t our young friend has just experienced, even
amidst the delights of this magical scene, and amidst the balmy whispers
of a July night."

"Sir," replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, "you have defined
exactly the nature of that shudder which came over me. But how could my
manner be so faithful an index to my impressions?"

"I know the signs of the visitation," returned the stranger, gravely;
"they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience."

All the gentlemen present then declared that they could comprehend,
and had felt, what the stranger had described. "According to one of
our national superstitions," said Merton, the Englishman who had first
addressed Glyndon, "the moment you so feel your blood creep, and your
hair stand on end, some one is walking over the spot which shall be your
grave."

"There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so common
an occurrence," replied the stranger; "one sect among the Arabians hold
that at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death or
that of some one dear to you. The African savage, whose imagination is
darkened by the hideous rites of his gloomy idolatry, believes that the
Evil Spirit is pulling you towards him by the hair. So do the Grotesque
and the Terrible mingle with each other."

"It is evidently a mere physical accident,--a derangement of the
stomach; a chill of the blood," said a young Neapolitan.

"Then why is it always coupled, in all nations, with some superstitious
presentiment or terror,--some connection between the material frame
and the supposed world without us?" asked the stranger. "For my part, I
think--"

"What do you think, sir?" asked Glyndon, curiously.

"I think," continued the stranger, "that it is the repugnance and horror
of that which is human about us to something indeed invisible, but
antipathetic to our own nature, and from a knowledge of which we are
happily secured by the imperfection of our senses."

"You are a believer in spirits, then?" asked Merton, with an incredulous
smile.

"Nay, I said not so. I can form no notion of a spirit, as the
metaphysicians do, and certainly have no fear of one; but there may be
forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae to
which I have compared them. The monster that lives and dies in a drop of
water, carniverous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than
himself, is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature,