master of finance ;-so a truce to common belief, for ever, as an argument. Then the antiquity of an opinion (with me) will not go much farther than its common prevalence; for there have been ancient opinions, and very reverend ones, which have turned out to be mistaken. Other such opinions have grown weak, like wine, by over keeping. Lampridius tells us of Cauls, in his time, carried by advocates, and orators, and pleaders;-it being believed that they imparted such a power of persuasion to the wearer as no judge or tribunal, or assembly, could withstand. But it is well known, at the present day, that Cauls can do nothing but save people from being drowned; and even that fact may go near to be doubted in another century or two. Then, if neither our current opinion, nor ancient opinion, will help us in this strait, still less could I rely upon any thing in the shape of testimony. In the first place, we have had no "testimonies" at all—that is, none worth consideration-very lately; and, again, there was testimony, and plenty of it, to the cures of Cagliostro and Dr Loutherbourg. Besides, I never heard a story yet, which (faith set apart) was not capable of solution. Either the party who saw was mad, or asleep, or intoxicated, or he deceived himself, or he was deceived by others, or-and this last explanation is absolutely a cutting of the gordian knot -he lied. There is really more in this point, as Canton says, "than good people will think." I was reading over all the evidence in the famous Diamond Necklace case the other day; and I found it as impossible, in a great many statements, to get on without that solution, as Hannibal would have found it, in the Alps, to get on without vinegar. Again, I don't know of any really shrewd man, who has seen a ghost since the gas lights were introduced in our streets; no thief (before conviction); no resurrection man, or experienced Old Bailey counsel, has been so visited. I don't think Sir William Garrow ever saw a ghost. These spirits hate cross examination. Therefore, to prevent all mistakes, or after-claps, or jostlings in my belief, I have made up my mind to believe

upon a ground of my own; and I do believe, be it known by these presents I believe upon the mere probability of the fact!

And what a heaven-listen ye Pagans!-does such a faith open to its proselytes! the mind of a man who believes must be kept so constantly on the qui vive! not a door can bang upon its hinges in the dark, nor a cat squall in a gutter after twilight, but to him it is an object of deep-of vital -interest! the anxious curiosity which the living feel as to the condition of the dead, he (the believer) has hope, to say the least, of gratifying. While grovelling infidels must content themselves to know the present, he looks for intelligence, nay for counsel, as to the future.

Va tout cela, I protest I think we are almost as much indebted to the inventor of a new ghost story, as we should be to the man who could invent, in cookery, a new dish. And there is a world of veracious anecdote (too briefly given) in the old writers, which a hand that could command "the lie with circumstance," might, in detail, render irresistible.

What an admirable tale, for instance, might be constructed upon the legend of the Sunday evening card party; when, three persons being engaged at whist, a fourth (in black) is suddenly added to the company, who takes the vacant chair and hand!

There is another Sunday evening anecdote, of a party (it was in Italy,) who were dancing; and found all at once, to their amazement, that they had two musicians instead of one. This intruder's character was discovered almost immediately, by the shape of the foot with which he beat time.

Pierre Loyer gives a third instance of a huge skeleton who suddenly appeared at a ball; to the consternation of dancers, musicians, and attendants. He came out from behind a door, where he was seen "footing it," for several minutes, to himself; and galloped " down the middle," with preternatural strength and velocity.*

It seems probable to me, however, that these three unbidden guests were not ghosts properly, or Revenans, but incarnations of the fiend in persona.

So Manlius tells us how four thieves, who were hanged in chains, became reanimated, and went in rich clothes, to, visit a gentleman at his own house. Being strangers, they were invited to dinner, and sat down in form to table; but the moment grace was said (this ordeal, the devil probably had not adverted to) they fell down and be came mere carcases, as before.

The same incapacity of the evil one to resist certain sounds and ceremonies, was attended in another case with more unhappy consequences. A decent woman in the Low Countries, who practised a little in sorcery, was returning home one evening upon the back of a demon, after a jollification; when, flying over a church (about two miles high) the chimes happened to play the hundredth psalm; upon which he (the demon) dropped her immediately, and she broke her bones by the fall. This woman probably owed her mischance entirely to having studied Don Calmet, who decries the broomstick, in his work, as a monture, infra dignitatem; but witches who take my advice will still adhere to the besom. There has been no lady within my recollection, (since Mrs Thornton rode at York,) who could have mounted the devil, with any certainty of keeping her seat. A broomstick must be, I should think (to the prudent) a very pleasant, easy-going, Lord Mayor's sort of pad; and it has this peculiar advantage over a demon, that, if all Sternhold and Hopkins were performed in its hearing, the operation, as it cannot hear, would be entirely ineffective.

Bodin thinks it possible that some spectres have appeared with dishonest views; and puts a case indeed in which a ghost becomes little better than a swindler. A comes to the bedside of B, and says "I am the ghost of your grandfather, who died last night; I am in purgatory; cause masses to be said to deliver me;"-this A, all the while, being, in fact, no relation at all to B, but A himself a robber hanged three weeks before. This certainly, in a court of law, would be obtaining masses under false pretences; but Bodin doubts afterwards whether the apparition be really the spirit even of A, or whether it is not some devil, who, for his own purposes, takes the robber's shape. Writers, however, geVOL. XIV.

nerally, on this particular subject, are apt to differ in opinion. The same Bodin, speaking of certain feats performed by jackass, near Milan, maintains that the performer must have been a man in the likeness of an ass; while Reginald Scot, noticing the suggestion, treats the matter in quite a different light; and says that Bodin must have been an ass, in the likeness of a man.

Be this, however, as it may, the devil is a rogue sometimes. His attack upon the attorney (Field) at Shenley, was the most uncandid thing in the world. He went to Field as a client, and induced him to take an exorbitant fee. Now, besides that the exorbitant fee was all in Field's "vocation," the thing altogether is not fairly done. It is like the crimp's trick of slipping a shilling slyly into a man's pocket, instead of putting it, according to the statute, into his hand. So again in the case of the Irishman, who used to find roasted potatoes at night under his pillow. This is taking a man at his foibles.

A good stomach, by the way, seems pretty generally to have given hope to the tempter. William of Malmesbury, who is a great authority in matters of this nature, relates an instance of a monk who had something like a hearty appetite, and was very partial to a preparation, I believe, of hot grey pease. One day feeling a longing between breakfast and dinner,-here probably, lay the sin, luncheons, in a monk, being accounted a gluttony,lo! there came into his cell a beautiful young lady, who lighted a fire in the grate; took some grey pease from a cupboard; dressed them to admiration; and disappeared, leaving them smoking. But the devil was cozened this time, and lost his pease and his labour to boot; for the monk, conquering his hunger until the hour of refection, went to his superior, and related the whole circumstance. Upon which the prior said-" Eat! for pease were made by God for man." And the monk did eat, and spared not, (taking care to say grace first,) and declared that he had never eat pease better cooked in his life.

The same writer, William of Malmesbury, relates another story, which might make a volume-of two women, mother and daughter, who kept an inn 4 M

on a by-road near Rome; and, when a guest arrived, used to turn him into an ass, or a goat; and so sell him to the next comer for what he would fetch. But it has always seemed to me that the ass and the goat here are parabolical; although William of Malmesbury, in his simplicity, has taken the words in their literal sense. As, for example-when a guest arrived at this inn, the old woman made an ass of him-which might well be; and so on to the young one, mutatis mutandis.

On the point of outwitting a demon, the new German story, built probably upon the legend of Lord Lyttleton, is the best. A student at a German University fancies one night, when he has been in bed about an hour, and certainly has not gone to sleep, that his mother comes to his bedside, and warns him of his approaching death. He was to have died on the third night from that on which he saw the vision; and fell ill, (and probably would have died)-on the morning of the third day; the physician, however, who was sent for, gave his patient, privately, a powerful opiate draught; he slept for eighteen hours; and, when he awoke, it was too late for the ghost to keep her word.

Some demons have been rather waggishly than fraudulently inclined. In Switzerland there was such a one, when time was, who passed for a farmer, and was called Maitre Pierre. This caitiff made quantity of pigs out of trusses of straw, and taking them to market, sold them to a butcher. And the butcher drove them safely, three parts of the way home, until passing through a brook, the running water dissolved the spell; and the pigs became trusses of straw again. A farther wonder occurs in this case, when the butcher goes to complain of the cheat. He finds Maitre Pierre gone to bed at his inn, and sends the chambermaid of the house up stairs to wake him. But as the girl lays hold of the conjurer's leg, it comes off in her hand; and the same accident happens when she touches his head; upon which the girl runs down stairs in affright, and the whole family, butcher included, ran up; and Maitre Pierre is found walking about the room in excellent health and spirits. He refunds the money for the pigs; and, of course, is seen no more.

Another rogue, who was a juggler

at Magdeburg, shewed a horse that could read, and so forth, for money. But one day, his audience being smaller than usual, he declared that he would entertain such people as the Prussians no longer. And then throwing the bridle of his horse loose into the air, the horse leapt up after it. And the conjurer laid hold of the horse's tail and went up; and the conjurer's wife laid hold of the conjurer's tail and went up; and the conjurer's wife's maid laid hold of the conjurer's wife's tail and went up; and so they all went up together. Whence the vulgar saying-To go to heaven in a string;" improperly supposed to have been first spoken of, and concerning the penitent hanged.

It is really amazing how anybody can deny themselves the pleasure of believing such strange facts as these; and especially the following.

An over-affection for his profession or calling in this world, may tend to make a person unquiet in the next.One Christopher Murcig, an apothecary's-assistant at Crossten, in Silesia, died on the 14th of March, 1660, and was buried on the 15th. But, on the 16th, he was seen again, in his place, behind the counter, weighing drugs, and pounding, with an immense noise, in the mortar. The horror of the new shopman, at the sight of this coadjutor, may easily be imagined; but, when the clock struck ten, (for this was in the morning,) the apparition took the new-comer's cloak and hat from a nail, and went forth, as he had been used to do at that hour, to visit the patients. It was afterwards found that he called upon several sick persons in the town; and burned one man's wrist, in feeling his pulse, so that the mark of his thumb and finger remains to this day.

Some accounts there be, extant, and very extraordinary ones too, of apparent good conduct by devils, in their visits upon this earth. Giraldus Cambrensis tells of one fiend who acted with great propriety for some time as a gentleman's butler. He was accounted to have the best hand at stirring a fire of any servant in the household; and it was observed, after he was gone, that he had always snuffed the candle with his fingers.

Another demon (according to the same author) took orders, and became a clergyman! This certainly does, at

first sight, seem very strange indeed; but yet it derives some support from another anecdote told by Jean Eveque, d'Asie. There is the proverb, too, moreover, as to the devil's building beside the church; from which one might perhaps augur, that he would get into it if he could.

As the legend goes, however, this fiend conducted himself with great propriety in his profession; and his real quality was discovered only by a slip in conversation. Talking one day with a gentleman upon subjects in ancient history, some act or other was canvassed about the time of Pontius Pilate ; when his reverence enforced his statement of the matter, by saying, "The thing was so; for I saw it." Upon which, concludes the historian," he blushed exceedingly, and vanished."

Both these last devils, no doubt, were of the genus called Blue Devils; and, from the blushing of the latter, the phrase, "to blush blue," may probably have been derived. Or perhaps, indeed, they might not have been devils at all; but merely different incarnations of the wandering Jew; whose habit of changing his shape, from time to time, is notorious; and who has been detected more than once, like the fiendparson, by the over-strength of his memory.

There is another demon, too, on record, besides the butler, who desired to be a servant; and he haunted the kitchen of a certain Bishop of Saxony, in human shape. This fiend assisted very commonly in the culinary arrangements; and is said to have been the first inventor of the "devil'd biscuits."

If such be the fact, however, I should opine that the discovery was accidental, and that his fiendship came rather with a hope to learn cuisine, than with the power of instructing in it. Because, if the proverb as to the devil's sending cooks (peculiarly) should be deemed equivocal, we have it in evidence, twenty times over, that the infernal" roast and boiled" is not what it should be. Paul Grilland speaks of a man whose wife was a witch; and who went out with her one night (up the chimney!) to a banquet. This witness stated distinctly, that he found a magnificent collation set out; but that everything was very ill drest indeed; and that, above all, there was no salt

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upon the table. The event proves, that the man could not be mistaken upon this point; because he mentioned the fact once or twice to an Incubus who stood behind his chair; and, at last, growing out of patience, he cried aloud, "Good God! will nobody bring any salt?" Upon which (as usual in such cases) the table flew away. has need, however, o' a lang spoon, (as the Scottish proverb says,) wha sups kail wi' the deil. This apprentice, or whatever he was, at the Bishop's, behaved very well for some time; but, at length, quarrelling with one of the kitchen lads, he took a private opportunity, tore him to pieces, and cooked him (most likely, for practice.) After which, he became so mischievous, that it was found necessary to proceed against him by exorcism; and there is a long account of his being caught with a great deal of trouble; and eventually laid, for an uncertain term, in a well dripping-pan.

These goblin domestics, indeed, were generally, in the end, ill to deal with, for their masters, as well as their fellow-servants. A Spanish gentleman had one, whose business it was to clean a favourite horse; and the rogue, being idle and negligent, was chid occasionally for not well currying the animal. But mark what followed. Getting tired of repeated jobations, the mischievous imp one day carried the horse up to the top of a high tower, and there left him, with his head thrust out of a window. The Spaniard, returning home, was surprised to hear his favourite neigh to him from so strange a situation; but the demon had disappeared, and the horse never could be got down any more.

All servants, in fact, who take no wages, are apt to be both careless and insolent; and the devil, were it only for his pert tongue, I should think not worth hiring. In the affair of the demon of Mascon, a jeer of his is actually recorded.-Some person-I believe, a man of worship-asking him rather a weak question, with a view to exorcise him, he answered, " I heard long since thou wast a fool, and now I am sure of it." And, thereupon, laughed, or spoke Greek, or committed some other affront against the good man, like an uncourteous fiend as he was.

But I might go on, almost for ever, with strange legends and instances out

of the thousand and one volumes, in all languages, which have been written upon this interesting subject; and not meddle then with the horde of divines and metaphysicians who have touched the question, en passant, either in the way of principle or illustration.There is the impressive story of the Italian soldier, who gave his money in charge at night to his host; which the host, in the morning, denying, and he insisting upon, he was cast into prison as a thief. What can be more exemplary than the man in the black cap who sits under the Judge, upon the trial for the soldier's life; and when the inn-keeper swears he wishes" the devil may take him if ever he had the money," seizes the self-forfeited traitor, and bursts through the roof of the court with him? Or what a tale might be formed upon the legend of Saint Gregory of Nice, who describes the spectres and demons, in a city infected with the plague, walking about in broad day-light-as though growing insolent upon the prospects before them?-Jean Eveque states a similar fact; but, in his case, the fiends went about in the shape of ecclesiastics. Imagine a man sending for a confessor, and a devil making his bow!

Then there are the histories, out of number, of persons frighted by imaginary spectres; all of which lose their force, if we give up the existence of spectres in reality. There is that brilliant idea of the lady who sees a female at the foot of her bed-she recoils but the phantom distinctly moves, and extends its arm towards her. The lady is sleeping in a strange house; and sees herself in a looking-glass, which is framed in the wainscot of the room. Or there is the still more entertaining adventure of the ape who puts on the coeffure of a deceased Duchess, and gets into her bed, to the total rout of the whole household, who believe that their late mistress is come back. And what a delicious idea is that about the boarding-school at Lisle, in 1640; in which one Antionette Bourignon being the mistress, all the young ladies,

to the number of forty, were suddenly discovered to be witches! Some of these girls, says the relater, were very young; and they confessed "many strange things."

And, for myself, my mind is made up, as I have said, to believing all these things without any reason; not merely because I never found anybody yet who could give a satisfactory reason for his belief; but also because most of the writers who explain feats of sorcery, seem to me to make them ten times more incredible than they were made by the sorcerers themselves. Thomas Ady, for instance, a writer upon witchcraft, of the year 1656, after exposing the monstrous frauds of pretended conjurors and wizards, shews the manner in which their apparently miraculous feats are accomplished, and adds full directions for doing the same," without harm or danger." Ady's first recipe for conjuring (ex uno disce, &c.) is not amiss. Take wref's hair," he says, " and put it in your pocket ; and it will make mad bulls, and every other kind of cattle, run away from you !"

No; there would be no getting on, by halves, in this way. For a conjurer to give up the devil, is like a ropedancer's giving up his pole. And, for resigning all these beautiful and entertaining truths, to a man of any spirit, the thing would be impossible. The hunter looks, with an evil eye, upon enclosure bills and increased population; for these are circumstances which thin his game, and narrow his field of action; and the child of romance looks back with regret to those wild beliefs and superstitions of which the progress of science and education has deprived him. Fodoré, a French writer, complains, in a fanciful treatise, of the naturalist Reamur, for having discovered that ants do not eat in the winter. "For, by undeceiving mankind," says he, " as to the providence of these little creatures, Mr Reamur has deprived poets of a beautiful moral illustration."