,
that, however familiar the hedges, trees, &c. were to me, I lost myself,
insomuch that I did not know whether I was going to or from home. In a
field where I then was, I suddenly discovered what I imagined was a well
known hedge-row, interspersed with pollard trees, &c. under which I
purposed to proceed homewards; but, to my great surprise, upon
approaching this appearance, I discovered a row of the plants known by
the name of _rag_, and by the vulgar, _canker weed_, growing on a mere
balk, dividing ploughed fields: the whole height of both could not
exceed three feet, or three feet and a half. It struck me so forcibly
that I shall never forget it; this too in a field which I knew as well
as any man, could know a field."

THE

PHILOSOPHER GASSENDI,

AND THE

_HAUNTED BED-ROOM_.

In one of the letters of this celebrated philosopher, he says, that he
was consulted by his friend and patron the Count d'Alais, governor of
Provence, on a phenomenon that haunted his bed-chamber while he was at
Marseilles on some business relative to his office. The Count tells
Gassendi, that, for several successive nights, as soon as the candle was
taken away, he and his Countess saw a luminous spectre, sometimes of an
oval, and sometimes of a triangular form; that it always disappeared
when light came into the room; that he had often struck at it, but could
discover nothing solid. Gassendi, as a natural philosopher, endeavoured
to account for it; sometimes attributing it to some defect of vision, or
to some dampness of the room, insinuating that perhaps it might be sent
from Heaven to him, to give him a warning in due time of something that
should happen. The spectre still continued its visits all the time that
he staid at Marseilles; and some years afterwards, on their return to
Aix, the Countess d'Alais confessed to her husband, that she played him
this trick, by means of one of her women placed under the bed with a
phial of phosphorus, with an intention to frighten him away from
Marseilles, a place in which she very much disliked to live.

THE

GHOST ON SHIP-BOARD.

A gentleman of high respectability in the navy relates the following
story.

"When on a voyage to New York, we had not been four days at sea, before
an occurrence of a very singular nature broke in upon our quiet. _It was
a ghost!_ One night, when all was still and dark, and the ship rolling
at sea before the wind, a man sprung suddenly upon deck