of Ross
Were wont, with clans and ready vassals thronged,
To wake the bounding stag, or guilty wolf;
There oft is heard at midnight or at noon,
Beginning faint, but rising still more loud,
And louder, voice of hunters, and of hounds,
And horns hoarse-winded, blowing far and keen.
Forthwith the hubbub multiplies, the air
Labours with louder shouts and rifer din
Of close pursuit, the broken cry of deer
Mangled by throttling dogs, the shouts of men,
And hoofs, thick-beating on the hollow hill:
Sudden the grazing heifer in the vale
Starts at the tumult, and the herdsman's ears
Tingle with inward dread. Aghast he eyes
The upland ridge, and every mountain round,
But not one trace of living wight discerns,
Nor knows, o'erawed and trembling as he stands,
To what or whom he owes his idle fear--
To ghost, to witch, to fairy, or to fiend,
But wonders, and no end of wondering finds."[3]

It must also be remembered, that to the auricular deceptions practised
by the means of ventriloquism or otherwise, may be traced many of the
most successful impostures which credulity has received as supernatural
communications.

[Footnote 3: The poem of "Albania" is, in its original folio edition, so
extremely scarce that I have only seen a copy belonging to the amiable
and ingenious Dr. Beattie, besides the one which I myself possess,
printed in the earlier part of last century. It was reprinted by my late
friend Dr. Leyden in a small volume entitled "Scottish Descriptive
Poems." "Albania" contains the above, and many other poetical passages
of the highest merit.]

The sense of touch seems less liable to perversion than either that of
sight or smell, nor are there many cases in which it can become
accessary to such false intelligence as the eye and ear, collecting
their objects from a greater distance and by less accurate enquiry, are
but too ready to convey. Yet there is one circumstance in which the
sense of touch as well as others is very apt to betray its possessor
into inaccuracy, in respect to the circumstances which it impresses on
its owner. The case occurs during sleep, when the dreamer touches with
his hand some other part of his own person. He is clearly, in this case,
both the actor and patient, both the proprietor of the member touching,
and of that which is touched; while, to increase the complication, the
hand is both toucher of the limb on which it rests, and receives an
impression of touch from it; and the same is the c