seldom in
any country an allusion hath been made to such evidence in a court of
justice, although, according to their belief, such instances must have
frequently occurred. One or two cases of such apparition-evidence our
researches have detected.

It is a popular story, that an evidence for the Crown began to tell the
substance of an alleged conversation with the ghost of a murdered man,
in which he laid his death to the accused person at the bar. "Stop,"
said the judge, with becoming gravity, "this will not do; the evidence
of the ghost is excellent, none can speak with a clearer cause of
knowledge to any thing which befell him during life. But he must be
sworn in usual form. Call the ghost in open court, and if he appears,
the jury and I will give all weight to his evidence; but in case he
does not come forward, he cannot be heard, as now proposed, through the
medium of a third party." It will readily be conceived that the ghost
failed to appear, and the accusation was dismissed.

In the French _Causes Celebres et Interessantes_, is one entitled, _Le
Spectre, ou l'Illusion Reprouve_, reported by Guyot de Pittaval [vol.
xii. edition La Haye, 1749], in which a countryman prosecutes a
tradesman named Auguier for about twenty thousand francs, said to have
been lent to the tradesman. It was pretended, that the loan was to
account of the proceeds of a treasure which Mirabel, the peasant, had
discovered by means of a ghost or spirit, and had transferred to the
said Auguier, that he might convert it into cash for him. The case had
some resemblance to that of Fanny the Phantom. The defendant urged the
impossibility of the original discovery of the treasure by the spirit
to the prosecutor; but the defence was repelled by the influence of the
principal judge, and on a charge so ridiculous, Auguier narrowly
escaped the torture. At length, though with hesitation, the prosecutor
was nonsuited, upon the ground, that if his own story was true, the
treasure, by the ancient laws of France, belonged to the Crown. So that
the ghost-seer, though he had nearly occasioned the defendant to be put
to the question, profited in the end nothing by his motion.

This is something like a decision of the great Frederick of Prussia.
One of his soldiers, a Catholic, pretended peculiar sanctity, and an
especial devotion to a particular image of the Virgin Mary, which,
richly decorated with ornaments by the zeal of her worshippers, was
placed in a ch