‘With regard to this vision,’ says the ingenious Dr. Hibbert, ’the appearance of our Saviour on the cross, and the awful words repeated, can be considered in no other light than as so many recollected images of the mind, which probably had their origin in the language of some urgent appeal to repentance that the colonel might have casually read or heard delivered.  From what cause, however, such ideas were rendered as vivid as actual impressions, we have no information to be depended upon.  This vision was certainly attended with one of the most important of consequences connected with the Christian dispensation—­the conversion of a sinner.  And hence no single narrative has, perhaps, done more to confirm the superstitious opinion that apparitions of this awful kind cannot arise without a divine fiat.’  Doctor Hibbert adds in a note—­’A short time before the vision, Colonel Gardiner had received a severe fall from his horse.  Did the brain receive some slight degree of injury from the accident, so as to predispose him to this spiritual illusion?’—­Hibbert’s Philosophy of Apparitions, Edinburgh, 1824, p. 190.

NOTE 6

The courtesy of an invitation to partake a traveller’s meal, or at least that of being invited to share whatever liquor the guest called for, was expected by certain old landlords in Scotland even in the youth of the author.  In requital mine host was always furnished with the news of the country, and was probably a little of a humorist to boot.  The devolution of the whole actual business and drudgery of the inn upon the poor gudewife was very common among the Scottish Bonifaces.  There was in ancient times, in the city of Edinburgh, a gentleman of good family who condescended, in order to gain a livelihood, to become the nominal keeper of a coffee-house, one of the first places of the kind which had been opened in the Scottish metropolis.  As usual, it was entirely managed by the careful and industrious Mrs. B—­; while her husband amused himself with field sports, without troubling his head about the matter.  Once upon a time, the premises having taken fire, the husband was met walking up the High Street loaded with his guns and fishing-rods, and replied calmly to someone who inquired after his wife, ’that the poor woman was trying to save a parcel of crockery and some trumpery books’; the last being those which served her to conduct the business of the house.

There were many elderly gentlemen in the author’s younger days who still held it part of the amusement of a journey ’to parley with mine host,’ who often resembled, in his quaint humour, mine Host of the Garter in the Merry Wives of Windsor; or Blague of the George in the Merry Devil of Edmonton.  Sometimes the landlady took her share of entertaining the company.  In either case the omitting to pay them due attention gave displeasure, and perhaps brought down a smart jest, as on the following occasion: