If a Medical Practitioner were to be summoned to a case of Violent Death under a form of horror similar to this, he would consider it as his duty to apply the Resuscitative process, with all diligence and zeal; especi ally if the person, on whom such appearances were impressed, had committed this act of violence upon himself. Yet such is the perversion of the understanding, that it may be doubted, whether any means of recovery would be applied, if the violence had proceeded from other hands.

In a case of Suspended Animation, which the same bard has placed before our view with such exquisite effect, how different would have been and how fatal often may have been our reasoning and our practice.

Bel.

"Thou blessed thing!

"Thou d'ydst a most rare boy, of melancholy!
"How found you him?

Aro. Stark, as you see:

"Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber,

"Not as Death's dart being laugh'd at : his right

"His arms thus leagu'd: I thought he slept, & put

"My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rude

ness

"Answer'd my steps too loud.

Guid. Why he but sleeps:

"If he be gone, he'll make his grave a bed :

"With female Fairies will his tomb be haunted; “And worms will not come to thee!”

Cymbeline.
Act. 4. S. 2.

We have here a case of Suspended animation, where appearances of Life in its most lovely tho' placid form are described, of which innumerable examples occur among the beautiful and the young. If this form, resembling Life in a sweet and gentle sleep, unaccompanied by visible motion and sensation, should be exhibited on a person in the flower of youth, and in the highest state of health, after a few days or even a few hours illness; such an appearance would be considered by the Practitioners, as belonging to an hopeless case of final, irremediable and putrefactive Death. We may safely affirm, that no medical Artist, and indeed that no person whatever, moved either by reflection or by feeling. would associate, even in conception, such a case with the devices of the Resuscitative process, however promising and inviting the appearances might be,and however impressively

they

they might seem to suggest to our minds, that the vital spark was perchance still glowing within the frame, and requiring only some friendly assistance from the powers of Art, in order to rekindle its latent force, and to raise it once more into the full flame and vigour of Life. Myriads of beings are committed to their graves, under the appearance described by the Poet, blooming with all the charms of beauty, of youth, and even of health, though under a faint and languid form, and smiling on their relations with ineffable sweetness and complacency, while the Lid of the fatal Coffin is closing for ever upon their doom, and consigning a creature, under every indication of Life, except a visible exhibition of Motion and Sensation, to darkness and the grave.

The lovely appearance of beautiful females after Death, seems to have seized on the mind with peculiar force in the days of Shakspeare, and our Poets of that period have displayed this idea, sometimes with great elegance of imagery, and sometimes with the coarseness of licentious Comedy. The Lover, when he laments over the fate of his departed Mistress, assuming this beautiful appearance

appearance is feigned to become jealous of Death, who is represented as a Rical or Paramour, retaining the beloved object in his possesion. Our great Bard has fully unfolded this imagery with exquisite effect, when Romeo laments over the fate of Juliet, as she lies entranced in the Tomb, which in the imagination of the Lover, is converted by the sovereign beauty of his Mistress, into the presence chamber of a splendid Court.

"For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
"This vault a feasting presence full of light.
"O my love! my wife!

"Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
"Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
"Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
"Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,
"And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.
"Ah! dear Juliet,

"Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
"That unsubstantial Death is amorous,
"And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
"Thee here in dark to be his Paramour
"For fear of that I will stay with thee,
"And never from this palace of dim night
"Depart again."

The Poet in this description has imagined a case, in which we have at once the Sleep

of

of Death and the Death of Sleep, that is, a case in which are combined the appearances of the Sleep of Death,and the consequences of the Death of Sleep. He supposes, according to received opinions, that the frame may be subdued by potent drugs to this condition, and that it is enabled to recover its accustomed functions by its own efforts, when these drugs have ceased to operate. Yet whatever may be the case conceived by the fancy of the Poet, we must remember that the description of Juliet is a faithful portrait of a certain state of Suspended Animation, in which motion and sensation are no longer visible and therefore that it is a precise delineation of the Sleep of Death, under one of its forms, from which state in the ordinary course of Nature, the person never recovers.

Here, Death, in its appearances and usual consequences, triumphs over Life; but the Poet has likewise described,in a vein of sportive imagery, another case, in which though Sleep and Death alike take full possession of the object, as if without mutual contention; yet Life is visibly triumphant,by the exhibition of perceptible breathing. The sound and placid Sleep. of the virtuous and beautiful Lucretia, is thus described.

"Her