sequent, and the plot appears to stand unaccountably still. Instead of striking at his object, he resigns himself to the current of events, and sinks at length, ignobly, under the stream.

CHAP. V.

Accessory causes of delusion, regarding spectral impressions-Apparition of Desfontaines-Ghosts at Portnedown Bridge -Lucian's story of a Split GhostInstance of a Ghost in two places at once.

It will readily occur to the reader, that

the disposition of the mind to hallucination must sometimes be powerfully aided, and encreased, by peculiar circumstances of time and place. Chance may supply, or artifice may contrive concomitant sounds and objects, which must appal even the most incredulous observer. Even Bayle has doubted, whether the imagination alone can produce spectres, without the assistance of

H

the arts of confederacy. This point, I trust, is now decided.

An apparition which made some noise, about the beginning of the last century, that of DESFONTAINES, seems to have originated in a fit of deliquium, connected strongly with the recollection of a friend.

It was published in the Journal de Trevoux, in 1726, and its outline is as follows.

- Mr. Bezuel, when a school-boy of 15, in 1695, contracted an intimacy with a younger boy, named Desfontaines. After talking together of the compacts which have been often made between friends, that in case of death, the spirit of the deceased should revisit the survivor, they agreed to form such a compact together, and they signed it, respectively, with their blood, in 1696. Soon after this

transaction, they were separated, by Desfontaines' removal to Caen.

In July, 1697, Bezuel, while amusing himself in hay-making, near a friend's house, was seized with a fainting fit, after which he had a bad night. Notwithstanding this attack, he returned to the meadow next day, where he again underwent a deliquium. He again slept ill. On the succeeding day, while he was observing the man laying up the hay, he had a still more severe attack. "I fell into a swoon: I lost my senses: "one of the footmen perceived it, ánd "called out for help. They recovered "me a little, but my mind was more "disordered than it had been before, "I was told that they asked me then "what ailed me, and that I answered; "I have seen what I thought I should But I neither remember the question, nor the answer. However, it agrees with what I remember I saw

"never see.

66

"it