e kind attempted to be got up near Edinburgh, but detected
at once by a sheriff's officer, a sort of persons whose habits of
incredulity and suspicious observation render them very dangerous
spectators on such occasions. The late excellent Mr. Walker, minister at
Dunottar, in the Mearns, gave me a curious account of an imposture of
this kind, practised by a young country girl, who was surprisingly quick
at throwing stones, turf, and other missiles, with such dexterity that
it was for a long time impossible to ascertain her agency in the
disturbances of which she was the sole cause.

The belief of the spectators that such scenes of disturbance arise from
invisible beings will appear less surprising if we consider the common
feats of jugglers, or professors of legerdemain, and recollect that it
is only the frequent exhibition of such powers which reconciles us to
them as matters of course, although they are wonders at which in our
fathers' time men would have cried out either sorcery or miracles. The
spectator also, who has been himself duped, makes no very respectable
appearance when convicted of his error; and thence, if too candid to add
to the evidence of supernatural agency, is yet unwilling to stand
convicted by cross-examination, of having been imposed on, and
unconsciously becomes disposed rather to colour more highly than the
truth, than acquiesce in an explanation resting on his having been too
hasty a believer. Very often, too, the detection depends upon the
combination of certain circumstances, which, apprehended, necessarily
explain the whole story.

For example, I once heard a sensible and intelligent friend in company
express himself convinced of the truth of a wonderful story, told him by
an intelligent and bold man, about an apparition. The scene lay in an
ancient castle on the coast of Morven or the Isle of Mull, where the
ghost-seer chanced to be resident. He was given to understand by the
family, when betaking himself to rest, that the chamber in which he
slept was occasionally disquieted by supernatural appearances. Being at
that time no believer in such stories, he attended little to this hint,
until the witching hour of night, when he was awakened from a dead sleep
by the pressure of a human hand on his body. He looked up at the figure
of a tall Highlander, in the antique and picturesque dress of his
country, only that his brows were bound with a bloody bandage. Struck
with sudden and extreme fear,