worth to Louis XVI.,
at the foot of the scaffold:--"Fils de St Louis, montez au ciel!"

LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

IV.--REAL GHOSTS, AND SECOND-SIGHT.

Dear Archy,--You will not expect, after my last letter, that under the
title of real ghosts, I am going to introduce to your acquaintance a set
of personages resembling Madame Tussaud's wax-work, done in air--filmy
gentlemen, in spectral blue coats, gray trousers, Wellingtons; and
semi-transparent ladies clad from the looms of the other world. No,
Nicolai's case, has extinguished that delusion. The visitant and his
dress are figments of the imagination _always_. They are as unreal and
subjective as the figures we see in our dreams. They are fancy's
progeny, having under pressing circumstances acting rank, as realities.
But, Archy, do dreams never come true? Let them plead their own cause.
Enter Dream.

A Scottish gentleman and his wife were travelling four or five years ago
in Switzerland. There travelled with them a third party, an intimate
friend, a lady, who some time before had been the object of a deep
attachment on the part of a foreigner, a Frenchman. Well, she would have
nothing to say to him, but she gave him a good deal of serious advice,
which I conclude she thought he wanted, and ultimately promoted, or was
a cognisant party to his marriage with a lady, whom she likewise knew.
The so-married couple were now in America. And the lady, my friend's
fellow-traveller, occasionally heard from them, and had every reason to
believe they were both in perfect health. One morning on their meeting
at breakfast she told her companions, that she had had a very impressive
dream the night before, which had recurred twice. The scene was a room
in which lay a coffin, near which stood her ex-lover, in a luminous
transfigured resplendent state; his wife was by, looking much as usual.
The dream had caused the lady some misgivings; but her companions
exhorted her to view it as a trick of her fancy, and she was half
persuaded so to do. The dream, however, was right notwithstanding. In
process of time, letters arrived announcing the death after a short
illness of the French gentleman, within the twenty-four hours in which
the vision appeared. Exit Dream, with applause.

I adduce this individual instance, simply because it is the last I have
heard, out of many that have come before me equally well attested. I
should have observed, that my i