OF Her most Gracious Majesty the Empress. THE ST. PETERSBURG ENGLISH REVIEW, OF LITERATURE, THE ARTS, AND SCIENCES. S. WARRAND, lo vulcamos vill at Teacher of the English Language and Literature to Their Imperial HIGHNESSES; AND THOMAS B. SHAW, B. A. of the University of Cambridge. VOLUME 111.-FIRST YEAR. ST. PETERSBURG, PERMITTED TO BE PRINTED; On condition of furnishing the necessary number of copies to the committee of Censorship. St. Petersburg, September 15th, 1842. KORSAKOFF, CENSOR. ST. PETERSBURG ENGLISH REVIEW. WELCH RABBITS. BY DR. MAGINN. Upon the existence of ghosts, and the influence of dreams, I know that opinion is divided. The wise, in general, are disbelievers; and, if we allege the credence of Johnson in such matters, we are met by the assertion that, in spite of the doctor's great talents and strong common sense on all ordinary subjects, he was on all subjects beyond the visible diurnal sphere deeply tinctured with superstition. And yet there lingers in the mind a willing belief that such things as communications from the departed may be permitted. I know all that has been said of the absurdity of imagining that, while no ghosts glide along the fields of Waterloo or Cannæ, or emerge from the waves of the Nile or Trafalgar, where many a thousand men passed timeless to their doom, we should find, in some obscure hole or corner, where a single person was done to death, that solitary shade returning to complain of the shedding of its blood. I know, too, that the objects in general assigned for the appearance of the ghost, are not such as we can reasonably imagine disturb the repose of a spiritual being. Crocks of gold, the portion of a fortunate interpreter of a dream, in which the shade VOL. 1 |