In our own day superstition and wanton, or cunningly devised, imposture have been so largely mixed up with the subject, that a strong and very natural prejudice has gradually grown up against the belief in ghosts. Every strange appearance, every mysterious coincidence, that escaped the most superficial investigation, was forthwith called a ghost. History records, besides, numerous cases in which the credulity of great men has been played upon for purposes of policy and statecraft. When the German Emperor Joseph showed his great fondness of Augustus of Saxony--afterwards king of Poland--his Austrian counsellors became alarmed at the possible influence of such intimacy of their sovereign with a Protestant prince, and determined to break it off. Night after night, therefore, a fearful vision arose before the German emperor, rattling its chains and accusing the young prince of grievous heresy. Augustus, however, known already at that time for his gigantic strength, asked Joseph's permission to sleep in his room; when the ghost appeared as usual, the young prince sprang upon him, and feeling his flesh and blood, threw him bodily out of a window of the second story into a deep fosse. The unfortunate king of Prussia, Frederick William II., fell soon after his ascension of the throne into the hands of designing men, who determined to profit by his great kindness of heart and his tendency to mysticism, and began to work upon him by supernatural apparitions. One of the most cunningly devised impostures of the kind was practised upon King Gustavus III. of Sweden by ambitious noblemen of his court.