obedient to the resources of Art and the skill of the Practitioner, who is ready to believe that others may proced in the same science, with the same success, and who justly looks forward to progressive advancements of future artists, by which his own deficiencies will be supplied, and his own errors be corrected. In all former ages the art of restoring the Dead to Life, or applying Remedies to the Disorder of Death, never appeared among the inventions of men, and we can readily conceive, if we may judge from the course of all other new discoveries, that in so early a period after its adoption, no progress has yet been made, which is at all commensurate with its future possible and probable advancement, among artists roused to exertions by the most important of all pursuits, where every thing is to be hoped and nothing to be feared.

The writer might perhaps be permitted to contemplate amidst the acquisitions of a future age, the state of perfection, to which the Resuscitative Process may finally arrive, and to express his confidence, or his hope, that a darling project, which had long seized on his imagination, might be at last crown

ed

ed with a cess adequate to its importance and its purposes. The writer might hope even, that he shall be enabled to excite the ardor of the present age in the same pursuit, and if he should be fortunate enough to gain at any period, the concurrence of mankind in the same cause, he will be enabled to boast of an advantage in the adoption of his project to which few other projectors can pretend in their appeals to public regard. The writer may assuredly boast, that the zeal of mankind cannot be abused, nor their expectations deceived, by the possibility of incurring an unforeseen evil at the hazard of any visible or present good. In this project, the activity of our zeal does not commence, till the extremity of the evil belonging to the case has been incurred, and when that period is arrived at which no danger is to be feared from the theories of the enthusiast, or the practices of the credulous. This cannot be too often repeated or too strongly urged; and if the project should be wholly unsuccessful in all its parts, still an important point will have been duly examined, and finally ascertained. The disappointment of our hopes whatever they might be, will be alleviated by the reflection, that a question of high preten

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sions, affording some promise of success, has been decided by full and unequivocal experiments, to be placed beyond the sphere of Art, and the powers of our skill. It is on this ground, that I appeal to a great portion of the community, whose imaginations are not preengaged in the cause, and who want only to be convinced or reminded, that the question is not so much a point of Philosophical enquiry, as of Moral Duty and Civil Policy.

The time, we may hope, is at last arrived, when the attention of mankind will no longer slumber over a theme pregnant with such mighty consequences, and the nature of the duty will be at once felt and acknowledged, when the understanding shall have been duly excited to the consideration of the question. The wildness of the project, or the miraculous termination of the event, as it might have been considered in some periods, can afford only a topic of objection to the most ordinary capacity, as the event of wonder has become familiar, and the miracle exists no more. We have already seen recorded some thousands of instances, in which the Dead have been raised to life, and it will add nothing to the miracle, if we see many thousands more restored like

wise to existence, who have presented to the view the same appearances of Death, and who differ only from the examples of the revived Dead already exhibited by the diversity of accidents, by which the same appearances were produced. It is the change from Death to Life, which operates on the mind, as a miraculous event; but when that change has become familiar, we are soon taught to consider it as an event, obedient to the laws of Nature, proceding in their due course; tho' they operated under new combinations partially and imperfectly understood. We then pass forward without additional amazement, from one series of examples to another, differing only in circumstances; and this comparison of similar cases ought surely to diminish the wonder of the event, and to soften if not to subdue the mind to the conception of the project and the devices of the projector.

There is however one supposition, which would indeed conduct us to a miraculous event, and would establish a case, in which the acknowledged principles of analogical reasoning, would be false and delusive. It will be indeed a miracle, which removes us altogether from the sphere of natural opera

tions, if the project, which I now offer to the attention of the Public, should after a fair trial prove to be entirely unsuccesful; or in other words, if an event, which had already happened by means of a certain process, in some thousands of instances under one species of accident, attended by a certain appearance, should never again he produced under other accidents, bearing the same appearance, and submitted to the same process. It will be indeed a miracle of the most extraordinary kind, in which, as we may justly conclude, the Laws of Nature have ceased to operate, without any conceivable cause to suspend their action, if the effects of the Resuscitative Process should not be felt beyond the boundaries, to which the practice has already been advanced, and that an Art so fortunately commenced, should at these limits be an Art no more, We surely cannot believe, that amidst the infinite variety of accidents and causes, by which the suspension of the Vital Powers may be produced, attended by the same appearances; there should be found but one or two Species belonging to one class only, in which a numerous series of the most decided and brilliant experiments attest the

success