I. The art, by which supernatural agency is insinuated, derives its potency from its singular application to human nature, in its extremes of weakness and strength. Simply considered, fear is the basest of emotions, and the least adapted to the dignity of romance; yet it is that, of which the most heroic heart sometimes whispers a confession. On the other hand, every thing, which tends to elevate and ennoble our feelings, to give the character of permanency to our impressions, and impart a tongue to the silence of nature, has reference to things unseen. The tremblings of the spirit, which are base when prompted by any thing earthly, become sublime when inspired by a sense of the visionary and immortal. They are the secret witnesses of our alliance with power, which is not of this world. We feel both our fleshly infirmity and our high destiny, as we shrink on the borders of spiritual existence. Whilst we listen for echoes from beyond the grave, and search with tremulous eagerness for indications of the unearthly, our Curiosity and Fear assume the grandeur of passions. We might well doubt our own immortality, if we felt no restless desire to forestal the knowledge of its great secret, and held no obstinate questionings with the sepulchre. We were not of heavenly origin, if we did not struggle after a communion with the invisible; nor of human flesh, if we did not shudder at our own daring;—and it is in the union of this just audacity and venial terror, that we are strangely awed and affected. It is, therefore, needless to justify the use of the supernatural in fiction; for it is peculiarly adapted to the workings of the imagination—that power, whose high province is to mediate between the world without us and the world within us; on the one hand to impart sentiment and passion to the external universe, and make it redolent of noble associations; and, on the other, to clothe the affections of the heart and the high suggestions of the reason with colour and shape, and present them to the mind in living and substantial forms.