f the enlightened portion of the world
a century ago. M. Calmet traversed all history for his facts, and
gives us a mass of monkish inventions, which prove to what an extent
the Romish church fostered superstition for its own purposes. We have
dead men called from their graves to show the danger of neglecting
to pay tithes, and to rivet on the rich the necessity of building
churches, and paying liberally for masses. At p. 286 of vol. 1 we
have a proof that the "knockings" which have made so much noise in
the United States, are no novelty:--

"Humbert Birk, a burgess of note in the town of Oppenheim,
had a country-house, called Berenbach. He died in the month
of November, 1620, a few days before the feast of St. Martin.
On the Saturday which followed his funeral they began to
hear certain noises in the house where he had lived with his
first wife; for at the time of his death he had married
again. The master of this house, suspecting that it was his
brother-in-law who haunted it, said to him: 'If you are
Humbert, my brother-in-law, strike three times against the
wall.' At the same time they heard three strokes only, for
ordinarily he struck several times. Sometimes, also, he
was heard at the fountain where they went for water, and he
frightened all the neighborhood. He did not utter articulate
sounds; but he would knock repeatedly, make a noise, or
a groan or a shrill whistle, or sounds as of a person in
lamentation."

This went on, at intervals, for a year, when the ghost found a voice,
and told them to tell the cure to come there; and when he came he said
he wanted three masses said for him, and alms given to the poor. The
author has the following sensible observations on the modes in which
ghost stories originate:--

"We call to our assistance the artifices of the charlatans,
who do so many things which pass for supernatural in the eyes
of the ignorant. Philosophers, by means of certain glasses,
and what are called magic lanterns; by optical secrets,
sympathetic powders: by their phosphorus, and, lately, by
means of the electric machine, show us an infinite number of
things which the simpletons take for magic, because they know
not how they are produced. Eyes that are diseased do not see
things as others see them, or else behold them differently.
A drunken man will see objects double; to one who has the
ja