district of the country as barren of superstitions or legendary
lore. Its characteristics are adverse to the growth of that natural
poetry in the minds of the people which gives birth to nymphs,
water-sprites, elves, or demons. It has neither woods, mountains, rocks,
caverns, nor waterfalls, to be the nurseries of such genii; its plains
are cultivated, its rivers navigable, its hills and valleys furrowed by
the plough, even to the very basement of any lingering ruin of tower or
steeple that may be scattered amongst them. How much more, therefore,
may we expect to find a dearth of such literature in the heart of the
great city, where the struggles of working-day life among looms and
factories, leave little time or room for aught else than the stern
_realities_ of existence to be known or felt?

But every where there exist some fragments of superstition, poetical or
uncouth; and we may not feel surprise that among such a people as the
lower orders of society, in an East Anglian manufacturing city, they
should bear little trace of the refinement which beautiful and romantic
scenery and occupation are wont in other scenes to throw over them.
Rarely do we hear of a haunted house, or a walking ghost; but not
unseldom do we see the horse-shoe nailed over the door-way of the
cottage, as an antidote to the power of witchcraft,--nor is it uncommon
to hear among the poor, of charms to cure diseases, of divinations by
_wise men_ and _wise women_, who by mystic rites pretend to discover lost
or stolen property,--nor even of animals bewitched, exercising direful
influence over the lives and health of human beings. Within the limits
of this age of enlightenment and civilization, many are the recorded
facts of this nature, and many more of continual recurrence might be
added, in illustration of the truth, that the lowest and grossest forms
of vulgar superstition yet lurk about in the purlieus and by-ways of the
old city.

Not long since, a woman, holding quite a respectable rank among the
working classes, and in her way a perfect "_character_" avowed herself
determined "to _drown'd_ the cat," as soon as ever her baby, which was
lying ill, should die; for which determination the only explanation she
could offer was, that the cat jumped upon the nurse's lap, as the baby
lay there, soon after it was born, from which time it ailed, and ever
since that time, the cat had regularly gone under its bed once a day and
coughed twice. These