a young barrister assailed me. 'You, of course, admit that apparitions were even common in the days of our Saviour; and as that which has happened once may happen again, you cannot deny their possibility.' This appears decisive: but, as in general, the point of contention is not the possibility for what, strictly speaking, is not possible? but the probability of the fact, we shall find some little sophistry in it. To produce a fair conclusion, the proposition ought to stand thus: That which has occurred once may, under the same or similar eircumstances, occur again. But the same or similar circumstances, our Saviour's appearance, namely, on earth; which we conceive was then pervaded by a divine influence, fully accounting for every miraculous event, never will occur again: therefore we are not, from this precedent, warranted in expecting such facts in ordinary times.' This, I know, does not set the question at rest; it is designed to answer a single argument only, by which one side of it has been frequently upheld with unequivocal success. My own belief in the existence and earthly intercourse of departed spirits is firmly, though humbly, entertained; and, after some preliminary remarks, explanatory of its nature, extent, and modifications, I shall offer two facts in confirmation of it.

Dr. Hibbert has written a book on apparitions. I have not seen it, and know nothing of his theories, but what I have derived from one of our periodicals, in which they were briefly stated. They are, doubtless, applicable to many cases; but are by no means, I think, sufficient to account for all. My conclusion on the subject is deduced from the following reasoning. It seems physically impossible that a spirit can become visible to a corporeal being as such. How then can there be any communication between the two worlds; supposing some facts to exist which compel us to believe that there really is? Undoubtedly, through the channel of that soul which, but for its clay tenement, would resemble the unobstructed spirit. But of those who have professed to witness supernatural visitations, some affirm that their evidence was occular, others that it was auricular, and not a few that it was tangible. What theory can harmonize such discrepancies, rendering, as they do, the accounts, if unexplained, ridiculous? In reference to subjects beyond this earthly scene, I think that no man who has properly studied divine revelation, would dare to hazard one important conjecture, unsupported by some quotation from it. Accordingly I appeal to it. The Almighty claims to himself such faculties as those by which our knowledge is obtained, in these words, He that made the eye shall he not see? He that formed the ear shall he not hear?' Elsewhere it is said, 'God made man in his own image'-man, meaning, of course, his immaterial spirit. I conclude, therefore, that the soul, independent of the body, has faculties exactly corresponding with those of seeing, hearing, &c. appertaining to the body. Suppose then, though we know from general experience that such an event is uncommon, that an intercourse was permitted between a disembodied spirit and one yet confined in its earthly receptacle, and that this intercourse should be effected through one of these corres. ponding senses, (as we must call them,) whether that of hearing, or seeing, or feeling; would not the vision of the soul leave an impression producing a conviction of reality, a belief as strong,-nay stronger, almost in the proportion of finite to infinite-as that which is produced by mere sensual demonstration ?

It will be seen, that metaphysical accuracy has not been much regarded in the above reasoning. The proof of the correctness of this view is, so far as I

know, original; and it satisfies me that the following narrations are not even improbable. I offer both as facts; the latter of which, at least, illustrates this theory.

One of the most intimate friends of my earlier years, with whom I held frequent conversations on the subject of ghosts, in which his own unbelief was most explicitly avowed, and rationally sustained, related, in substance, the following accounts, as personal evidences of the truth of his creed. 'I lived for some years in the town of during the time that my friend

was settled there, we were in habits of almost daily intimacy, frequenting each other's rooms without even the semblance of ceremony. His health was not remarkably good, by his own frequent confessions; and, to my mind, his whole appearance indicated very often unequivocal symptoms of the silent attacks of some slow-wasting disease. At length he became aware, that some decisive remedy was necessary to rescue him from the yawning grave; and accordingly, in my absence, he took his departure from to a neighbouring village, the distance of which from the town afforded no obstacle to his frequent visits to us. One morning, some time after this partial change of residence, previous to which we had not met for some days, I was passing by his room, in my way to another part of the town, when I observed the casement open, and my friend standing before it, simply clad in his night dress. His countenance was deadly pale, but yet strongly expressive of that resignation to his anticipated fate, which I knew he had long endeavoured to acquire. In order that I might convey to his mind no additional alarm, by expressing the anxiety that I really felt, I assumed a cheerful air, and addressed him with the wonted friendly salutation. Instead of the usual smile and reply, he glided by the window, and disappeared, without the slightest change of look, or symptom of recognition. At a loss to conjecture, whether this conduct was real or feigned, I was yet unable, that day, to satisfy myself, as the urgency of my business was too great to allow me to await the completion of his toilet. I called, however, the next day, and learnt from one of the domestics, merely that his master was from home. Some few days afterwards, I met him by chance in one of my walks; and after the usual inquiries about health, his favourable answers to which were sadly belied by his ghastly looks, I asked him whether his reverie on day morning was so deep, as to drown all self-recollection, and whether I might take that as an excuse for his not replying to his friend's morning address? You were certainly,' added I, 'in great mental absence.' 'Yes,' said he, and in bodily absence too, for that morning I was at from which place I am but just returned, as my equestrian habiliments testify.' 'Impossible,' rejoined I, .' for I saw you at your room window, and spake to you, on day morning, I certainly did; or seeing is no longer believing.' His explanations, however, were too clear to allow any room for doubting their accuracy; and, to my mind, they were fully confirmed by his death, which occurred just six days from that on which I received this information, in the same room, and at the same hour.

The other fact is as follows:

'You know,' said my friend, that my mother's support had, for years, devolved solely upon me. And a stronger affection for a parent could not, I think, exist in any son's breast: acting, as it always must, if it be real, it urged me on, and animated me in striving to render her declining years unattended by a single pang of poverty or neglect. I have every

reason to believe, that the solace afforded by such unwearied filial attentions more than compensated for the miseries of a comparative state of indigence, to which she had not been born, accompanied, as they were, by keen bodily affliction, forming an accumulation of ills, which, in ordinary cases, must have performed the work of death years before. We were the only members of our family whose union was at all perfect; and the neglect of those who might and ought to have done nearly all that I was called upon to effect alone, served only to draw closer and closer the endearing tie which bound us together. In fact, for myself, I cannot conceive that a heavier trial than her death could have befallen me, until the accumulation of mental and bodily disorders had rendered her so insensible to all the world, that this feeling became exchanged for the hope, promising a sad pleasure, that I might, ere long, be summoned to follow her disease-mangled frame to its mother earth.' This attachment of my friend to his mother was altogether the purest, the firmest, I ever knew; and aware, as I was, how well it had stood that true touchstone of sincerity, adversity, I could not doubt of its ennobling character. Whilst sauntering with him one delightful summer's afternoon, along a path that exhibited to our view, rather elevated as its position was, some of the richest glory of nature's scenery; stopping suddenly at a certain steep in it, he said, Here, here, I received the first intimation of my poor mother's death. I was returning from a solitary excursion, on day night, lighted by a glorious uncovered moon, when I here received the clearest, the most satisfactory information of the event, that could have been conveyed me by one who had professed to have just returned fresh from witnessing the scene. I saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing; but I experienced that, whatever it might be, which instantaneously broke off a train of thought, not even remotely connected with such a subject, and gave me an assurance of reality, leaving no doubt of a supernatural visitation. I was then not far from my residence, and having arrived there, immediately communicated it to my wife. She appeared incredulous, and attempted to reason me out of it; but, of course, without success. The following post confirmed-not to me, for firmer faith no occular demonstration could have supplied-the fact, as to the day and hour when I believed her spirit had depared, shaken itself effectually from the grasp of its dire tormentor, the body, to wing its unimpeded way to those abodes, where is found no sorrow, neither pain nor death.' Her hopes and desires had been long fixed and confined within the narrow precincts of the dark grave. And buffetted as we may be by trials assuming, as it were, the embodied shape of tyrants, delegated to inflict upon us the extremes of torture, amidst the direst ills of life, the pure mind may say, and feel, as hers did

"There is a calm for those that weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found,
They softly lie, and sweetly sleep,
Low in the ground.'

Many years have passed away since I heard the above accounts. I firmly credited them then, and my faith still remains unshaken by one breath of doubt. Our belief in such things ought altogether to depend on the character of the witnesses who attest them. For, I should feel much inclined to doubt the best told, and most probable, ghost story, narrated by either a very immoral man, or a coward. The creative powers of fear are too well known to require any supernatural explanation of its visions. An instance of the effects of conscience occurred some years ago, near the town in

as

which I was born. A gentleman, an East Indian nabob of immense wealth, acquired, it was understood, by the blackest scheme of iniquity, had retired to a country seat in this village. I know nothing of his general feelings, whether they were those of a man at peace with himself or not. But death was seen to make rapid approaches, his long-lulled conscience began to awaken, like a giant refreshed from sleep,' to call up byegone and half-forgotten deeds of darkness, and to invest them with all the terrors of judges, commissioned, without further inquiry, to pass. sentence irreversible upon him. His horrors were unutterable. One figure, he exclaimed, he saw as plain as he saw his attendants; and to escape the dreaded vision's imaginary grasp, he plunged from one extremity of the bed to the other, and clung convulsively to the bed-post, with the concentrated energies of a wretch making one last effort for salvation. No one but his ignorant attendants doubted the spectral illusion; it read, however, to us who had ears to hear, the most awful moral lesson. But to my friend, such epithets as coward, or immoral, were wholly inapplicable. He had real courage, and true religion. This character served as the basis of my belief in his assertions; without such a guarantee, I should long ago have forgotten them as idle tales.

MAY.

Tis now the happy time when flowers,
And hearts, and love, are all in season;
Young Cupid decks the smiling bowers,
And laughs at Care and cold-brow'd Reason!

"Tis now the time when beauty's cheek
Blooms brightly, as the sunny weather;
The winds in gentlest murmurs speak,
All things are gay and glad together!

Now Nature wears her freshest-green,

The birds, their softest notes are singing;
To hail the blushing May-Day queen,
The merry village-bells are ringing!

The skies a deeper azure wear

His brightest rays, the sun discloses ;
And looks from Heaven, all shining there,
As if to wake the opening roses!

All Nature smiles and the young breast
With life and hope is warmly glowing;
Pleasure is every bosom's guest,

On all her happy smiles bestowing!

Yes! 'tis the joyous time, when flowers
And hearts, and love, are all in season;
While Cupid decks the smiling bowers,

And laughs at Care and sober Reason!

C. B.-W.

SOLITARY HOURS.*

THIS modest and unassuming little volume is evidently the production of a person of considerable genius, and can scarcely fail of securing for its author a very enviable share of popularity. The class of literature to which it may be said to belong has, to be sure, been sadly overdone since the publication of Washington Irving's Sketch Book: but the public mind is, nevertheless, not so entirely jaded by bad imitations of good books, as to have been rendered incapable of appreciating the merits of so agreeable a melange as this; for if we except Phantasmagoria,' which takes a far wider range of subject than any of them, we scarcely know a modern work, of the immense quantity that have been published during the last few years of the same class, which, with such modest pretensions, possesses so much sterling and intrinsic merit. Solitary Hours' consists of from thirty to forty sketches, in prose and verse, a considerable portion of which have appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, and not a few of which have been very frequently extracted therefrom in various newspapers and periodicals; a pretty tolerable test of their value. Among the prose pieces, the Smuggler may be particularized as a sketch of great force and fidelity, and one that we should hardly have looked for from a female pen. It is too long for us to be enabled to offer any thing like a fair specimen of its character; but from an admirable, and highly humourous paper, entitled Thoughts on Letter-writing,' we can select a few paragraphs, without injustice to the author. After expatiating upon the misery of having to compose a set, proper, well worded, correctly pointed, elegant epistleone that must have a beginning, a middle, and an end,' our fair satirist suggests that some mode should be devised of producing letters by a sort of mute barrel organ, on the plan of those that play sets of tunes and country dances, to indite a catalogue of polite epistles; or by steam; or, in short, by any contrivance that would obviate the trouble of thinking: she goes on to describe the persons to whom this adventitious aid would be of the greatest importance, and to superadd a few suggestions of her own on the subject of epistolary correspondence in general.

The following specimen of the sincerity of lady letter writers is quite to the life:

MY DEAREST LADY D.-With feelings of the most inexpressibly affectionate interest, I take up my pen to congratulate you on the marriage of your lovely accomplished Alethea.

To you, who know every thought of my heart, it is almost unnecessary to say, that next to the maternal tenderness with which I watch over my own girls, I am most anxiously interested in every thing that relates to your charming family.

That sweet love Alethea, has always, you know, been my peculiar favourite;

wood.

YOU TIRESOME OLD TOAD,-You've manouvred off one of your gawky frights at last; and I must say something on the occasion.

How the deuce did you contrive to hook that noodle of a lord, when I have been angling ever since he came of age to catch him for my eldest girl?

That pert minx Alethea has always been my peculiar aversion; and I'm ready to

Solitary Hours, by the Author of Ellen Fitzarthur and the Widow's Tale. Black

Duodecimo. pp. 236.