by the Archbishop of Canterbury;" "Wooden Idols proved not Gods, by the Dean of Carlisle ;" and a "Discrediting of Diana of the Ephesians, in Seven Sermons, by Father Newman." All we can possibly say against the reappearance of the dead, continues Mrs. Crowe, is, not that it is impossible, but that we do not believe it; and if we say this, we ought at once to be subjected to the interrogation, "Have you devoted your life to sifting all the evidence that has been adduced on the other side from the earliest periods of history and tradition?" Unless we have done this, we are bound to believe; and even when we have done this, we shall be bold inquirers if we think ourselves entitled to say more than that the question is open. This is shifting the burden of proof with a vengeance. Fortunately for us, however, we all know disbelief is not the result of elaborate inquiry of this sort; but is due to the mind being occupied by certain positive convictions, which by their simple presence exclude those matters which are inconsistent with them; and that where no such inconsistent prepossession obtains, it is instinctive with us to seek some sort of evidence for that which claims. our belief, rather than to believe until we can obtain satisfactory evidence of a negative. This seems elementary; and it is not doing justice even to ghosts to claim our belief in them on principles of inquiry so directly opposed to those which are true and natural.

Any value which Mrs. Crowe's book might have as an attempt at the solution of some of the most puzzling facts of our experience, is destroyed by the undiscriminating voracity with which she devours every thing that bears the semblance of the marvellous. But Mrs. Crowe begs all the facts, and only asks you to scrutinise the explanation of them. She shares largely in a not uncommon delusion, that we extend the boundaries of knowledge by inventing new theories to account for unascertained facts; and she is simply blind to the idea that any story about spirits can be false. An anecdote has only to send up its card

with "ghost" written on it, and it is at once admitted into the innermost penetralia of her convictions.

Ghosts are a theory. It is with reluctance we refine further upon their already shadowy existence; yet what, after all, are they but an hypothesis to solve certain phenomena that have been presented? Men have seen, or have thought they have seen, the persons of those dead as if they still lived. Various solutions of such experiences have been proposed: one of them is, ghosts,that these figures are actual persons reappearing among us-revenants. When the phenomena shall have been sufficiently established, and ghosts shown to be the most consistent and satisfactory solution of their existence, they will be entitled to the honours of a scientific discovery. No one can say it is an impossible solution; à priori we do not know why it should be considered an improbable one. Where we know so little, it is not wise to deny much; but it is at least as hard to affirm without good grounds. And it cannot be denied, that the proving of a ghost is a matter attended with very peculiar difficulties; and the first and most important of these are connected with the ascertainment of the facts on which we are to base our conclusion. You cannot subject a ghost to scientific scrutiny under a microscope, or otherwise; nor can you, except rarely, and in a very slight degree, test the event of its appearance, as you do the truth of most events, by its consistency with other events which surround it. He comes when it suits his own purpose, not yours; and has never shown any willingness to subject himself to experiment. He simply presents himself: if you believe in him, well and good; if not, it is impossible for him to produce credentials. He is out of harmony with the world of matter in which he appears, and has nothing to fall back upon. His main stronghold lies, not in any evidence that can be adduced in his favour, but in the common prepossessions-superstitions, if you will—of our nature. We have all, if we would admit it,

a sympathy with the candid objector, who confessed that while stoutly denying the possibility of the appearance of spirits, he felt a cold stream down his back. It is the strong internal conviction which men in all ages have had of a spiritual world existing not far from their own, and of occasional trespasses across the common boundary, that makes ghost-stories possible. It is for this reason that they are the received hypothesis to explain various occurrences that puzzle us, and the popular and willingly accepted scapegoats of startling events. When strange noises are heard in a house, we rather say it is haunted than that material substances are moving about of their own accord; we rather believe that a ghost than a man walks through a bolted door. In these and similar cases, the supposition of spiritual interference, though it clashes with our experience, is more in harmony with our nature than one which infringes the ascertained laws of material existence. Men, naturally and rightly, are more ready to refer unexplained exhibitions of force to hidden living wills than to occult properties of matter.

Such

Hence general arguments in favour of ghosts carry us with them; but though we listen with interest to particular recitals of their appearance, it is few who in their hearts believe them. If we are to do so without having ourselves experienced them, it must be as a pure matter of trust in those who allege they have done so. trust, no doubt, mingles in all our belief. The mass of knowledge in most men is supported more or less by reliance upon others; but it is rarely mere personal trust. Many of us are very imperfectly acquainted with the chain of reasoning and calculation which convinces that an eclipse will occur at a given moment; but we know the kind of knowledge on which it depends-we exercise ourselves, in a more or less degree, the same faculties as those by which others have attained to this result, and we know too that among all competent persons who do examine the question there is an absolute coincidence of

opinion. It is a matter which has received great corroboration; but more than this, it is in its nature capable of unlimited corroboration, for every man may if he chooses test its truth for himself. Our confidence in such a case is not so much trust in men, as faith in the capacity for right working of the human mind. It is one thing to rely upon another person for the truth of a certain fact, it is another to be dependent upon him for its truth. We trust him just because we are not dependent on the sole evidence of his assertion, because there is other evidence if we choose to seek it. In the inverse proportion as facts are permanent or repeated under circumstances open to varied observation, and as they are capable of experimental test, does our belief in them depend on individual human trustworthiness. Though I may have never seen the sea, I believe in the ebb and flow of the tides on different grounds to those on which I believe in a remarkable meteor which my neighbour tells me he saw at ten o'clock last night. My belief in the latter depends almost entirely on my personal confidence in my neighbour; not entirely so, because others may have seen it; his statement is open at least to corroboration or refutation; and I know from other sources that such things are not uncommon. When, however, he tells me he saw a ghost, that in the dead of the night his grandmother stood by his bedside in a shattered cottage-bonnet or otherwise, I am absolutely dependent on his veracity and powers of accurate observation; and by veracity we mean to specify, not unwillingness to tell a lie, but all the moral and mental characteristics which enable a man to transmit correctly to another mind his own experience-characteristics which those who have had any experience in collecting evidence will admit to be rare.

But this position of absolute reliance on the individual who professes to have seen it, is the highest certainty we can attain to of the existence of a ghost. For ourselves, we rarely think it worth while to ask any one if

he has seen a ghost; we content ourselves with inquiring, Have you ever seen a person who has seen a ghost? It is rarely indeed that you can get one of these stories at first hand. They are almost always exposed to the chances of error which accumulate in all secondary evidence, from imperfect recital, imperfect comprehension, imperfect memory, and imperfect truthfulness; all swayed one way by love of the marvellous, and the still more deeply-rooted human passion, love of a good story. man who has seen a ghost has good evidence to go on. A man who hears the account of a trustworthy man who says he has seen a ghost has evidence more or less reliable; but a man who reads in a book that an unknown person, X, appeared to an unknown person, Y, what evidence has he?

A

Take as an instance of the sort of testimony on which we are generally dependent in ghost-stories, and of the way in which they are retailed, the following brief anecdote from Mrs. Crowe's book:

"The American case-I have omitted to write down the name of the place, and forget it-was that of a mother and son. She was also a highly-respectable person, and was described to me as perfectly trustworthy by one who knew her. She was a widow, and had one son, to whom she was extremely attached. He, however, disappeared one day, and she never could learn what had become of him; she always said that if she did but know his fate she should be happier. At length, when he had been dead a considerable time, her attention was one day, whilst reading, attracted by a slight noise, which induced her to look round, and she saw her son, dripping with water, and with a sad expression of countenance. The features, however, presently relaxed, and they assumed a more pleasing aspect before he disappeared. From that time she ceased to grieve, and it was subsequently ascertained that the young man had run away to sea; but no more was known of him. Certain it was, however, that she attributed her recovered tranquillity to having seen her son as above narrated." Now in this case we are dependent on the accuracy, 1, of the author; 2, of her informant; 3, of the respectable