I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august
      calamities on record; but in these it is the extent, not less
      than the character of the calamity, which so vividly impresses
      the fancy. I need not remind the reader that, from the long and
      weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have selected many
      individual instances more replete with essential suffering than
      any of these vast generalities of disaster. The true
      wretchedness, indeed—the ultimate woe——is particular, not
      diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man
      the unit, and never by man the mass——for this let us thank a
      merciful God! To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific
      of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere
      mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen
      will scarcely be denied by those who think. The boundaries which
      divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall
      say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that
      there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the
      apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations
      are merely suspensions, properly so called. They are only
      temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism. A certain
      period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets
      in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver
      cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably
      broken. But where, meantime, was the soul? Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, _a priori_ that
      such causes must produce such effects——that the well-known
      occurrence of such cases of suspended animation must naturally
      give rise, now and then, to premature interments—apart from this
      consideration, we have the direct testimony of medical and
      ordinary experience to prove that a vast number of such
      interments have actually taken place. I might refer at once, if
      necessary, to a hundred well-authenticated instances. One of very
      remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh
      in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago,
      in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a
      painful, intense, and widely-extended excitement. The wife of one
      of the most respectable citizens—a lawyer of eminence and a
      member of Congress—was seized with a sudden and unaccountable
      illness, which completely baffled the skill of her physicians. After much suffering she died, or was supposed to die. No one
      suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was not
      actually dead. She presented all the ordinary appearances of
      death. The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The
      lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the
      body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony
      rigidity. The funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the
      rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition. The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three
      subsequent years, was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term
      it was opened for the reception of a sarcophagus; but, alas! how
      fearful a shock awaited the husband, who, personally, threw open
      the door! As its portals swung outwardly back, some
      white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms. It was the
      skeleton of his wife in her yet unmoulded shroud. A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived
      within two days after her entombment; that her struggles within
      the coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the
      floor, where it was so broken as to permit her escape. A lamp
      which had been accidentally left, full of oil, within the tomb,
      was found empty; it might have been exhausted, however, by
      evaporation. On the uttermost of the steps which led down into
      the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, with which,
      it seemed, that she had endeavored to arrest attention by
      striking the iron door. While thus occupied, she probably
      swooned, or possibly died, through sheer terror; and, in failing,
      her shroud became entangled in some iron-work which projected
      interiorly. Thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect. In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France,
      attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion
      that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. The heroine of the
      story was a Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade, a young girl of
      illustrious family, of wealth, and of great personal beauty. Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor
      _litterateur_, or journalist of Paris. His talents and general
      amiability had recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by
      whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her pride of birth
      decided her, finally, to reject him, and to wed a Monsieur
      Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence. After
      marriage, however, this gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even
      more positively ill-treated her. Having passed with him some
      wretched years, she died—at least her condition so closely
      resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. She was
      buried——not in a vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village
      of her nativity. Filled with despair, and still inflamed by the
      memory of a profound attachment, the lover journeys from the
      capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with
      the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing
      himself of its luxuriant tresses. He reaches the grave. At
      midnight he unearths the coffin, opens it, and is in the act of
      detaching the hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the
      beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried alive. Vitality
      had not altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses
      of her lover from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death. He bore her frantically to his lodgings in the village. He
      employed certain powerful restoratives suggested by no little
      medical learning. In fine, she revived. She recognized her
      preserver. She remained with him until, by slow degrees, she
      fully recovered her original health. Her woman’s heart was not
      adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed to soften it. She
      bestowed it upon Bossuet. She returned no more to her husband,
      but, concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to
      America.