I have read some theories, or rather hypotheses, of apparitions, in which the authors attempt to account for the appearance of those unsubstantial shadows, resembling the forms of living men, by circumstances connected with the physical laws of matter.  But I am rather inclined to hold, with another class of inquirers, that the origin of such marvels must be looked for in the mind of the seers; although I do not go the length of their scepticism, and deny the actual existence of the ghostly show, as a real and visible spectacle, before the eyes.

These observations will derive some illustration at least, if not entire confirmation, from the following narrative, which is deemed to be authentic in the neighbourhood in which the scene is laid; and the application of which the judicious reader will, no doubt, be able to make for himself.

About the middle of the last war, the Polly, tender, commanded by lieutenant Watts, came swooping up one evening to the small town of Auchinbreck, in Scotland, and, resolving to pounce, without warning, upon her prey, as soon as she had anchored in the roads, sent ashore the press-gang to pick up as many of the stout boat-builder lads as they could catch.  The towns-people, however, were not so unprepared as the captain of the tender imagined; some of those, indeed, who were fit for sea, ran up into the hills, but by far the greater number collected about the corner of a building-shed as you go on to the main street, and, when the signal of hostility was given, by the capture of a man by the press-gang, they rushed down upon them in a body, every one with his axe on his shoulder like a troop of Indians with their tomahawks.  It had now become so dark that the sailors had much to do to keep their footing upon the loose stones of the beach, which was just at this time rendered a still more troublesome passage by the scattered materials of a pier, then beginning to be built; and, besides, their number was so small compared to the townspeople, that, after a few strokes of the cutlas, and as many oaths as would have got a line-of-battle ship into action and out again, they were fain to retreat to their boat, pursued by the boat-builders, young and old, like furies.  A midshipman, sitting in the stern, whose name was William Morrison, a fine lad of fifteen, observed the fate of the action with feelings in which local and professional spirit struggled for the mastery.  One moment he would rub his hands with glee, and the next unsheath his dagger in anger, as he saw the axe of a fellow-townsman descend on the half-guarded head of a brother sailor; but, when the combatants came within oar’s length of the boat, and the retreat began to resemble a flight, the esprit de corps got the upper hand in the Auchinbrecken midshipman’s feelings, and, unsheathing his dagger, he jumped nimbly ashore and joined in the fray.  At last the sailors got fairly into their boat without a single man being either missing or killed, although the list of the wounded included the whole party; and the landsmen, apparently pretty much in the same circumstances, although unable, from their number and the darkness, to reckon as instantaneously the amount of the loss or damage, after giving three cheers of triumph, retired in good order.