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plan. It is more to our present purpose to add, that the success of this man assisted to diffuse a taste for necromancy over the nation. "Tricks," is the summary of this by the writer in the Christian Observer, "were devised and executed which serve to illustrate and confirm the opinion, that in all ages, much of what has been referred to spectral appearances has far more connection with the living than the dead. Gustfragog, in the presence of the narrator above-mentioned, produced the shades of the dead, invisible music, called out voices from the dead walls, in short, made matter loquacious, music philosophical, at his pleasure.'

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So also of a well-known and painful narration told by the late Mr. Washington Allston. A student at Cambridge dressed himself up in white as a ghost to frighten his companion, having first drawn the bullets from pistols which he kept at the head of his bed. As the apparition glided by his bed, the youth laughed and cried out: "Vanish, I fear you not." The ghost did not obey him, and at length he reached a pistol and fired it, when seeing the ghost immovable, and invulnerable as he supposed, a belief in a spirit instantly came over his mind, and convulsions succeeding, his extreme terror was soon followed by death.

Predictions, accompanied by ghostly horrors such as this, often bring about their own fulfillment. Dr. Rush, we have heard, told a story of a farmer, near Philadelphia, who took the yellow fever upon hearing from a party of medical students, who wanted to play a practical joke upon him, that he displayed the premonitory symptoms of that disease. Suppose the communications had been made to him under the mask of a simulated apparition, and suppose the imposition had remained undetected, would we not have had a ghost story equal in authentication to the strongest which modern supernaturalism can present?

2d. Mistake of Senses.

Mr. Dendy, in his Philosophy of Mystery, tells us that when at Paris, a few days after the death of Marshal Ney, the servant, ushering into a soirée the Mareschal Ainé, announced by

mistake Mons. Le Mareschal Ney. Instantaneously, says the narrator, the form of the Prince of Moskeva was before his eye.

Now here was an apparition produced by mental association. No one accustomed to the examination of testimony in courts of justice, but will recollect many similar cases. In one case, familiar to the present writer, a witness made a deposit in bank A in mistake for bank B. The appearance of the two buildings was very much the same. Some time afterwards, when the deposit in bank B was denied, he was ready to testify, not only to the fact of the deposit, but to an alleged conversation he had with the receiving teller at the time. The fact was, that he assumed a stand-point, and then grouped in vision around that stand-point all the incidents properly belonging to it.

Visual mistakes find their place here. Thus Lord Nelson's sailors conjured up the bloated corpse of the murdered Prince Caraccioli, as it floated erect towards their ship, as a ghost fraught with a supernatural warning.

A lady was some years back attending a sick husband in a little town on the Hudson river. The windows of the room they occupied looked directly down on a grave-yard. Towards midnight, on Saturday, the disease of the sick man approached a crisis, and his wife was earnestly praying for his recovery. Suddenly she saw in the graveyard a spectral figure in white robes, apparently waving its arms to her as if with a gesture of assent. She called to it the attention of the nurse, who at once fainted. It seemed as if the sick man at once began to recover, but the wife was too much overawed to be willing to remain in a neighborhood open to such apparitions. She was about to remove, when the difficulty was solved by the following account given to her by her washerwoman: "I am obliged to move also, for I have no place to dry my clothes. Last week we were forced to hang them in the churchyard, and then I forgot them, and had to run in towards midnight to catch them up in my arms, so as to keep them from being seen on Sunday morning."

Mr. Dendy tells us of a farmer of Teviotdale, who in the

gloom of evening saw on the wall of a cemetery a pale form throwing about her arms and moving and chattering to the moon. With not a little terror, he spurred his horse, but as he passed the phantom it dropped from its perch, and fixing itself on the croup, clasped him tightly round the waist. He arrived at home; with a thrill of horror exclaimed, "Tak aff the ghaist!" and was carried shivering to bed. And what was the phantom? A maniac widow on her distracted pilgrimage to the grave of her husband, for whom she had mistaken the ill-fated farmer.

The supernatural scenery which once surrounded Lake Superior, may fall under this head. Spectre ships, propelled by giant sailors, were seen on its shores. Bluffs, almost mountain. high, lifted their brows covered with trees of mammoth height. But the ships were Indian canoes, and the bluffs low ridges of sand covered with scrubby pines. The exaggerated size was produced by a peculiar reflective power of the atmo sphere.

Observe, also, the solution of the Giant of the Brocken, as given by M. Haue.

"After having been here for the thirtieth time, and besides other objects of my attention, having procured information respecting the above-mentioned atmospheric phenomenon, I was, at length, so fortunate as to have the pleasure of seeing it; and perhaps my description may afford satisfaction to others who visit Broken through curiosity. The sun rose about four o'clock, and the atmosphere being quite serene towards the east, his rays could pass without any obstruction over the Heinrichshohe. In the south-west, however, towards the Achtermannshohe, a brisk west wind carried before it their transparent vapors, which were not yet condensed into thick, heavy clouds. About a quarter past four, I went towards the inn, and looked around to see if the atmosphere would permit me to have a free prospect to the south-west; when I observed at a very great distance towards the Achtermannshohe, a human figure of a monstrous size. A violent gust of wind having almost carried away my hat, I clapped my hand to it, by moving my arm towards my head, and the colossal figure did the same. The pleasure I felt on this discovery can hardly be described; for I had already walked many a weary step in the hope of seeing this shadowy image, without being able to satisfy my curiosity. I immediately made another movement by bending my body, and the colossal figure before me repeated it. I was desirous of doing the same thing once more, but my colossus had vanished. I remained in the same position, waiting to see whether it would return, and in a few minutes it again made its appearance in the Achtermannshohe. I paid my respects to it a second time, and it did the same to me.

I then called the landlord of the Broken; and having both taken the same position which I had taken alone, we looked toward the Achtermannshohe, but saw nothing. We had not, however, stood long when two such colossal figures were formed over the above eminence, which repeated our compliments by bending their bodies as we did; after which they vanished. We retained our position, kept our eyes fixed upon the same spot, and in a little while the two figures again stood before us. Every movement that we made by bending our bodies, these figures imitated, but with this difference, that the phenomenon was sometimes weak and faint, sometimes strong and well-defined. Having thus had an opportunity of discovering the whole secret of this phenomenon, I can give the following information to such of my readers as may be desirous of seeing it themselves. When the rising sun throws his rays over the Broken upon the body of a man standing opposite to fine light clouds floating around or hovering past him, he needs only fix his eye steadfastly upon them, and in all probability he will see the singular spectacle of his own shadow extending to the length of five or six hundred feet, at the distance of about two miles from him. This is one of the most agreeable phenomena I ever had an opportunity of remarking on the great observations of Germany."

A throng of persons collecting at a given spot, and gazing intently at any specific object, will readily be affected by a delusion concerning it. Mr. Dendy tells us that some time since a very large assemblage was watching with intense interest the stone lion of the Percies at Northumberland House. They were unanimous in the conviction that he was swinging his tail to and fro; a false impression, of course, which had gradually accumulated from this solitary exclamation of a passenger: "By heaven, he wags his tail." Of this sort of illusion we are given the following additional instance. Beneath the western portico of St. Paul's a crowd of gazers were some time since bending their eyes on the image of a saint, who was nodding at them with a very gracious affabil. ity. Curiosity had risen to the pitch of wonder at a miracle, when suddenly a sparrow-hawk flew from the ringlets of the saint, and the illusion vanished.

3d. Guess Work.

Dr. Bushnell, among the very few instances he collects of modern supernatural appearances, gives to the following a particular prominence. He meets, in the Napa Valley of California, a "most venerable and benignant looking individual," one, however, confessedly not a Christian, who tells the following story:

"About six or seven years previous in a mid-winter's night, he had a dream, in which he saw what appeared to be a company of emigrants, arrested by the snows of the mountains, and perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge perpendicular front of white rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what appeared to be the tree-tops, rising out of deep gulfs of snow; he distinguished the very features of the persons, and the look of their particular distress. He woke, profoundly impressed with the distinctness and apparent reality of his dream. At length he fell asleep, and dreamed exactly the same dream again. In the morning he could not expel it from his mind. Falling in, shortly, with an old hunter comrade, he told him the story, and was only the more deeply impressed, by his recognizing, without hesitation, the scenery of the dream. This comrade came over the Sierra, by the Carson Valley Pass, and declared that a spot in the pass answered exactly to his description. By this, the unsophisticated patriarch was decided. He immediately collected a company of men, with mules and blankets, and all necessary provisions. The neighbors were laughing meantime at his credulity. 'No matter,' said he, 'I am able to do this, and I will, for I verily believe the fact is according to my dream.' The men were sent into the mountains, one hundred and fifty miles distant, directly to the Carson Valley Pass. And there they found the company in exactly the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant alive."

Now here we may observe three things. First, in a million of dreams, such as each night brings to pass, it is much more probable that some should come true, than that none should. Secondly, in a winter night, and in such a scene as Dr. Bushnell describes, such a presentiment would be a sagacity rather than a prophecy. Thirdly, to such a man, himself not a believer, we can not conceive any necessity of a supernatural intervention, beyond that which could have been effected by one of the ordinary dispositions of second causes. Let us see, however, whether we find in any explained phenomena of this class ground to believe that such a presentiment as this is soluble on natural grounds.

"If you do so and so, you will rue it." So speaks superior sagacity or superior caution; but does the fulfillment prove the foreknowledge? Columbus predicted to the Indians an eclipse. In this case the prediction was the result of a higher degree of knowledge on his part. An Earl of Caithness, we are told, was desirous of ascertaining the distance of a vessel laden with wine for his cellars. He went to a seer, and received the answer: "At the distance of four hours' sail." The prophet, to prove the truth of his statement, laid before the VOL. VI.-42

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