The superstitions of nations must always be interesting, since they afford
a criterion of the progress that knowledge and reason have made. To trace
the origin of the belief that departed spirits revisit the earth, a belief
apparently so repugnant to reason and revelation, must ever attract the
attention of the curious. For it is a question of importance to religion,
even although the existence of apparitions would not in the slightest
degree invalidate those sacred writings on which the bases of religion are
founded; on the contrary, if the reality of apparitions (that is of the
existence of apparitions) could be ascertained, another proof would be
added to an immense weight of testimony of the ability possessed by the
Deity to arrest or alter what appears the ordinary course of nature.

The existence of apparitions has been acknowledged by many, and a tendency
towards a belief of them is to be remarked in many more. Ardent, and what
is stranger still, since directly opposed to ardent, morbid minds are too
ready to embrace "the pleasing dreadful thought," and to this may be
attributed the prevalence of this kind of superstition among the poets, and
all indeed of an enthusiastic temperament.[3] Some of the tales urged in
defence of apparitions are upon a _primâ facié_ observation to be traced to
an exuberance[4] of imagination on the part of the ghost, others that are
plainly false, and others that as they cannot be authenticated, are not
worthy of notice. I shall here give what I consider an example of the
former.

[3] Dr. Johnson, it is well known, was a firm believer in
ghosts, as the following extract will show:--"That the dead are
seen no more," said Imlac, "I will undertake to maintain,
against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages, and
of all nations. * * * This opinion which, perhaps, prevails as
far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by