In estimating the truth or falsehood of such stories it is evident we can derive no proofs from that period of society when men affirmed boldly, and believed stoutly, all the wonders which could be coined or fancied.  That such stories are believed and told by grave historians, only shows that the wisest men cannot rise in all things above the general ignorance of their age.  Upon the evidence of such historians we might as well believe the portents of ancient or the miracles of modern Rome.  For example, we read in Clarendon of the apparition of the ghost of Sir George Villiers to an ancient dependant.  This is no doubt a story told by a grave author, at a time when such stories were believed by all the world; but does it follow that our reason must acquiesce in a statement so positively contradicted by the voice of Nature through all her works?  The miracle of raising a dead man was positively refused by our Saviour to the Jews, who demanded it as a proof of his mission, because they had already sufficient grounds of conviction; and, as they believed them not, it was irresistibly argued by the Divine Person whom they tempted, that neither would they believe if one arose from the dead.  Shall we suppose that a miracle refused for the conversion of God’s chosen people was sent on a vain errand to save the life of a profligate spendthrift?  I lay aside, you observe, entirely the not unreasonable supposition that Towers, or whatever was the ghost-seer’s name, desirous to make an impression upon Buckingham, as an old servant of his house, might be tempted to give him his advice, of which we are not told the import, in the character of his father’s spirit, and authenticate the tale by the mention of some token known to him as a former retainer of the family.  The Duke was superstitious, and the ready dupe of astrologers and soothsayers.  The manner in which he had provoked the fury of the people must have warned every reflecting person of his approaching fate; and, the age considered, it was not unnatural that a faithful friend should take this mode of calling his attention to his perilous situation.  Or, if we suppose that the incident was not a mere pretext to obtain access to the Duke’s ear, the messenger may have been impressed upon by an idle dream—­in a word, numberless conjectures might be formed for accounting for the event in a natural way, the most extravagant of which is more probable than that the laws of Nature were broken through in order to give a vain and fruitless warning to an ambitious minion.

It is the same with all those that are called accredited ghost stories usually told at the fireside.  They want evidence.  It is true that the general wish to believe, rather than power of believing, has given some such stories a certain currency in society.  I may mention, as one of the class of tales I mean, that of the late Earl St. Vincent, who watched, with a friend, it is said, a whole night, in order to detect the cause of certain nocturnal disturbances which