Part 5

REMARKABLE INSTANCE

OF THE

POWER OF IMAGINATION.

It has been remarked, that when the royal vault is opened for the interment of any of the royal family, Westminster Abbey is a place of great resort: some flock thither out of curiosity, others to indulge their solemn meditations.

By the former of these motives it was, when the royal vault was opened for the interment of her illustrious Majesty Queen Caroline, that five or six gentlemen who had dined together at a tavern were drawn to visit that famous repository of the titled dead. As they descended down the steep descent, one cried--"It's hellish dark;" another stopped his nostrils, and exclaimed against the nauseous vapour that ascended from it; all had their different sayings. But, as it is natural for such spectacles to excite some moral reflections, even with the most gay and giddy, they all returned with countenances more serious than those they had entered with.

Having agreed to pass the evening together, they all went back to the place where they dined; and the conversation turned on a future state, apparitions, and some such topics. One among them was an infidel in those matters, especially as to spirits becoming visible, and took upon him to rally the others, who seemed rather inclinable to the contrary way of thinking. As it is easier to deny than to prove, especially where those that maintain the negative will not admit any testimonies which can be brought against their own opinion, he singly held out against all they had to alledge. To end the contest, they proposed to him a wager of twenty guineas, that, as great a hero as he pretended, or really imagined himself, he had not courage enough to go alone at midnight into the vault they had seen that day. This he readily accepted, and was very merry with the thoughts of getting so much money with such ease. The money on both sides was deposited in the hands of the master of the house; and one of the vergers was sent for, whom they engaged, for a piece of gold, to attend the adventurer to the gate of the cathedral, then shut him in, and wait his return.

Every thing being thus settled, the clock no sooner struck twelve, than they all set out together; they who laid the wager being resolved not to be imposed on by his tampering with the verger. As they passed along, a scruple arose, which was, that though they saw him enter the church, how they should be convinced he went as far as the vault; but he instantly removed their doubts, by pulling out a pen-knife he had in his pocket, and saying, "This will I stick into the earth, and leave it there; and if you do not find it in the inside of the vault, I will own the wager lost." These words left them nothing to suspect; and they agreed to wait at the door his coming out, believing he had no less stock of resolution than he had pretended: it is possible, the opinion they had of him was no more than justice.

But, whatever stock of courage he had, on his entrance into that antique and reverend pile, he no sooner found himself shut alone in it, than, as he afterwards confessed, he found a kind of shuddering all over him, which, he was sensible, proceeded from something more than the coldness of the night. Every step he took was echoed by the hollow ground; and, though it was not altogether dark, the verger having left a lamp burning just before the door that led to the chapel (otherwise it would have been impossible for him to have found the place), yet did the glimmering it gave, rather add to, than diminish, the solemn horror of every thing around.

He passed on, however; but protested, had not the shame of being laughed at, prevented him, he would have forfeited more than twice the sum he had staked to have been safe out again. At length he reached the entrance of the vault: his inward terror increased; yet, determined not to be overpowered by fear, he descended; and being come to the last stair, stooped forwards, and struck the pen-knife with his whole force into the earth. But, as he was rising in order to quit so dreadful a place, he felt something pluck him forward; the apprehension he before was in, made an easy way for surprise and terror to seize on all his faculties: he lost in one instant every thing that could support him, and fell into a swoon, with his head in the vault, and part of his body on the stairs.

Till after one o'clock his friends waited with some degree of patience, though they thought he paid the titled dead a much longer visit than a living man could choose. But, finding he did not come, they began to fear some accident: the verger, they found, though accustomed to the place, did not choose to go alone; they therefore went with him, preceded by a torch, which a footman belonging to one of the company had with him. They all went into the Abbey, calling, as they went, as loud as they could: no answer being made, they moved on till they came to the vault; where, looking down, they soon perceived what posture he was in. They immediately used every means they could devise for his recovery, which they soon effected.

After they got him out of the Abbey to the fresh air, he fetched two or three deep groans; and, in the greatest agitation, cried, "Heaven help me! Lord have mercy upon me!" These exclamations very much surprised them; but, imagining he was not yet come perfectly to his senses, they forbore farther questions, till they had got him into the tavern, where, having placed him in a chair, they began to ask how he did, and how he came to be so indisposed. He gave them a faithful detail, and said, he should have come back with the same sentiments he went with, had not an unseen hand convinced him of the injustice of his unbelief. While he was making his narrative, one of the company saw the pen-knife sticking through the fore-lappet of his coat. He immediately conjectured the mistake; and, pulling out the pen-knife before them all, cried out, "Here is the mystery discovered: for, in the attitude of stooping to stick the knife in the ground, it happened, as you see, to go through the coat; and, on your attempting to rise, the terror you was in magnified this little obstruction into an imaginary impossibility of withdrawing yourself, and had an effect on your senses before reason had time to operate." This, which was evidently the case, set every one, except the gentleman who had suffered so much by it, into a roar of laughter. But it was not easy to draw a single smile from him: he ruminated on the affair, while his companions rallied and ridiculed this change in him: he well remembered the agitations he had been in. "Well," replied he; when he had sufficiently recovered, "there is certainly something after death, or these strange impulses could never be. What is there in a church more than in any other building? what in darkness more than light, which in themselves should have power to raise such ideas as I have now experienced? Yes," continued he, "I am convinced that I have been too presumptuous: and, whether spirits be or be not permitted to appear, that they exist, I ever shall believe."

THE

WESTMINSTER SCHOLARS.

A few years since, some Westminster scholars received great insult from a hackney-coachman, who treated them with the greatest scurrility, because they would not comply with an overcharge in his fare. This behaviour the youths did not forget, and were resolved to punish him without danger of prosecution; upon which one of them devised the following whimsical turn of revenge.

Four of these gentlemen, one dark evening, about nine o'clock, (having previously learned where his coach would be) called him from off the stand, and desired the coachman to drive over Westminster Bridge to Newington. They had not long been seated, when one of them, with a sportive tone of voice, said, "Come, boys, let us begin."

They then instantly dressed themselves in black clothes, and every necessary befitting mourners at a funeral, (which articles they brought with them in small parcels.) And the night was particularly favourable for carrying their scheme into execution: for it was uncommonly dark, and very still. 'Twas such a night that Apollonius Rhodius thus describes--

"Night on the earth pour'd darkness; on the sea, The wakesome sailor to Orion's star And Helice turn'd heedful. Sunk to rest, The traveller forgot his toil; his charge, The centinel; her death-devoted babe, The mother's painless breast. The village dog Had ceas'd his troublous bay: each busy tumult Was hush'd at this dread hour; and darkness slept, Lock'd in the arms of silence."

To terrify him the more, they wore linen hat-bands and scarfs, instead of crape. And when they had got into the loneliest part of St. George's Fields (for at that time they were not built over as at present), they called to him, and desired him to stop, as they wanted to get out.

They marked the side the coachman came to open the door of; and he that sat next the other door, opened it at the same instant.

What the coachman felt on seeing the first mourner move out with the greatest solemnity, can be better conceived than expressed: but what were his terrors when the second approached him, a majestic spare figure about six feet perpendicular, who passed him (as did the first) without speaking a word.

As fast as one youth got out, he went round to the other side of the coach, stepped in, and came out a second time at the opposite door.

In this manner they continued, till the coachman, if he had the power of counting, might have told forty.

When they had thus passed out seemingly to the number of twenty, the poor devil of a coachman, frightened almost to death, fell upon his knees, and begged for mercy's sake the King of Terrors would not suffer any more of his apparitions to appear; for, though he had a multitude of sins to account for, he had a wife and a large family of children, who depended upon his earnings for support.

The tallest of these young gentlemen then asked him, in a hoarse tone of voice, what was his heaviest sin? He replied, committing his lodger, a poor carver and gilder, to the Marshalsea, for rent due to him, which the badness of the times, and his business in particular, would not enable him to pay. He said, he would not have confined him so long, but in revenge for a severe beating he gave him one day when they fell to loggerheads and boxed. He further told them, the poor man had been six months in captivity; and that he understood from a friend of his, the other day, that he made out but a miserable living by making brewers' pegs, bungs for their barrels, and watchmakers' skewers.

The young gentleman then told him, that if he did not instantly sign his discharge, which he would write, he might rest assured of no mitigation of the dreadful punishment he would go through in a few minutes; for those he had seen come out of his coach were his harpies in disguise, and were now in readiness to bear him to the infernal regions.

The trembling villain, without the least hesitation, complied. One of the scholars fortunately having a pen and ink, the King of Terrors wrote the discharge in a fair leaf of his pocket-book, as well as he could in the dark, and then made the coachman sign it.

Having so done, the scholars told him he might go for the present, and that he would find his coach in less than an hour in Piccadilly or Oxford Street.

One of the youths then mounted the box, while the others got within, and away they drove to the Marshalsea, but in the way they stopped till they had taken off their disguise.