Sir John Friend, with his accomplices, forfeited
their guilty lives on the scaffold. The name was
subsequently changed to Prendergast, its
possessor was rewarded by royal gratitude with a
grant of considerable forfeited estates in Ireland,
became colonel of the 22nd Regiment of Foot,
and attained the rank of brigadier-general in
the army of Marlborough. The general stated
as certain to his companions that he would die
on a particular day, the 31st of August, 1709, a
day on which victory crowned the English arms
on the bloody field of Malplaquet. After the
battle, Prendergast was still alive, and his brother
officers jeeringly inquired of him, where was
his confident prediction? He gravely answered,
"I shall die notwithstanding what you see!"
Shortly after, a cannon-ball came from one of
the enemies' batteries, which the order for the
cessation of hostilities had not reached, and
carried off his head. Colonel Cecil, into whose
hands his papers came, found in his pocket-
book the following solemn entry, "Dreamt or"
—the words probably were, was told by an
apparition—"Sir John Friend meets me!"
The anecdote is traditional in 'the noble family
which descended from him and inherited his
estates.

The last hours of the profligate Lord
Littleton, to whom a clever essayist in the Quarterly
Review has of late years ingeniously but
erroneously attributed the authorship of Junius,
produced a deep sensation at the time, and the
event was associated with the supernatural. He
had dreamed that he saw a dove fluttering at his
chamber window, and afterwards a female figure
clothed in white appeared; the room was
unusually bright, and the objects distinctly visible.
The form approached his bed, and pointing to
the dial of a clock on the mantelpiece,
announced to the appalled and terror-stricken
peer, "Prepare to die! you will cease to exist
in three days!" It was midnight, his eye
glanced upon the dial, the hand of which pointed
to twelve o'clock; the warning spirit had
disappeared, and all around was involved in
darkness. The supernatural summons, calling
him to an untimely tomb, produced an intense
impression on his spirits, and at breakfast on
the morning of the predicted day he observed,
"If I live over night, I shall jockey the ghost,
for this is the third day." He dined at five and
retired to bed at eleven. Being afterwards about
to take some rhubarb and mint-water mixed,
and perceiving his valet stir the mixture with
a toothpick, in an upbraiding tone he directed
the servant to bring a teaspoon. On the
almost immediate return of the man, he found
his master quite dead, and the hand stood on
the dial at twelve. The apparition had been
that of a lady, whom he had betrayed and
deserted; agonised at his desertion, she had
committed suicide, and it was her figure that,
on awaking, he had seen in the aperture of the
window from which the fluttering sound had
proceeded. Part of the mystery was
subsequently cleared up: a lady in the house had
lost a favourite bird, and all the domestics had
been engaged in a vain chase for its recovery.
Consciousness of his faithless perfidy, remorse at
the fate of his victim, and weariness of life from
the reflection of great talents abused, had
predetermined him to take poison; his mind, affected
by an association of omens, had selected the
hour, and thus enabled him to fulfil the anticipation
of his own dream. A family picture
subsequently represented the incidents of the
visitation.

It was a remark of Doctor Johnson that many
who had denied the belief in apparitions with
their tongues, confessed it with their fears.
Spectral delusions were peculiarly prevalent in
England after the civil wars, and were, in a
great measure, traceable to the gloomy
imaginations of the Puritans. The happy and cheerful
hearths in the mansions of ancient families had
become dismal and desolate, and frightful tales
were circulated of their Cromwellian oppressors
by discarded retainers. Every rustic village had
its sheeted ghost from the graveyard, and those
who visited the higher orders were invariably
represented as pale in colour, and of a misty or
cloudy semblance. Lord Clarendon pauses in
his history to inform us that the ghost of Sir
George Villiers, father of the Duke of Buckingham,
gave three previous warnings of his son's
assassination by Felton; but, strange to say, the
phantom only carried its errand to an officer of
his wardrobe. Court etiquette required him,
after the third visit, to request an interview, in
order to communicate the information in person
to the intended victim. The duke was observed
to be very melancholy afterwards; but, as his
father's spirit did not come directly to himself,
the hint was too mysterious and remote to enable
him to provide against the danger. Even in
days past we have a remarkable instance of the
cool common sense with which a supernatural
visitor was received. The sturdy assessor to
the Westminster assembly had his rest disturbed
by the arch fiend, whom he treated with such
sovereign contempt as must have astonished the
dignity of his Satanic Majesty. Observing the
devil standing on a bright night by his bedside,
he considered for a while whether he should
address him. This he did at length by coolly
observing, " If thou hast nothing to do, I have!"
so turned himself to sleep.

When the mind is loaded with a sense of
guilt, reproaching voices frequently disturb the
imagination. Shakespeare, the deepest observer
of human nature, recalled the apparitions of his
murdered victims to Richard of Gloucester, in
his tent, on the feverish night he passed before
he met his fate at Bosworth field:

Oh! coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me.

The solitary hours of Charles the Eleventh of
France were rendered horrible by the constant
repetition of the shrieks and agonies which
assailed his ears during the frightful massacre
of Saint Bartholomew. Terror has produced
similar impressions on the timid; many witnesses,
eminently trustworthy, who had survived the
horrors of the Irish rebellion of 1641, solemnly