r; she lay scarcely half immersed
in those waters of death; a few lazy tench floating sluggishly about,
appeared to be curiously inspecting their ghastly, uninvited guest; and
the fragments of an enamelled miniature, with some torn letters in the
hand-writing of Rowland Beauvoir, were found scattered on the
overflowing margin of the pool."

* * * * *

Well, unkindly whelp, if your bone has no pickings better than this, not
a cur shall envy you the sorry banquet. Yet, had my genius been better
educated in the science of French cookery, this might have been served
up with higher seasoning as a savoury _ragout_: but you get it in
simplicity, scarce grilled; and in sooth, good world, it is easier to
sneer at a novel than to imagine one; and far more self-complacency may
be gained by manfully affecting to despise the novelist, than by adding
to his honours in the compliment of humble imitation.

* * * * *

Things supernatural have every where and every when exercised mortal
curiosity. Fear and credulity support the arms of superstition, fierce
as city griffins, rampant as the lion and the unicorn; and forasmuch as
no creature, Nelson not excepted, can truly boast of having never known
fear, and no man also--from polite Voltaire, shrewd Hume, Leviathan
Hobbes, and erudite Gibbon, down to the most stultified
Van-Diemanite--can honestly swear himself free from the influence of
some sort of faith, for thus much the marvellous and the terrible meet
with universal popularity. Now, one or two curious matters connected
with those "more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of
in your philosophy," which have even occurred to mine own self,
(whereof, to gratify you, shall be a little more anon), have heretofore
induced me to touch upon sundry interesting points, which, like pikemen
round their chief, throng about the topic of

THE MARVELLOUS.

A book, so simply titled, with haply underneath a gigantic note of
admiration between two humble queries ?!? would positively, my worthy
publisher, make your worship's fortune. For it should concern ghosts,
dreams, omens, coincidences, good-and-bad luck, warnings, and true
vaticinations: no childish collection, however, of unsupported trumpery,
but authenticated cases staidly evidenced, and circumstantially
detailed; no Mother Goose-cap's tales, no Dick the Ploughman's dreams,
no stories from the '_Terrif