CAST. A ghost, I believe, according to the rules of phantasy, ought to be without matter or form, or indeed any sensible properties. Yet are very serious tales related of guns bursting when fired at them, and swords broken by their contact, and of loud voices issuing from filmy phantoms through which the moonbeams are seen to glimmer. A spirit ought, of course, to communicate with us in another way than that which we know, and possess those ethereal faculties of creeping through chinks or keyholes, and of resuming its airy form, like the sylph of Belinda, when the “glittering forfex” had cut it in twain. An exquisite morceau of such a phantom just now flits across my memory. It is of two old ladies dwelling in two border castles in Scotland. One of these dames was visited by the spectre _bust_ of a man; and the other by the _lower half_ of him. Which had the better bargain, I know not, but I believe— ASTR. Nay, it were not difficult, lady, to overwhelm me with tales like yours—the idle and unmeaning gossip of a winter’s night: but there are many spectral visitations so intimately associated with events, that the faculty even of prophecy cannot be doubted. Bodine, as Burton writes, is fully satisfied that “these souls of men departed, _if_ corporeal, are of some shape, and that absolutely round, like sun and moone, because that is the most perfect form: that they can assume other aërial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleasure, appear in what likeness they will themselves: that they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant, and so likewise transform bodies of others into what form they please, and, with admirable celerity, remove them from place to place: that they can represent castles in the ayre, armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange objects to mortal men’s eyes; cause smells, savors, deceive all the senses; foretel future events, and do many strange miracles.” Then the eccentric Francis Grose has thus summed up many of their wondrous attributes:— “The spirit of a person deceased is either commissioned to return for some especial errand, such as the discovery of a murder, to procure restitution of lands, or money unjustly withheld from an orphan or widow: or, having committed some injustice whilst living, cannot rest till that is redressed. Sometimes the occasion of spirits revisiting this world is to inform their heir in what secret place or private drawer in an old trunk they had hid the title-deeds of the estate, or where, in troublesome times, they had buried the money and plate. Some ghosts of murdered persons, whose bodies have been secretly buried, cannot be at ease till their bones have been taken up and deposited in sacred ground, with all the rites of Christian burial.” The ghost of Hamlet’s father walked on the platform at Elsineur, to incite his son to revenge his murder; and many modern phantoms have enlivened the legends of our local histories, bent on the same mysterious errand.