tion of Drelincourt on Death, and complained to of twenty shillings, this troublesome ghost would Defoe of the loss which was likely to ensue. The come as before, whistle in a calm at the mainnast experienced bookmaker, with the purpose of recom- at noon-day, when they had descried land, and then mending the edition, advised his friend to prefix the ship and goods went all out of hand to wreck; incelebrated narrative of Mrs. Veal's ghost, which he somuch that he could at last get no ships wherein wrote for the occasion, with such an air of truth, to stow his goods, nor any mariner to sail in them; that although, in fact, it does not afford a single for, knowing what an uncomfortable, fatal, and lotitle of evidence properly so called, it nevertheless sing voyage they should make of it, they did all dewas swallowed so eagerly by the people, that Dre-cline his service. In her son's house she hath her lincourt's work on Death, which the supposed spirit constant haunts by day and night; but whether he recommended to the perusal of her friend Mrs. Bar- did not, or would not own, if he did see her, he algrave, instead of sleeping on the editor's shelf, mov- ways professed he never saw her. Sometimes when ed off by thousands at once; the story, incredible in bed with his wife, she would cry out, Husband, in itself, and unsupported as it was by evidence or look, there's your mother! And when he would turn inquiry, was received as true, merely from the cun- to the right side, then was she gone to the left; and ning of the narrator, and the addition of a number when to the left side of the bed, then was she gone of adventitions circumstances, which no man alive to the right: only one evening their only child, a girl could have conceived as having occurred to the of about five or six years old, lying in a truckle-bed mind of a person composing a fiction. under them, cries out, "O help me, father! help me, It did not require the talents of Defoe, though in mother, for grandmother will choke me! and before that species of composition he must stand unrivalled, they could get to their child's assistance, she had to fix the public attention on a ghost story. John murdered it; they finding the poor girl dead, her Dunton, a man of scribbling celebrity at the time, throat having been pinched by two fingers, which succeeded to a great degree in imposing upon the stopped her breath and strangled her. This was the public a tale which he calls the Apparition Evidence. sores of all their afflictions; their estate is gone, and The beginning of it at least, for it is of great length, now their child is gone also; you may guess at their has something in it a little new. At Mynehead, in grief and great sorrow. One morning after the child's Somersetshire, lived an ancient gentlewoman, nam-funeral, her husband being abroad, about eleven in ed Mrs. Leckie, whose only son and daughter resi- the forenoon, Mrs. Leckie the younger goes up into ded in family with her. The son traded to Ireland, her chamber to dress her head, and, as she was lookand was supposed to be worth eight or ten thousanding into the glass, she spies her mother-in-law, the pounds. They had a child about five or six years old beldain, looking over her shoulder. This cast old. This family was generally respected in Myne- her into a great horror; but recollecting her affrighthead; and especially Mrs. Leckie, the old lady, wased spirits, and recovering the exercise of her reason, so pleasant in society, that her friends used to say faith, and hope, having cast up a short and silent to her, and to each other, that it was a thousand prayer to God, she turns about, and bespeaks her: pities such an excellent, good-humoured gentle- In the name of God, mother, why do you trouble woman must, from her age, be soon lost to her me?' Peace says the spectrum; 'I will do thee friends. To which Mrs. Leckie often made the no hurt. What will you have of me?' says the somewhat startling reply: "For as much as you daughter," &c.* Dunton, the narrator, and probanow seem to like me, I am afraid you will but little bly the contriver of the story, proceeds to inform us, care to see or speak with me after my death, though at length, of a commission which the wife of Mr. I believe you may have that satisfaction." Die, Leckie receives from the ghost to deliver to Atherton, however, she did, and after her funeral, was repeat-Bishop of Waterford, a guilty and unfortunate man, edly seen in her personal likeness, at home and who afterward died by the hands of the executioner; abroad, by night and by noon-day. but that part of the subject is too disagreeable and tedious to enter upon.

One story is told, of a doctor of physic walking into the fields, who in his return met with this spectre, whom he at first accosted civilly, and paid her the courtesy of handing her over a style; observing, however, that she did not move her lips in speaking, or her eyes in looking round, he became suspicious of the condition of his companion, and showed some desire to be rid of her society. Offended at this, the hag at next style planted herself upon it, and obstructed his passage. He got through at length with some difficulty, and not without a sound kick, and an admonition to pay more attention to the next aged gentlewoman whom he met. "But this," says John Dunton, " was a petty and inconsiderable prank to what she played in her son's house, and elsewhere. She would at noon-day appear upon the key of Mynehead, and cry, 'A boat, a boat, ho! a boat, a boat, ho! If any boatmen or seamen were in sight and did not come, they were sure to be cast away; and if they did come, 'twas all one, they were cast away. It was equally dangerous to please and displease her. Her son had several ships sailing between Ireland and England; no sooner did they make land, and come in sight of England, but this ghost would appear in the same garb and likeness as when she was alive, and, standing at the mainmast, would blow with a whistle, and though it were never so great a calm, yet immediately there would arise a most dreadful storm, that would break, wreck, and drown the ship and goods, only the seamen would escape with their lives-the Devil had no permission from God to take them away. Yet at this rate, by her frequent apparitions and disturbances, she had made a poor merchant of her son, for his fair estate was all buried in the sea, and he that was once worth thousands was reduced to a very poor and low condition in the world; for whether the ship was his own or hired, or he had but goods on board it to the value

So deep was the impression made by the story on the inhabitants of Mynehead, that it is said the tradition of Mrs. Leckie still remains in that port, and that mariners belonging to it often, amid tempestuous weather, conceive they hear the whistle-call of the implacable hag who was the source of so much mischief to her own family. However, already too desultory, and too long, it would become intolerably tedious were we to insist farther on the peculiar sort of genius by which stories of this kind may be imbodied and prolonged.

I may, however, add, that the charm of the tale depends much upon the age of the person to whom it is addressed; and that the vivacity of fancy which engages us in youth to pass over much that is absurd, in order to enjoy some single trait of imagination, dies within us when we obtain the age of manhood, and the sadder and graver regions which lie beyond it. I am the more conscious of this, because I have been myself, at two periods of my life, distant from each other, engaged in scenes favourable to that degree of superstitious awe which my countrymen expressively call being eerie.

On the first of these occasions, I was only nineteen or twenty years old, when I happened to pass a night in the magnificent old baronial castle of Glammis, the hereditary seat of the Earls of Strathmore. The hoary pile contains much in its appearance, and in the traditions connected with it, impressive to the imagination. It was the scene of the murder of a Scottish king of great antiquity; not, indeed, the gracious Duncan, with whom the name naturally associates itself, but Malcolm the Second. It contains also a curious monument of the peril of feudal times, being a secret chamber, the entrance of which, by the law or custom of the family, must only be

* Apparition Evidence.

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[LET. X.

known to three persons at once, viz. the Earl of Strathmore, his heir apparent, and any third person whom they may take into their confidence. The extreme antiquity of the building is vouched by the immense thickness of the walls, and the wild and straggling arrangement of the accommodation within doors. As the late Earl of Strathmore seldom resided in that ancient mansion, it was, when I was there, but half furnished, and that with moveables of great antiquity, which, with the pieces of chivalric armour hanging upon the walls, greatly contributed to the general effect of the whole. After a very hospitable reception from the late Peter Proctor, Esq., then seneschal of the castle, in Lord Strathmore's absence, I was conducted to my apartment in a distant corner of the building. I must own, that as I heard door after door shut, after my conductor had retired, I be-bling the human figure, have obtained the name of gan to consider myself too far from the living, and somewhat too near the dead. We had passed through what is called "the King's room,' a vaulted apartment, garnished with stags' antlers, and similar trophies of the chase, and said by tradition to be the spot of Malcolm's murder, and I had an idea of the vicinity of the castle chapel.

In spite of the truth of history, the whole night scene in Macbeth's castle rushed at once upon my mind, and struck my imagination more forcibly than even when I have seen its terrors represented by the late John Kemble and his inimitable sister. In a word, I experienced sensations, which, though not remarkable either for timidity or superstition, did not fail to effect me to the point of being disagreeable, while they were mingled at the same time with a strange and indescribable kind of pleasure, the recollection of which affords me gratification at this

Macleod and his lady the courteous offer of the haunted apartment of the castle, about which, as a stranger, I might be supposed interested. Accordingly, I took possession of it about the witching hour. Except, perhaps, some tapestry hangings, and the extreme thickness of the walls, which argued great antiquity, nothing could have been more comfortable than the interior of the apartment; but if you looked from the windows, the view was such as to correspond with the highest tone of superstition. An autumnal blast, sometimes clear, sometimes driving mist before it, swept along the troubled billows of the lake, which it occasionally concealed, and by fits disclosed. The waves rushed in wild disorder on the shore, and covered with foam the steep piles of rock, which, rising from the sea in forms something resemMacleod's Maidens, and in such a night, seemed no bad representatives of the Norwegian goddesses. called Choosers of the Slain, or Riders of the Storm. There was something of the dignity of danger in the scene; for on a platform beneath the windows lay an ancient battery of cannon, which had sometimes been used against privateers even of late years. The distant scene was a view of that part of the Quillan mountains which are called, from their form, Macleod's Dining-Tables. The voice of an angry cascade, termed the Nurse of Rorie Mhor, because that chief slept best in its vicinity, was heard from time to time mingling its notes with those of wind and wave. Such was the haunted room at Dunvegan, and as such, it well deserved a less sleepy inhabi tant. In the language of Dr. Johnson, who has stamped his memory on this remote place, "I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more affected; but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be moved." In a word, it is necessary to confess, that, of all I heard or saw, the most engaging spectacle was the comfortable bed, in which I I had been on a pleasure voyage with some friends hoped to make amends for some rough nights on around the north coast of Scotland, and in that ship-board, and where I slept accordingly, without course had arrived in the salt-water lake under the thinking of ghost or goblin, till I was called by my Castle of Dunvegan, whose turrets, situated upon a servant in the morning, frowning rock, rise immediately above the waves of the loch. As most of the party, and I myself in particular, chanced to be well known to the Laird of Macleod, we were welcomed to the castle with Highland hospitality, and glad to find ourselves in polished society, after a cruise of some duration. The most modern part of the castle was founded in the days of James VI.; the more ancient is referred to a period "whose birth tradition notes not." Until the present Macleod connected by a drawbridge the site of the castle with the mainland of Skye, the access must have been extremely difficult. Indeed, so much greater was the regard paid to security than to convenience, that in former times the only access to the mansion arose through a vaulted cavern in a rock, up which a staircase ascended from the sea shore, like the buildings we read of in the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe.

moment.

In the year 1814, accident placed me, then past middle life, in a situation somewhat similar to that which I have described.

Such a castle in the extremity of the Highlands was of course furnished with many a tale of tradition, and many a superstitious legend to fill occasional intervals in the music and song, as proper to the halls of Dunvegan as when Johnson commemorated them. We reviewed the arms and ancient valuables of this distinguished family-saw the dirk and broadsword of Rorie Mhor, and his horn, which would drench three chiefs of these degenerate days. The solemn drinking cup of the Kings of Man must not be forgotten, nor the fairy banner given to Macleod by the Queen of Fairies; that magic flag, which has been victorious in two pitched fields, and will still float in a third, the bloodiest and the last, when the Elfin Sovereign shall, after the fight is ended, recall her banner, and carry off the standard-bearer. Amid such tales of ancient tradition, I had from

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From this I am taught to infer, that tales of ghosts and demonology are out of date at forty years and upwards; that it is only in the morning of life that this feeling of superstition comes o'er us like a summer cloud," affecting us with fear, which is solemn and awful rather than painful; and I am tempted to think, that if I were to write on the subject at all, it should have been during a period of life when I could have treated it with more interesting vivacity, and might have been at least amusing, if I could not be instructive. Even the present fashion of the world seems to be ill suited for studies of this fantastic nature; and the most ordinary mechanic has learning sufficient to laugh at the figments which in former times were believed by persons far advanced in the deepest knowledge of the age.

I cannot, however, in conscience, carry my opinion of my countrymen's good sense so far as to exculpate them entirely from the charge of credulity. Those who are disposed to look for them may, without much trouble, see such manifest signs, both of superstition and the disposition to believe in its doctrines, as may render it no useless occupation to compare the follies of our fathers with our own. The sailors have a proverb, that every man in his lifetime must eat a peck of impurity; and it seems yet more clear that every generation of the human race must swallow a certain measure of nonsense. There remains hope, however, that the grosser faults of our ancestors are now out of date; and that whatever follies the present race may be guilty of, the sense of humanity is too universally spread to permit them to think of tormenting wretches till they confess what is impossible, and then burning them for their pains.

END OF DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT.

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