Dr. Chambers assures us that the leading incidents of the narrative may be relied on as correct; but we think the reader will exercise a wise incredulity: that at all events his belief will not go beyond the admission of some possible resemblance, entirely accidental, between Mrs. M. and the lady whom the imaginative Mr. C. had seen in his Halloween dream, and whose image he had so carefully treasured in his memory. CHAPTER XIX. _SECOND SIGHT: DIVINATION: UNIVERSALITY OF CERTAIN SUPERSTITIONS: FAIRIES IN SCOTLAND._ There are many aspects of the Past which have an interest for the psychological student as well as for the antiquary, and there are not a few to which everybody may occasionally direct their attention with advantage. We are too much inclined to put it aside as a “sealed book,” which none but the scholar can open,--which, when opened, is hardly worth the reading. Or we are attracted only by its picturesque and romantic side, and take no heed of the valuable lessons which may be deduced upon a careful examination. Yet, as all history is more or less the history of human error and human folly, those chapters which treat of the credulities and superstitions of the Past, must surely embody many warnings and much counsel for the present. Our glance at Halloween superstitions in Scotland reminds us of other old Scottish practices, which serve to point a moral, if not to adorn a tale. We have met with a volume by a Mr. Walter Gregor, which furnishes some curious illustrative instances. On his vivid picture of the gloom and desolation of a Scottish Sabbath, we will not dwell, for our readers will probably have gathered from other sources, or even from personal experience, an idea of the dreariness of that sombre institution in the days when bigotry was mistaken for zeal, and the spirit was killed outright by the letter. It is pleasanter to read of the strong yearning for knowledge that then possessed the hearts of our Scottish youth; and how, in the age before School Boards were conceived of, the parish school supplied for twenty shillings per annum an education which fitted the scholar for entering the University. No Royal Road to Learning had as yet been discovered; and with much sweat of brain did the aspiring student brood over his Homer or Virgil by the flickering light of the peat-fire. When the time came for his removal to Glasgow or Aberdeen, thither he trudged afoot with his little “all” in a knapsack slung from his sturdy shoulders; and during the “sessions” it was a hard hand-to-hand fight with poverty which he stoutly fought, while delving deep into classical and mathematical lore; not forgetting occasional excursions into that vague metaphysical region which has always had so keen an attraction for the strong Scotch intellect. Our “present-day” students would too often shrink, we suspect, from the sacrifices demanded of their forefathers, and give way under the hardships which they endured, when a few potatoes and a