them apart from the multitude in a private house to special pupils, with admissions or rejections at their own pleasure." The Academus-grove of Plato, the Garden of Epicurus, the Porch or cloister of Zeno, the Lyceum or sanctuary, with the Peripatetic shades of Aristotle, all indicate the prevailing practice. The philosophy of Socrates alone was in every sense the philosophy of the market-place. Very rarely he might be found under the shade of the palm-tree, or the caverned rocks of the lissus, enjoying the grassy slope of its banks, and the little pools of water that collect in the corners of its torrent-bed, and the white and purple flowers of its agnus-castus shrubs. But, ordinarily, whether in the city, in the dusty road between the Long Walls, or in the busy mart of Piræus, his place was among men, and with man, in every vocation of life, living not for himself, but for them, rejecting all pay, contented in poverty. Whatever could be added to the singularity of this spectacle, was added by the singularity of his outward appearance. What that appearance was has been already indicated. Amid the gay life, the beautiful forms, the brilliant colors, of an Athenian multitude and an Athenian street, the repulsive features, the unwieldy figure, the naked feet, the rough, thread-bare attire of the philosopher, must have excited every sentiment of astonishment and ridicule which strong contrast can produce. And if to this we add the occasional trance, the eye fixed on vacancy, the total abstraction from outward things,—or, again, the mo Quarterly Review, No. clxxv. mentary outbursts of violent temper, or, lastly, (what we are told at times actually took place,) the sudden irruptions of his wife Xanthippe to carry off her eccentric husband to his forsaken home,-we shall not wonder at the universal celebrity which he acquired, even irrespectively of his great powers or of his peculiar objects. Every one knows the attention which an unusual diction, or even an unusual dress, secures for a teacher so soon as he has once secured a hearing. A Quaker at court, or a Latter-day prophet, speaking in the language of Mr. Carlyle, has, other things considered, a better chance of being listened to than a man in ordinary costume and of ordinary address. And such, in an eminent degree, was Socrates. It was (so his disciples described it) as if one of the marble satyrs which sat in grotesque attitudes with pipe or flute in the sculptors' shops at Athens, had left his seat of stone, and walked into the plane-tree avenue of the gymnastic colonnade. Gradually the crowd gathered round him. At first he spoke of the tanners, and the smiths, and the drovers, who were plying their trades about him; and they shouted with laughter as he poured forth his homely jokes. But soon the magic charm of his voice made itself felt. The peculiar sweetness of its tone had an effect which even the thunder of Pericles failed to produce. The laughter ceased; the crowd thickened; the gay youth whom nothing else could tame stood transfixed and awe-struck in his presence; there was a solemn thrill in his words, such as his hearers could compare to nothing but the mysterious sensation produced by the clash of drum and cymbal in the worship of the great mother of the gods;. the head swam; the heart leaped at the sound; tears rushed from the eyes; and they felt that, unless they tore themselves away from that fascinated circle, they should sit down at his feet and grow old in listening to the marvelous music of this second Marsyas. But the excitement occasioned by his appearance was increased tenfold by the purpose which he had set before him, when, to use the expressive comparison of his pupils, he cast away his rough satyr's skin, and disclosed the divine image which that rude exterior had covered. The object to which he thus devoted himself was to convince men of all classes, but especially the most distinguished, that they had the "conceit of knowledge without the reality." DEATH OF SOCRATES. It would be tempting to enlarge on the closing scene which Plato has invested with such immortal glory: on the affècting farewell to the judges; on the long thirty days which passed in prison before the execution of the verdict; on the playful equanimity and unabated interest in his habitual objects of life, amid the uncontrolable emotions of his companions, after they knew of the return of the sacred ship, whose absence had up to that moment suspended his fate; on the gathering in of that solemn evening, when the fading of the sunset hues on the tops of the Athenian hills was the signal that the last hour was at hand; on the entrance of the fatal hemlock; the immovable countenance; the firm hand; the wonted "scowl" of stern defiance at the executioner; the burst of frantic lamentation from all his friends, as with his habitual "ease and cheerfulness" he drained the cup to its dregs; then the solemn silence enjoined by himself; the pacing to and fro; the cold palsy of the hemlock creeping from the extremities to the heart; and the gradual torpor ending in death. But we must forbear. It is a story which, having been once told, can never be repeated; and in this case, more especially, it would be almost an insult to our readers to enter into details on which Mr. Grote has modestly declined to dwell, as if unwilling to trust himself to the handling of so great a subject. It is enough to be reminded of some of those little incidents which so strikingly illustrate the general character of Socrates, and which in Mr. Grote's narrative are for the first time fully brought out in this connection: how to the end his ruling passion, strong in death, suggested to him the consolation, as natural to him as it seems strange to us, that when in the world beyond the grave he should, as he hoped, encounter the heroes of the Trojan war, he should then " pursue with them the business of mutual cross-examination, and debate on ethical progress and perfection;" how he confidently (but, as the event proved, mistakingly) believed that his removal would be the signal "for numerous apostles putting forth with increased energy that process of interrogatory test and spur to which he had devoted 66 his life, and which was doubtless to him last conversations of the prisoner in the far dearer and more sacred than his life;" | Athenian dungeon, our thoughts almost insensibly rise to the parting discourses in the upper chamber at Jerusalem; and we remember with gratitude and reverential awe the uncertainty-the wavering-the dark future of the philosophic speculations, when contrasted with the unbroken repose and confidence which pervades every word of the divine assurances. Or (to turn to another side) when we are perplexed by the difficulty of reconciling the narrative of the three first evangelists with the altered tone of the fourth, it is at least a step toward the solution of that difficulty to remember that there is here a parallel diversity of narrative, which, so far from destroying the historical truth of the whole representation, has rather confirmed it. The Socrates of Xenophon is widely different from the Socrates of Plato; and yet no one has been tempted by that diversity to doubt the substantial identity— ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE REALITY OF THE the true character-much less the histori how his escape from prison was only pre- GOSPEL HISTORY. cal existence of the master whom they both profess to describe. Nor when we think of the total silence of Josephus, or of other cotemporary writers, respecting the events which we now regard as the greatest in the history of mankind, is it altogether irrelevant to reflect that, for the whole thirty years which Thucydides comprises in his work, Socrates was not only living, but acting a more public part, and, for all the future history of Greece, an incomparably more important part, than any other Athenian citizen; and yet that so able and so thoughtful an observer as Thucydides has never once noticed him, directly or indirectly. There is no stronger proof of the weakness of the argument from omission, especially in the case of ancient history, which, unlike our own, contained within its range of vision no more than was immediately before it for the moment. Of those comparisons which have again and again been instituted between the life and death of the Athenian sage, and that divine life and death which admits of no equal or parallel, it has indeed been truly said, "If Christ were no more than a Socrates, then a Socrates he was not." To compare is, in such a case, to misconceive relations which are, in fact, incommensurable. Still we cannot wonder that such comparisons should have been suggested; and, if viewed aright, there are few more remarkable illustrations of the reality of the gospel history, than the light which, by way of contrast or likeness, is thrown upon it by the highest example of Greek antiquity. It is instructive to observe that there alone-on no lower level before or since-in that climax and crisis of the human development of ancient times, is to be found the only career which, at however remote a distance, suggests, whether to friends or enemies, any real illustration of the One Life, which is the turningpoint of the history of the whole world. When we contemplate the contented pov-resistibly leads us, the illustrations superty, the self-devotion, the publicity, of the career of Socrates, we feel that we can understand better than before the outward aspect, at least, of that Sacred Presence which moved on the busy shores of the Sea of Galilee, and in the streets and courts of Jerusalem. When we read the If we descend from this higher ground to those lower but still lofty regions of Christian history, to which perhaps Mr. Grote's language more naturally and ir plied by the life of Socrates are still more which Mr. Grote describes the energy and the enthusiasm of the Athenian missionary enables us to realize with greater force than ever "the pureness, and knowledge, and love unfeigned," of the missionary of a far higher cause, who stood and argued in the very market-place where Socrates had conversed four hundred and fifty years before, and was, like him, accused of being a vain babbler," and "a setter-forth of strange gods." And even in minute detail there is nothing which more forcibly illustrates some of the passages of the apostle's life than the corresponding features in the career of the philosopher. in the cry, "Away with the atheists," which was raised against the first Christians. In each case the next generation judged more wisely and more justly. Socrates was in the age of Plato and Aristotle more fully appreciated; and the gross mistake which Tacitus had made with regard to Christianity in the reign of Nero, we learn from the milder tone of the younger Pliny to have passed away in the reign of Trajan. But the warnings are not less instructive for every age; and it is because the two cases, amid infinite diversity, tend to explain each other, that we have thus ventured to bring them together. THE CRYSTAL PALACE-ITS NEW SITE AND NEW USES. S the British Government decided its original site, two parties immediately came to the rescue of the fairy structure, both equally unwilling that the palace, with its social blessings and its real interests for the million, should disappear forever; and Messrs. Fox and Henderson, the contractors and owners of the building, declared themselves open to treat for the purchase and removal of the materials. The one party was represented by Sir Joseph Paxton, the Dukes of Devonshire and Argyll, the Earl of Carlisle, and other members of the aristocracy; and another by Mr. Fuller, one of the Executive Committee of the late Exhibition, on behalf of several large capitalists. As is not uncommon in these cases, capital prevailed against nobility, and the $350,000 pur We have reminded our readers of this juxtaposition, because there is no passage in history which more happily illustrates the position which was taken up against the Christian apostles and missionaries of the first and second centuries,—a position which has not unfrequently been overlooked or misapprehended. "Christianity," as has been well remarked, "shared the common lot of every great moral change which has ever taken place in human society, by containing among its supporters men who were morally the extreme opposites of each other." No careful reader of the epistles can fail to perceive the constant struggle which the apostles had to maintain, not only against the Jew and the Heathen external to the Christian society, but against the wild and licentious heresies which took shelter within it. The same confusion which had taken place in the Athenian mind in the case of Socrates and Alcibiades, took place in the first century of the Christian era with regard to the apostles and the heresiarchs of the Christian Church. St. Paul and Hy-chase-money was paid by Mr. Fuller to the menæus were to all outward appearance on the same side, both equally bent on revolutionizing the existing order of civil society. As Aristophanes could not distinguish between the licentious arguments of the wilder class of sophists and the elevating and inspiring philosophy of Socrates, so Tacitus could not distinguish between the anarchists whom St. Paul and St. Peter were laboring to repress, and the pure morality and faith which they were laboring to propagate. He regarded them both as belonging to " an execrable race," ," "hateful for their abominable crimes;" and as the Greek poet could see nothing but an atheist in Socrates, so the Roman historian would have joined contractors, the Brighton Railway Company being understood to be the principal speculators. As soon as the purchase of the building was completed, Mr. Fuller wrote to Sir Joseph Paxton, asking him what post in the new undertaking he would like to hold; and to the Duke of Devonshire, proposing to buy a portion of His Grace's estates at Chiswick. At first, Sir Joseph declined to accept an appointment, as he hoped that the building—the scene of his triumph-might yet be retained; and the duke, after mature deliberation, signified his unwillingness to part with any of his land at Chiswick: so that, however desirable the situation, all idea of |