and arrived at High Wycombe on the third day; where my dear mamma, beautiful as an angel, stretched out her arms, and caught me within them.' 'Now!' continued the Doctor, 'these are precisely the places where the child's corpse will remain on this and the succeeding night before we reach his mother's vault, which is finally to receive it.'"[1]
It will be observed that the above story consists of two parts: the dream of Mr. Petty, as related by Dr. Priestley; and the appearance to Mr. Alsop. Putting aside several minor inaccuracies in the narrative of the Rev. Richard Warner, Rector of Great Chalfield, Wilts, on whose authority it rests, such as the age of Mr. Petty when he died, and the character of his illness, it appears from the statements of Mr. Jervis himself that neither he nor Dr. Priestley attended the funeral, that no communication of the nature mentioned above was ever made to Mr. Jervis by Dr. Priestley, and that the latter never saw Mr. Petty during his last illness. As regards the appearance to Mr. Alsop, it appears to depend on a statement made by Joseph Townsend to Mr. Warner. Townsend however did not state from whom he received it. But the story, says Mr. Warner, is confirmed "by a voucher scarcely to be resisted, the indisputably true report of Dr. Alsop's viva voce declaration on his death-bed." Mr. Warner however does not state who received this declaration, nor on what evidence it is to be received as "indisputably true," while Mr. Jervis himself never heard of it nor of the story, till many years after. There is something ludicrous in a ghost story being fathered upon Joseph Townsend, the utilitarian friend of Bentham,[2] and on Priestley, who at this time was engaged on his Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit, the object of which was to prove that man is purely material, and that the only reason he has to hope for immortality lies in the evidence of the resurrection of Christ.
