physio-psychological department of inquiry | Baconian or scientific apprehension of the to order and intelligibility, it may not be physio-psychological relation between abso difficult to indicate the directions in sent friends is not necessarily absurd.· which light is likely to arise upon it. As the subject is distinctly of a twofold character, and lies in the twilight rather than in the night of nature, there are two quarters on which the investigator must bend his cautious eye. There is the fact of sensuous illusion, not necessarily confined to the sense of sight, but extended to those of hearing, and even of touch, which is manifestly never absent in these phenomena; and there is the unknown fact or process, which initiates such more than ordinary illusions, and renders them so specific and determinate that they are sometimes presentimental, sometimes representative, and sometimes retrospective of actual future, distant or past persons. It is not impossible that the unknown quantity in the equation is to be found in the region of nervous sympathy. The doctrine of sympathy and antipathy has fallen into too much neglect among the regulars of science. It feels too mystical for the sensuous and numerical spirit of the present stage of positive research, a spirit so statical and even gross, that it is remarkable to find that no one has proposed the supposition that the force of gravitation is a new imponderable! "This too, too solid flesh," is impeding the development of those more dynamical notions of nature, which have notwithstanding begun to germinate within the more logical minds of the time. The notion of one nervous system acting upon another one at a distance, or otherwise than through the five senses, is hardly admitted in these days. Yet Bacon not only believed in such a thing, but proposed experiments to limit and determine its results. That great clear-seer, we remember, suggests among other things, that two lovers should record all the critical movements transpiring within them during a time of separation, and afterwards compare their notes and dates with the view of discovering whether they seemed to have been affected by one another. It is unfortunate for this proposal that the fact of conscious observation of one's self is the death of true emotion; and it is little short of monstrous to think of a soft spontaneous woman, her heart almost in pain with budding hopes, with her notebook on the pillow beside her wakeful little head, to write down the minute, hour and day of this tender agitation, and of that, in the radiance of a rush-light! But the If some great catastrophe were to take place within the limit of the sun, the shock would be communicated to the earth, which would answer the appeal to its gravitative and other cosmical sympathies. But what if sun and earth had been a pair of palpitating, mobile, vibrant nervous systems, the organs of sensations that stretch through countless solar systems and many a firmament, the ministers of "thoughts that wander through eternity," the vehicles of emotions that embrace Almighty God?— Nor is the application of this illustration to the wraith, to take the least complicated case of ghost-seeing, very far-fetched. The brother of Mr. H. is dying, the last great change is passing over his frame, it is being shaken into the dust again. The excellent painter, a man of the most tremulous sensibility, unweeting of the dire catastrophe that is rocking the fraternal nervous system to the centro, is yet interiorly and secretly commoved by the event; but he does not understand or even observe the latent trouble of his marrow, until it throw itself down upon the eye as a spectre, and he exclaims, "There's my brother!" It is more difficult indeed to put this construction upon the stories of haunted houses, and some of the other curiosities of literature, which are faithfully narrated by our German, French and English authors. Nor is it either necessary or advisable to do so, for we have no theory to support; even in the instance of the wraith we are but sceptics in the sense of being considerers; and it was our present purpose to do no more than offer a hint to minds more inquisitive than our own. to the ultimate solution of the question, it is at all events our assured belief that it will never be effected until some great and comprehensive medical psychologist, not of the merely phrenological, not of the purely psychological, but of the physio-psychological school, shall devote a lifetime to its investigation. A lucid thinker like Feuchterleben, with equally vast stores of information, equally Catholic canons of criticism, and equally enormous learning, but with more originalty of spirit, with more of that poetic quality by which all great discoverers have been notoriously distinguished from the erudite artisans and the busy dilettants of science, with more imaginative insight, would find this sphere of research As f of tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco and opium; remembering that the taste for all of these drugs has actually to be acquired, even by otherwise unnatural creatures like the men and women of the present day, and that taste is therefore not congenial with the paradisaic instincts of ideal man. Examine the very meats which the flaccid genius of dys full of noble results. So extensive and perplexed indeed is the whole subject, that the union of two energetic researchers, one of them a physiologist, the other a philosopher, and both psychologists, a pair of men like Reil and Hoffbauer, would render us still more sanguine of the speedy clearing up of the mystery. At all events, it is with students like these alone that we are will-pepsy has invented. Count the hundred ing to leave the inquiry; and we do so with hope. spices and impurities by which the fine edge of ordinary sensibility is blunted and torn. There is one conclusion, however, to Recollect the extent to which night is uniwhich the wisely sceptical student of ghosts, versally turned into day. Take particular spectres, prophetic dreams, presentiments, notice of the excessive and exclusive culticlear-seeing, and the like, may come with- vation of the mere muscles of the body in out waiting a single day longer; and it is one class of people, of the mere stomach and one of such urgent importance, in our opi- lungs in another, of the mere nerves of sunion, as to demand immediate attention. perficial and sentimental sensibility in a If morbid sensibility renders the connexion third, and of the mere miserable brain in a between a human nervous system and na- fourth one, and so forth. Think, in fine, ture, as well as betwixt one nervous system of everything in the daily life of Europe and another, so delicate, searching and far- that is calculated, if not intended, to thrust extending, what would be the results to the man out of harmony with all the finer individual, and the race, if there prevailed movements of nature on the one side, and throughout society a pure, wholesome and of his own unfathomable soul on the other. natural susceptibility to every kind of phy- Nor can anybody claim exemption from the sical impressions; For surely no one will rule. Be one ever so wholesome in physideny that man is still very far from the cal living, ever so virtuous in moral conrealization of his ideal condition. He does duct, and ever so generally cultivated in not fulfil the law of his nature. He is no- mind, it will avail him only a little ; but where perfect in his kind, in the manner that excellent little is worth a world of selfand degree in which, for example, the wing-denial. The disorder, the dulness, and the footed red-deer of the Scottish Highlands, perversion of the native sensibilities of the or those whirlwinds of unmounted cavalry frame are distributed through the whole that sweep the plains of South America, or the self-relying lion of Zahara is perfect, each in its kind. Even the daisy, or our still more favorite flower, the blue-eyed speedwell, is enabled to show forth all its little capabilities, and it is complete; but man is neither what he should be, nor what he shall become. To speak only of the lower ingredient of his constitution, it appears that his very nervous system does not habitually attain to anything like a free and a full manifestation of the wonderous properties lying latent within its round. All men, considered merely as so many cerebro-spinal axes, are maimed and defective. They all want something that belongs to them. Like Harry Bertram in the Romance of Guy Mannering, they do not Everybody knows, of course, that a more know the fields that are their own, their an-penetrating and better tuned sensibility is cestral rights, nor yet the small voice of na- only one of the co-efficients of genius; it is ture that stirs their hearts into remem- the immeasurably, and even the incalculabrance. Nor is there any room for won-bly inferior of the two; but it is the only der! Think of the enormous amount of circumstance of creative power over which hereditary, chronic, and lurking disease in anybody has daily control. Let it then be the world. Consider the vast consumption seen to. There is no saying what a few ages race by marriage, as well as by example and consent. Civilized language contains at least one significant indication of the fact. When there appears among men a person of extraordinary sensibility to the more sacred influences of that temple of nature, in which they are changing money more than serving like priests, they call him a genius, leave him to shift as he can, and let posterity discover that he was the most genuine man of them all. Aye, and so bad is the horrid imbroglio of custom, that no sooner does a soul come into the world in such an organization, than he is entangled in the habits of society, and, falling from a greater height, he frequently sinks lower than the lowest. of simplicity and equable culture may ef- dividually and together, towards this confect. That eloquent analyst Isaac Taylor summation among others-namely, the imhas shown how greatly the mere exaltation mediate attainment of as high a strain as of the present qualities of the nervous sys- possible of physical purity. There are intem of man would add to the felicities of deed things of higher value, but this is at the intellectual and emotional life in Hea- once the most substantial and the most beven. It is more to the purpose to assert it coming of foundations, for the erection of will do the same on earth. It will bring every grace that is more excellent still. him closer to the heart of nature. It will Nor are we unwilling to avow our convicextend, deepen and ennoble his whole be- tion that a far-spreading and thorough reing. It will gradually restore him to his formation of this sort, is destined to approve abdicated sovereignty over creation. It is itself as one of the signs of a thorough and therefore the duty of all men to work, in-far-spreading millennium. From the New Monthly Magazine. A VISIT TO THE BATTLE-FIELDS OF CRESSY AND AGINCOURT. IN LETTERS ADDRESSED TO H. P. SMITH, ESQ. BY HENRY LAWS LONG, ESQ. LETTER I. not be attractive, find him admirably "done into English" by Johnes, who has, with a PASSAGE OF THE SOMME AT THE FORD OF peculiarly happy spirit, preserved in the BLANQUETAQUE. To your suggestions, my dear Smith, I owe translation the quaint gossiping flow of the original. It would seem from Johnes's own showing that the manuscripts of Froissart present considerable diversities, and since his time M. Rigollot has published in the third volume of the "Memoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Picardie" various fragments of a MS. of Froissart's which exists in the library of Amiens. From this work M. Louandre in his "History of Abbeville and Ponthieu" has drawn copiously to illustrate his account of the Battle of Cressy. M. Bucher des Perthes, whom I had the pleasure of seeing at Abbeville, recommended me M. Louandre's volumes as containing the best and most recent details of the action, and from his stores I shall not hesitate to borrow whenever I find anything likely to prove of interest to you, and to illustrate the subject of my letter. The whole campaign of Edward from Cherbourg to the gates of Paris, and thence to Calais, would form an agreeable outline for a drive through France-his terrific march, Amazement in the van with flight combined, And sorrow's faded form and solitude behind! with its various scenes and events would be the main object of examination, while an abundance of collateral sources of interest | in order to outstrip the enemy, and reach would fill up any vacancies which might oc- the river in time to avail himself of the procur in the progress of tracing his steps. per state of the tide for effecting the pasFor ourselves, we confined our observations sage. A chemin-de-travers extends from to Picardy, and approached the scene of Oisement to St. Valery; of this Edward action at the mouth of the Somme. seems to have availed himself, and although the distance cannot be less than fourteen or fifteen miles, he reached the river at the desired spot at five o'clock in the morning of the 24th of August. It was low-water, and the ford, perfectly practicable, lay before him; but upon the opposite bank was posted a Norman baron, Godemar de Fay, with a force of some thousand men prepared to dispute the passage. No time was to be lost, for an hundred thousand men were close upon his rear, and Edward ordered his marshals with the best of his menat-arms, to advance into the river, nor did the French wait until their enemy had gained dry ground, but rushing into the bed of the river, the combatants met and fought furiously in the water. The battle was, however, of brief duration, the English column reached the opposite bank, Godemar was totally defeated, wounded, put to flight, and pursued up to the gates of Abbeville. You remember how Edward, while Warwick and Harcourt advanced as far as St. Germain and St. Cloud, remained in the nunnery of Poissy until the middle of August, and celebrated there the feast of the Virgin, "sitting at table in his scarlet robes, without sleeves, trimmed with fur and ermine;" and how his adversary, Philip, had quitted Paris, much to the sorrow and terror of its inhabitants, and fixing his head quarters at St. Denis, collected an army of imposing strength, and of unusual splendor, for three kings served under his banners. It soon became apparent that the English forces could no longer maintain their position in the face of such formidable numbers, and Edward commenced a retreat towards Calais, which had the appearance almost of a flight, inspiring the French with an energy and activity wholly wanting before, and encouraging them to an immediate pursuit of their enemy. But the march of Edward was impeded on reaching the Somme, the bridges were all either destroyed or in possession of well-fortified hostile forces, and Philip approached fully expecting to shut the English up between the river and the sea, and to starve them into a capitulation, or fight them with every advantage on his own side. could not have attempted the passage. He retired "tout dolent" to Abbeville, and took up his quarters in the monastery of St. Pierre. In the meantime, Philip, following previously from Oisemont, and imagining his prey now fairly within his grasp, reached the south bank of the Somme, time enough to destroy some few unlucky stragglers of the English army, but too late to pursue it across the ford. The tide was returning, and without exposing himself to the fate of On the 23d of August, 1346, we find the" Busiris and his Memphian chivalry," he relative positions of the armies to have been thus. Philip was at Airaines, which the English had quitted so precipitately that the French on entering found meat on the spits, bread in the ovens, "et moult The village of Noyelles, less than a mile tables que les Anglais avaient laissées.' from the ford of Blanquetaque, was defendEdward after ineffectually attempting to ed by a garrison and a strong château, force a passage at Abbeville, had retired, which now" n'offre plus qu'une vaste butte "moult pensif," to Oisemont, and there, de decombres entourée de quelques debris apparently not knowing by which way to de murailles, et des fossés profonds" The proceed, proclaimed rewards and liberty to labors of the English army, after effecting any one among his prisoners who would their passage of the Somme, and putting to guide him to a ford by which he might pass flight the forces of Fay, were not entirely the river with safety. A" varlet" of Mons, over. Noyelles, however, was soon taken, by name Gobin Agache, undertook to con- the village was burnt, and the castle would duct him to a spot, where "twice a day, "have shared its fate, had not its noble lady, in the words of Froissart, "the river is passable for twelve men abreast, with water not higher than their knees, over a bottom hard with gravel and white stones." The English king caught joyfully at this information, and quitted Õisemont at midnight, Catharine d'Artois, Countess d'Aumale, found favor in the eyes of Edward. It was true that her daughter's husband and his father were in arms against him, serving under the standard of Philip, but the father (doomed to perish within a few hours on puis longtemps et tombait de vétusté. contretemps contraria beaucoup l'empereur qui avait hâte d'arriver à Paris; le passage par bateau était extrêmement dangereux, aucun batelier ne voulut le tenter: cependant l'empereur se souvint qu'il y avait à Givet un dépôt de prisonniers Anglais; il ordonna qu'on en fit venir quelques uns devant lui, et auxquels il demanda leur avis sur la possibilité de passer la rivière; un grand nombre de ces marins assurèrent que la traversée, quoique presentant quelques dan the field of Cressy!) was brother to Geoffroy d'Harcourt, Edward's favorite marshal, and Catharine herself was daughter to his equally favorite adhercnt, Robert d'Artois, whom he had created Earl of Richmond; thus was she connected with two great men in Edward's service, who had both quitted that of the French monarch out of some pique or disgust, and who, however valiant and faithful in their fealty to their adopted master, can be regarded as little better than traitors. Catharine, too, although constrained to admit Philip's gar-gers, était cependant possible, et offrirent rison within the walls of her castle, partook of the general dislike, which all the French noblesse at that period entertained towards that monarch. She threw herself at the feet of Edward, and by the intercession of Geoffroy d'Harcourt, preserved her castle and her liberty. At Noyelles, the English army halted for the night, and Edward's good faith towards his guide, "the varlet," Gobin, is recorded so carefully by the chroniclers, that it seems to have been a surprise to them that he adhered to his promises. Gobin was presented with a hundred nobles of gold, a horse "pour se sauver," his freedom being granted together with that of his companions. Thus it was that the English monarch owed his preservation and that of his army to the happy accident of finding among his humble prisoners a "varlet," who, acting the part of the mouse in the fable of the lion caught in the toils, was enabled to point out the means by which the great enemy of his country could conquer an apparently insuperable obstacle, and extricate himself from his embarrassments. It was reserved for our own days to witness the converse of this remarkable circumstance, when a French sovereign was indebted to English prisoners for his passage across an adverse river. I allude to Napoleon at Givet, on the Meuse; and the anecdote is too curious and too little known, to require an apology for introducing it here as a parallel to the above. I am indebted to a friend for extracting it from the "Guide Pittoresque du Voyageur en France (Paris, 1834). "On communique des deux Givets par un beau pont en pierre, dont la construction décrétée par l'empereur en 1810 fut achevée en 1816. Voici à quelle occasion Napoléon ordonna cette construction, l'empereur revenant de la Belgique arriva à Givet par un temps affreux; la Meuse, grossie par de longues pluies, avoit rompu et emporté le pont de bois qui existait de leurs services, l'empereur en choisit vingt; et, plein de confiance en leur habilité, parvint heureusement à l'autre rive. Les vingt Anglais reçurent avec la liberté, un habillement complet et une récompense pecuniaire. A son retour à Paris Napoléon ordonna la construction du beau pont qui lie aujourd'hui les deux parties de la ville." I considered the ford of Blanquetaque possessed of quite sufficient interest to invite us to its examination, and accordingly we quitted the great post road at Nouvion, and taking a sandy track over an open undulating country, we drove to Noyelles, and thence by a little road bearing the magnificent appelation of Chemin des Valois, and connecting the eastern end of the village with the bank where the ford begins, we reached Blanquetaque. The wide bed of the Somme, a mile and a half in breadth, and enlarging towards its mouth, where the towns of St. Valery and Le Crotoy confront each other, seemed at first sight an awful place for the existence of a ford of any description. We arranged to arrive there at low water, but the wet sands as we approached them did not present any other appearance than that of water, giving a most perilous aspect to such extensive shoals through which an army would have to wade. But its dangers disappeared upon examination; the sands are perfectly solid and safe, and the current of the Somme occupies but a very narrow space, and is not above a foot and a half in depth; a very civil person employed on the spot as a douanier, explained to us the usual track adopted by any vehicles traversing the river, but at the same time intimated that he was in the habit of walking almost everywhere—even direct to St. Valery itself. It is not improbable that in the days of Edward, there might have been far greater hazard attending the passage; the continual drift of sand all along this coast must have had no inconsiderable effect in the embou |