This may seem rather exaggerated, read by good daylight, or by the fire of a city hearth; but this is the natural spirit of the solitary house. It is that which many a one has felt. It has cured many a one of longing to live in a “sweet sequestered cot;” nay, it is the spirit felt by the naturalized inhabitants of such solitary places. I look upon such places to generate fears and superstitions too, in no ordinary degree. The inhabitants of solitary houses are often most arrant cowards; and for this there are many causes. A sense of exposure to danger if it be not lost by time, is more likely to generate timidity of disposition than courage. Then, the sound of woods and waters; the mysterious sighings and moanings, and lumberings, that winds and other causes occasion amongst the old walls and decayed roofs, and ill-fastened doors and casements of large old country houses, have a wonderful influence on the minds of the ignorant and simple, who pass their lives in the solitude of fields; and go to and fro between their homes and the scene of their duties, often through deep and lonesome dells, through deep, o’ershadowed lanes by night; by the cross-road, and over the dreary moor: all places of no good character. Superstitious legends hang all about such neighbourhoods; and traditions enough to freeze the blood of the ignorant, taint a dozen spots round every such place. In this field a girl was killed by her jealous, or only too favoured lover: to the boughs of that old oak, a man was found hanging: in that deep dark pool the poor blind fiddler was found drowned: in that old stone-quarry, and under that high cliff, deeds were done that have mingled a blackness with their name. Nay, in one such locality, the head of a woodman was found by some mowers returning in the evening from their work. There it lay in the green path of a narrow dingle, horrid and blackening in the sun. It was supposed to have been severed from the wretched man’s body with his own axe, by a band of poachers, who charged him with being a spy upon them. The body was found cast into a neighbouring marsh. What lonely country but has these petrifying horrors? And is it wonderful that they have their effect on the simple peasantry? especially as they are the constant topics round the evening fire, along with a thousand haunted-house and churchyard stories; ghosts, and highway robberies, and Horrid stabs in groves forlorn, And murders done in caves.--_Hood._