strange things fancy and memory are apt to be, by vivid images of the fair Belinda, and of that inimitable game at Ombre which will live longer than any painting, and can only die with the language. There is no forgetting that morning.

Deans and the Duke of Argyle met Queen Caroline: it has been improved unluckily, and the walk where the interview took place no longer exists. To make some amends, however,-for every thing belonging to those delicious books assumes the form of historical interest, becomes an actual reality-to compensate for this disappointment, in removing some furniture from an old house in the Town, three portraits were discovered in the wainscot, George the second, a staring likeness, between Lady Suffolk and Queen Caroline. The paintings were the worst of that bad era, but the position of the three, and the recollection of Jeanie Deans was irresistible; those pictures ought never to be separated.

But of all the celebrated villas round Richmond, none pleased me better than one which seemed so unsuited to that gay scene, that one cannot look at it without wondering how it came there. I speak of Ham House, a stately old place retired from the river, which is concealed and divided from it by rows of huge trees.

Another almost as pleasant was passed in going down the river towards Kew, amongst all sorts of royal recollections, from the remains of the house of Anne of Cleves, to the lime-trees fragrant with blossom and musical with bees, under which the late king and queen used to sit of a summer evening, whilst their children were playing round them on the grass. Kew Palace is in fine harmony with this pretty family scene. One likes to think of royalty so comfortable and homely and unconstrained as it must have been in that small ugly old-fashioned house. Princes are the born thralls of splendour, and to see them eased of their cumbrous magnificence produces much such a sensation of pleasure as that which one feels in reading the fine passage of Ivanhoe, where the collar is taken from the neck of Gurth, and he leaps up a free Ham House is a perfect model of the manAt Kew, too, in those confined and ill- sion of the last century, with its dark shadowy furnished rooms, the royal inhabitants were front, its steps and terraces, its marble basins, not without better luxuries; books accessible and its deep silent court, whose iron gate, as and readable, and looking as if they had been Horace Walpole used to complain, was never read, and a fine collection of cabinet pictures: opened. Every thing about it belongs to the superb Canaletti's; the famous Dropsical time of hoops and periwigs. Harlow Place Woman on which the queen is said during must have been just such an abode of stateliher last illness to have fixed her eyes so fre-ness and seclusion. Those iron gates seem quently and with such an intense expression to have been erected for no other purpose than of self-pity; and a portrait of Vandyke, to divide Lovelace from Clarissa; they look which rivals the Titian, the elegant Vandyke with his head over the shoulder, which has been so often engraved. What a noble race of men those great painters were! There is nothing in all their works grander or fuller of intellectual beauty than some of their own heads as we find them recorded in their portraits of themselves, or in the interesting col

man.

lection of Vasari.

This remark will hardly apply to one great Painter, whose residence forms one of the many delightful associations of Richmond. Sir Joshua, who flattered all other persons, did himself so little justice, that in his own portraits he might pass for a dancing-master. His Villa is here; rich in remembrances of Johnson and Boswell and Goldsmith and Burke; here the spot where the poet Thomson used to write; here the elegant house of Owen Cambridge; close by the celebrated villa of Pope, where one seems to see again, Swift and Gay, St. John and Arbuthnot; a stone's throw off the still more celebrated gothic toy-shop Strawberry Hill, which we all know so well from the minute and vivid descriptions of its master, the most amusing of letter-writers, the most fashionable of antiquaries, the most learned of petit-maitres, the cynical finical delightful Horace Walpole; here too is Richmond Park, where Jeanie

so stern and so unrelenting. We almost expect to see her through them sweeping slowly along the terrace-walk in the pure dignity of her swan-like beauty, with her jealous sister watching her from a window; and we look for him, too, at the corner of the wall waiting to deposite a letter and listening with a speaking eagerness to the rustle of her silk gown. If there were any Clarissas now-a-days, they would certainly be found at Ham House. And the keeping is so perfect. The very flowers are old-fashioned. No American borders, no kalmias or azaleas or magnolias, or such heathen shrubs! No flimsy China roses! Nothing new-fangled! None but flowers of the olden time, arranged in gay formal knots, staid and prim and regular, and without a leaf awry. Add but round Dutch honeysuckles, and I dare say that Fletcher's beautiful song, which I shall borrow to conclude my description, might comprise the whole catalogue.

With her bells dim,
Oxslips in their cradles growing,
Marigolds on death-beds blowing,
*Lark-heels trim."

GHOST STORIES.

SUPERSTITION has fallen woefully into decay in our enlightened country. Sunday-schools and spinning-jennies, steam-engines, and MacAdam roads, to say nothing of that mightiest and most diffusive of all powers, the Press, have chased away the spirit of credulity, as ghosts are said to be scared by the dawn, so that if a second Sir Thomas Browne were to appear amongst us, we should be forced to send him to Germany for that class of "Vulgar Errors," the old saws and nursery legends, which once formed a sort of supplement to the national faith, an apocrypha as ancient and as general as our language. Not only have we discarded the more gross and gloomy creations of an ignorant fear, the wizards, witches and demons of the middle ages, but we have also divested ourselves of the more genial and every-day phantasies, the venerable and conventional errors-pleasant mistakes at least if mistakes they were-which succeeded to them. Who now hails his good fortune if he meet two magpies, or bewails his evil destiny if he see but one? Who is in or out of spirits according as the concave cinder which does him the honour to jump from the fire on his foot be long or round a coffin or a purse? Who looks in the candles for expected letters, or searches the tea-cups for coming visiters? Who shrinks from being helped to salt as if one were offering him arsenic, or is wretched if a knife and fork be laid across his plate? Who if his neighbour chance to sneeze, thinks it a bounden duty to cry God bless him? Who tells his dreams o'mornings, and observes that they come true by contraries? Who, now that Sir Walter disclaims it, hath faith in the stars? Nobody.

It was not so sixty or seventy years ago. Then the nation was a believing nation, and the world was a believing world. Even Frederick and his philosophical court (I mean him of Prussia called the Great) held, if we may trust M. Thiebault's very amusing book

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Mes Souvenirs," as comfortable a share of these minor articles of faith as their more orthodox neighbours. M. de Klest, for instance, and a whole band of young spendthrifts ruined themselves by alchemy, which they pursued with the assistance of an adept, with sacrifices to the devil and as many suffumigations as

*Of course the flower that we now call larkspur. I have attributed this charming song (the bridal song from the Two Noble Kinsmen) to Fletcher;-but it may belong to a still greater poet, for certainly Shakspeare was art and part in that beautiful tragedy.

Dousterswivel; the Marquis d'Argens had the infirmity of not enduring to be one of thirteen at table; M. Laméthrie, a professed atheist, crossed himself like a good catholic whenever it thundered or was likely to thunder; the princess Amelia, as stanch a philosopher as the best of them, believed tout de bon, in fortune-telling and astrology; the queen Ulrica of Sweden, another of Frederick's sisters, lent herself to the miracles of Emmanuel Swedenborg; and the great king himself is violently suspected of sharing the fortune-telling faith of his sister Amelia, and even of suffering the predictions with which she furnished him to influence the conduct of his warlike opera

tions.

Now without pretending to compete with this right royal superstition, inasmuch as I neither regulate my actions by fortune-tellers, nor believe that dead men are in the habit of holding conversations with the living-except perhaps sometimes in books, I must yet plead guilty to a few old-fashioned irrationalities, half of theory, and half of practice. There is no analyzing a folly of this sort, it runs away when one attempts to clutch it like a drop of quicksilver; but it is easily defined by instances. I had rather not spill the salt for example, unless I can slily throw a pinch over my left shoulder; and I had rather not see the new moon through a window; and I have gone all day with a stocking the wrong side without, rather than forfeit the good fortune attributed to that lucky accident by turning my hose; and although not generally addicted to the consulting of small oracles, such as the Virgilian lots and cards and so forth, yet I can so far sympathize with the feeling as to understand why, during his exile in Siberia, poor Kotzebue (those Germans are pretty believers) used to play by himself every night at la grande patience, and go to bed hopeful or despairing according as he had won or lost at his solitary game. Not that I have any real faith in such nonsense either-be sure to remember that, courteous reader-nothing like a real genuine honest faith-only a sort of sneaking kindness for the old foolery-besides one likes to meet with it now and then as a rarity, to sympathize with or laugh at according to circumstances.

+ Mes Souvenirs de vingt ans de séjour à Berlin. Tome I. pages 111, et 285. M. Thiebault, talking of Swedenborg, relates a curious story of a conversation which that visionary held, or pretended to hold with a certain dead Baron, whose wife being much pestered by a creditor whom she knew to be paid, commissioned Swedenborg to inquire of the defunct what he had done with the receipt. The deceased Baron replied that being engaged in reading Bayle at the moment the paper was delivered to him, he had placed it between the leaves of such a volume at such a page, and the receipt was found there accordingly. This story much resembles Wandering Willy's tale in Redgauntlet, and was perhaps the origin of that fine legend.

This is a pleasure that seldom falls in my way. We have the ill luck to live in a very polished neighbourhood near a large manufacturing town, not far from London, and with a great road running through the village. We have a Free School of our own; and a National School, and a Lancasterian School close at hand; a public house where they take in two newspapers, and a parish clerk who reads Cobbett. In a word, we are a civilized people, I grieve to say it, a generation of wiseacres. At present we have not credulity enough amongst us to maintain a gipsy fortune-teller. My observations of this sort are all retrospective;-nothing better than recollections, dating at least twenty years back, before the lightning of universal education (for really it did burst upon us like a storm) had astonished and illuminated the world.

all times, and was in truth almost equally agreeable to look at or to listen to.

So unluckily thought Peter Hodges. Every evening through the winter, from Michaelmas to New-year's day, and from New-year's day to Candlemas, did that indefatigable suitor present himself at the mason's cottage, until Dame Butler, whose domestic economy had at first been a good deal discomposed by the honour of the young farmer's visits, began! from mere habit to mind him no more than a joint stool, and till poor Kate grew so weary of the sight of him, that she used to lock herself into her own little room, and go to bed without her supper, purely to get out of his way.

Now this was an affront which our imperturbable suitor bore with exemplary patience; but for which the contumacious damsel reThe last true believer of my acquaintance ceived sundry serious reproofs from her good was a young farmer called Peter Hodges, who father, the little mason; who reminded her having luckily had a father before him, was that not only did farmer Hodges take the well to do in the world, and was at the par- trouble to walk two miles every night to look ticular period of which I speak, (somewhere at her baby-face, but that it was not many about Candlemas-tide in the year nine.) pay-persons who would like to pass the Nursery ing suit and service to the fair Kate Butler, daughter of old Simon Butler the bricklayer of Aberleigh, and one of the prettiest girls in the parish.

Now Peter was of that order of suitors with whom fathers are generally better pleased than their daughters, especially when those fathers are, as was the case with our good mason, thrifty and cautious, and mindful of the main chance, and the daughters like Kate, thoughtless and open-hearted. He, Peter Hodges, was a tall lathy awkward figure, with a boy ish-I had almost said a girlish-countenance, fair, pale and freckled, and an expression so remarkably vacant and simple, that nobody could see him without being tempted to ask Macbeth's uncivil question, "Where got'st thou that goose look ?" His motion was weak and shambling; as if his long thin limbs were unable to support his long thin body. Even his straight light hair stuck up and stuck out and waved abroad with a flickering motion, like flax upon a distaff, adding tenfold to the helpless silliness of his aspect. Silly he looked, and silly he was; so silly that in conversation, as his fair mistress was wont to assert, the very magpie had the advantage of him, inasmuch as she, when a stranger said "How d'ye do, Mag?" would answer "What's that to you, sir!" whereas Peter when thus addressed only opened his mouth and stared, and said nothing.

No such accusation could be brought against Kate, a lively spirited girl, whose beauty owed half its reputation to the quickness of mind and the light and joyous temperament, which danced in her eyes, played in her smiles, and gave a singular charm to the mingled archness and innocence of her rustic merriment. Kate had plenty to say for herself at

corner of a dark winter's night. "I never saw any thing there myself," continued master Butler, "but all the parish knows it's haunted, and my grandmother, rest her soul! got strangely scared there, in her younger days, by a ghost all in white, and of surprising stature. The farmer thought he saw it last night," added the man of mortar; "he came in quite flustrated like, with his hair right on end upon his head, and making as much noise with his breath as you are doing with those bellows, as if coals did not burn out fast enough, without such wastefulness," added the angry father, passing with great rapidity from one subject of objurgation to another; "the fire's a good fire, and nobody but an extravagant hussy would think of blowing it after that fashion."

"Mother ordered me to heat the irons," replied the culprit meekly; "but did Farmer Hodges really see the ghost, father? Do you think it was the ghost? Did you see any signs of it?"

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Why no," responded the little mason: "I can't say that I did. I took my hat down from the nail, and set out to see, but just at our gate I met young Joe Appleton of the Mill-I wonder what he was doing about here so late," muttered the knight of the hod, again flying from his subject and casting a keen glance at his daughter, who blushed and fidgeted, and busied herself in laying down the irons before the fire, and at last spoke timidly.

"But the ghost, father? Had he seen the ghost?"

"He? no! He said, if there's any truth in the chap, that the only thing to be seen at the Nursery corner, when he came by, was Hester Hewitt's white cow looking over a

give a shrewd guess at what ails Joe Appleton. The poor lad 's in love too."

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Ay, with pretty Kate of the Nursery corner," quoth mine hostess.

"Her father says she's to marry long Peter Hodges," replied mine host.

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name what's that?" added he, interrupting himself, and going towards the door, at which some one was knocking with a most prodigious din. "Who's that beating at the good oak panels as if he would beat them out?" continued the astonished landlord, undoing the lock, and admitting the clamorous applicant, who staggered faintly towards the group at the fire-place.

miller's hat, jacket, and trousers, all white with the flour of the mill, and catching hold of a bundle which he held under his arm. "I see how it is! And I'll take care of Kate's sheet-it is her's, I suppose?" Joe nodded. But in heaven's" And do you wipe the flour from your face, and go your way with Jem the keeper, for though yon body's well-nigh stupefied with the fright, it's better to run no risk. And now they're getting him to drink the brandy, what sense he has will come back again. Did I see a ghost, boy?" pursued the old man, as he was letting Joe Appleton out of the house-door; "Did I see a ghost in America? Ay, just such an one as Master Hodges has seen to-night! Just such an one as thyself, my lad! Get along with ye, and leave me to frighten long Peter out of passing the Nursery corner; Kate's too good and too pretty for him, if he were as rich again," continued the old man to himself, as he joined the luckless farmer (who sat still half unconscious by the fire-side) and applied himself seriously to the business of consolation and mystification, taking upon him to compound two tumblers of stiff toddy, and so ordering his discourse whilst discussing them, that Peter left the Rose more certain that he had seen a ghost than he was when he entered it, and declared that he would never pass the Nursery corner again for love or money.

"Why, Farmer Hodges! was it you that made this clatter? I thought you had been a quieter body," said the Pensioner: "What's the matter, man? I did not think it had been in him to make so much noise. He looks quite scared," added the veteran.

And Peter, his hair on end, and his face whiter than his shirt, sank into a low wicker chair by the fire, and began rocking himself to and fro, as if he were nursing a baby. "He looks for all the world as if he had seen a ghost," pursued the old man.

And Peter started and looked round him, as if he saw it then.

"Where was it, lad? At the Nursery corner?"

And Peter's teeth chattered at the sound. "Ah, they are sad things, those ghosts," continued the veteran, as Peter, rejecting the ale offered to him by the host, and the brandy tendered by the hostess, sank back in his wicker chair, looking very likely to faint away. "They are sad things, those ghosts," said the old man in a sympathising tone. "Better not cross them! I had my own troubles in that way, when I was a youngster. Did you never hear me tell of it, Master Hodges?* If it had not been for that ghost which came across us when I was upon guard in America, I should have saved General Prescott from being taken, and have been made a corporal upon the spot. A corporal! by Jove I should have been a general myself by this time, if that confounded ghost story had not come over me and stopped my preferment. Ghosts are plaguy things any how, especially if you cross

them."

In about a twelvemonth, young Joe Appleton of the mill married the mason's pretty daughter with the consent of all parties; and in spite of the ups and downs of life, which they have shared with their neighbours, neither of them has, I believe, ever found cause to repent their union. The good old Pensioner is dead; long Peter is gone away; and the world is grown so wise, that the very children laugh at the terrors of the Nursery corner; and it would be impossible for a village maiden to frighten away a disagreeable lover by a ghost story now-even if she had Mrs. Radcliffe's genius for the romantic and the horrible.

NOTE. The following characteristic and national narrative contains the American version of the Ghost story in question. The remarkable facts attending the capture of General Prescott are certainly true, being attested not only by my friend the veteran, but "What did you ever see a ghost in Amer- corroborated by some near relations of that brave ica? a real ghost?" said a voice from behind, officer, who remember the story as current in the and Joe Appleton, who had entered unper-exploits which succeeded by their own exceeding family. It appears to have been one of those daring Iceived in the bustle, advanced towards the boldness, and are practicable only because they appear veteran; "a real, actual, bona fide ghost?" impossible. Certainly if the notion of a ghost had not come across the English sentinel, the American adventurers would have had the worst of the fray. Narrative of the Surprise and Capture of Maj. Gen.

"Why should not I as well as he!" replied our scarlet friend. Then looking at Joe more closely, "Ah! Ah! man! I see how it is now! you have been playing the ghost yonder yourself, for the sake of your pretty sweetheart;" added he in a whisper, regarding the

Vide note at the end of the story.

Richard Prescott, of the British Army, together with his Aid-de-camp, Major Barrington, by a party of American soldiers, under Major Wm. Barton, July

9, 1777.

In the month of November, 1776, Major General Lee was surprised and taken prisoner by a detach