One eye is closed to each in rayless night, She will be Venus, and thou sightless Love SPIRITUAL RAPPINGS. Rushton Hall, near Kettering in Northamptonshire, was long the residence of the ancient and distinguished family of Treshams. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the mansion was occupied by Sir Thomas Tresham, who was a pedant and a fanatic; but who was an important character in his time by reason of his great wealth and powerful connections. There is a lodge at Rushton, situate about half a mile from the old hall, now in ruins, but covered all over, within and without, with emblems of the Trinity. This lodge is known to have been built by Sir Thomas Tresham; but his precise motive for selecting this mode of illustrating his favorite doctrine was unknown until it appeared from a letter written by himself about the year 1584, and discovered in a bundle of books and papers inclosed, since 1605, in a wall in the old mansion, and brought to light about twenty years ago. The following relation of a "rapping" or "knocking" is extracted from this letter: If it be demanded why I labour so much in the Trinity and Passion of Christ to depaint in this chamber, this is the principal instance thereof: That at my last being hither committed,* and I usually having my servants here allowed me, to read nightly an hour to me after supper, it fortuned that Fulcis, my then servant, reading in the Christian Resolution, in the treatise of Proof that there is a God, &c., there was upon a wainscot table at that instant three loud knocks (as if it had been with an iron hammer) given; to the great amazing of me and my two servants, Fulcis and Milkton. In Glanvill's Blow at Modern Sadducism, in his account of the "Dæmon of Tedworth," who was supposed to haunt the This refers to his commitments for recusancy, which had been frequent. house of Mr. Mompesson, and who was the original of Addison's "drummer," it is stated that on the 5th November, 1662, "in the sight and presence of the company, the chairs walked about the room," p. 124. Defoe, in his veracious History of Mr. Duncan Campbell (2d ed., p. 107), quotes a story of spirit-knocking from "the renowned and famous " Mr. Baxter's History of Apparitions, prefacing it thus: What in nature can be more trivial than for a spirit to employ himself in knocking on a morning at the wainscot by the bed's head of a man who got drunk over night, according to the way that such things are ordinarily explained? And yet I shall give you such a relation of this, that not even the most devout and precise Presbyterian will offer to call in question. He then gives the following extract from The certainty of the Worlds of Spirits fully evinced by the Unquestionable Histories of Apparitions, &c., by Richard Baxter, London, 1691 : Mr. Baxter, in his Historical Discourse of Apparitions, writes thus: "There is now in London an understanding, sober, pious man, oft one of my hearers, who has an elder brother, a gentleman of considerable rank, who having formerly seemed pious, of late years does often fall into the sin of drunkenness; he often lodges long together here in his brother's house, and whensoever he is drunk and has slept himself sober, something knocks at his bed's-head, as if one knocked on a wainscot. When they remove his bed it follows him. Besides other loud noises on other parts where he is, that all the house hears, they have often watched him, and kept his hands lest he should do it himself. His brother has often told it me, and brought his wife, a discreet woman, to attest it, who avers moreover, that as she watched him, she has seen his shoes under the bed taken up, and nothing visible to touch them. They brought the man himself to me, and when we asked him how he dare sin again after such a warning, he had no excuse. But being persons of quality, for some special reason of worldly interest I must not name him."-Defoe's Life of Duncan Campbell, 2d ed. p. 107. There is a curious criminal process on record, manuscript 1770, noticed by Voltaire as in the library of the King of France, which was founded upon a remarkable set of visions said to have occurred to the monks of Orleans. The illustrious house of St. Memin had been very liberal to the convent, and had their family vault under the church. The wife of a Lord of St. Memin, Provost of Orleans, died, and was buried. The husband, thinking that his ancestors had given more than enough to the convent, sent the monks a present, which they thought too small. They formed a plan to have her body disinterred, and to force the widower to pay a second fee for depositing it again in holy ground. The soul of the lady first appeared to two of the brethren, and said to them, "I am damned, like Judas, because my husband has not given sufficient." They hoped to extort money for the repose of her soul. But the husband said, "If she is really damned, all the money in the world won't save her," and gave them nothing. Perceiving their mistake, they declared she appeared again, saying she was in Purgatory, and demanding to be disinterred. But this seemed a curious request, and excited suspicion, for it was not likely that a soul in purgatory would ask to have the body removed from holy ground, neither had any in purgatory ever been known to desire to be exhumed. The soul after this did not try speaking any more, but haunted everybody in the convent and church. Brother Peter of Arras adopted a very awkward manner of conjuring it. He said to it, "If thou art the soul of the late Madame de St. Memin, strike four knocks," and the four knocks were struck. "If thou art damned, strike six knocks," and the six knocks were struck. "If thou art still tormented in hell, because thy body is buried in holy ground, knock six more times," and the six knocks were heard still more distinctly. "If we disinter thy body, wilt thou be less damned, certify to us by five knocks," and the soul so certified. This statement was signed by twenty-two cordeliers. The father provincial asked the same questions and received the same answers. The Lord of St. Memin prosecuted the father cordeliers. Judges were appointed. The general of the commission required that they should be burned; but the sentence only condemned them to make the "amende honorable," with a torch in their bosom, and to be banished. This sentence is of the 18th of February, 1535. Vide Abbé 552 of a Paris In Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxix. cap. i. p. edition, 1681, two persons, Patricius and Hilarius, charged with disseminating prophecies injurious to the Emperor Valens, were brought before a court of justice, and a tripod, which they were charged with using, was also produced. Hilarius then made the following acknowledgment: Construximus, magnifici judices, ad cortinæ similitudinem Delphicæ, diris auspiciis, de laureis virgulis infaustam hanc mensulam quam videtis; et imprecationibus carminum secretorum choragiisque multis ac diuturnis ritualiter consecratam movimus tandem; movendi autem, quoties super rebus arcanis consulebatur, erat institutio talis. Collocabatur in medio domûs emaculatæ odoribus Arabicis undique, lance rotunda pure superposita, ex diversis metallicis materiis fabrefacta; cujus in ambitu rotunditatis extremo elementorum viginti quatuor scriptiles formæ incisa perite, dijungebantur spatiis examinate dimensis. Hac linteis quidam indumentis amictus, calciatusque itidem linteis soccis, torulo capiti circumflexo, verbenas felicis arboris gestans, litato conceptis carminibus numine præscitionum auctore, cærimoniali scientia perstitit; cortinulis pensilem anulum librans, sartum ex carpathio filo perquam levi, mysticis disciplinis initiatum : qui per intervalla distincta retinentibus singulis litteris incidens saltuatim, heroos efficit versus interrogationibus consonos, ad numeros et modos plene conclusos; quales leguntur Pythici, vel ex oraculis editi Branchidarum. Ibi tum quærentibus nobis, qui præsenti succedet imperio, quoniam omni parte expolitus fore memorabatur et adsiliens anulus duas perstrinxerat syllabas, OEO cum adjectione litteræ postrema, exclamavit præsentium quidem, Theodorum præscribente fatali necessitate portendi. In lib. xxxi. cap. ii. p. 621 of same edition, a method of prognostication by the Alami is described; but there is no mention of tables there. The historian only says:— Rectiores virgas vimineas colligentes, easque cum incantamentis quibusdam secretis præstituto tempore discernentes, aperte quid portendatur norunt. The following curious passage is from the Apologeticus of Tertullian, cap. xxiii: Porro si et magi phantasmata edunt et jam defunctorum infamant animas; si pueros in eloquium oraculi elidunt; si multa miracula circulatoriis præstigiis ludunt; si et somnia immittunt habentes semel invitatorum angelorum et dæmonum assistentem sibi potestatem, per quos et capræ et mense divinare consueverunt; quanto magis, &c. Here table divination by means of angels and demons seems distinctly alluded to. PARALLELS. Macaulay's Hist. of England (1st ed.), ii. 476 : But the iron stoicism of William never gave way: and he stood among his weeping friends calm and austere, as if he had been about to leave them only for a short visit to his hunting-grounds at Loo. ... non alitèr tamen Et populum reditus morantem, Tendens Venafranos in agros, Aut Lacedæmonium Tarentum. Hor. Od. iii. v. 50–56. Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest.—Bacon, Essay 20, "Of Empire." Kings are like stars-they rise and set-they have The worship of the world, but no repose. Shelley, Hellas. How when the Fancy, lab'ring for a birth, Nought but a dark and empty void I find : Some little hints at length like sparks break thence, With nought of mark to be discover'd by, "Some New Pieces" in Oldham's Works, pp. 126-27, 1684. |