Regarding the confirmation, which the ghost’s mission is, in the same narrative, supposed to have received from the completion of a foreboded death, all that can be said of it is, that the coincidence was a _fortunate_ one; for, without it, the story would, probably, never have met with a recorder, and we should have lost one of the sweetest anecdotes that private life has ever afforded. But, on the other hand, a majority of popular ghost-stories might be adduced, wherein apparitions have either visited our world, without any ostensible purpose and errand whatever, or, in the circumstances of their mission, have exhibited all the inconsistency of conduct so well exposed in the quotation which I have given from Grose, respecting departed spirits. “Seldom as it may happen,” says Nicolai, in the memoir which he read to the Society of Berlin, on the appearance of spectres occasioned by disease, “that persons believe they see human forms, yet examples of the case are not wanting. A respectable member of this academy, distinguished by his merit in the science of Botany, whose truth and credulity are unexceptionable, once saw in this very room in which we are now assembled, the phantom of the late president Maupertius.” But it appears that this ghost was seen by a philosopher, and, consequently, no attempt was made to connect it with superstitious speculations. The uncertainty, however, of ghostly predictions, is not unaptly illustrated in the table-talk of Johnson. “An acquaintance,” remarks Boswell, “on whose veracity I can depend, told me, that walking home one evening at Kilmarnock, he heard himself called from a wood, by the voice of a brother, who had gone to America; and the next packet brought an account of that brother’s death. Mackbean asserted that this inexplicable _calling_ was a thing very well known. Dr. Johnson said that one day at Oxford, as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly calling _Sam_. She was then at Litchfield; but _nothing ensued_.” This casual admission, which, in the course of conversation, transpired from a man, _himself_ strongly tainted with superstition, precludes any farther remarks on the alleged nature and errand of ghosts, which would now, indeed, be highly superfluous. “A lady once asked me,” says Mr. Coleridge, “if I believed in ghosts and apparitions? I answered with truth and simplicity, No, Madam! I have seen far too many myself[43].” DEUTEROSCOPIA, OR SECOND-SIGHT.