There was one Theophilus Insulanus, who, I think, calls all those who have not faith in phantoms, _irreligious_, because, forsooth, “these ghosts are never employed on subjects of frivolous concern.” I may be under the ban of this flimsy enthusiast, but you will not gain me as a proselyte, Astrophel, for, like our great poet, I have seen too many ghosts myself. Yet I know some few self-created wizards, who have solved to their hearts’ content those two grand mysteries, the _real_ existence and the _purpose_ of ghostly visitations; who, like Owain Glyndwr, “can call spirits from the vasty deep,” and even expect that they will “come when they do call for them.” Others have laboured under self-glamourie, and believed themselves magicians, until put _to the proof_. I remember the painter, Richard Cosway, was under this illusion; and, when the old cynic Northcote desired him to raise Sir Joshua Reynolds, the pseudo-magus confessed himself foiled, by advancing this simple excuse, “I would, were it not _sinful_!” It were well if these monomaniacs were laid in the famous bed of St. Hilary at Poitiers; for there, with the muttering of a prayer or two, as the legend tells us, madmen may be cured. But, in truth, the light of divine reason has so far dispelled these fancies for the supernatural, that very few of _us_, I presume, are confident in the hope of raising a ghost when we want one; or of laying it in the Red Sea for a hundred years, by two clergymen, with “bell, book, and candle,” and scraps of mystic Latin, when it becomes rude or troublesome. IDA. Will you not concede that many visionaries have _believed_, and written from pure and even holy motives? EV. There is no doubt of this, lady; yet while it has fanned the flame of superstition in minds of lower intellect, with many, the endeavour to _prove too much_ has marred these motives, and weakened faith, even in the credulous; so that we may hope the wild romances of Beaumont, and Burthogge, and Baxter, and Aubrey, and Glanville, and that arch-mystagogue Moreton (whose book is half full of prolix dialogues between ghosts and ghost-seers), will soon be mere objects of interest and curiosity to the black-letter bibliomaniac and the more erudite legend-hunter. CAST. We will not submit to your anathema, Evelyn. This learned clerk has challenged our faith. What a treasury of secrets might he unfold to us from the mystic tomes of antiquity, the wonders of profane psychology; from the tales of Arabia to Vatheck and the Epicurean—from the classic mythology of Homer to the wild romances of his humble prototype Ossian. Let it be a match: we will listen, Astrophel, while you “unsphere the spirit of Plato;” and here we sit in judgment, on the velvet throne of this our court of Tintern. NATURE AND MOTIVES OF GHOSTS.