HE age of superstition is fast giving way to the age of science; the occult elements of our nature are now dismissed to the shades by the great modern tyrant, Matter-of-Fact; we shall soon come to "lord it" superciliously over all those subtle feelings and apprehensions which cannot be clearly accounted for by the Schoolmaster, the doctor, the chymist, the mechanist, the grave-digger, and the stone-mason. When we are dead, buried, and epitaphed, it will be sheer imperti

nence "to walk," as of yore, frightening respectable people in bed, or at table, and disturbing them from their business. As the Genius of Philosophy advances, seated aloft on his steam chariot, attended by his stern, remorseless train of anlaytic reasoners and experimentalists, the appalling adumbrations of Signior Goblin or Baron Bogie retreat, appalled in their turn; while those who were unluckily gifted with "the vision and the faculty divine" (say rather with the peculiar temperament and idiosyncrasy) of beholding preternatural shapes, and hearing inorganic voices, are now almost as few in number as "the elect" among poets. The reign of supernatural terror is nearly at the last phase of its final lunation; and thousands of doughty Ghosts in sheets, in armour, or in airy robes, breathing phosphoric fire, pointing with an awful straight finger, and leaving their cards behind them in the shape of a warning scroll, together with a strong perfume of naughty-place sulphur, are now trooping back-like bad ministers turned out of office-sad, forlorn, and unpitied, to seek companionship with the preposterous Shades of ex-giants, in those by gone days when such cubit-lubbers were.

Before we dismiss them, however, to their eternal rest, it may not be improper—indeed we are not sure but the omission would even savour of ingratitude— to allow them a last "squeak and gibber," in the shape of some analysis of the principles on which we have been affected by their various appearances. In doing this, we shall have to demonstrate the paradox

of seeing that which does not in itself exist; or of hearing that which has no sound. Should we succeed, it is manifest that we shall do much to enhance the past respectability of Ghosts, even in bidding them their long farewell.

Travelling one cold winter in the north of England, we found ourselves, towards nightfall, entering a sombre avenue of bare trees, whose broad dark trunks, as we advanced, were gradually expanding into the general shade that was slowly overcoming all the scene. The road would have been a rich slough had the weather been anything but a hard frost; but this apparently fortunate circumstance did not much better our condition, as the frozen ridges of earth, with deep and tortuous trenches between, and ugly holes at awkward intervals, rendered it about as dangerous a horse-road as one could well imagine. It seemed made on purpose to break legs and overturn carts. We accordingly dismounted without loss of time, and began to lead our snorting friend by the bridle.

We will not detain the reader with an account of our disastrous wayfaring; of the many shifts and turnings and pauses we were compelled to make, nor of the monosyllabic ejaculations at the sundry false steps, accompanied with our renewed endeavours and desperate setting of the teeth. Having accomplished about a hundred and fifty yards in the space of somewhat more than an hour, stoppages included, we at length arrived at a tolerably level road, and discerned a light from a window glimmering in the distance.

We accordingly remounted, and, setting off at a gleeful canter, reached the overhanging wooden portal of a small inn, just as a heavy fall of snow was commencing, the flakes of which were as large as those generally used at the minor theatres, though by no means so orderly in their slant, or so regular in their sequence.

We saw our horse lodged in a tolerably good stall, though very unequal to his deserts; and as soon as he had finished his pot of porter and his corn, we entered the house and were ushered into the parlour. It was a small room, furnished as usual, with an oldfashioned mahogany table, leather-bottomed chairs, a huge clock that might have been used by Gog or Magog as a sentry-box, sanded floor, &c. There were six or seven people in the room; and a grave-lookingman, in a pepper-and-salt coat, kindly rose and offered his seat by the fire. Courtesy might have induced us to give a faint declination to "robbing him of his seat ;" but the fact was the cold had by this time made us insensible to the existence of our toes, finger-ends, and tip of our nose; so that we took him at his word without more ado. The room was very warm, full of smoke and argument as we entered, and the subject was "Ghosts."

The company present was composed of a young fair-haired gentleman, attired in a fancy travelling dress, not unlike the Polish costume; a dapper little pug-nosed man, having the air of a grocer, or something in that line; and an elderly hard-featured gen

tleman, with short dark hair that looked as though it had been recently cut with a saw and dressed with a rake. These three we soon discovered to be strangers, who were travelling up to London, being subpoenaed on a trial. He of the pepper-and-salt vesture turned out to be the landlord. The rest, two in number only, were small farmers or graziers living in the neighbourhood.

Addressing the fair gentleman, who seemed to have been the principal speaker, we requested that our frozen and hungry, but fast-reforming condition might not at all interrupt a discussion that appeared so interesting. By degrees the subject was renewed, and the debate soon rose to a very amusing height between the said gentleman and the dapper pug-nose; the latter being frequently seconded by horse-laughs from the graziers, and provokingly dry queries emanating from the old gentleman in the corner.

"I do maintain," exclaimed the pragmatic grocer, "and, what is more, I do insist, that the instances you have adduced in favour of Apparitions are without any sufficient proof or credible attestation; and I make bold to say that no respectable jury in the United Kingdom would listen to any such statement in evidence, for one moment!

"What!" exclaimed the young gentleman contemptuously, "would you have a ghost tried by jury?"

"Certainly; or at all events, why not, if you are determined to make us believe in him?

But to