_Mr. Fax._ This is no uncommon effect of the association of ideas when external objects present themselves to us after an interval of absence, in their remembered arrangement, with only one form wanting, and that the dearest among them, to perfect the resemblance between the present sensation and the recollected idea. A vivid imagination, more especially when the nerves are weakened by anxiety and fatigue, will, under such circumstances, complete the imperfect scene, by replacing for a moment the one deficient form among those accustomed objects which had long formed its accompaniments in the contemplation of memory. This single mental principle will explain the greater number of _credible_ tales of apparitions, and at the same time give a very satisfactory reason why a particular spirit is usually found haunting a particular place. _Mr. Forester._ Thus Petrarch’s beautiful pictures of the Spirit of Laura on the banks of the Sorga are assuredly something more than the mere fancies of the closet, and must have originated in that system of mental connection, which, under peculiar circumstances, gives ideas the force of sensations. Anxiety and fatigue are certainly great promoters of the state of mind most favourable to such impressions. [Illustration: _Sir Oran, throwing himself into a chair, began to shed tears in great abundance._] _Mr. Fax._ It was under the influence of such excitements that Brutus saw the spirit of Caesar; and in similar states of feeling the phantoms of poetry are usually supposed to be visible: the ghost of Banquo, for example, and that of Patroclus. But this only holds true of the poets who paint from nature; for their artificial imitators, when they wish to call a spirit from the vasty deep, are not always so attentive to the mental circumstances of the persons to whom they present it. In the early periods of society, when apparitions form a portion of the general creed; when the life of man is wandering, precarious, and turbulent; when the uncultured wildness of the heath and the forest harmonises with the chimaeras of superstition; and when there is not, as in later times, a rooted principle of reason and knowledge, to weaken such perceptions in their origin, and destroy the seeming reality of their subsequent recollection, impressions of this nature will be more frequent, and will be as much invested with the character of external existence, as the scenes to which they are attached by the connecting power of the mind. They will always be found with their own appropriate character of time, and place, and circumstance. The ghost of the warrior will be seen on the eve of battle by him who keeps his lonely watch near the blaze of the nightly fire, and the spirit of the huntress maid will appear to her lover when he pauses on the sunny heath, or rests in the moonlit cave. CHAPTER XXXIV THE CHURCHYARD