Till thou hast thy health again!
Mend thou in God's name!"

John Aubrey in his _Miscellanies_ has many naïve evidences of the
twilight region of consciousness, like that between wake and sleep,
which tends to fade when we are wideawake; so much so, that we call it
visionary. Yet it is very real to the haunted folk, to Aubrey's
correspondent, the Rector of Chedzoy, or to the false love of the Demon
Lover, or that Mr Bourne of whom Glanvil tells in _The Iron Chest of
Durley_, or the Bishop Evodius who was St Augustine's friend, or for
that matter the son of Monica himself. The reality of these visitations
may seem dim, but the most sceptical of us cannot doubt that, whether
from some quickened fear of death or impending disaster, from evil
conscience or swift intensification of vision; whether in the forms of
beloved sons lost at sea or of other revenants who were held
indispensably dear in life, the haunters have appeared, to the absolute
belief of those who saw them or their simulacra.

"It poseth me," said Richard Baxter, "to think of what kind these
visitants are. Do good spirits dwell then so near us, or are they sent
on such messages?" The question, indeed, poseth most of us, but we
cannot leave the inquiry alone. M. Larigot, realising this
preoccupation, has in the course of his investigations, during many
years, arrived at the conclusion that there is an Art of the
Supernatural, apart from the difficult science of psychical research,
worth cultivating for its own sake. So he has gone to Glanvil and Arise
Evans and the credulous old books--to Edgar Poe and Lord Lytton and the
modern writers who tell supernatural tales. He gives us their material
without positing its unquestionable effect as police-court evidence, and
if we recognise its artistic interest, he does not mind much if we say