In reviewing my late novel of “Lilly Dawson,” where I announce the present work, I observe that while some of the reviewers scout the very idea of anybody’s believing in ghosts, others, less rash, while they admit that it is a subject we know nothing about, object to further investigation, on account of the terrors and uncomfortable feelings that will be engendered. Now, certainly, if it were a matter in which we had no personal concern, and which belonged merely to the region of speculative curiosity, everybody would be perfectly justified in following their inclinations with regard to it; there would be no reason for frightening themselves, if they did not like it; but, since it is perfectly certain that the fate of these poor ghosts, be what it may, will be ours some day—perhaps before another year or another week has passed over our heads—to shut our eyes to the truth, because it may perchance occasion us some uncomfortable feelings, is surely a strange mixture of contemptible cowardice and daring temerity. If it be true that, by some law of nature, departed souls occasionally revisit the earth, we may be quite certain that it was intended we should know it, and that the law is to some good end; for no law of God can be purposeless or mischievous; and is it conceivable that we should say we will not know it, because it is disagreeable to us? Is not this very like saying, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die!” and yet refusing to inquire what is to become of us when we do die? refusing to avail ourselves of that demonstrative proof which God has mercifully placed within our reach? And, with all this obstinacy, people do not get rid of the apprehension; they go on struggling against it and keeping it down by argument and reason; but there are very few persons indeed, men or women, who, when placed in a situation calculated to suggest the idea, do not feel the intuitive conviction striving within them. In the ordinary circumstances of life, nobody suffers from this terror; in the extraordinary ones, I find the professed disbelievers not much better off than the believers. Not long ago, I heard a lady expressing the great alarm she should have felt, had she been exposed to spend a whole night on Ben Lomond, as Margaret Fuller, the American authoress, did lately; “for,” said she, “though I don’t believe in ghosts, I should have been dreadfully afraid of seeing one then!”