to need recital in this place. Both these men, though terribly oppressed by phantoms of the mind, arising, as they themselves thought, from physical infirmity and disease, have done great service to the cause of common-sense by subjecting the phenomena under which they laboured to calm, philosophical investigation; and so perfectly had long practice given them mental command, that they were able, even when the morbid affliction was raging-when the phantoms were actually present-to examine the condition of their mind and nerves, and lay the result before their fellow-creatures.

The following curious instance of a musical ghost occurred in the writer's own family.

A lady having watched several nights by the bed-side of her sister, (a married woman,) suffering under dangerous illness, was at length fairly exhausted by physical fatigue and mental anxiety. Long privation of sleep had worked its bewildering effect. Further attendance was out of the question at that time. It was absolutely necessary that she should repair to her mother's house, and recruit her strength and spirits in order that she might better be able to

resume her affectionate offices on behalf of one so dear to her and her brother having undertaken to sit up with the patient's husband, and to communicate, in case of need, with his unmarried sister, the latter set out on her return to the maternal home, there to find repose of which she stood so excessively in need.

Utterly weary, worn out, and plodding towards her residence, more by instinct than by perception of outward objects, she almost slept as she walked, and was only roused to consciousness by the sudden glare from a shop-window, produced by a strong light before a polished reflector. Looking about, she could not distinctly remember how she came to be where she was. She felt bewildered and alarmed. Being in the neighbourhood of one of her friends, she thought it would be prudent to call, and, distrustful of further progress in the streets by herself, ask for some one to accompany her. Acccordingly, attended by a servant, she reached her home safely.

But whether her somnolency while walking, or the shock she had received on having been startled into consciousness, or the extreme agita

tion under which she laboured on account of the critical state of her sister-whether any, or all, of these had induced nervous irritability, certain it is that she had no tendency to sleep on sitting down in her own apartment, where she remained in a state of painful vigilance-her thoughts shaping themselves in all kinds of dreary prognostics.

A pianoforte, closed up, was in the room; and, as the almost-exhausted lady leaned back in her chair, she heard, (so she thought,) the keys of the instrument struck on a sudden by some unseen hand, which, after a wild and dismal prelude, performed a dirge-like melody. She had never before heard the air, nor could she imagine how so mournful, so ghastly, so funereal, so spiritual a character could be given to music. In the weakness of her fear, she started up, grasped the back of the chair for support, and ejaculated to herself, "My sister is dead!—these sounds which seem born of tears, announce to me her dissolution !"

On a sudden the strains ceased; and the returning silence was quickly broken by a loud knocking at the street-door. Gasping with

terror, she staggered to open it, when her brother appeared.

"Maria is just dead!" she shrieked; "you come to tell me so!"

"Be calm, I beseech you,” he replied; "I bring you news from the physician that all danger is over, and that she will soon be well."

The delight was too much. The poor watcher fainted in her brother's arms, was conveyed to bed, and, after a night's repose, waked happily at sun-rise.

The imaginary and presaging sounds were falsified, as such omens often are, though the failures are seldom recorded. Had not the hearer of them been so utterly worn out in mind and body, no such sounds would have seemed to be audible. Exhaustion is a cunning impostor.

The best explication ever given of ghostcraft, is that addressed by Cassius to his friend Brutus, after the latter imagined he had seen a phantom in his tent previously to the battle of Philippi.

"In our sect, Brutus," said he, "we have an opinion that we do not always feel or see that

which we suppose we do both see and feel; but our senses being credulous, and therefore easily abused, (when they are idle and unoccupied in their own objects,) are induced to imagine they see and conjecture that which in truth they do not. For our mind is quick and cunning to work (without either cause or matter) anything in the imagination whatsoever. And, therefore, the imagination is resembled to clay, and the mind to the potter; who, without any other cause than his fancy and pleasure, changeth it into what fashion and form he will. And this doth the diversity of our dreams shew unto us. For our imagination doth, upon a small fancy, grow from conceit to conceit, altering both in passions and forms of things imagined. The mind of man is ever occupied; and that continual moving is nothing but an imagination. But yet, there is a further cause of this in you; for you being by nature given to melancholic discoursing, and of late continually occupied, your wits and senses having been overlaboured, do easilier yield to such imaginations. For to say that there are spirits, and, if there were, that they have the shape of men, or such voices,