WHAT has become of the ghosts? Gone — alas! gone. With the immortal comedies of last season — the rotten potatoes of last season — the ruck at the Derby of every season: they are nowhere. Like the stock of defunct railways, whose projection was on paper, and whose projectors are in Boulogne, they will rise no more. Meat may rise — the Thames may rise — early getters-up may rise — but ghosts will never rise again. Like eggs, they are laid once and for all. Pedestrians may walk — penny postmen may, as is their duty, walk — and walking gentlemen may walk — but ghosts will never walk again. They are all the Red Sea. Actors may appear — cheap newspapers may appear — comets may appear — but ghosts will never put in appearances again. Intellect has marched in, and apparitions have marched out. Enter schoolmaster with birch — exeunt ghosts with chains. Steam, electric telegraphs, poses plastiques, and the Polka have driven the unhappy ghosts everlasting smash. We can't bother about them now. The world has got them over like teething or the chicken pox. Not a glare of a ghostly lantern — not a flutter of ghostly shroud — churchyards now are too well bred to yawn, even when the dreariest customers are committed to their bosoms: and as for the prim, gentlemanly cemetries ever thinking of such a solecism is quite out of the question.

      Time was when the "dead of the night" was a ghostly phrase. We don't care now for the dead of the night more than for dead small beer. Oh, the once mysterious hour of twelve! — what magic there was in the dozen solemn strokes. Ghosts answered them as waiters do the bell. This was the way the story used to run:—

      "The last stroke of the castle clock had hardly ceased to vibrate in the haunted turret, and through the long corridors which lead to the vaults underneath the chapel, when Ulric started to hear — as though the sound were an echo — the clanking of a distant chain. In a moment, a blue light illuminated the old gothic apartment, and a secret panel in the oaken wall opening with a grating noise, the figure of the dead Sir Hildebrand, clothed in complete armour, and surrounded a faint blue gleam, slipped forth, and in hollow voice thus addressed his descendant."

      What he said, I know not; for no publisher is likely to be fool enough to pay for his speech, no author is likely to be soft enough to write it. The Mysteries of Paris or of London have replaced those of Udolpho. The old English baron is gone with the respected old English gentleman, all of the olden time. What the crow of the cock was once, the whistle of the locomotive is now — only the latter, instead of sending the ghosts about their business until the dark hours again, is likely to pack them off until the dark ages again. Whenever we have singing for the million, knowledge for the million, pineapples for the million, ragged schools for the million, we may give up all hopes of ghosts for the million. The houses which they delighted to inhabit — the very homes and haunts of English ghosts and ghostesses are disappearing for ever. As for the baronial keeps and very old castles, with walls twelve feel thick so, they arc either in such absolute ruins, that as nobody ever goes there at night, it is obvious that a ghost would be throwing away his valuable time haunting them — or they are dressed up into show places, such perfect traps for loose change, that if the spirit of the founder of the pile himself walked moodily through the slate rooms, the old housekeeper would be down in a twinkling on the unhappy spectre for a shilling. No, it was the "moated grange" style of house — the old Elizabethan, even Queen Anne's species of domicile which used to furnish the best ghost seeing. These were the houses of haunted chambers, red rooms, or yellow rooms, of long corridors, affording capital walking exercise for a ghost of domestic tastes — of faded, gloomy tapestry, which rustled and waved when the night breeze came sighing through the overshadowing trees, and moaning round high peaked gables and down yawning chimneys — of long echoing galleries lined with dreary rows of family portraits — of dark oaken panelling, and secret doors in the wall, with hidden staircases leading nowhere in particular; these jolly old ghost houses, in fine, were just the places — where, tossing restlessly on a huge antique bed, just as the flicker of the moon got brighter than the expiring glare of the dying coals in the vast grate, you heard a low rustling noise, and turning round, saw gliding solemnly by, be-hooped, be-periwigged, and with dismal flutter of brocade, and creak of high-heeled shoes, a stately dame, whose face, she turned it towards you, you recognised as that of the fifth or the eventeenth Lady Penelope of the family, of whose portrait, hung in the great dining room, your worthy but prosy old host has frequently begun to tell you some long legend of horror and ghostliness, but which you never heard the end of, in consequence of always falling asleep before arriving at the middle.

      These were exactly the places which ghost, in search of furnished apartments, would naturally fix upon. He would be as much at home there as a periwinkle in its shell. But only fancy, for a moment, a ghost at No. 6, Albert Terrace, (omnibuses pass the door every five minutes,) or at No. 10, Rose Villas, those elegant and suburban retreats — or rapping double knocks all night at the wainscot — or stalking solemnly about in all the paraphernalia of ghostship, through a four-roomed house, well furnished for fifteen — comfortably for twenty five — elegantly for thirty two — and luxuriously for forty eight pounds sterling!

      Ghosts used to be dismal gentlemen on board ships. Only fancy one in the steward's pantry of Margate steamer. They used to terrible fellows for subterranean passages — imagine one getting into a tunnel, to try to frighten the express train! They were fond of having late evening parties in churches — conceive a report spreading through Somers' Town, or Hackney, that light was seen shining, and solemn unearthly music heard swelling from that square wicker box, called the "Little Bethseda," wherein the Rev. Melchisadeck Swang snuffles a nasal Christianity to his flock of thirteen serious washerwomen.

      No: ghosts, like dogs, have their day — or rather their night — and it is gone. Blue fire burns but at the Surrey — chains but clank where living men stir them — graves but open where the sexton digs. A man may be haunted all night by an indigestion, but not by an apparition.

      Pork may conjure up dismal visions; toasted cheese may call dreary nightmares from the livery stable of a disordered stomach; but it requires neither bell nor book — only pill and draught, to lay them.

      Toll — toll, then, the passing chime for the perishing branches of the family of ghosts, and their brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts — apparitions, phantoms, spectres, goblins, shades, fetches, demons, spirits, imps — the life is out of them. Don your mourning for the departed, ye lovers of the good old times, ye ghostly legend tellers round wintry hearths. Dig, dig, ye public teachers — ye wavers of the torch of knowledge and of science — dig in the shadowy no-man's-land of oblivion that deep, deep grave, wherein shall rest henceforth, and for ever, the midnight phantom, and the gibing fiend, to perplex weak souls — to affright darkened minds — to trouble poor ignorance — and sleepy humanity no more! — Court Journal.