Death of Lord Rossmore. Belief in ghosts.

Chapter XLIV.

Death of Lord Rossmore.

**Strictures on Dr. Johnson - his biographer, Boswell - False definitions and erroneous ethics - Superstition - Supernatural appearances

• Theological argument of the author in favour of his peculiar faith - Original poetry by Miss T. - The author purchases Lady Mayo’s demesne, County Wicktow - Terrific and cultivated scenery contrasted - Description of the golden belt of Ireland and the beauties of the above mentioned county - Lord Rossmore - His character - Supernatural incident of a most extraordinary nature, vouched by living witnesses, and attendant on the sudden death of his lordship.**

It is not pleasant to differ essentially from the general opinions of the world, and nothing but a firm belief that we are right can bear us up in so doing. I feel my own fallibility poignantly, when I venture to remark upon the celebrated personage yclept “the greatest moralist of England.”

To criticise the labours of that giant of literature I am unequal: to detract from his ethics is not my object. But it surely savours not of treason to avow that parts of his Lexicon I condemn, and much of ins philosophy I dissent from.

It is fortunate for the sake of truth that Boswell became Johnson’s biographer; for, as the idolaters of China devoutly attach a full proportion of bad qualities to the object of their adoration so in like manner he has shewn no want of candour as to the doctor’s failings; and it might have been still wiser in him to have reflected on the unkind propensities of this wicked world, by which reflection his eulogiums would probably have been rendered less fulsome, and his biography yet more correct.

The English language had been advancing gradually in its own jog-trot way from the days of Bayley to those of Johnson it travelled over a plain smooth surface and on a gentle ascent. Everybody formerly appeared to understand each other tolerably well: words were then very intelligible, and women in general found no difficulty in pronouncing them. But the great lexicographer soon convinced the British people, the Irish are out of the question, that they had been reading, writing, and spouting in a starved, contracted tongue, and that the magnificent *dassimibominus’s *of the Grecian language were ready in polysyllables to relieve that wretched poverty under which ours had so long languished.

This noble revolution in letters has made a progress so rapid, that I found in one essay of a magazine, two or three months ago, no fewer than twenty-four words which required me to make as many references to our great Lexicon.

Nobody can deny the miraculous labour which that work must have required: yet now, when enthusiasm has some what abated and no danger exists of being clapper-clawed by the doctor himself, some ungrateful English grammarians have presumed to assert that, under the gaberdine of so great an authority, anybody is lawfully entitled to coin any *English *word he chooses out of any foreign language he thinks proper; and that we may thus tune up our vocabulary to the key of a lingua franca, assemblage of all tongues, sounds, and idioms, dead or living. It has also been asserted since his decease, that the doctor’s logic is frequently false both in premises and conclusion, his ethics erroneous, his philosophy often unintelligible, and his diction generally bombastic. However, there are so many able and idle gentlemen of law, physic, and divinity, amply educated, with pens stuck behind their ears ready for action, and who are much better skilled in the art and practice of criticism than I am, that I shall content myself with commenting on one solitary word out of forty thousand, which word not only bears strongly on my own tenets and faith, but also affects one of the most extraordinary occurrences of my life.

This comprehensive and important word, which has upon occasion puzzled me more than any other in the English language, is “superstition.” - whereof one of the definitions given by the doctor in his Lexicon, appears to be rather inconsiderate, namely, “religion without morality.” Now, I freely and fully admit that I am *superstitious; *yet I think it is rather severe and somewhat singular in the doctor to admit my religion and extinguish my morality, which I always considered as marching hand in hand.

When Dr. Johnson began to learn his own morality does not appear: I suppose not until he got an honorary degree from the pedants of Oxford. Collegiate degrees in general however, work no great reformation, I am inclined to believe, in morality; at least I am certain that when I became a doctor of laws I did not feel my morals in the least improved by my diploma. I wish he candid Boswell had mentioned the precise epocha of the doctor’s reformation, for he admits him to have been a *little *wild in his youth, and then we might have judged under what state of mind he adopted the definition.

For myself, I consider faith grounded on the phenomena of Nature, not the faith of sectarianism or fanaticism, as the true source and foundation of morality; and morality as the true source and foundation of religion.

No human demonstration can cope with that presented by the face of Nature. What proof so infallible as that the sun produces light and heat and vegetation? [The following lines are by the young poetess whom I have before mentioned, and shall again allude to more fully:-] that the tides ebb and flow, that the thunder rolls, that the lightning flashes, that the planets shine? Who can gaze on the vast orb of day without feeling that it is the visible demonstration of a superior Being, convincing our reason

The sun is in the empire of his light,

Thronged in the mighty solitude of heaven’

He seems the visible Omnipotent

Dwelling in glory:- his high sanctuary

Do the eyes worship, and thereon as

Impiety to gaze, the senses reel,

Drunk with the spirit of his deep refulgence.

Circle of glory! Diadem of heaven!

Cast in the mould of bright eternity,

And bodying forth the attributes of Him

Who made thee of this visible world supreme,

And thou becamest a wonder and a praise,-

A worship - yea, a pure idolatry!

The image of the gloucs of our God.

• The reader may deem it curious to compare the two following paraphrases, the first graced with the great name, as author, of Mr. Addison; the second the performance of my accomplished young friend, and extracted from her commonplace book, without any opportunity given for revision

On The Planets

The spacious firmament on high,

With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame!-

Their great Original proclaim.

In Reason’s ear they all rejoice,

And utter forth a glorious voice;

For ever singing, as they shine,

The hand that made us is divine!

---

Ye living fires in yon eternal dome,-

Ye lamps, whose light is immortality,-

Hung forth in mercy from our Father’s house,

As beacon-lights to guide us to our God!

Ye are ordained man’s faithful monitors,

Gazing like heavenly eyes upon our deeds,

Till guilt is awed and shrinks beneath your glance.

Ye bright and visible rewards! held forth

From God’s high sanctuary, to work in us

A pure ambition for eternal things,

And glories which our spirit heaves to grasp!

and our senses, and even the scanty reason of illiterate savages?

It is foreign from the intention of this work to dilate on theoretical subjects of any kind: suffice it to say, that the following are simply my own sentiments, which I must be permitted to retain, and which, indeed, nothing on this side the grave can shake.

The omnipotence of the Deity in our creation and destruction-in the union and separation of our bodies and souls - and in rendering the latter responsible for the acts of the former, no Christian denies: and if the Deity be thus omnipotent in forming, destroying, uniting, separating, and judging, He must be equally omnipotent in *reproducing *that spirit and that form which He created, and which remain subject to His will, and always in His power.

It follows, therefore, that the Omnipotent Creator may at will reproduce that spirit which He reserves for future judgment, or the semblance of that body which once contained the undecaying soul. The smallest atom which floats in the sunbeam cannot, as everybody knows, from the nature of matter, be actually *annihilated: *death consequently only decomposes the materials whereof our bodies are formed, which materials are obviously susceptible of being recombined.

The Christian tenets maintain that the soul and body must appear *for *judgment, and why not *before *judgment - if so willed by the Almighty? The main argument which I have heard against such appearances tends nearly as much to mislead, as a general disbelief or denial of Omnipotence-namely, that though this power *may *exist in the Deity, He never *would permit *such spectacles on the earth, to terrify the timorous, and give occasion to paltering with the credulity of His creatures.

It is truly surprising how rational men can resort to these methods of reasoning. When we admit the Omnipotence, we are bound likewise to admit the Omniscience of the Deity; and presumptuous, indeed, must that man be who overlooks the contractedness of his own intellectual vision, or asserts that because he cannot see a reason for a supernatural interference, none therefore can exist in the eye of the Supreme.

The objects of God are inscrutable: an appearance of the departed upon earth may have consequences which none - not *even those who air affectcd by it *can either discover or suppose.

[Nothing in print places my theory in so distinct, clear, and pleasing a point of view as Parnell’s *Hermit, *a strong, moral, and impressive tale; beautiful in poetry, and abounding in instruction. There the Omniscience of Cod is exemplified by human incidents, and the mysterious causes of his actions brought home to the commonest capacity. The moral of that short and simple tale says more than a hundred volumes of dogmatic controversies! The following couplets appear to me extremely impressive

The Maker justly claims that world he made:

In this the right of Providence is laid:

Its sacred majesty, through all, depends

On using second means to work its ends.

What strange events can strike with more surprise

Than those which lately struck thy wondering eyes?

Yet, taught by these, confess the Almighty just;

And where you can’t *unriddle, *learn to trust.]

Can any human wisdom presume to divine why man was originally created at all? why one man is cut short in high blooming health and youth, and another lingers long in age and decrepitude? why the best of men are frequently the most unfortunate, and the greatest villains the most prosperous? why the heinous criminal escapes in triumph, and the innocent being is destroyed by torture? And is the production of a supernatural appearance, for the inscrutable purposes of God, more extraordinary, or less credible, than these other ordinations of the Deity, or than all those unaccountable phenomena of Nature, which are only, as the rising and setting sun, disregarded by common minds from the frequency of their Occurrence?

This is a subject whereon I feel strongly and seriously, and hence it is that I have been led into so long an exordium. I regard the belief in supernatural apparitions as inseparable from my Christian faith and my view of Divine Omnipotence; and however good and learned individuals may possibly impugn my reasoning, I have the consolation of knowing that the very best and wisest doctors in divinity and mastens of arts in the British empire can have no better or *truer *information upon the subject than myself; that I am as much in my senses as many of them; and that the Deity has made no sort of distinction between the intellectual capacity of a bishop and a judge: the secrets of Heaven are not divulged to either of them. The judge does justice to other people, and the bishop does justice to himself: both are equally ignorant of the mysteries of futurity, and must alike wait until they pass the dim boundary of the grave, to gain any *practical *information. When a military captain is ordained a clergyman, as is somewhat the fashion during the peace establishment, does he become one atom wiser or more knowing as to the next world than when he was in the army? Probably, on the other hand, he thinks much less about the matter than when standing upon the field of battle.

I would not have the reader imagine that I should he found ready to receive any idle ghost story which might be told me. So far contrary, I have always been of opinion that no incident or appearance (and I have expressed as much before in this work, however strange, should be considered as supernatural which could *anyhow *be otherwise accounted for, or referred to natural or human agency.

I will proceed at once to the little narrative thus importantly prefaced. The circumstances will, I think, be admitted as of an extraordinary nature: they were not connected with the workings of imagination - depended not on the fancy of a single individual. The occurrence was altogether, both in its character and in its possible application, far beyond the speculations of man. But let me endeavour to soften and prepare my mind for the strange recital by some more pleasing recollections connected with the principal subject of it.

Immediately after the rebellion of 1798, the Countess Dowager of Mayo discovered a man concealed under her bed, and was so terrified that she instantly fled from her country residence in the most beautiful part of County Wicklow: she departed for Dublin, whence she immediately sailed for England, and never after returned. Her ladyship directed her agent, Mr. Davis, immediately to dispose of her residence, demesne, and everything within the house and on the grounds, for whatever they might bring. All property in the disturbed districts being then of small comparative value, and there having been a battle fought at Mount Kennedy, near her house, a short time previous, I purchased the whole estate as it stood, at a very moderate price, and on the ensuing day was put into possession of my new mansion. I found a house not large, but very neat and in good order, with a considerable quantity of furniture, some excellent Wines, &c., and the lands in full produce. The demesne was not extensive, but delightfully situated in a district which, I believe, for the union of rural beauties and mild uniformity of climate, few spots can excel.

I have already disclaimed all pretensions as a writer to the power of scenic description or imaginary landscape, though no person existing is more gratified than myself with the contemplation of splendid Scenery. In saying this, however, I do not mean that savage sublimity of landscape that majestic assemblage of stupendous mountain and roaring cataract - of colossal rocks and innumerable precipices - where Nature appears to designate to the bear and the eagle, to the boar or chamois - those tracts which she originally created for their peculiar accommodation. To the enthusiastic sketcher and the high-wrought tourist I yield an exclusive right to those interesting regions, which are far too sublime for my ordinary pencil. I own that I prefer that luxurious scenery where the art and industry of man go hand in band with the embellishments of Nature, and where Providence smiling combines her *blessings *with her beauties.

Were I asked to exemplify my ideas of rural, animated, cheering landscape, I should say-” My friend, travel Visit that narrow region which we call the *golden belt of Ireland. [That lovely district extends about 30 miles in length, and from four to seven in breadth. It commences near Dublin, and ends at a short distance beyond Avondale. The soil is generally a warm gravel, with verdant valleys, bounded by mountains amble to their summits on one side, and by the sea upon the other. The gold mine is on a frontier of this district, and it is perhaps the most congenial to the growth of trees and shrubs of any spot in the British dominions.] *Explore every league from the metropolis to the meeting of the waters. Journey which way you please, you will find the native myrtle and indigenous arbutus glowing throughout the severest winter, and forming the ordinary cottage fence.”

The scenery of Wicklow is doubtless on a very minor scale, quite unable to compete with the grandeur and immensity of continental landscape. Even to our own Killarney it is not comparable; but it possesses a genial, glowing luxury, whereof more elevated scenery is often destitute. It is, besides, in the world: its beauties seem *alive. *It blooms, it blossoms : the mellow climate extracts from every shrub a tribute of fragrance wherewith the atmosphere is saturated, and through such a medium does the refreshing rain descend to brighten the hues of the evergreens I

I frankly admit myself an enthusiast as to that lovely district. In truth, I fear I should have been enthusiastic on many points, had not law, the most powerful antidote to that feeling, interposed to check its growth.

The site of my sylvan residence, Dunran, was nearly in the centre of the golden belt, about 15 miles from the capital; but owing to the varied nature of the country, it appeared far more distant. Bounded by the beautiful glen of the Downs, at the foot of the magnificent Bellevue, and the more distant sugar-loaf mountain called the Dangle, together with Tynnehinch - less celebrated for its unrivalled scenery than as the residence of Ireland’s first patriot - the dark, deep glen, the black lake, and mystic vale of Lugelough, contrasted quite magically with the highly cultivated beauties of Dunran - the parks, and wilds, and sublime cascade of Powerscourt, and the newly-created magnificence of Mount Kennedy, abundantly prove that perfection itself may exist in contrasts.

In fine, I found myself enveloped by the hundred beauties of that enchanting district, which, though of one family, were rendered yet more attractive by the variety of their features; and had I not been tied to laborious duties, I should infallibly have sought refuge there altogether from the cares of the world.

One of the greatest pleasures I enjoyed whilst resident at Dunran was the near abode of the late Lord Rossmore, at that time commander-in-chief in Ireland. His lordship knew my father, and from my commencement in public life bad been my friend, and a sincere one. He was a Scotsman born, but had come to Ireland when very young, as page to the Lord-Lieutenant. He had married an heiress, had purchased the estate of Mount Kennedy, built a noble mansion, laid out some of the, finest gardens in Ireland, and in fact improved the demesne as far as taste, skill, and money could accomplish. He was what may be called a remarkably fine old man, quite the gentleman, and when at Mount Kennedy quite the *country *gentleman. He lived in a style few people can attain to: his table, supplied by his own farms, was adapted to the Viceroy himself; yet was ever spread for his neighbours; in a word, no man ever kept a more even hand in society than Lord Rossmore, and no man was ever better repaid by universal esteem. Had his connexions possessed his understanding, and practised his habits, they would probably have found more friends when they wanted them.

This intimacy at Mount Kennedy gave rise to an occurrence the most extraordinary and inexplicable of my whole existence, an occurrence which for many years occupied my thoughts and wrought on my imagination. Lord Rossmore was advanced in years, but I never heard of his having had a single day’s indisposition. He bore in his green old age the appearance of robust health. During the viceroyalty of Earl Hardwick, Lady Barrington, at a drawing-room at Dublin Castle, met Lord Rossmore. He had been making up one of his weekly parties for Mount Kennedy, to commence the next day, and had sent down orders for every preparation to be made. The Lord-Lieutenant was to be of the company.

“My little farmer,” said he to Lady Barrington, addressing her by a pet name, “when you go home, tell Sir Jonah that no business is to prevent him from bringing you down to dine with me to-morrow. I will have no ifs in the matter - so tell him that come he *must!” *She promised positively, and on her return informed me of her engagement, to which I at once agreed. We retired to our chamber about twelve, and towards two in the morning I was awakened by a sound of a very extraordinary nature. I listened; it occurred first at short intervals, it resembled neither a voice nor an instrument, it was softer than any voice, and wilder than any music, and seemed to float in the am I don’t know wherefore, but my heart beat forcibly; the sound became still more plaintive, till it almost died away in the air, when a sudden change, as if excited by a pang, changed its tone; it seemed *descending *I felt every nerve tremble: it was not a *natural *sound, nor could I make out the point from whence it came.

At length I awakened Lady Barrington, who heard it as well as myself; she suggested that it might be an Eolian harp; but to that instrument it bore no similitude - it was altogether a different *character of sound. My *wife at first appeared less affected than I, but subsequently she was more so.

We now went to a large window in our bedroom which looked directly upon a small garden underneath; the sound seemed then obviously to ascend from a grass-plot immediately below our window. It continued; Lady Barrington requested that I would call up her maid, which I did, and she was evidently more affected than either of us.

The sounds lasted for more than half an hour. At last a deep, heavy, throbbing sigh seemed to issue from the spot, and was shortly succeeded by a sharp but low cry, and by the distinct exclautation, thrice repeated, of “Rossmore - Rossmore - Rossmore!” I will not attempt to describe my own feelings, indeed I cannot. The maid fled in terror from the window, and it was with difficulty I prevailed on Lady Barrington to return to bed; in about a minute after, the sound died gradually away until all was silent.

Lady Barrington, who is not so *superstitious *as I, attributed this circumstance to a hundred different causes, and made me promise that I would not mention it next day at Mount Kennedy, since we should be thereby rendered *laughingstocks. *At length, wearied with speculations, we fell into a sound slumber.

About seven the ensuing morning a strong rap at my chamber-door awakened me. The recollection of the past night’s adventure rushed instantly upon my mind, and rendered me very unfit to be taken suddenly on any subject. It was light; I went to the door, when my faithful servant, Lawler, exclaimed on the other side, “O Lord, sir !” “What is the matter?” said I hurriedly. “O sir!” ejaculated he, “Lord Rossmore’s footman was running past the door in great haste, and told me in passing that my lord, after coming from the castle, had gone to bed in perfect health, but that about *half-after two *this morning his own man hearing a noise in his master’s bed - he slept in the same room - went to him, and found him in the agonies of death, and. before he could alarm the other servants all was over!”

I conjecture nothing. I only relate the incident as unequivocally matter *of fact *Lord Rossmore was *absolutely dying at the moment I heard his name pronounced. *Let sceptics draw their own conclusions; perhaps natural causes *may *be assigned; but *I *am totally unequal to the task.

Atheism may ridicule me, Orthodoxy may despise me, Bigotry may lecture me, Fanaticism might *burn *me, yet in my very faith I would seek consolation. It is, in my mind, better to believe *too much *than *too little, *and that is the only theological crime of which I can be fairly accused.

Barrington Index. Home.