The celebrated Marshal Laudohn would have entered when young, into the service of the great Frederick, King of Prussia; but that monarch, with all his penetration, formed a very erroneous judgment of the young officer, (as he himself found in the sequel,) and pronounced that he would never do; in consequence of which Laudohn entered into the service of the Empress-Queen, Maria Theresa, and became one of the most formidable opponents of his Prussian Majesty. Marshal Turrene was much more accurate in his opinion of our illustrious John Duke of Marlborough, whose future greatness he predicted, when he was serving in the French army as Ensign Churchill, and known by the unmilitary name of the “handsome Englishman.”
In the fine arts, moreover, we have seen no less accurate predictions of future eminence. As the scholars of Rubens were playing and jesting with each other, in the absence of their master, one of them was accidentally thrown against a piece on which Rubens had just been working, and a considerable part of it was entirely disfigured. Another of the pupils set himself immediately to repair it, and completed the design before his master returned. Rubens, on reviewing his work, observed a change, and a difference that surprised and embarrassed him. At last, suspecting that some one had been busy, he demanded an explanation; adding, that the execution was in so masterly a manner, that he would pardon the impertinence on account of its merit. Encouraged by this declaration, the young artist confessed, and explained the whole, pleading, that his officiousness was merely to screen a comrade from his master’s anger. Rubens answered, “if any one of my scholars shall excel me, it will be yourself.” This pupil was the great Vandyck.
Lavater, who revived physiognomy, has, unquestionably, brought it to great perfection. But it may justly be doubted whether he is not deceived in thinking that it may be taught like other sciences, and whether there is not much in his system that is whimsical and unfounded. Every man, however, has by nature, something of the science, and nothing is more common than to suspect the man who never looks his neighbour in the face. There is a degree of cunning in such characters, which is always dangerous, but by no means new. “There is a wicked man that hangeth down his head sadly; but inwardly he is full of deceit. Casting down his countenance, and making as if he heard not. A man may be known by his look, and one that hath understanding, by his countenance, when thou meetest him.”—In several of Lavater’s aphorisms, something like the following occurs: “A man’s attire, and excessive laughter, and gait, shew what he is.”
APPARITIONS.
Partial darkness, or obscurity, are the most powerful means by which the sight is deceived: night is therefore the proper season for apparitions. Indeed the state of the mind, at that time, prepares it for the admission of these delusions of the imagination. The fear and caution which must be observed in the night; the opportunity it affords for ambuscades and assassinations; depriving us of society, and cutting off many pleasing trains of ideas, which objects in the light never fail to introduce, are all circumstances of terror: and perhaps, on the whole, so much of our happiness depends upon our senses, that the deprivation of any one may be attended with a proportionate degree of horror and uneasiness. The notions entertained by the ancients respecting the soul, may receive some illustrations from these principles. In dark, or twilight, the imagination frequently transforms an inanimate body into a human figure; on approaching the same appearance is not to be found: hence they sometimes fancied they saw their ancestors; but not finding the reality, distinguished these illusions by the name of shades.
Many of these fabulous narrations might originate from dreams. There are times of slumber, when we are sensible of being asleep[[38]]. On this principle, Hobbes has so ingeniously accounted for the spectre which is said to have appeared to Brutus, that we cannot resist the temptation of inserting it in his own words. “We read,” says he, “of M. Brutus, (one that had his life given him by Julius Cæsar, and was also his favourite, and notwithstanding murdered him) that at Philippi, the night before he gave battle to Augustus Cæsar, he saw a fearful apparition, which is commonly related by historians as a vision; but considering the circumstances, one may easily judge it to have been but a short dream. For, sitting in his tent, pensive and troubled with the horror of his rash act, it was not hard for him, slumbering in the cold, to dream of that which most affrighted him; which fear, as by degrees it made him wake, so it must needs make the apparition by degrees to vanish: and having no assurance that he slept, he could have no cause to think it a dream, or any thing but a vision.”—The well-known story told by Clarendon, of the apparition of the Duke of Buckingham’s father, will admit of a similar solution. There was no man in the kingdom so much the subject of conversation as the Duke; and, from the corruptness of his character, he was very likely to fall a sacrifice to the enthusiasm of the times. Sir George Viliers is said to have appeared to the man at midnight—there is therefore the greatest probability that the man was asleep; and the dream affrighting him, made a strong impression, and was likely to be repeated.
It must be confessed, that the popular belief of departed spirits occasionally holding a communication with the human race, is replete with matter of curious speculation. Some Christian divines, with every just reason, acknowledge no authentic source whence the impression of a future state could ever have been communicated to man, but from the Jewish prophets or from our Saviour himself. Yet it is certain, that a belief in our existence after death has, from time immemorial, prevailed in countries, to which the knowledge of the gospel could never have extended, as among certain tribes of America. Can then this notion have been intuitively suggested? Or is it an extravagant supposition, that the belief might often have arisen from those spectral illusions, to which men in every age, from the occasional influence of morbific causes, must have been subject? And what would have been the natural self-persuasion, if a savage saw before him the apparition of a departed friend or acquaintance, endowed with the semblance of life, with motion, and with signs of mental intelligence, perhaps even holding a converse with him? Assuredly, the conviction would scarcely fail to arise of an existence after death. The pages of history attest the fact that:—
“If ancestry can be in aught believ’d,
Descending spirits have convers’d with man,
And told him secrets of the world unknown.”