aughed at such things, but seeing was believing--that,
passing the house one night, he was quite sartain he had seen a light
in one of the rooms, and had heard groans---that he got home as well
as he could, but all the world should not induce him to pass the house
again at that time of the night." "And others," said I, "have perhaps
seen the the same?"--"Aye, by goles, have they," exclaimed the fellow
with terror in his countenance.--I then told him, I would with
pleasure sit up in the house to see these ghosts--"Rather you than I,
Sir," said he.--"Nay, nay," said I, "I dare say now for five shillings
you would sit up with me!" "Naugh, dang me if I would, nor for the
best five pounds in the world, much as I wants money! I don't fear
man, but I am naugh match for the devil!--I believes in God, and does
nobody any harm; and therefore don't think he'd let the old-one hurt
me: but some main wicked ones lived, as I've hard, in that there
house, so I'll have naught to do with it; and dang me if any of 'em
shall catch me in it after night."

The poor fellow uttered these sentiments with such earnestness, that
my risible emotions were converted into pity. I forebore, however, to
argue the point with him, for many instances of superstition equally
gross had long convinced me that the untaught and half-taught of my
countrymen are, in this respect, little superior to the savage tribes,
whom we pity, in Tartary, Africa, and America: yet in this instance
the man's inference was a consequence of his premises, and his error
in these it might have been deemed heretical to expose.

The nursery becomes the means of fixing similar impressions in the
families of the most enlightened, and the unformed minds of children
propagate in public schools the stories of their nurses. The lowest
superstition pervades therefore all ranks, even of a population so
comparatively enlightened as that of England; and, being imbibed in
infancy and confirmed, through the entire period of youth, no
impressions are more strong, or more universally operative. The poet
and the priest either encourage the feeling, or do not take any pains
to remove it. The agency of spirits and abstract principles, is
countenanced by some of the records of religion, and by philosophers
and physicians in their reasonings about occult causes, sympathies,
coincidencies, and destinies. It is urged in vain, that ghosts and
supernatural effects are never seen, except by the weakest or