“Many years after this, about the year 1790, two ladies paid a visit at Allanbank—I think the house was then let—and passed a night there. They had never heard a word about the ghost; but they were disturbed the whole night with something walking backward and forward in their bed-chamber. This I had from the best authority. “Sir Robert Stuart was created a baronet in the year 1687. “Lady Stapleton, grandmother of the late Lord le Despencer, told me that the night Lady Susan Fane (Lord Westmoreland’s daughter) died in London, she appeared to her father, then at Merriworth, in Kent. He was in bed, but had not fallen asleep. There was a light in the room; she came in, and sat down on a chair at the foot of the bed. He said to her, ‘Good God, Susan! how came you here? What has brought you from town?’ She made no answer; but rose directly, and went to the door, and looked back toward him very earnestly: then she retired, shutting the door behind her. The next morning he had notice of her death. This, Lord Westmoreland himself told to Lady Stapleton, who was by birth a Fane, and his near relation.” ----- [4] “A species of lace made of thread.”—JAMIESON. CHAPTER XV. APPARITIONS SEEKING THE PRAYERS OF THE LIVING. WITH regard to the appearance of ghosts, the frequency of haunted houses, presentiments, prognostics, and dreams, if we come to inquire closely, it appears to me that all parts of the world are much on an equality—only, that where people are most engaged in business or pleasure, these things are, in the first place, less thought of and less believed in, consequently less observed; and when they _are_ observed, they are readily explained away: and in the second place—where the external life, the life of the brain, wholly prevails—either they do not happen, or they are not perceived—the rapport not existing, or the receptive faculty being obscured.