ource of so much mischief to her own family. However, already
too desultory and too long, it would become intolerably tedious were I
to insist farther on the peculiar sort of genius by which stories of
this kind may be embodied and prolonged.

I may, however, add, that the charm of the tale depends much upon the
age of the person to whom it is addressed; and that the vivacity of
fancy which engages us in youth to pass over much that is absurd, in
order to enjoy some single trait of imagination, dies within us when we
obtain the age of manhood, and the sadder and graver regions which lie
beyond it. I am the more conscious of this, because I have been myself
at two periods of my life, distant from each other, engaged in scenes
favourable to that degree of superstitious awe which my countrymen
expressively call being _eerie_.

On the first of these occasions I was only ninteeen or twenty years old,
when I happened to pass a night in the magnificent old baronial castle
of Glammis, the hereditary seat of the Earls of Strathmore. The hoary
pile contains much in its appearance, and in the traditions connected
with it, impressive to the imagination. It was the scene of the murder
of a Scottish king of great antiquity; not indeed the gracious Duncan,
with whom the name naturally associates itself, but Malcolm the Second.
It contains also a curious monument of the peril of feudal times, being
a secret chamber, the entrance of which, by the law or custom of the
family, must only be known to three persons at once, viz., the Earl of
Strathmore, his heir apparent, and any third person whom they may take
into their confidence. The extreme antiquity of the building is vouched
by the immense thickness of the walls, and the wild and straggling
arrangement of the accommodation within doors. As the late Earl of
Strathmore seldom resided in that ancient mansion, it was, when I was
there, but half-furnished, and that with movables of great antiquity,
which, with the pieces of chivalric armour hanging upon the walls,
greatly contributed to the general effect of the whole. After a very
hospitable reception from the late Peter Proctor, Esq., then seneschal
of the castle, in Lord Strathmore's absence, I was conducted to my
apartment in a distant corner of the building. I must own, that as I
heard door after door shut, after my conductor had retired, I began to
consider myself too far from the living and somewhat too near the dead.
We had passed