Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius haswritten a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to hisEssay on the strange subject which the MS. illuminates.
This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning andacumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but onevolume of the series of that extraordinary man’s collected papers.
As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the“laity,” I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, innothing; and after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstainfrom presenting any précis of the learned Doctor’s reasoning, or extractfrom his statement on a subject which he describes as “involving, notimprobably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and itsintermediates.”
I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence commencedby Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and carefulas his informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found thatshe had died in the interval.
She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative which she communicatesin the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such conscientiousparticularity.
In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, orschloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight ornine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answeredamong wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name,although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place,where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don’t see how ever somuch more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.
My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and hispatrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and