NOW that the weather is cold and the evenings at their longest — when the day closes in at half past three, and one dines early because one does not know what else to do; and afterwards piles up such a fire, that, no matter how many candles are lighted, the flashing glow on the ceiling, and glass, and picture-frames overcomes them — at this cozy season I sometimes have a small party. My visitors are not numerous. They come at the minute I wish for them, and depart with equally agreeable rapidity. They do not cost me anything to entertain. They are not "fast" up-to-the-time fellows; but grave, and even shabby in their appearance; such as many would not like to be seen in their rooms. We have, however, been friends for many years; and they have, in times of vexation and fretting, given me more consolation than several others upon whom I might, with more plausibility, have reckoned. In a word, they are a few favourite red-edged, round-cornered, musty old books.

      I have not many. Bibliomania is an expensive passion to indulge in, and will affect a large income; but where that income is fished with a steel pen from the bottom of an inkstand, with the same slippery incertitude that attends the spearing of eels in a muddy pond, the taste is, of necessity, entirely kept down. And so I am content with a very few that have come to me as heir-looms, rather than purchases, awaiting patiently, with the resignation of the Flying Dutchman's wife, the time when the long expected ship shall come in that contains my fortune.

      It so happens that the few old books I have, treat almost entirely either of ghosts or prodigies. How our good ancestors contrived to live in full possession of their wits, in those old haunted-looking houses, with so many accredited instances in their popular literature of unearthly visitors calling upon them at all times is, in itself, a marvel. How they ever found themselves alone in their tall ghastly beds, with the moon shining through the mullioned windows upon the tapestry, as she rose over the yew-trees of the adjoining churchyard, without dying with fright, then and there, is matter for serious discussion. Now, it is true, ghosts have somewhat declined in position; not but that I still devoutly believe in them; but circumstances are not so favourable to their appearance. In the country they would shun spots where the gleam and scream of the mail-train might disturb their importance; and in London they would hate the gas-light shining through the bedroom blinds; the rattling of the cabs going home with late roysterers; and, at this their own season, the waits playing the Eclipse Polka, as well as the cornet-à-pistons in the cold, can imitate the great fluttering solo of Kœnig, Arban, or Macfarlane. Ghosts have never been in force in London. I can't tell what you might see if you were shut up all night by yourself in Westminster Abbey; but certainly they eschew the squares, and have a horror of hotels. To be in a cellar at midnight might formerly have been considered a favourable position for meeting one. Imagine the chance a spectre would have at 12 P.M. in the Cyder Cellars! But to our subject more directly.

      The smallest of my books, looking like a little withered old gentleman, is entitled "Miscellanies, collected by J. Aubrey, Esq." Its title-page of contents, amongst which we find "Apparitions," "Omens," "Voices," "Knockings," "Corpse Candles," and other "shudderish" subjects, bespeaks its tendency. It is, I think, the only published work of the author.

      Aubrey must have been on excellent terms with ghosts generally. It is somewhat strange, considering the high respect in which he held them, that none ever paid him a visit. He has, however, no story of his own to recount; but he evidently believes in all the narrations as though he had been the hero of them; and it was on this account that Gifford, somewhat ill-naturedly, called him "a credulous fool." One of his notes, under the head of Magick, will cause a smile. It runs as follows:—

      "In Herefordshire, and other parts, they do put a cold iron bar upon their barrels, to preserve their beer from being soured by thunder. This is a common practice in Kent."

      Modern science has attributed this remedy to other causes than "magick;" indeed, "progress" has sadly upset the wizards. Mephistophiles himself, when he tapped the table to bring forth wine for the students, would have been quenched altogether by Robert Houdin and his inexhaustible bottle. Take another:—

      "There was in Scotland one — (an Obsessus) carried in the air several times in the view of several persons, his fellow-soldiers. Major Henton hath seen him carry'd away from the guard in Scotland sometimes a mile or two. Sundry persons are living now (1671) that can attest this story. I had it from Sir Robert Harley (the son), who marryed Major Henton's widow; as also from E. T. D.D."

      And next to it:—

      "A gentleman of my acquaintance, Mr. — M. was in Portugal, Anno 1655, when one was burnt by the Inquisition for being brought thither from Goa in East India, in the air, in an incredible short time."

      Wonderful as these events must have been at the time, a shilling will procure us a similar spectacle on fine summer Monday afternoons at Cremorne Gardens, when Mr. Green not only carries away one, but a dozen with him in the air. And certainly no Essex Inquisition would now think of condemning to be burnt all "intrepid aeronauts," who came in fifteen minutes from Chelsea to Chelmsford, for which latter neighbourhood descending balloons appear to have a great predilection.

      Following up the "Magick," we have a less satisfactory receipt than that for the thunder.

"To Cure the Thrush.

      "Take a living Frog, and hold it in a cloth, that it does not go down into the child's mouth; and put the head into the child's mouth till it is dead."

      It is not here clearly explained whether the death of the child or the frog puts an end to the thrush. The following is more simple, and at all events harmless.

"To Cure the Toothache.

      "Take a new nail and make the gum bleed with it, and then drive it into an oak. This did cure William Neal, Sir William Neal's son, a very stout gentleman, when he was almost mad with the pain, and had a mind to have pistoll'd himself."

      The cure that an inflamed gum might receive from this rude lancing, is not hinted at. Going on, we find it clearly shewn why the steel horse-shoe now hangs from the glittering Chatelaine at the side of our most fashionable west-end belles, to which enviable position, it will be seen, they have been promoted from the door-steps.

      "It is a thing very common to nail horse-shoes on the thresholds of doors; which is to hinder the power of witches that enter into the house. Most houses of the west-end of London have the horse-shoe on the threshold. It should be a horse-shoe one finds. In the Bermudas they use to put an iron into the fire when a witch comes in."

      We do the latter thing in England, on the entrance of a friend, to give him a cheerful blaze. The next receipt, I think I may safely affirm, is no longer practised.

      "At Paris when it begins to thunder and lighten, they do presently ring out the great bell at the Abbey of St. German, which they do believe makes it cease. The like was wont to be done heretofore in Wiltshire; when it thundered and lightened, they did ring St. Adelm's bell at Malmsbury Abbey. The curious do say that the ringing of bells exceedingly disturbs spirits."

      It certainly exceedingly disturbed mine when I once lived opposite to a country church where the "youths" were wont to ring "triple-majorbobs," or whatever they called them, twice a-week. The subject is, however, worth deep investigation. Perhaps by it, may be accounted for, how it happens always to be such serene and lovely weather on the Queen's festival days: and a new fact in meteorology opened to us.

      As regards matrimony, Aubrey had collected many secrets. "The last summer," he says, "on the Day of St. John Baptist (1694), I accidentally was walking in the pasture behind Montague-House, it was XII a clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees very busie, as if they had been weeding. I could now presently learn what the matter was; at least a young man told me that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their heads that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands: it was to be found that day, and hour."

      Again:— "To know whom one shall marry, you must be in another county, and knit the left garter about the right legg'd stockin (let the other garter and stockin alone), and as you rehearse these following verses, at every comma, knit a knot.

This Knot I knit, To know the thing I know not yet, That I may see The man (woman) that shall my husband (wife) be, How he goes, and what he wears, And what he does all the days.

      "Accordingly, in your dream you will see him; if a musitian, with a lute or other instrument; if a scholar, with a book, &c. A gentlewoman that I knew, confessed in my hearing, that she used this method and dreamt of her husband whom she had never seen: about two or three years after, as she was on Sunday at church, up pops a young Oxonian in the pulpit: she cries out presently to her sister, 'This is the very face of the man that I saw in my dream.' Sir William Somes lady did the like."

      Under the head of Apparitions, is the following paragraph, which is, perhaps, better known than most of Aubrey's collection:—

      "Anno 1670, not far from Cyrencester, was an Apparition: being demanded whether a good spirit, or a bad? returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious perfume, and most melodious twang. Mr. W. Lilly believes it was a Farie."

      This is certainly unsatisfactory — the locality is hazily defined, and the detail not well filled up. But the fact that "Mr. W. Lilly" believed it, to be a "Farie," was quite sufficient. Hitherto we have selected the most ridiculous of Aubrey's miscellanies, but we now come to some which, at all events, are well authenticated. And first, under the head of Dreams:—

      "Sir Christopher Wren, being at his father's house, Anno 1651, at Knahil in Wilts (a young Oxford scholar), dreamt that he saw a fight in a great market-place, which he knew not: where some were flying and others pursuing: and among those that fled, he saw a kinsman of his who went into Scotland to the King's army. They heard in the country that the King was come into England, but whereabout he was they could not tell. The next night his kinsman came to his father at Knahill, and was the first that brought the news of the fight at Worcester."

      Sir Christopher, in all probability, told this story himself to Aubrey: at all events he lived twenty years after the publication of the book. The chronicler also received the following, nearly first-hand. There is, however, little that is supernatural in it: but its quaintness is most diverting:—

      "Dr. — Twiss, minister of the new church at Westminster, told me that his father (Dr. Twiss, Prolocutor of the Assembly of Divines, and author of ), when he was a school-boy at Winchester, saw the Phantome of a school-fellow of his deceased (a Rakehell), who said to him I am damned. This was the occasion of Dr. Twiss (the Father's) conversion, who had been before that time (as he told his son) a very wicked boy. (He was hypochondriacal.)"

      The one or two more stories, that we shall steal from Aubrey, are of a serious character — really "ghost stories" — well attested and inexplicable. "Anno 1647," he says, "the Lord Mohun's son and heir (a gallant gentleman, valiant, and a great master of fencing and horsemanship) had a quarrel with Prince Griffin; there was a challenge, and they were to fight on horse-back in Chelsey-fields, in the morning; Mr. Mohun went accordingly to meet him; but about Ebury-Farm, he was met by some who quarrell'd with him and pistol'd him; it was believed by the order of Prince Griffin; for he was sure that Mr. Mohun, being so much the better horseman, &c., would have killed him, had they fought. In James-street in Covent-garden did then lodge a gentlewoman, who was Mr. Mohun's sweetheart. Mr. Mohun was murthered about ten a-clock in the morning; and at that very time, his mistress being in bed, saw Mr. Mohun come to her bed-side, drew the curtain, looked upon her and went away: she called after him, but no answer: she knocked for her maid, ask'd her for Mr. Mohun; she said, she did not see him, and had the key of her chamber-door in her pocket. This account my friend, aforesaid, had from the gentlewoman's own mouth, and her maids. A parallel story to this, is, that Mr. Brown, (brother-in-law to Lord Coningsby,) discovered his being murthered to several. His Phantome appear'd to his sister and her maid in Fleet-street, about the time he was killed in Herefordshire, which was about a year since, 1693."

      In the following is ground for a good romance:—

      "Sir Walter Long, of Draycot (grandfather of Sir James Long) had two wives; the first a daughter of Sir — Packinton in Worcestershire; by whom he had a son: his second wife was a daughter of Sir John Thinne of Longleat; by whom he had several sons and daughters. The second wife did use much artifice to render the son by the first wife, (who had not much Promethean fire,) odious to his father; she would get her acquaintance to make him drunk; and then expose him, in that condition to his father; in fine, she never left off her attempts, till she got Sir Walter to disinherit him. She laid the scene for the doing this, at Bath, at the assizes, where was her brother Sir Egrimond Thinne, an eminent serjeant-at-law, who drew the writing; and his clerk was to set up all night to engross it; as he was writing, he perceived a shadow on the parchment from the candle; he look'd up, and there appear'd a hand, which immediately vanished; he was startled at it, but thought it might be only his fancy, being sleepy: so he writ on; by and by, a fine whitehand interposed between the writing and the candle (he could discern it was a woman's hand) but vanish'd as before: I have forgot, it appeared a third time; but with that the clerk threw down the pen, and would engross no more, but goes and tells his master of it, and absolutely refused to do it. But it was done by somebody, and Sir Walter Long was prevailed with to seal and sign it. He lived not long after; and his body did not go quiet to the grave, it being arrested at the church-porch by the trustees of the first lady. The heir's relations took his part, and commenced a suit against Sir Walter (the second son) and compell'd him to accept of a moiety of the estate; so the eldest son kept South-Wranchester, and Sir Walter, the second son, Dracot, Cernes, &c. This was about the middle of the reign of King James the First."

      With one more we shall lay Aubrey aside: this is the more interesting, as it has relation to a well-known event in our history:—

      "One Mr. Towes, who had been schoolfellow with Sir George Villers, the father of the first Duke of Buckingham, (and was his friend and neighbour,) as he lay in his bed awake (and it was daylight), came into his chamber the phantome of his dear friend Sir George Villers. Said Mr. Towes to him, 'Why, you are dead; what make you here?' Said the knight, 'I am dead, but cannot rest in peace for the wickedness and abomination of my son George at court. I do appear to you to tell him of it, and to advise and exhort him from his evil ways.' Said Mr. Towes, 'The duke will not believe me, but will say that I am mad, or doat.' Said Sir George, 'Go to him from me, and tell him by such a token (some mole) that he had which none but himself knew of.' Accordingly Mr. Towes went to the duke, who laughed at his message. At his return home, the phantome appeared again, and told him that 'the duke would be stabbed (he drew out a dagger) a quarter of a year after; and you shall outlive him half a year. And the warning that you shall have of your death will be, that your nose will fall a-bleeding:' all which accordingly fell out so. This account I have had (in the main) from two or three; but Sir William Dugdale affirms what I have here taken from him to be true, and that the apparition told him of several things to come, which proved true; e.g., of a prisoner in the Tower that should be honourably delivered. This Mr. Towes had so often the ghost of his old friend appear to him, that it was not at all terrible to him. He was surveyor of the works at Windsor (by favour of the duke.) Being then sitting in the hall, he cried out, 'The Duke of Buckingham is stabbed!' He was stabbed that very moment."

      Next to Aubrey on my shelves of the same octavo form, but far stouter in appearance, so that the two books look like an alderman and a genius side by side — is Glanvil's Saducismus Triumphatus. It differs from Aubrey's work, inasmuch as the former is merely a string of collected anecdotes, imperfectly arranged, and printed one after the other; whereas Glanvil devotes half his book to metaphysical arguments upon the possibility of apparitions: and in his collection of relations, to each of them he adds some comments. It is a regular, downright hair-erecting ghost book; one only to be read, except by strong-minded persons, in the day-time, and in company; and even then with the prospect of a bed-fellow. I was a child when I first read it, and at that time it was the most entrancing book I ever came upon. But I paid dearly for the interest it excited. For a long season I used to lie trembling in bed for hours, as I pondered on the awful stories it contained. They are mostly too long to extract here; but I remember the relation of the chest with the three locks, which opened one after another at the foot of Mr. Bourne's bed, just before he died; and also how the Earl of Donegal's steward, Taverner, riding home, was passed at night, on the high road, by the likeness of James Haddock, who had been dead five years, and who was now mounted on a horse that made no noise; how this spectre wished him to set a will case to rights; and how it haunted him night and day, alone and in company, until he did. There was also a fearful tale of the gashed and bleeding likeness of old Mr. Bowes, of Guildford, appearing to a criminal in prison, which led to the apprehension of the real murderers, as related by Mr. Onslow, a justice of the peace in the neighbourhood. And another ghost (also at Guildford, of which place, by the way, I shall have to recite my own ghost story presently,) who got back some land to the rightful people by appearing to the usurper at a stile, over which he had to pass one evening, going across a field. This last haunted me out of doors as well as within. There was a wooden bridge, with a stile in the middle of it, over a bourne, in the middle of the long, lonely fields between Chertsey and Thorpe, which I always associated with the apparition; and when, as sometimes chanced, I was sent with medicine for some urgent case at the latter village, and it was growing dusk on my return, my heart absolutely quaked within me as I got near the stile. I always expected to see a grey, transparent dead man opposing my passage; and this feeling grew upon me so, that at last I preferred to go round the long road-way, even skirting the dark fir copses of St. Anne's Hill in preference; for one might meet a donkey-cart there by chance, or haply the postman: but in Thorpe Fields, except on Saturday night, when the people came to our town to buy things, the solitude was awful. In the latter case they mostly went home "jolly;" and the walk on such an evening then became a matter of great glory to me. My nightly fears, through reading Glanvil, were equally acute, and they lasted over a longer space of time. The only occasions on which I slept calmly were when the people came to brew; and then the clanking of the pails, the chopping of wood, and the poking of fires, kept up all night long, made it very pleasant.

      One of the most fearful stories in Glanvil's book is not in his narrations, but in a prefatory letter by Dr. H. More, who edited the work; and it is well told as follows:—

      "About the year of our Lord 1632, near unto Chester in the Street, there lived one Walker, a yeoman-man of good estate, and a widower, who had a young woman to his kinswoman that kept his house, who was by the neighbours suspected to be about to become a mother, and was towards the dark of the evening one night sent away with one Mark Sharp, who was a Collier, or one that digged coals under ground, and one that had been born in Blakeburn-hundred in Lancashire; and so she was not heard of a long time, and no noise or little was made about it. In the winter-time after, one James Graham, or Grime, (for so in that country they call them,) being a Miller, and living about two miles from the place where Walker lived, was one night alone very late at the mill grinding corn; and as, about twelve or one o'clock at night, he came down the stairs from having been putting corn in the hopper, the mill-doors being shut, there stood a woman upon the midst of the floor, with her hair about her head, hanging down and all bloody, with five large wounds on her head. He being much affrighted and amazed, began to bless him, and at last asked her who she was, and what she wanted? To which she said, 'I am the spirit of such a woman, who lived with Walker; and he promised to send me to a place where I should be well lookt to until I should come again and keep his house. And accordingly,' said the apparition, 'I was one night late sent away with one Mark Sharp, who, upon a Moor (naming a place that the miller knew), slew me with a pick (such as men dig coals with), and gave me these five wounds, and after threw my body into a coal-pit hard by, and hid the pick under a bank; and his shoes and stockings being bloudy, he endeavoured to wash; but, seeing the bloud would not wash forth, he hid them there.' And the apparition further told the miller, that he must be the man to reveal it, or else that she must still appear and haunt him. The miller returned home very sad and heavy, but spoke not one word of what he had seen, but eschewed as much as he could to stay in the mill within night without company, thinking thereby to escape the seeing again of that frightful apparition. But, notwithstanding, one night, when it began to be dark, the apparition met him again, and seemed very fierce and cruel, and threatened him, that if he did not reveal the murder, she would continually pursue, and haunt him. Yet, for all this, he still concealed it until St. Thomas's-eve before Christmas, when being soon after sunset walking on in his garden, she appeared again, and then so threatened him, and affrighted him, that he faithfully promised to reveal it next morning.

      "In the morning he went to a magistrate, and made the whole matter known, with all the circumstances; and diligent search being made, the body was found in a coal-pit, with five wounds in the head, and the pick, and shoes, and stockings yet bloudy, in every circumstance as the apparition had related unto the miller. Whereupon Walker and Mark Sharp were both apprehended, but would confess nothing. At the Assizes following (I think it was at Durham), they were arraigned, found guilty, condemned, and executed, but I could never hear that they confessed the fact. There were some that reported that the apparition did appear to the Judge or the Foreman of the Jury, (who were alive in Chester in the Street about ten years ago, as I have been credibly informed,) but of that I know no certainty.

      "There are many persons yet alive that can remember this strange murder and the discovery of it; for it was, and sometimes yet is, as much discoursed of in the North country, as any thing that almost hath ever been heard of, and the relation printed, though now not to be gotten. I relate this with the greatest confidence (though I may fail in some of the circumstances) because I saw and read the letter that was sent to Serjeant Hutton, who then lived at Goldsbrugh, in Yorkshire, from the judge before whom Walker and Mark Sharp were tried, and by whom they were condemned; and had a copy of it until about the year 1658, when I had it and many other books and papers taken from me. And this I confess to be one of the most convincing stories, (being of undoubted verity,) that ever I read, heard, or knew of, and carrieth with it the most evident force to make the most incredulous spirit to be satisfied that there are really sometimes such things as apparitions."

      This horrible story is corroborated further by two of the witnesses on the trial, men of credit, before Judge Davenport. One of them deposed, on oath, that he saw the likeness of a child stand on Walker's shoulders during the time of the trial, at which time the judge was very much troubled, and passed sentence that night — a thing never the custom in Durham before. Those who have paid any attention to these matters may remember, in our own time, that the body of Maria Martin was discovered in the Red Barn, at Polstead, in consequence of her appearing to her parents in a dream. Of course this was not mentioned at the trial of her murderer, Corder; but it was known to have been the case. There appears something more than nervous fancy or coincidence in this.

      The greater part of Glanvil's book is taken up with accounts of the doings of witches, and of the disturbances in haunted houses; but they are mostly very silly. As regards the first, Lady Duff Gordon's admirable translation of "The Amber Witch" is far more interesting; and, for the second, the most circumstantial detail does not impress you with one-hundredth part of the mysterious terror that Hoon's "Haunted House" called forth.^*

* In that fine poem were some half dozen lines singularly descriptive of the scene, which, sometime afterwards, the murder of the Duchesse de Praslin, impressed so forcibly on the public mind. I do not think the coincidence was ever noticed. They ran — "The floor alone retain'd the trace of guilt,  Those boards obscurely spotted. "Obscurely spotted to the door, and thence  With mazy doubles to the grated casement —  Oh, what a tale they told of fear intense,  Of horror and amazement! "What human creature in the dead of night  Had coursed like hunted hare that cruel distance!  Had sought the door, the window in the flight,  Striving for dear existence? "What shrieking spirit in that bloody room,  Its mortal frame had violently quitted?"

      One more scrap from Glanvil before we leave him. Dr. More says he was accustomed to have an argument on the immortality of the soul with "an old gentleman in the countrey, an excellent justice of peace, and a piece of a mathematician; but what kind of philosopher he was, you may understand from a rhyme of his own making, which he commended to me on my taking horse in his yard, which rhyme is this:—

"Ens is nothing till sense finds it out:  Sense ends in nothing, so nought goes about;"

which rhyme of his was so rapturous to himself, that at the reciting of the second verse, the old gentleman turned himself about upon his toe as nimbly as one may observe a dry leaf whisked round in the corner of an orchard-walk by some little whirlwind." And with this quaint anecdote we put Glanvil by.

      And from him we turn to a large folio of 1649, teeming with excellent wood-cuts, whereof all the personages look as if they were ready dressed to perform in "The Huguenots," and in which the "figures," or "effigies" of the elephant and whale appear as wonders, although the well-defined tables of the human blood-vessels would scarcely disgrace the ablest anatomical demonstrator of the present day. This large book contains the works of Ambrose Paré, who was successively the bold and successful surgeon to the French kings, Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III. — who dressed the wounds of the unfortunate Coligni at the time of the terrible Bartholomew's Eve; and who, on the night before the massacre was locked up by Charles in his own chamber, that he might not be murdered, albeit he was a Protestant. He says little about ghosts, for a believer in the supernatural; but his "Prodigies are of the wildest order. He gives pictures of all of them, which I regret cannot here be reproduced; and he has these illustrated from the slightest descriptions. What he would have made of the sea-serpent is difficult to tell. But Pontoppidan had not then been born, nor had the Dædalus been launched: elsewise, in his chapter devoted to "the wondrous nature of some marine things," we might have expected an account as long as its object. One thing, however, is worthy of serious remark, in his general "prodigies." Many of them, classed on a level with the rest in point of the marvellous, have had their fellows in our own time. He pictures a case parallel to that of the Siamese twins; and has also an account of a child with two heads, similar to the infant that died in Paris in 1829. He moreover pourtrays a baby with four arms, four legs, and one head, a companion to which died in Westminister in 1838, and an account of it appears in The Times of Sept. 17 in that year. Now, if it is possible for such monsters — which take high rank amongst his prodigies — to exist, may not the majority of the rest be also matters of likelihood?

      But to his marvels: and out of compliment to the marine monster quoted above, who has made a little stir of late, we will commence with some of Ambrose Paré's ocean wonders. And first, of two ecclesiastical prodigies. "In our times, saieth Rondeletius, in Norway, was a monster taken in a tempestuous sea, the which as manie as saw it, presently termed a monk, and Anno Dom. 1531, there was seen a sea-monster in the habit of a bishop." He also authenticates a sea-monster, with the head of a bear, and feet and hands of an ape: another, with a lion's head and man's voice: and one like a man, "with his countenance composed to gravity, and his hair yellow," but a fish from the waist downwards, who came one fine morning out of the Nile. Others are spoken of as "with the head, mane, and breast of a horse:" and others seventy feet long, with heads like swine's.

      But in another story he is more plausible. "Whilest in my vineyard," he says, "that is at Meudon, I caussed certain huge stones to bee broken to pieces, a toad was found in the mid'st of one of them. When as I much admired thereat, becaus there was no space wherein this creature could bee generated, increas, or live; the Stone-cutter wished me not to marvel thereat, for it was a common thing: and that hee saw it almost everie daie. Certainly it may com to pass, that from the more moist portion of stones, contained in places moist and underground, and the celestial heat mixing and diffusing it self over the whole mass of the world, the matters may bee animated for the generation of these creatures."

      Reporters who live upon enormous gooseberries and showers of frogs, might have amassed large incomes in his time; for he speaks of "great and thick bars of iron which fell from heaven, and presently turned into swords and rapiers;" and also of a stone that tumbled from the skies in Hungary, and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. And we find, at three separate periods in Italy, it has rained flesh, corn, and milk and oil. If any turn in the weather would bring about a like series of showers in Ireland just at present, what a great thing it would be!

      Ambrose Paré's system of surgery and medicine was wonderfully sensible for the time in which he lived: much of his treatment would hold good at the present day. Occasionally, however, we may put less trust in him. He says, "If one tell an ass in his ear that hee is stung by a scorpion, they saie that the danger is immediately over." But, he adds, "oft times there is no small superstition in things that are outwardly applied, such as to make pills of one hanged, against the bitings of a mad dog: for any one to bee free'd from the cough who shall spit in the mouth of a toad, letting her go away alive; or the halter wherein one hath been hanged, put about the temples to help the headache." He very properly deems all these as "superstitious fictions," albeit the devil will sometimes make them prosper, to keep the workers ensnared to his service. There are very many other marvellous histories in Ambrose Paré, but as they are better suited to the medical than the general ear, they may be passed over.

      Finally, I mentioned that I had a ghost-story, hitherto unpublished, to tell about Guildford. About ten years ago my brother was a pupil at the Grammar-School in that town. The boys had been sitting up all night in their bedroom for a frolic, and, in the early morning, one of them, young K——, of Godalming, cried out, "Why! I'll swear there's the likeness of our old huntsman on his grey horse going across the whitewashed wall!" The rest of the boys told him he was a fool, and that they had all better think about going to sleep. After breakfast, a servant came over from K——'s family to say, "that their old huntsman had been thrown from his horse and killed, early that morning, whilst airing the hounds."

      Leaving the reader to explain this strange story, which may be relied upon, I put my old books back on their shelves, and lay aside my pen. For it is very late: the clock is ticking with a ghostly sound, as if it was about to talk, and the furniture appears positively to be growing alive, whilst I cannot help thinking that whole hosts of spectres are behind the window curtains. The candles, too, are burning with a most uncomfortable glare, and altogether I expect, if I do not get to bed whilst I can hear somebody moving in the house, the first thing that I see when I open the door to go, will be some dreadful apparition standing on the mat at the bottom of the staircase.