There is a certain grim humour in both these, and the last almost looks like a conscious travestie of Binnorie: but scarcely any genuine ballad of the English populace is otherwise than grotesquely ridiculous, even when most horrible. The very best always have some painful triviality and absurdity; the Children in the Wood' itself is full of paltrinesses; Widdrington and his stumps spoil Chevy Chase, at best greatly inferior to the Scottish Battle of Otterburn, where Douglas's death is marvellously beautiful; and the uniform conclusion of ballads of unhappy lovers is wilful bathos. Denmark, the prolific source of ballads, we believe, invented the regulation termination by which 'The one was buried within the church, The other within the choir, And out of the one there grew a birch, Scotland, the country of burying lands in desolated convent churches, touchingly made the two to intertwine, but some practical Englishman caused the sexton to hack them down with his hook because they encumbered the path. Is it that the English nature so revolts in indignation at having been touched, that it immediately makes game of the subject? Or is it that there is absolutely no sense of the ridiculous? Whatever has been orally transmitted, such as the mumming dialogues, carols, May-day songs, &c., have always become hopelessly confused and vulgarised in a manner that, if we may trust collectors, does not befal the songs and rhymes of Scotland, Denmark, Germany, Brittany, or Italy. English poetic genius stands as high as that of any other nation, but it would appear as if appreciation of the poetical was, in our own country, confined to the cultivated classes. Abroad though the demarcation of rank was more defined, yet everywhere but in France there was less dissimilarity of feeling between the gentleman and peasant, than here, where the one might be the more refined, but the other less so. Moreover, learning has probably never been out of reach of an intelligent person in England, since Richard II. refused to grant his nobles' petition that their serfs might be forbidden to learn to read. First monasteries, then grammar, and dame, schools put book learning within the reach of any one whose mind was active enough to seek for it; and a clever lad, rising into the position of a scholar, left the homely songs of tradition to those who had not the sentiment to mould them, or even the power to preserve them accurately. Peace and prosperity are also very depoetizing elements, since they leave no landmarks in the mind, and on a silent people, much absorbed in present interests, and happily without a notion of long standing family feuds. Traditions are hardly ever handed on―among what we are no longer allowed to call the genuine Anglo Saxons. Celtic or Danish admixtures make a great difference in the tenacity of traditions, and thus all the best and fullest come from our northern and western countries, which often explain otherwise incomprehensible usages and sayings of the south and east. Folk Lore may be classified as consisting of beliefs in supernatural appearances; of customs, spells and sayings, and of old stories; and eeah class of these are partly derived from old heathen, partly from Christian usages. Among these, the most universal and abiding article of popular credence is the appearance of ghosts. This hardly deserves to be termed mere popular superstition, for we verily believe that more thoughtful and cultivated persons would confess that they regarded such phantoms as veritable mysteries, than could now be found to acknowledge any faith in them among the half educated; but as it was among the untaught that the traditions were fostered and preserved, ghosts are classed among vulgar fables. The question has often been carefully argued, and the result seems to be that there is no impossibility in a certain intercourse between the departed spirit and persons still living, and therefore that each single instance must rest on its own evidence. The favourite Reductio ad absurdum is that, when a ghost is seen in the ordinary dress of the person it represents, the question is asked whether these are the ghosts of the garments? but this seems to us unreasonable. When we think of our friends, they appear before our mind's eye attired as we are used to see them, and thus by whatever means the impression of the presence of the deceased is produced, the memory recalls him as he has appeared in life There is no doubt that the senses often imagine themselves to have been cognizant of that which has produced an effect on the mind, e.g., though an earthquake is silent in itself, yet from the similarity of the sensations it occasions with those produced by a thunderstorm, it is common to believe that there is a rumbling sound underground; and in the instance of a ship of war lying at anchor off New Zealand, where the concussion resembled the shock of the discharge of cannon, many persons below thought that they heard the report of all the guns fired off at once, while those on deck were con vinced that there had been no sound at all. Many supernatural appearances, related in good faith, may thus be accounted for, without the eyes and ears having been concerned. Spirit may communicate with spirit, though no outward figure be pictured on the retina, no vibration meet the tympanum, yet these are so exclusively the media of perception that the mind and memory believe the impression to have been conveyed through them. This must be the case in a dream. Allowing, however, for much imagination, much imposture and exaggeration, there is a large residuum of apparitions that have never been disproved, and which can only be wondered at. The most frequent and best authenticated of these are the cases in which the wraith or phantom of a person dying or recently dead, manifests itself.. Madame de Genlis tells us in her memoirs that she and her only son, a child of three years old, sickened at the same time with the measles, and the child's death was kept a secret from her by her friends, but from the moment he expired till she recovered, she saw him continually hovering over her on the top of the bed, and that she felt no doubt of the true state of the case. Whether this deserves to be called a sick mother's fancy, or whether the lively lady herself be worthy of credit, this is only one of many such stories. A maid servant in the family of Sir Stamford Raffles was one night sitting alone in the kitchen, when she saw her soldier brother, then in India, pass before her, with a handkerchief that she had given him, round his head. It proved that at this very time, he had almost, with his last breath, desired to have his head bound with his sister's handkerchief. Mr. Henderson has another story to the same effect, on the authority of a clerical friend, who heard it from the aunt who witnessed it. She was about fourteen years old, when, as she was playing with the children of a gentleman living near Ripon, one of them cried, Why, there is brother walking at the bottom of the garden.' The whole set of children distinctly recognised the form and features of the brother, who was then in India, and one ran into the house and told her father, who made light of it to her, but noted the day and hour, and these of course corresponded with the time of the young man's death. We give another instance on the authority of Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, whose stern realistic breeding was no school for credulity : 'I will close these anecdotes with one of a different description. At a distance of sixty or more years, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my memory in its subordinate details, but of its substantial correctness I am sure, having frequently heard it from Dr. and Mrs. Priestly, and many years after from the medical man, the late Dr. Allsop, of Calne, who was concerned in it; and whom I met in a very different circle of society. While Dr. Priestly occupied the post of librarian to Lord Shelburne, one day Mr. Petty, the precocious and gifted youth whom I have mentioned, sent for Dr. Priestly (Lord Shelburne then being absent, I think, in London). When the doctor entered, Mr. Petty told him he had passed a very restless night, and had been much disturbed by uncomfortable dreams, which he wished to relate to Dr. Priestly, hoping that by so doing, the painful impression would pass away. He then said that he dreamed that he had been very unwell, when suddenly the whole house was in preparation for a journey, he was too ill to sit up, but was carried, lying down, into the carriage; his surprise was extreme on seeing carriage after carriage in almost interminable procession. He was alone, and could not speak, he conld only gaze in astonishment. The procession at last wound slowly off. After pursuing the road for many hours towards London, it at last appeared to stop at the door of a church. It was the church at High Wycombe, which is the burial-place of the Shelburne family. It seemed, in Mr. Petty's dream, that he entered, or rather, was carried into the church; he looked back, he saw the procession which followed him was in black, and that the carriage from which he had been taken bore the resemblance of a hearse. Here the dream eaded, and he awoke. Dr. Priestly told him that his dream was the result of a feverish cold, and that the impression would soon pass off. Nevertheless, he thought it better to send for the family medical attendant. The next day, Mr. Petty was much better, on the third day he was completely convalescent, so that the doctor permitted him to leave his room; but as it was in January, and illness was prevalent, he desired him on no account to leave the house, and with that precaution, took his leave. Late the next afternoon, the medical man was returning from his other patients; his road lay by the gates of Bowood, and as Lord Shelburne was away, he thought he might as well call to see Mr. Petty, and enforce his directions. What was his surprise, when he had passed the lodge, to see the youth himself without his hat, playfully running to meet him! The doctor was much astonished, as it was bitterly cold, and the ground covered with snow. He rode to Mr. Petty to rebuke him for his imprudence, when suddenly he disappeared, whither, he knew not, but he seemed instantaneously to vanish. The doctor thought it very extraordinary, but that probably the youth had not wished to be found transgressing orders, and he rode on to the house. There he learnt that Mr. Petty had just expired.'— Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, pp. 73–74. Such apparitions as these are quite frequent enough to be regarded as established. The appearance of Protesilaus to Laodamia was probably founded on similar occurrences among the Greeks; and Mr. Henderson tells us that St. Macarius the younger of Alexandria, A.D. 373, declares that the spirit wanders about the earth for two days after death, at its will.' Without exactly adopting the explanation of the good Saint, we own ourselves inclined to believe that in those kinds of death where a stupor or trance precedes actual dissolution, the spirit may be, in a manner, absent from the flesh, and yet not entirely removed to its resting-place; and thus that its own last thoughts and impulses may actually render it present to the persons to whom it is most attached, or whom it last recollected. Thus in the cases above cited, the two dying youths in India evidently flew to their rela tives, and young Petty, on becoming worse, probably thought of the doctor. We believe a great proportion at least of these apparitions were of persons whose death took place in the manner above mentioned. We have heard of one case where the death was through convulsions, when the struggle is always long and apparently unconscious, and many more in cases of drowning. The dripping hand which announced the shipwreck of Hugh Miller's father, was perhaps an instance of this kind. And we have heard a curious, and to our own knowledge, true story, of the master of a sailing vessel who had promised his favourite aunt to announce his death to her if he were lost at sea. In process of time, he did appear wet and dripping, but strange to say, not to the aunt who had made the tryste, but to his wife. Of course his safety was despaired of, but he at length returned home, and it then appeared that his ship had been lost on the South American coast; he had staid by her to the last, and at the time of his apparition had been brought off so nearly drowned as to be insensible. Surely this would seem as if in his extremity his promise had, as it were, borne away his spirit, and yet that it had flown to the person the most prominent in his thoughts. An apparition almost exactly similar to this is related in a curious old book of the 17th century, called the Secrets of the Invisible World Disclosed;' by Andrew Moreton, Esq.; the 4th edition being printed in 1740. His story is as follows: A certain lady of my acquaintance, going out of her chamber into a closet in the adjoining room, saw her husband walking along in the room before her. She immediately comes down in a great surprise, tells the family she had seen her husband, and she was sure it was he; though at the same time she knew her husband (who was the commander of a ship), was at sea, on a voyage to or from the Capes of Virginia. The family takes the alarm, and tells her that to be sure her husband was dead, and that she should be sure to set down the day of the month, and the hour of the day, and it was ten thousand to one that she should find that he died that very moment, as near as could be found out. 'About two months after, her husband comes home very well, but had an accident befell him in his voyage, viz., that stepping into the boat or out of the boat, he fell into the sea, and was in danger of being lost, and this they calculated upon to be as near the time as they could judge, that he appeared to his wife.'-Moreton, p. 263-4. Andrew Moreton, Esq., who tells this story as from his personal knowledge, intends throughout his book to argue against apparitions being attributed to the Devil, or being taken to be spirits of the individuals they represent, considering them rather as the work of an intermediate class of spiritual beings, of limited power and knowledge, and some beneficent, some malignant. He argues stoutly, but most of the stories he adduces rather fail of supporting his theory, |