I have read (I believe in Clarendon), that the decapitation of Charles I. was augured (_after death_) from his coronation robes being of white velvet instead of purple; and this it was remembered was the colour of a victim’s death-garment; and in Blennerhasset’s history of James II., that the crown at his coronation tottered on his head, and at the same moment the royal arms fell from the altar of some London church. All this is too childish to be spoken of seriously, and reminds me of the General Montecuculi, who on some saint’s day had ordered bacon in his omelette. At the moment it was served, a peal of thunder shook his house, when he exclaimed, “Voilà bien du bruit pour une omelette!” We wonder not to find Lily, into whose moth-eaten tomes I have sometimes peeped for amusement, prating thus of consequences. There is an old paper of his graced with “the effigies of Master Praise God Barebone,” where, among other _judgments_, the blindness of Milton is recorded as a penal infliction of the Deity, for “that he writ two books against the kings, and Salmasius his defence of kings.” But we do wonder at such a weakness in Sir Walter Raleigh, that he should thus write in his History of the World,—“The strangest thing I have read of in this kind being certainly true, was, that the night before the battle of Novara, all the dogs which followed the French army ran from them to the Switzers; and lo! next morning the Switzers were beaten by the French.” And yet a greater wonder is, that so many solemn stories should have crept into our national legends, in which there is _no truth_: in which philosophers and divines have very innocently combined to bewilder us. There is an _assumed_ incident associated with a melancholy event in the noble family of Lansdowne, most illustrative of my observation. In the “Literary Recollections” of the Rev. Richard Warner, is recorded the interesting story of the apparition of Lord William Petty, at Bowood, related to Mr. Warner by the Rev. Joseph Townsend, rector of Pewsey in Wiltshire, and “confirmed by the dying declaration of Dr. Alsop, of Calne.” It is affirmed that Lord William Petty, who was under the care of Dr. Priestley, the librarian, and the Rev. Mr. Jervis, his tutor, was attacked, at the age of seven, with inflammation of the lungs, for which Mr. Alsop was summoned to Bowood. After a few days, the young nobleman seemed to be out of danger; but, on a sudden relapse, the surgeon was again sent for in the evening.