[1] It will be readily conceived that the curious MSS. and other
    information of which we have availed ourselves were not accessible
    to us in this country; but we have been assiduous in our inquiries;
    and are happy enough to possess a correspondent whose researches on
    the spot have been indefatigable, and whose kind, and ready
    communications have anticipated all our wishes.

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The traditions and manners of the Scotch were so blended with superstitious practices and fears, that the author of these novels seems to have deemed it incumbent on him, to transfer many more such incidents to his novels, than seem either probable or natural to an English reader.  It may be some apology that his story would have lost the national cast, which it was chiefly his object to preserve, had this been otherwise.  There are few families of antiquity in Scotland, which do not possess some strange legends, told only under promise of secrecy, and with an air of mystery; in developing which, the influence of the powers of darkness is referred to.  The truth probably is, that the agency of witches and demons was often made to account for the sudden disappearance of individuals and similar incidents, too apt to arise out of the evil dispositions of humanity, in a land where revenge was long held honourable—­where private feuds and civil broils disturbed the inhabitants for ages—­and where justice was but weakly and irregularly executed.  Mr. Law, a conscientious but credulous clergyman of the Kirk of Scotland, who lived in the seventeenth century, has left behind him a very curious manuscript, in which, with the political events of that distracted period, he has intermingled the various portents and marvellous occurrences which, in common with his age, he ascribed to supernatural agency.  The following extract will serve to illustrate the taste of this period for the supernatural.  When we read such things recorded by men of sense and education, (and Mr. Law was deficient in neither), we cannot help remembering the times of paganism, when every scene, incident, and action, had its appropriate and presiding deity.  It is indeed curious to consider what must have been the sensations of a person, who lived under this peculiar species of hallucination, believing himself beset on all hands by invisible agents; one who was unable to account for the restiveness of a nobleman’s carriage horses otherwise than by the immediate effect of witchcraft:  and supposed that the sage femme of the highest reputation was most likely to devote the infants to the infernal spirits, upon their very entrance into life.

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