In the city of Nantes, as we see it written by William of Malmsbury, in the twelfth century, dwelt two young ecclesiastics. Between them was a solemn compact, that within thirty days after the death of either, his shade should appear, sleeping or waking, to the survivor, to declare if the true psychology was the doctrine of Plato, or of the Epicureans; if the soul survived the body, or vanished into air. The shade appeared like one dying, while the spirit passeth away; and discoursing, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, of the pains of infernal punishments, stretched forth his ulcerous arm, and asked if “it seemed as light;” then, dropping the caustic humour from his arm on the temples of the living witness, which were corroded by the drop, he warned him of the same penalties if he entered not into holy orders, in the city of Rennes. This solemn warning worked his conversion, and he became a pious and exemplary devotee, under the holy wings of Saint Melanius. In these instances, is not the special influence of the Deity evident? and why will our profane wisdom still draw us from our leaning to this holy creed, causing us to “forsake the fountains of living water, and hew out unto ourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water?” How awfully beautiful is the Mosaic picture of the first mortal communion with the Creator, when the vision of God was heard by Adam and Eve, walking in the garden in the cool of the day; or, when the Deity appeared to Abraham and to Moses, and his word came to Manoah, and to Noah, with the blessings of a promise; or, when his angels of light descended to console, and to relieve from chains and from fire; or, when the angel of the Lord first appears in the vision to Cornelius; and the trance, or rather the counterpart of the vision, comes over St. Peter, at Joppa; and the arrival of the men, sent by the centurion, confirms the miracle: and then, the last sublime revealings of the Apocalypse. You will not call it presumption, Evelyn, that I adduce these holy records to confirm our modern faith; and ask you, why philosophy will yet chain our thoughts to earth, and affirm our visions to be a meaningless phantasy? ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. “More strange than true. I never may believe These antique fables.” MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. EV. Your holy thoughts, fair Ida, are but an echo of my own. The grand causes and awful judgments of the inspired æras of the world prove the truth by the _necessity_ of the miracles, not only in answer to the Pharisees and Sadducees, who _required a sign_, but even before the eyes of the early disciples, whose apathetic hearts soon forgot the miracles, and their divine Master himself; for, as he was walking on the sea, “at the fourth watch, they thought he was a spirit.”