LORD BROUGHAM ON GHOSTS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 201, 7 December 1871, Page 7

LORD BROUGHAM ON GHOSTS.

[From Life and Timet of Lord Brougham

written by himself.)

Tired with the cold of yesterday, I was glad to take advantage of a hot bath before I turned in. And here a most remarkable thing happened to me — so remarkable that I must tell the story from the beginning. After I left the High School, I went with G , my most intimate friend to attend the classes in the University. There was no divinity-class, but we frequently in our works discussed and speculated. upon many grave subjects — among others, on the immortality of the soul, and on a fixture state. This question, and the possibility, I will not say of ghosts walking, but of the dead appear ing to the living, were subjects of much speculation ; and we actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our blood, to the effect that' whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of the " life after death." After' we had finished ouv classes at the college, Gr — went to India, having got an appointment there in the civil service. He seldom wrote to me, and after the lapse of a few years I had almost forgotten him ; moreover, his family having little connextion with Edinburgh, I seldom' saw or heard anything of" them, or of him through them, so that all the old schoolboy intimacy had died out, and I had nearly forgotten his existence. I had i taken, as I have said, a warm bath ; and while lying, in it and enjoying the comfort" of the lieat, after the late freez-

Lug I had undergone, I turned ray head round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I turned about to get up out of the bath. On the chair sat G- , looking calmly at me. How I got out of the bath I

know not, but on recovering my senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was, that had taken the likeness of Gr , had disappeared.

Tha vision produced such a shock that I had no inclination to talk about it, or to speak ahout it even to Stuart ; but the impression it made upon me was too vivid to be easily forgotten ; and so strongly was I effected by it that I have here written down the whole history, with the date, 19th December, and all the particulars as they are fresh before me. No doubt I had fallen asleep '; and that the appearance presented so distinctly to my eye was a dream, I cannot for a moment doubt ; yet for years I had. had no communication with G , ntov had there b*;en anything to recall him to my recollection ; nothing had taken place during our Swedish travels either connected with. G or with India, or with anything relating to him, or to any member of his family. I recollected quickly enough owv old discussion, and the bargain we had made. I could not discharge from my mind the impression that Gr must have died, and that his appearance was to be received by me as a proof of a future state ; yet all the while I felt convinced that the whole was a dream ; and so painfully vivid, and so unfading was the impression, that I could not bring myself to talk of it, or to make the slightest allusion to it. I finished dressing, and, as we had agreed to make an early start, I was ready by six o'clock, Ihe hour of our breakfast. Brougham, October 10, 1802. — I have just been copying out from ray journal the account of this strange dream : Girfissima mortis imago! And now to finish the story, begun about sixty years since. -Soon after my return to Edinburgh, there arrived a letter from India announcing G 's death ! and stating that he had died on the 19th December ! ! Singular coincidence ; yet when one reflects on the vast number of dreams which night after night pass through our brains, the number of coincidences between the vision and the event are perhaps fewer and less remarkable than a fair calculation, of chances would warrant us to expect. Nor is it surprising, considering the variety of our thoughts in sleep, that they all bear some analogy to the affairs of life, that a dream should sometimes coincide with a contemporaneous, or even with a future event. This is hot much more wonderful than that a person, whom we had no reason to'expect, should appear to xis at the very moment, we had been speaking or thinking of him. So common is thLs that it has for ages grown into the proverb, " Speak of the devil." I believe every such seeming miracle is, like every ghost story, capable of explanation. There never was, to all appearance, a better authenticated fact than ! Lord Lyttelton's ghost. I have heard my father tell the story; but coupled with his entire conviction that if was either a pure invention, or the accidental coincidence of a dream with the event. He bad heard tho particulars from a lady — a Mrs. A {fleck, or some such name — during a visit he made to \ London about the year 1780, not very j long after the death. The substance of what he heard was that Lord Lyttelton had for some time been iv failing health ; that h« was suffering from a heart complaint; that a fewdays before his death he related to some female friends who were living in his house in London an extraordinary dream, in which a figure appeared to him and told -him he should shortly ! die ; that his death, which really took place a few. days after the dream, had been very sudden, owino: no doubt to the heart disease. My father was convinced that the female tendency to believe in the marvellous naturally produced the statement that the moment of the death had exactly corresponded with the time as predicted in the dream. The story was told with corroborating circumstances — one of which was the attempt to cheat the ghost by altering the hour on the clock ; and the tale obtained a surprising degree of credit, considering the unsubstantial foundation on which it really rested. On all such subjects my father was very sceptical. He was very fond of telling a story in which he had been actor, and, as he use.l to say, in which his unbelieving obstinacy had been the means of demolishing what would have made a very pretty ghost story. He had dined-one day in Deau's-yard, Westminster, with a party of young men, one- of whom was his intimate friend, Mr. Calmel. There was some talk about the death" of a Mrs. Nightingale, who had recently died under some melancholy circumstances, and had that day been buried in the Abbey. Some one of the party offered to her that no oue of those present wouldrgo down into the grave and drive a nail into the coffin. Calmel accepted the wager, only stipulating that he might have a- lantern. He was accordingly led into the cathedral \ by a. door out ,of cloisters," and them left to himself.' The dinner party, after waiting an hour or, more" for Calmel, began , to think something must have happened to him, and that be ought to be looked after ; so ' my father and two 'or three' more got a light, and went to the grave, 'at" the

bottom of which lay the apparently dead body of Mr. Calmel. He was quickly transported to the prebend's dining-room, and recovered out of his fainting fit. As soon as he could find his tongue, he said, " Well, 1 have won my wager, and you'll find the nail in the coffin; but, by Jove! the ltuly rose up, laid hold of me, and pulled me down before I could scramble out of the grave." Calmel stuck to his stoi*y in spite of all the scoffing of his friends ; and the ghost of Mrs. Nightingale would have been all over the town, but for my father's obstinate incredulity. Nothing would satisfy him but an ocular inspection of the grave and coffin ; and so, getting a light, he and come of the party returned to the grave. There, sure enough, was the nail, well driven into the coffin ; but hard fixed by it, was a bit of Mr. Calmel's coat tail ! So there was au end of Mrs. Nightingale's ghost. This grave afterwards became remarkable for a very beautiful piece of sculpture, by some celebrated artist, representing Mr. Nightingale vainly attempting to ward Irom his dying wife the dart of death. My father always instanced this as the best piece of monumental sculpture in the Abbey. After this long digression, it is time to return to my journal.