It is not within the province of this volume to recapitulate and classify Welsh superstitions; they were, and probably, in many neighbourhoods, are still, very various: we must satisfy our readers with a slight illustration. Perhaps some may object to the retailing such stories, for instance, as the following. The apology for its insertion, then, must be, that it is one of a number tending to illustrate that sense which the old Welsh mind had, of its residence upon the borders of, and relation to, the Invisible World. The Rev. John Jones, of Holywell, in Flintshire, was one of the most renowned ministers in the Principality; he was a man of extraordinary zeal and fervour as a preacher, and his life and character were, in unblemished reputation, equal to his gifts and zeal. He used to recite, with peculiar solemnity, a story of a mysterious horseman, by whom he believed he had been delivered from a position of extreme danger, when he was travelling, alone, from Bala, in Merionethshire, to Machynlleth, in the county of Montgomery. He travelled on horseback through a wild, desolate country, at that time almost uninhabited; he had performed nearly half his journey, when, as he was emerging from a wood, he says, “I observed coming towards me a man on foot. By his appearance, judging from the sickle which he carried sheathed in straw over his shoulder, he was doubtless a reaper in search of employment. As he drew near, I recognized a man whom I had seen at the door of the village inn at Llanwhellyn, where I had stopped to bait my horse. On our meeting, he touched his hat, and asked if I could tell him the time of day. I pulled out my watch for the purpose,—noticing, at the same time, the peculiar look which the man cast at its heavy silver case. Nothing else, however, occurred to excite any suspicion on my part; so, wishing him a good afternoon, I continued my journey.” We must condense Mr. Jones’s narration, feeling that the story loses much of its graphic strength in so doing. He pursued his way down a hill, and, at some distance farther on, noticed something moving on the other side of a large hedge; he soon discovered it to be a man, running in a stooping position. He watched the figure with curiosity, which grew into something like fear as he recognized the reaper with whom he had spoken a short time before, and that, as he moved on, he was engaged in tearing the straw band from his sickle. The man hurried on, and Mr. Jones saw him conceal himself behind a thicker part of the hedge, within a few yards of the road, and near where a gate crossed the park. Mr. Jones says he did not doubt, then, that he intended to attack and, perhaps, murder him for the sake of the watch, and whatever money he might have about him. He looked round: no other person was in sight,—no house near; he was hemmed in by rocky banks and high hedges on either side.