sm in manners, something like that of impeaching the genuine value
of the antiquities exhibited by a good-natured collector for the
gratification of his guests. This difficulty will appear greater should
a company have the rare good fortune to meet the person who himself
witnessed the wonders which he tells; a well-bred or prudent man will,
under such circumstances, abstain from using the rules of
cross-examination practised in a court of justice; and if in any case he
presumes to do so, he is in danger of receiving answers, even from the
most candid and honourable persons, which are rather fitted to support
the credit of the story which they stand committed to maintain, than to
the pure service of unadorned truth. The narrator is asked, for example,
some unimportant question with respect to the apparition; he answers it
on the hasty suggestion of his own imagination, tinged as it is with
belief of the general fact, and by doing so often gives a feature of
minute evidence which was before wanting, and this with perfect
unconsciousness on his own part. It is a rare occurrence, indeed, to
find an opportunity of dealing with an actual ghost-seer; such
instances, however, I have certainly myself met with, and that in the
case of able, wise, candid, and resolute persons, of whose veracity I
had every reason to be confident. But in such instances shades of mental
aberration have afterwards occurred, which sufficiently accounted for
the supposed apparitions, and will incline me always to feel alarmed in
behalf of the continued health of a friend who should conceive himself
to have witnessed such a visitation.

The nearest approximation which can be generally made to exact evidence
in this case, is the word of some individual who has had the story, it
may be, from the person to whom it has happened, but most likely from
his family, or some friend of the family. Far more commonly the narrator
possesses no better means of knowledge than that of dwelling in the
country where the thing happened, or being well acquainted with the
outside of the mansion in the inside of which the ghost appeared.

In every point the evidence of such a second-hand retailer of the mystic
story must fall under the adjudged case in an English court. The judge
stopped a witness who was about to give an account of the murder upon
trial, as it was narrated to him by the ghost of the murdered person.
"Hold, sir," said his lordship; "the ghost is an excellent