In these later days, it, no doubt, requires a fine knowledge of the human heart to employ the supernatural, so as to move the pulses of terror. Of all superstitions, the most touching are those, which relate to the appearance of the dead among the living; not only on account of the reality which they derive from mingling with the ordinary business of life, but of the cold and shuddering sympathy we feel for a being like to whom we may ourselves become in a few short years. To bring such a vision palpably on the scene is always a bold experiment, and usually requires a long note of preparation, and a train of circumstances, which may gradually and insensibly dispose the mind to implicit credence. Yet to dispense with all such appliances, and to call forth the grandest spirit, that ever glided from the tomb, was not beyond Shakspeare’s skill. A few short sentences only prepare the way for the ghost of the murdered King of Denmark; the spirit enters, and we feel at once he is no creature of time; he speaks, and his language is “of Tartarus, and the souls in bale.” Such mighty magic as this, however, belonged only to the first of poets. Writers who, in modern times, have succeeded in infusing into the mind thoughts of unearthly fear, have usually taken one of these two courses: either they have associated their superstitions with the solemnities of nature, and contrived to interweave them in the very texture of life, without making themselves responsible for the feelings they excite: or they have, by mysterious hints and skilful contrivances, excited the curiosity and terror of their readers, till they have prepared them either to believe in any wonder they may produce, or to image for themselves in the obscurity fearful shapes, and to feel the presence of invisible horrors.