the state of any of their former acquaintance, are offensive, and not often answered, spirits, perhaps, being restrained from divulging the secrets of their prison house.

Occasionally spirits will even condescend to talk on common occurrences, as it is instanced by Glanvil, in the apparition of Major George Sydenham to Captain William Dyke, Relation 10th, wherein the Major reproved the Captain for suffering a sword he had given him to grow rusty; saying, Captain, Captain, this sword did not use to be kept after this manner when it was mine.' This attention to the state of arms was a remnant of the Major's professional duty when living.

6

It is somewhat remarkable that Ghosts do not go about their business like the persons of this world. In cases of murder, a Ghost, instead of going to the next justice of the peace, and laying its information, or to the nearest relation of the person murdered, appears to some poor labourer who knows none of the parties, draws the curtains of some decrepit nurse or alms-woman, or hovers about the place where the body is deposited. The same circuitous mode is pursued with respect to redressing injured orphans or widows; when it seems as if the shortest and most certain way would be, to go to the person guilty of the injustice, and haunt him continually till he were terrified into a restitution. Nor are the pointing out lost writings generally managed in a more summary way; the Ghost commonly applying to a third person, ignorant of the whole affair, and a stranger to all concerned. But it is presumptuous to scrutinize too far into these matters : Ghosts have, undoubtedly, forms and customs peculiar to themselves.

If, after the first appearance, the persons employed neglect, or are prevented from, performing the message or business committed to their management, the Ghost appears continually to them ; at first with a discontented, next an angry, and at length with a furious countenance, threatening to tear them to pieces if the matter is not forthwith executed; sometimes terrifying them, as in Glanvil's Relation 26th, by appearing in many formidable shapes, and sometimes even striking them a violent blow. Of blows given by Ghosts there were many instances, and some wherein they have been followed with an incurable lameness.

It should have been observed, that Ghosts, in delivering their commissions, in order to ensure belief, communicate

to the persons employed some secret, known only to the parties concerned and themselves, the relation of which always produces the effect intended. The business being completed, Ghosts appear with a cheerful countenance, saying they shall now be at rest, and will never more disturb any one; and thanking their agents, by way of reward communicate to them something relative to themselves, which they will never reveal.

Sometimes Ghosts appear, and disturb a house, without designing to give any reason for so doing; with these, the shortest and only way is to exorcise and eject them: or, as the vulgar term is, lay them. For this purpose there must be two or three clergy, and the ceremony must be performed in Latin; a language that strikes the most audacious Ghost with terror. A Ghost may be laid for any term less than an hundred years, and in any place or body, full or empty; as, a solid oak the pommel of a sword-a barrel of beer, if a yeoman or simple gentleman-or a pipe of wine, if an esquire or justice. But of all places the most common, and what a Ghost least likes, is the Red Sea; it being related, in many instances, that Ghosts have most earnestly besought the exorcists not to confine them in that place. It is nevertheless considered as an indisputable fact, that there are an infinite nnmber laid there, perhaps from its being a safer prison than any other nearer at hand; for neither history nor tradition gives us any instance of Ghosts escaping or returning from this kind of transportation before their time.

Having thus given the most striking outlines of the po pular superstitions respecting Ghosts, I shall next treat of another species of human apparition, which, though it something resembles it, does not come under the description of a Ghost. These are the exact figures and resemblances of persons then living, often seen, not only by their friends at a distance, but many times by themselves; of which there are several instances in Aubrey's Miscellanies: one, of Sir Richard Napier, a physician of London, who being on the road from Bedfordshire to visit a friend in Berkshire, saw at an inn his own apparition lying on the bed as a dead corpse: he nevertheless went forward, and died in a short time; another, of Lady Diana Rich, daughter of the Earl of Holland, who met her own apparation walking in a garden at Kensington, and died a month after of the small-pox. These apparitions are

called Fetches, and, in Cumberland, Swarths; they most commonly appear to distant friends and relations, at the very instant preceding the death of the person whose figure they put on. Sometimes, as in the instances above mentioned, there is a greater interval between the appearance and death.

SKETCH OF A TRADITION.

[Lord Byron appears to have founded his Tragedy of Manfred upon this singular tale, though it cannot be denied that the superstructure bears strong marks of Goëthe's Faustus.]

"His soul was wild, impetuous, and uncontrollable. He had a keen perception of the faults and vices of others, without the power of correcting his own; alike sensible of the nobility, and of the darkness of his moral constitution, although unable to cultivate the one to the exclusion of the other.

"In extreme youth, he led a lonely and secluded life in the solitude of a Swiss valley, in company with an only brother, some years older than himself, and a young female relative, who had been educated along with them from her birth. They lived under the care of an aged uncle, the guardian of those extensive domains which the brothers were destined jointly to inherit.

"A peculiar melancholy, cherished and increased by the utter seclusion of that sublime region, had, during the period of their infancy, preyed upon the mind of their father, and finally produced the most dreadful result. The fear of a similar tendency in the minds of the brothers, induced their protector to remove them, at an early age, from the solitude of their native country. The elder was sent to a German university, and the younger completed his education in one of the Italian schools.

"After the lapse of many years, the old guardian died, and the elder of the brothers returned to his native valley; he there formed an attachment to the lady with whom he had passed his infancy; and she, after some fearful forebodings, which were unfortunately silenced by the voice of duty and of gratitude, accepted of his love, and became his wife.

"In the meantime, the younger brother had left Italy, and travelled over the greater part of Europe. He mingled with the world, and gave full scope to every impulse of his feelings. But that world, with the exception of certain hours of boisterous passion and excitement, afforded him little pleasure, and made no lasting impression upon his heart. His greatest joy was in the wildest impulses of the imagina

tion.

"His spirit, though mighty and unbounded, from his early habits and education naturally tended to repose; he thought with delight on the sun rising among the Alpine snows, or gilding the peaks of the rugged hills, with its evening rays. But within him he felt a fire burning for ever, and which the snows of his native mountains could not quench. He feared that he was alone in the world, and that no being, kindred to his own, had been created; but in his soul there was an image of angelic perfection, which he believed existed not on earth, but without which he knew he could not be happy. Despairing to find it in populous cities, he retired to his paternal domain. On again entering upon the scenes of his infancy, many new and singular feelings were experienced, he is enchanted with the surpassing beauty of the scenery, and wonders that he should have rambled so long and so far from it. The noise and the bustle of the world were immediately forgotten on contemplating

The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.' A light, as it were, broke around him, and exhibited a strange and momentary gleam of joy and misery mingled together. He entered the dwelling of his infancy with delight, and met his brother with emotion. But his dark and troubled eye betokened a fearful change, when he beheld the other playmate of his infancy. Though beautiful as the imagination could conceive, she appeared otherwise than he expected. Her form and face were associated with some of the wildest reveries, his feelings of affection were united with many undefinable sensations,―he felt as if she was not the wife of his brother, although he knew her to be so, and his soul sickened at the thought.

"He passed the night in a feverish state of joy and horror. From the window of a lonely tower he beheld the moon

shining amid the bright blue of an Alpine sky, and diffusing a calm and beautiful light on the silvery snow. The eagle owl uttered her long and plaintive note from the castellated summits which overhung the valley, and the feet of the wild chamois were heard rebounding from the neighbouring rocks; these accorded with the gentler feelings of his mind; but the strong spirit which so frequently overcame him, listened with intense delight to the dreadful roar of an immense torrent, which was precipitated from the summit of an adjoining cliff, among broken rocks and pines, overturned and uprooted, or to the still mightier voice of the avalanche, suddenly descending with the accumulated snows of a hundred

years.

"In the morning he met the object of his unhappy pas sion. Her eyes were dim with tears, and a cloud of sorrow had darkened the light of her lovely countenance.

"For some time there was a mutual constraint in their manner, which both were afraid to acknowledge, and neither was able to dispel. Even the uncontrollable spirit of the wanderer was oppressed and overcome, and he wished he had never returned to the dwelling of his ancestors. The lady was equally aware of the awful peril of their situation, and without the knowledge of her husband, she prepared to depart from the castle, and take the veil in a convent situated in a neighbouring valley.

"With this resolution she departed on the following morning; but in crossing an Alpine pass, which conducted by a nearer route to the adjoining valley, she was enveloped in mists and vapour, and lost all knowledge of the surrounding country. The clouds closed in around her, and a tremendous thunder-storm took place in the valley beneath. She wandered about for some time, in hopes of gaining a glimpse, through the clouds, of some accustomed object to direct her steps, till exhausted by fatigue and fear, she reclined upon a dark rock, in the crevices of which, though it was now the heat of summer, there were many patches of snow. There she sat, in a state of feverish delirium, till a gentle air dispelled the dense vapour from before her feet, and discovered an enormous chasm, down which she must have fallen, if she had taken another step. While breathing a silent prayer to heaven for this providential escape, strange sounds were heard, as of some disembodied voice floating