in me of the mystery
it seemed to be. My grandmother promised me the sampler after her death
as a legacy, and the promise was no small gratification; but the
promise, with many other promises of jewels and gold coins, was
productive of nothing but disappointment. Her death took place when I
was at Oxford. My father went down; and without consulting me, or giving
the slightest intimation of his intention, let the house, and sold to
the tenant almost everything that was in it. It was doing as he was wont
to do, notwithstanding his undoubted affection for me. In the same way
he sold the estate he had given to me as a provision on the occasion of
his second marriage. In the mass went some music-books which I had
borrowed of Mrs. Browne. Not long after, she desired them to be
returned. I stood before her like a defenseless culprit, conscious of my
inability to make restitution; and at the same time, such was my state
of mental weakness that I knew not what to say for apology or defense.

My grandmother's mother was a matron, I was told, of high respectability
and corresponding piety; well-informed and strong-minded. She was
distinguished, however; for while other matrons of her age and quality
had seen many a ghost, she had seen but _one_. She was in this
particular on a level with the learned lecturer, afterwards judge, the
commentator Blackstone. But she was heretical, and her belief bordered
on Unitarianism. And by the way, this subject of ghosts has been among
the torments of my life. Even now, when sixty or seventy years have
passed over my head since my boyhood received the impression which my
grandmother gave it, though my judgment is wholly free, my imagination
is not wholly so. My infirmity was not unknown to the servants. It was a
permanent source of amusement to ply me with horrible phantoms in all
imaginable shapes. Under the pagan dispensation, every object a man
could set his eyes on had been the seat of some pleasant adventure. At
Barking, in the almost solitude of which so large a portion of my life
was passed, every spot that could be made by any means to answer the
purpose was the abode of some spectre or group of spectres. So dexterous
was the invention of those who worked upon my apprehensions, that they
managed to transform a real into a fictitious being. His name was
_Palethorp_; and Palethorp, in my vocabulary, was synonymous with
hobgoblin. The origin of these horrors was this:--

My father's house w