ental cavalier. To avoid the wedding which is thrust
on her, she gets an old witch to do what the Australian romancer
professes to do--to suspend her animation, and so she is carried on an
open bier to a chapel on the border of her lover's lands. There he
rides, the right lover, with his men-at-arms, the bride revives just in
time, is lifted on to his saddle-bow, and "they need swift steeds that
follow" the fugitive pair. The sleeping beauty, who is thrown into so
long a swoon by the prick of the fairy thorn, is another very old
example, while "Snow-white," in her glass coffin, in the German nursery
tale, is a third instance.

It is not only the early fancy of the ballad-mongers and fairy
tale-tellers that has dwelt longingly on the idea of suspended animation.
All the mystics, who all follow the same dim track that leads to nothing,
have believed in various forms of the imaginary Australian experiment.
The seers of most tribes, from Kamschatka to Zululand, and thence to
Australia, are feigned to be able to send their souls away, while their
bodies lie passive in the magical tent. The soul wanders over the
earthly world, and even to the home of the dead, and returns, in the
shape of a butterfly or of a serpent, to the body which has been lying
motionless, but uncorruptible, in apparent death. The Indian Yogis can
attain that third state of being, all three being unknown to Brahma,
which is neither sleeping nor waking, but trance. To produce this
ecstasy, to do for themselves what some people at the Antipodes pretend
to do to sheep and cattle, is the ideal aim of the existence of the Yogi.
The Neoplatonists were no wiser, and Greek legend tells a well-known
story of a married mystic whose suspended animation began at last to bore
his wife. "Dear Hermotimus"--that was his name, if we have not forgotten
it--"is quite the most absent of men," his spouse would say, when her
husband's soul left his body and took its walks abroad. On one occasion
the philosopher's spiritual part remained abroad so long that his lady
ceased to expect its return. She therefore went through the usual
mourning, cut her hair, cried, and finally burned the body on the funeral-
pyre. "We can do no more for miserable mortals, when once the spirit has
left their bones," says Homer.

At that very moment the spirit returned, and found its uninsured tenement
of clay reduced to ashes. The sequel may be found in a poem of the late
Professor Ayto