dressing injured orphans or widows: when it seems as if the shortest and most certain way would be, to go to the person guilty of the injustice, and haunt him continually till he be terrified into a restitution. Nor are the pointing out lost writings generally managed in a more summary way, the ghost commonly applying to a third person, ignorant of the whole affair, and a stranger to all concerned. But it is presumptuous to scrutinize too far into these matters: Ghosts have undoubtedly forms and customs peculiar to themselves. If, after the first appearance, the persons employed neglect, or are prevented from, performing the message or business committed to their management, the ghost appears continually to them, at first with a discontented, next an angry, and at length with a furious countenance, threatening to tear them in pieces if the matter is not forthwith executed: sometimes terrifying them, as in Glanvil's Relation 26th, by appearing in many formidable shapes, and sometimes even striking them a violent blow. Of blows given by ghosts there are many instances, and some wherein they have been followed by an incurable lameness. It should have been observed that ghosts, in delivering their commissions, in order to ensure belief, communicate to the persons employed some secret, known only to the parties concerned and themselves, the relation of which always produces the effect intended. The business being completed, ghosts appear with a cheerful countenance, saying they shall now be at rest, and will never more disturb any one; and, thanking their agents, by way of reward communicate to them something relative to themselves, which they will never reveal. Sometimes ghosts appear, and disturb a house, without deigning to give any reason for so doing: with these the shortest and only way is to exorcise and eject them, or, as the vulgar term is, lay them. For this purpose there must be two or three clergymen, and the ceremony must be performed in Latin; a language that strikes the most audacious ghost with terror. A ghost may be laid for any term less than a hundred years, and in any place or body, full or empty; as, a solid oak-the pommel of a sword a barrel of beer, if a yeoman or simple gentleman, or a pipe of wine, if an esquire or justice. But of all places the most common, and what a ghost least likes, is the Red Sea; it being related in many instances, that ghosts have most earnestly besought the exorcists not to confine them in that place. It is nevertheless considered as an indisputable fact, that there are an infinite number laid there, perhaps from it being a safer prison than any other nearer at hand; though neither history nor tradition gives us any instance of ghosts escaping or returning from this kind of transportation before their time." It is to be suspected that the of a ancient ideas ghost were as indefinite and loose as those now prevalent among us. St. John's Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece, 1842, i., 364, et seqq. The vulgar superstition, that ghosts walk about in white sheets or clothes seems to have had existence at an early date for in the story of the Miller and the Tailor in "A C. Mery Talys," 1526, the sexton mistakes the miller in troubled spirit risen from the grave. But in the "Awntyrs of Arthur at the Ternewathelyn" there is a description of an apparition, which proceeds on a somewhat more intelligent theory, so to speak: his white coat for the dead farmer's "Bare was hir body, and blak to the bane, Vnbeclosut in a cloude, in clethyng. evyl clad; Hit zaulut, hit zamurt, lyke a woman, Nauthyr of hyde, nyf of heue, no hyllyng hit had. Alle gloet as the gledes, the gost qwere hit glidus, Was vnbyclosut in a cloude, in clething vn-clere, Was sette aure with serpentes, that sate to the sydus; To telle the todus ther opon with tung were to tere." Shakespear's ghosts excel all others. The terrible indeed is his forte. How awful is that description of the dead time of night, the season of their perambulation! ""Tis now the very witching time of night, I When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world." append two other early notices : "I know thee well, I heare the watchfull dogs, With hollow howling tell of thy approach, The lights burne dim, affrighted with thy presence: And this distemper'd and tempestuous night Tells me the ayre is troubled with some devill." Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608. "Ghosts never walk till after midnight, If I may believe my Grannam.” Beaumont and Fletcher, Lovers Progress, act iv. bug-bears, &c. from whence we are gradually led to the traditionary accounts of local ghosts, which, like the genii of the ancients, have been reported to haunt certain family seats and cities, famous for their antiquities and decays. Of this sort are the apparitions at Verulam, Silchester, Reculver, and Rochester: the Dæmon of Tidworth, the Black Dog of Winchester, and the Bar-guest of York. The story of Madam Veal has been of singular use to the editors of Drelincourt on Death." And he afterward ironically observes: "When we read of the ghost of Sir George Villiers, of the Piper of Hamelm, the Dæmon of Moscow, or the German Colonel mentioned by Ponti, and these accounts, we find reason for our see the names of Clarendon, Boyle, &c. to credulity; till, at last, we are convinc'd by a whole conclave of ghosts met in the "Various ways," says a writer in, cheat is begun by nurses with stories of the Gentleman's Magazine, 1732, "have been proposed by the learned for laying of ghosts. Those of the artificial sort are easily quieted. Thus when a fryer, personating an apparition, haunted the chambers of the late Emperor Josephus, the present King Augustus, then at the Imperial Court, flung him out of the window, and laid him effectually. The late Dr. Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester, and the late Mr. Justice Powell, had frequent altercations upon this subject. The Bishop was a zealous defender of ghosts; the Justice somewhat sceptical, and distrustful of their being. In a visit the Bishop one day made his friend, the Justice told him, that since their last disputation he had had ocular demonstration to convince him of the existence of ghosts. How, says the Bishop, what! ocular demonstration? I am glad, Mr. Justice, you are become a convert; I beseech you let me know the whole story at large. My Lord,' answers the Justice, as I lay one night in my bed, about the hour of twelve, I was wak'd by an uncommon noise, and heard something coming upstairs, and stalking directly to'Antiquarian is a singular narrative wards my room. I drew the curtain, and named Richard Clarke, saw a faint glimmering of light enter my chamber. Of a blue colour, no doubt, labourer at Hamington, in Northampwas haunted by the (says the Bishop),—' Of a pale blue' (an-tonshire, who man, name appaswers the Justice): the light was follow'd ghost of another by a tall, meagre, and stern personage, rently unknown, who declared to Clarke who seemed about 70, in a long dangling once, through a large hole in the wall of one of the rooms of his (Clarke's) house, rugg gown, bound round with a broad that he had been murdered near his own leathern girdle; his beard thick and grizly; a large furr-cap on his head, and house 267 years, 9 months, and 2 days a long staff in his hand; his face wrinkled ago, (this was in 1675), and buried in the orchard. He added that his wife and and of a dark sable hue. I was struck with the appearance, and felt some unchildren, who had lived in Southwark, usual shocks; for you know the old saying never knew what became of him; that he I made use of in Court, when part of the had some treasures and paper buried in lanthorn upon Westminster Hall fell the cellar of a house near London, and (the ghost) would meet him in the cellar, that Clarke must seek for it, and that he down in the midst of our proceedings, to the no small terror of one or two of my brethren, Si fractus illabatur Orbis, Impavidum ferient Ruinæ. But, to go on it drew near and stared me full in the face.' And did you not speak to it (interrupted the Bishop); there was money hid or murder committed, to be sure.' 'My Lord, I did speak to it' And what answer, Mr. Justice?' 'My Lord, the answer was, (not without a thump of the staff and a shake of the lanthorn), that he was the watchman of the night, and came to give me notice that he had found the streetdoor open; and that unless I rose and shut it, I might chance to be robbed before break of day.' The Judge had no sooner ended, but the Bishop disappear'd." The same author adds: "The works of Glanvil and Moreton." The Madame Veal above-mentioned was the same as the person of whom Defoe wrote. Mr. Locke assures us we have as clear an idea of spirit as of body.' In the Repertory" of a man a farming to assist him in the search. Clarke asked time to consider; but the ghost was peremptory. He told him that, as soon as the money and the writings were found, and duly delivered to certain relatives of his in Southwark at such an address, removed from him in the fourth generation, he (the ghost) would cease to visit him, and would leave him in peace; at present he said "that he rece'd much hurt in his cattele by him, yt he shooke the house when his first wife lay in, and frighted her so, she dyed of it." Hereupon Clarke went to town, and on London Bridge the ghost passed him, and conducted him to the house, where his wife had lived four generations before. Clarke found everything answerable to the account which the ghost had given him; the money and the documents were discovered, the writ ings on vellum found, but those on paper decayed. Clarke divided the money, and acted exactly as the ghost of the murdered man directed him to do, and the latter "lookt chearfully upon him, and gave him thankes, and said now he should be at rest, and spoke to those other persons which were of his generation, relations, but they had not courage to answer; but Clarke talked for them." Morgan, the writer of the letter, in which this story appears, quite believed in the account, and he says, alluding to the money: "It must be coyne of Hen. 4 time and will come amongst the goldsmiths one time or other, if care be taken in it; methinks it should make some noise in Southwarke, and might be found out there. He (Clarke) hath several brothers in London whom he was wth; perhaps some discovery may be made from them of the place. I had this story from Mr. Clarke himself." Original letter from Fr. Morgan at Kingsthorpe near Northton (Northampton) to a correspondent at Garraway's Coffee-house, printed in A. R. ed. 1808, vol. iv. p. 635-7. "Tout est prodige pour l'ignorance, qui, dans le cercle étroit de ses habitudes, voit le cercle ou se meut l'univers. Pour le philosophe, il n'y a pas de prodiges: une naissance monstrueuse, l'eboulement subit de la roche la plus dure, resultent, il le sait, de causes aussi naturelles, aussi necessaires, que le retour alternatif du jour et de la nuit."-Salverte, Des Sciences Occultes, p. 7. Gifts. See Nails. Giles's, St., Day. (September 1.) An account of this Saint and of the origin of the consecration of the 1st of September to his memory in our calendar, may be found in the "Book of Days." Many churches bear his name. There is the following description in Machyn's "Diary,' of the procession in the city of London in 1556, round the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate: "The furst day of September was Sant Gylles day, and ther was a goodly processyon abowt the parryche with the whettes (waits), and the canepe borne, and the sacrament, and ther was a goodly masse songe as has bene hard; and master Thomas Greuelle, waxchandler, mad a grett dener for master Garter (lord mayor) and my lade, and master Machylle the shreyffe and ys wyff, and boyth the chamburlayns, and mony worshefull men and women at dener, and the whettes playng and dyver odur mynstrelles, for ther was a grett dener." Brand has observed silence respecting St. Giles's Bowl, the flagon or jug of ale, which was in the old times presented to the condemned convict at St. Giles's Hospital, on the road to Tyburn. It appears to be established with tolerable certainty, that the gallows stood on the site of a portion of Connaught Square; but I am not aware that the precise spot has been settled beyond dispute. A correspondent of "Current Notes for August 1856, quotes Burton the Leicestershire historian's account of this ceremony. "At the Hospital of St. Giles in the Fields, without the bar of the old Temple, London, and the Domus Conversorum (now the Rolls), the prisoners conveyed from the City of London towards Teybourne, there to be executed for treasons, felonies, or other trespasses, were presented with a great bowle of ale thereof to drinke at their pleasure, as to be their last refreshing in this life." The writer goes on to say that Parton, in his account of St. Giles's Hospital and Parish, 1822, refers to this as a peculiar custom; but he points out that "the custom was not so peculiar, but appears to have been an observance of Popish times." He seems rather to mean Catholic countries, for the period, of which he had been before speaking, was antecedent, of course, to the Reformation, and he just afterwards cites some examples of a similar usage among the French in the XVth century. Churchyard also refers to it in his "Mirror and Manners of Men," 1594: "Trusting in friendship makes some be trust up, Or ride in a cart to kis Saint Giles his cup." There is a Yorkshire proverb: "He will saddler of Bawtrey," which refers to a be hanged for leaving his liquor, like the similar usage. A saddler from Bawtrey, on his way to execution declined the proffered bowl of ale, and was consequently turned off, just before a reprieve arrived. In Lyndsay's time, and long before, the inhabitants of Edinburgh used Day, what the poet calls "an auld stock to carry about the town, on St. Giles's which they bore in procession at Babylon. image," and likens to the image of Bell, printed about 1554: The passage is in the " Monarke," first "On thare feist day, all creature may se: Thay beir an auld stock image throuch yo toun, With talbrone, trompet, schalme, and clarioun, Quhilk hes bene vsit mony one zeir bigone; With priestis and freris, in to processioun, Siclyke as bell wes borne throuch Babilone.' "The arm-bone of St. Giles," observes Mr. D. Laing, was regarded as a relique T what words, and they call a boy that is pure and no way corrupted, to see therein that which they require, as the same Bodin doth also make mention." Molle's Living Librarie, 1621, p. 2. In the "Marriage of the Arts," by Barten Holiday, 1618, is this: "I have often heard them say, 'tis ill luck to see one's face in a glass by candle-light." Among unlucky portents must also be noticed the strong objection which persons even of enlightened views and good position in society still have to allow a young baby to see itself in the glass. The reason is not particularly obvious; but in such a case perhaps a lady's reason ought to be accounted suffiWhen a looking glass is broken, it is an omen that the party to whom it belongs will lose his best friend. See the Greek Scholia on the Nubes of Aristophanes, p. 169. Grose tells us that "Breaking a looking glass betokens a mortality in the family, commonly the master." cient. Glastonbury Thorn.-Collinson, speaking of Glastonbury, says: "South west from the town is Wearyall Hill, an eminence so-called (if we will believe the monkish writers) from St. Joseph and his companions sitting down here, all weary with their journey. Here St. Joseph struck his stick into the earth, which, although a dry hawthorn stick, thenceforth grew, and constantly budded on Christmas-Day. It had two trunks or bodies till the time of Queen Elizabeth, when a Puritan exterminated one, and left the other, which was the size of a common man, to be viewed in wonder by strangers; and the blossoms thereof were esteemed such curiosities by people of all nations, that the Bristol merchants made a traffick of them, and exported them into foreign parts. In the Great Rebellion, during the time of King Charles I., the remaining trunk of this tree was also cut down but other trees from its branches are still growing in many gardens of Glastonbury and in the different nurseries of this kingdom. It is probable that the monks of Glastonbury procured this tree from Palestine, where abundance of the same sort grew, and flower about the same time. Where this thorn grew is said to have been a nunnery dedicated to St. Peter, without the Pale of Weriel Park, belonging to the Abbey, It is strange to say how much this tree was sought after by the credulous; and though a common thorn, Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the realm, even when the times of monkish superstition had ceased, gave large sums of money for small cuttings from the original." Somersetshire, ii., 265. : I have no doubt but that the early blossoming of the Glastonbury Thorn was owing to a natural cause. It is mentioned by Gerard and Parkinson in their herbals. Camden also notices it. Ashmole tells us that he had often heard it spoken of, "and by some who have seen it whilst it flourished at Glastonbury." He adds: Upon St. Stephen's Day, Anno 1672, Mr. Stainsby (an ingenious enquirer after things worthy memorial) brought me a branch of hawthorne having green leaves, faire buds, and full flowers, all thick and very beautifull, and (which is more notable) many of the hawes and berries upon it red and plump, some of which branch is yet preserved in the plant booke of my collection. This he had from a hawthorne tree now growing at Sir Lancelote Lake's house, near Edgworth (Edgeware) in Middlesex, concerning which, falling after into the company of the said knight, 7 July, 1673, he told me that the tree, whence this branch was plucked, grew from a slip taken from the Glastonbury Thorn about sixty years since, which is now a bigg tree, and flowpendix to Hearne's Antiquities of Glasers every winter about Christmas.' Aptonbury, p. 303. Sir Thomas Browne remarks: Certainly many precocious trees, and such as spring in the winter, may be the fall of the leaf or autumn, and if not found in England. Most trees sprout in kept back by cold and outward causes, would leaf about the solstice. Now if it happen that any be so strongly constituted as to make this good against the power of winter, they may produce their leaves or in some singles which is observable in blossoms at that season, and perform that whole kinds: as in ivy, which blossoms and bears at least twice a year, and once in the winter: as also in Furze, which "This tree,' flowereth in that season." says Worlidge, "flourished many years in Wilton Garden, near Salisbury, and, gether so exact to a day as its original I suppose, is there yet; but is not altofrom whence it came was reported to be; it's probable the faith of our ancestors might contribute much towards its cerFor imagination doth tainty of time. operate on inanimate things, as some have observed." Systema Horticultura, 1677, P. 88. In the metrical life of Joseph of Arimathea, probably written in the reign of Henry VII., three hawthorns are mentioned: "Thre hawthornes also that groweth in Do burge and bere grene leaves at As fresshe as other in May whan y |