diviners, philosophers, saints, witches, charlatans, hypnotists.
Many a heart has been broken, like that of Mr. Dale Owen, by the
late discovery of life-long delusion, for we meet in Cock Lane, as
Porphyry says, [Greek]. Yet this 'deceptive race' has had its
stroke in the making of creeds, and has played its part in human
history, while it contributes not a little to human amusement.
Meanwhile, of all wanderers in Cock Lane, none is more beguiled than
sturdy Common-sense, if an explanation is to be provided. When once
we ask for more than 'all stuff and nonsense,' we speedily receive a
very mixed theory in which rats, indigestion, dreams, and of late,
hypnotism, are mingled much at random, for Common-sense shows more
valour than discretion, when she pronounces on matters (or spirits)
which she has never studied.

Beautiful instances of common-sense explanations, occur in two
stories of the last century, the St. Maur affair (1706), and the
haunted house of Amiens, (1746). The author of 'Ce qu'on doit
penser de l'aventure arrivee a Saint Maur,' was M. Poupart, canon of
St. Maur, near Paris. The good canon, of course, admits Biblical
apparitions, which are miraculous, and admits hallucination caused
by the state of the visual organs and by fever, while he believes in
something like the Lucretian idea, that bodies, dead bodies, at
least, shell off a kind of peel, which may, on occasion, be visible.
Common ghosts he dismisses on grounds of common-sense; if spirits in
Purgatory _could_ appear, they would appear more frequently, and
would not draw the curtains of beds, drag at coverlets, turn tables
upside down, and make terrible noises, all of which feats are
traditional among ghosts.

M. Poupart then comes to the adventure at St. Maur. The percipient,
M. de S., was a man of twenty-five: his mother seems to have been a
visionary, and his constitution is described as 'melancholic'. He
was living alone, however, and his mother has no part in the
business. The trouble began with loud knocks at his door, and the
servant, when she went to open it, found nobody there. The curtains
of his bed were drawn, when he was alone in the room, and here, of
course, we have only his evidence. One evening about eleven, he and
his servants heard the papers on a table being turned over, and,
though they suspected the cat, no cat could be found. When S. went
to bed, the same noise persisted in his sitting-room, where the cat,
no doub