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 took place in a certain mansion.
The house was under lease to Mrs. Ricketts, his sister. The result of
his lordship's vigil is said to have been that he heard the noises
without being able to detect the causes, and insisted on his sister
giving up the house. This is told as a real story, with a thousand
different circumstances. But who has heard or seen an authentic account
from Earl St. Vincent, or from his "companion of the watch," or from his
lordship's sister? And as in any other case such sure species of direct
evidence would be necessary to prove the facts, it seems unreasonable to
believe such a story on slighter terms. When the particulars are
precisely fixed and known, it might be time to enquire whether Lord St.
Vincent, amid the other eminent qualities of a first-rate seaman, might
not be in some degree tinged with their tendency to superstition; and
still farther, whether, having ascertained the existence of disturbances
not immediately or easily detected, his lordship might not advise his
sister rather to remove than to remain in a house so haunted, though he
might believe that poachers or smugglers were the worst ghosts by whom
it was disturbed.

The story of two highly respectable officers in the British army, who
are supposed to have seen the spectre of the brother of one of them in a
hut, or barrack, in America, is also one of those accredited ghost
tales, which att