to think that the philosophers of two thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, will look back with pity on what they will call the ignorance of those who just now tread the earth. In the progressive victories of science, and until its conquests shall be completed (a faroff day) there must always be something existing in Heaven and earth, as Hamlet says,, not dreamed of in our philosophy. The wonders of somnambulism and catalepsy would be altogether beyond the possibility of belief, were it not that other marvels exist that are unquestionable in fact, and yet equally unaccountable.

The somnambulist hears the sound of his own voice, so as to give it perfect modulation, which deaf persons cannot do, but is insensible to any other noise around him. He goes straight to the object of his search, and walks on the brink of a precipice with security, but sees nothing of the friends who watch his progress and cross his very path. Can it be by means of the optic and the auditory nerves that the sense of distance is then conveyed to his perception? It is impossible to believe it, and yet account for the fact that he sees and hears only the things on which his attention is fixed, and not all things that present themselves to those outward senses. Cases of catalepsy are more rare; but there have been many apparently well attested, where a total suspension of the ordinary powers of the senses has seemed to disclose the existence of another means of communion between the understanding and the external world, the mode and limit of which are entirely out of the grasp of our comprehension. The deaf, dumb, and blind girl, at the Hartford institution, is believed to acquire knowledge of many things which seem to require the use of some one of the senses that she does not possess. The faculties of smell and touch do not account for all the information that she gains. These considerations may induce a more indulgent and credulous attention to the accounts of cataleptic patients who exercise an unaccountable power of intelligence; which relations are apt to be treated as mere impostures.

The following curious statement of a case of this kind, is translated from a Paris journal of literature and science, published in Italian and French, entitled 'The Exile.' The case is one of great notoriety, and a current anecdote at Paris embodies a fact more startling than even those here narrated. It is said that a number of persons at that capital, among whom was the great and good Lafayette, determined to put the cataleptic to a severe test, and for that purpose wrote to her attendants to inquire of her, at a particular day and hour, what was passing at a designated place in Paris. The patient was at Bologna, and at the day and hour appointed, was attended by several witnesses, and a notary, whose duty it was to make an authenticated note of all she said. At the same hour and minute the meeting was held in the appointed apartment at Paris, where a notary also attended to take down all they should do. They purposely acted whimsical and extravagant things, such as could not be expected of them; and their notary wrote all fairly down, affixed his official seal and transmitted the paper, sealed, to Bologna-reserving a copy. The cataleptic, at the same moment, described their persons and all their doing; which the notary present wrote down and transmitted to Paris. The two documents passed each other on the road, in the mails, and were found to correspond precisely - the description given by the cataleptic being perfectly accurate. Can such things be? Certainly not without our 'special wonder.' But it would be more unphilosophical to resist good evidence, than to receive unaccountable facts. Without further preface, we proceed to the account given as before mentioned.

EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF CATALEPSY:

WITNESSED AT BOLOGNA, BY DOCTORS CASINI, AND VISCARTI, AND M. MAZZACORATI, PHARMACEUTIST. We fear that the facts which we are about to relate will not find credence with our readers; yet we can assure them that we are well acquainted with the persons from whom the narrative comes, and we cannot doubt their sincerity, nor their ability to judge of the evidence on which it rests. A detailed account of the case was sent to one of our most honored associates, from whom we have obtained the following abridgment of it, which we offer to our readers, in the hope that it may prove interesting, by reason of the extraordinary phenomena it describes.

A young woman, aged twenty-five years, on the tenth of September last, fell into a complete state of catalepsy, which recurred regularly for forty-two days consecutively. During the first thirty days, the fit began at noon, and ended at midnight; but afterward, it was of less duration. The patient, so long as the paroxysm lasted, presented the ordinary appearances of catalepsy; that is, an aptness to assume and retain all manner of inconvenient and unnatural postures, and a general insensibility to the most forcible physical impressions. Frequent yawns and sighs preceded the coming on of the fit, and also its termination; and for the last ten or twelve days, just before waking, she would raise the left arm, then the right; then the right and left foot at equal intervals, and let them fall as if they were lifeless. After these motions, she would move her head, open her hands, take hold of the bed-raise her body, fall back again, then place her hands on her head, rub up her hair, and assume a harsh expression of countenance. Her eyes were closed during the first twenty-one paroxysms; the rest of the time they were open as if she were awake. She did not appear to suffer any pain, and when awake, had no recollection of the fit; but during the paroxysm she remembered perfectly, not only what had occurred when she was awake, but also every thing that happened during the preceding paroxysms. She had no medical treatment, as she took pleasure in her malady; and the cure was effected by the efforts of nature alone.

We have said that her body was not capable of feeling the most forcible impressions, nor such as were most calculated to produce pain; but this was not the case with all parts of her body. A most exquisite sensibility remained about the epigastric region, in the palms of her hands, and the soles of her feet. These parts became supplementary organs of the senses, and through them she could receive external impressions, not spontaneously, but only when her attention was roused by the experimenters. At first, it was necessary to speak immediately against the parts that retained their sensi

bility; afterward it was sufficient if the speaker merely touched any one of those parts; and still later, it was enough if he were in communication, though at some distance, with the person who was in actual contact with those parts. She never spoke unless spoken

to.

When questioned in the manner described, she answered in the same tone of voice that was used by the one who spoke to her; either high or low, or very high. Her power of hearing through those parts was very extraordinary. If a person touching her stomach with one hand, grasped with his other the hand of a second person standing farther off, and the third and fourth formed in this manner a chain, hand in hand, and the fourth questioned her in the lowest possible tones, she would understand perfectly, and reply in the same tone. The reply continued always so long as the contact was maintained with the parts possessing sensibility, and ceased when that contact was interrupted; but she would resume the discourse when the contact was restored, at the point to which it would have reached if there had been no interruption. It seemed, therefore, that the reply was continued internally; and indeed, when she was asked, in such case, why she had not spoken all the words, she always insisted that she had pronounced them all equally.

After the twenty-first day, she lost the faculty of speech. She continued to hear and understand as before; but she could answer only by breathing forcibly when she wished to affirm positively. Those who were about her then conceived the plan of inducing her to convey her answers in as few words as possible, and to signify those words by a strong breathing, while they pronounced in her hearing the several letters of the alphabet. Afterward, she lost also the power of breathing forcibly; but the experimenters, finding that she could make a slight pressure with the ends of her fingers, availed themselves of that means to receive her answers.

Her eyes, as we have already said, were closed the first twenty-one days; but to be the more assured of their inactivity, the experimenters bound them with a handkerchief well folded; and yet she recognised immediately the color of different bodies that were presented to the parts having sensibility. She could sometimes read in this way, and could always tell the hour by a watch. Afterward it was not even necessary that the objects should be in contact with her body; she could tell them in any part of the room; and it was only requisite for this, that the experimenters who were in contact with her should direct her attention to the proper point. Still later, she recognised and described objects placed in another room, in the street, or at a distance in places that she had never seen.

Being requested to give a description of a convent at Bologna, and of the vaults under a country-house in the neighborhood of that city, of which neither the patient or her interrogators had any knowledge, she described both, minutely; and her description being taken down, was found to correspond exactly with the facts, even including the number and position of the wine-vessels in the cellars.

She was once persuaded by a professor of the University to name the objects that were in a certain cabinet in the college; she complied, and enumerated them exactly. She was asked what was on a certain table there, which was indicated to her: she said 'a book.' 'And what on the book? She answered, 'A brain.' 'What brain ?' She said, 'That of some animal.' 'What animal?" She replied that if he would name several, she could tell him which was the animal, and accordingly she told, correctly, the animal to which the brain had belonged was a leopard. She declared that she saw distinctly; and she certainly described the internal organs of her own body, and those of other persons. Being subjected by the professor above mentioned, to an examination on anatomy, she described, with astonishing precision, the situation of the heart, the pancreas, the spinal marrow, and the nerves - their connections and uses. And when requested by the same professor to examine the internal condition of his female patient, who lived at some distance, she informed him that the disease was in her womb, and was incurable.

A new order of phenomena became manifest during the time when her eyes, instead of being closed and bandaged, were open and motionless. It was found that the axis of the ball had a tendency to turn, as if moved by mechanical force, toward the side where the physicians, or any one else, caused, by any means, a current of the electric fluid. This occurred even when the electricity was excited behind her, or in another room; on which occasions her eye-balls would turn, and her head would follow the movement. The same effect was found to proceed from the presence of a loadstone, or any magnetized body, and also from so slight a galvanic action as might be produced by touching a plate of zinc to a plate of copper.

The witnesses of these extraordinary facts purpose, as we learn, to give a full account of them to the public. We hope they will also be able to explain them. It is for philosophers alone to judge of these marvellous phenomena.

E.

THE PATRIOTS OF THE TYROL.

A TALE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY-FOUNDED ON FACT.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

THE Tyrol is perhaps the most mountainous and therefore the most picturesque country in the world. It is divided by a lofty and precipitous range of mountains into two sections, whereof the upper, or German Tyrol, is a valley of about one hundred miles in length, and from three to eight miles in breadth, formed by the river Inn, about the centre of which stands Innspruck, the capital. The lower, or Italian Tyrol, comprises the two valleys of Eisach and Adige, through which flow two rivers of the same name. The only road which connects the two districts, passes over Mount Brenner, at an elevation of six thousand feet above the level of the sea.

This territory-successively the property of the Roman, the Vandal, the Hun, the Frank, and the Bavarian - fell, about the middle of the sixteenth century, into the possession of the House of Austria, partly by the marriage of Margaret Moultasche, the only daughter of one of the most powerful of the native counts, to a duke of the Hapsburg family, and partly by purchase and conquest. From that period till the year 1805, the Tyrol continued a dependency of the Austrian government, and a firm and faithful ally of that power. The clemency and paternal regard, remarkable in the Austrian rulers toward their hereditary states, were shown in a conspicuous light in their intercourse with the Tyrolese, who were left in the enjoyment of all their ancient privileges; their diet, or representative assembly, experienced no interference with their deliberations, and their liberal institutions remained unchanged and unmutilated by the hand of Power.

This happy state of affairs was, however, doomed to a melancholy change. The rapid and brilliant campaign of 1805 gave to Bonaparte so vast a command over the humbled house of Austria, that he was enabled to dictate whatever terms his unlimited ambition might prompt. One of the conditions of the peace ratified by the treaty of Presburg was that the Tyrol should be ceded to his ally, the King of Bavaria. This sacrifice the Emperor Francis was compelled to make; and it is easy to judge what must have been the indignation of the hardy mountaineers, when informed of this sudden transfer, effected without consultation with the diet, and in direct opposition to the wishes of the people, who found themselves made over, like a flock of sheep, from one master to another-from a master whom they loved, to one whom, from former acts of tyranny and oppression, handed down by tradition from their forefathers, they had every reason, if not to hate, at least to fear. It is true, indeed, that the king of Bavaria solemnly guarantied to them the full possession of all their ancient rights; but however implicitly they might have trusted these assurances, the true character of their new rulers was not long in disclosing itself. They were soon called upon to witness the suppression of their representative assembly-the seizure of their public funds-the confiscation of their ecclesiastical revenues, and the