served the same before, and that it was the ghost of old.

The younger brother soon after was appointed to another curacy, and left this house; nor was he sorry to do so; though I know not if he was ever disturbed again. This story was related by a brother of these two, who vouched for the truth of it, as it was told him by the elder brother.

SOPHRON. Here, I think, we will close this part of our subject. Our remaining night is, you know, to be devoted to the consideration of modern prophecies and witchcraft.

SCEPT. Let it be so by all means; and allow me to join your party.

SOPHRON. With pleasure.

NIGHT IX.

OF INTERCOURSE WITH GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS.

PISTUS. It is a singular, but certain fact, that of the many recorded stories of apparitions which have occurred in later times, almost all are those of spirits that once tenanted a human body; hardly one of angels, whether good or bad.

SOPHRON. And the reverse is what you might expect. For one account in Holy Scripture of the re-appearance of a human spirit (unless, indeed, that magnificent description of Eliphaz the Temanite, be referred to this head), we have thirty or forty visitations of angels, both to the good, and also to the bad.

THEO. It is that last consideration which renders the matter more difficult to explain; else it might be said that the weakness of present faith, and the abundance of present iniquity, were amply sufficient to account for the fact.

EUSEBIA. It cannot, however, be said, that the visible ministrations of angels have entirely ceased.

We have that Derbyshire relation, in which a child was taken out of the stream, into which she had accidentally fallen, by (what she declared to be) a beautiful lady, clad in white. As no such person was discoverable, far or near, the parents not unnaturally concluded that an angel had been commissioned to save their little one from death.

THEO. I, too, have heard a story of a similar nature. A widower, with his two children, was on a visit at the house of a friend. The children were playing about (for it was an oldfashioned place) in its rambling passages, their father being ignorant that one of them opened on a deep and uncovered well, when, according to their own account, they were met by the figure of their deceased mother, who made them return. If the apparition were indeed she whom it personated, it is a beautiful instance of the endurance of earthly love beyond the grave: if it were their guardian angel, permitted to assume that shape, it is hardly a less striking lesson of the heed we should take not to despise one of these little ones. I never heard, however, any other tale of the appearance of angels, and am sure that many such do not exist.

PISTUS. And just as rare is it to find instances in which evil spirits, known and confessed as such, have appeared. I pass by the instances of witchcraft, as better spoken of another time: but putting these, be they universally false, or with a

mixture of truth, aside, there is hardly a case on record where any man professes to have seen or spoken with an evil spirit.

SOPHRON. The case most in point, perhaps, is that famous one at Hammel, in Saxony, where, on the 20th of June, 1484, a piper entered the town, playing a tune which seemed to exercise an irresistible fascination on all the children that heard it. One hundred and thirty, in spite of all efforts used to prevent them, followed the man, and were never afterwards heard of.

PISTUS. Of indefinite apparitions of evil spirits there are traditions enough: and the old writers on demonology invented, as we have seen, a particular class of fiends, whom they called ambulones, whose business it was to mislead travellers on wide heaths and solitary places.

SOPHRON. It is curious to observe how, in the common fictions with respect to intercourse between man and his great enemy, the devil is constantly represented as one whom it is most easy to interest and to dupe. He rarely gets the best of a bargain it is the man who overreaches the evil one. Some flaw is discovered in the engagement; some cunning method of eluding the most express and binding compacts; and the man exults in having outwitted Satan. Now I know not whether this arises from a good or a bad cause. It may arise from either. At first sight it seems a device of the evil one himself, content to be

despised in this life, if thereby he may the more easily secure his prey in the next. And certain it is, that the light and trifling way of naming the devil in all European languages, and the familiar and absurd names which are bestowed on him, have done incalculable harm. This seems to lead to the conclusion that the source of this contempt is bad. But then again when I consider that this feeling prevails most strongly in the most Catholic country under the sun, namely, Brittany, I see another possible origin for it. For in like manner as many heathens hated and abhorred the evil spirits whom they worshipped, and yet worshipped them, because they so greatly dreaded them, so the feeling of the Church with respect to her ghostly enemies would be precisely the contrary. She too would hate and abhor them, but it would be a hatred without the smallest particle of respect, or fear, or doubt of final victory: she would feel that she was conquering them every day, and would go on conquering to the end and that feeling involves also the most bitter scorn and contempt. If only for that reason, no mediæval poet could have written Paradise Lost. And in the same way medieval painters generally represent fiends as rather absurd and grotesque than frightful; something which would occasion laughter, were it not for the strong mixture of disgust.

PISTUS. Perhaps there may be somewhat of