oppression. A very stupid tale, such as one
might expect to find in a child's story-book, or
perhaps in a collection of semi-mythological
legends. Its oddity consisted in the circumstance
that it afforded the subject of conversation
to a party assembled in the parlour of a
roadside inn, situated near the haunted lane,
and that one of the speakers asserted that he
Imd actually seen the ghost with his own eyes.

Any one who analyses his own feelings with
respect to supernatural manifestations, will
discover that a ghost-story is terrible just in
proportion to the closeness of its connexion
with the real life of the present day. If genuine
awe is to be inspired, it is absolutely necessary
that the originating cause of a spectre should
not be more ancient than the reign of Queen
Anne. Should the ghost be traced to some
unhappy gentleman who committed suicide under
one of the Georges, so much the better. And
if referred, with convincing evidence, to some
one who died last year, it would be absolutely
perfect. Unfortunately, this last position
involves an ideality of effectiveness that can
rarely be obtained, and it is to be remarked that
the apparition of a gentleman personally known
to a large number of living souls, might have
to encounter an ordeal of searching criticism, by
no means easy to pass. On the whole, as a
good, safe, practical expedient for raising terror,
nothing is better than a ghost in a court dress,
after the fashion depicted by Hogarth.

Something may be said in favour of the
extremely white ghost, which belongs to no period
at all—the ghost that was once rendered familiar
to the public by the short tragedies performed
in Richardson's show, and by Monk Lewis's
Castle Spectre. This was the ghost rudely
copied by the wicked boors, who constructed
spectres with sheets and hollow turnips for the
purpose of terrifying old women, and the fact
that this base mockery has literally frightened a
great many persons out of their wits, sufficiently
proves the effectiveness of the appearance.
But I would say that the white ghost rather
appeals to a primitive than to a cultivated mind—
is somewhat vulgar in its strength. The white
dress once meant a shroud, and was well suited
to a manifestation in a churchyard, but
afterwards it assumed any pattern, and meant
nothing. The ghost at Richardson's wore a
tunic and helmet of surpassing whiteness, and
his face was chalked to correspond. The fault
of the white ghost is, that it is too abstract.

Still, as an expedient for exciting terror, the
stock white ghost of rustic villages is far
superior to the ghost that is referable to a time
wholly different from our own. Our grand-
fathers link us with the early Georges, and then
take us back to Queen Anne, but when we
come (say) to Elizabeth, we find ourselves in a
period represented by books and monuments
alone, and with which we have no traditional
connexion. A ghost in an Elizabethan dress
is too historical to be terrible; while as for a
baronial ghost in armour, the rumour that such
a being haunted any grim castle would fail to
scare the most timid old woman in the
neighbouring village.

But the spectre of a giant—of an ultra-mythical
monster, that probably never lived at all, and,
if he did, must have been ten times more wonderful
than his own ghost—such a spectre was the
very sublime of effeteness. One is accustomed
now-a-days to regard a giant as a funny figure.
I recollect, when a parly of us got up an amateur
pantomime on the subject of Jack the Giant
Killer at the hospitable mansion of Mr. Bendlads,
how a fund of mirth was produced ai the
appearance of thin Harry Smith, when with
infinite bolsters he had stuffed himself into an
Ogre. I was the harlequin on that occasion,
and executed the flying leap through a
supposed window with great applause. I recollect
that just as I was in the middle of the leap an
uneasy doubt crossed my mind whether the
men who were to catch me behind the scenes
were really at their post. The doubt was
horrible. Could anything like that horror be
produced by such a dull phenomenon as the ghost
of a giant?

Absorbed in these reflections (the acuteness
and profundity of which have, I trust, been
appreciated by the reader), I found myself in the
very lane which, according to local tradition, was
haunted by the insipid spectre. The sun was
going down, and, I am ashamed to confess the
fact, I felt rising within me a pusillanimous
regret that the lane was connected with any
ghost whatever, gigantic or otherwise. The
practical value of my professed theories was
rapidly approaching zero.

I once read, with considerable respect, the
theatrical notice which a literary friend of mine
wrote for a weekly newspaper on the occasion
of some performance of Sheridan's comedy
The Rivals. With much shrewdness, as I
thought, my friend pointed out a glaring
inconsistency in the character of Bob Acres. Why
should the aforesaid Bob be so ferociously
valiant when writing the challenge, and so
obtrusively timid when awaiting the approach of
his antagonist? The author had clearly sought
to amuse his audience at the expense of truth.
So said, or rather wrote my friend, and the
exposition of his view occupied nearly a column
of close small print. I thought him lengthy,
but right. My walk in the haunted lane has
convinced me that Sheridan was right, and my
friend was wrong.

Still I went on, and soon perceived straight
before me a sort of white mist, which extended
almost entirely across the road, and was by no
means to be accounted for by the general state
of the atmosphere, the adjoining fields being
entirely free from exhalations of any kind. This
was strange, and the phenomenon became
stranger still as I approached it. Manifestly
the mist had something like a human outline.
A large mass, resembling a body, culminated in
a smaller one, which seemed like a head, and
was split at the bottom into two columns, which,
without any great stretch of fancy, might be
taken for legs, while towards the head shot out