University of Virginia Library

1. I.

“With what a sober and saintly sweetness do
these evening lights stream around us. What a
spiritual atmosphere is here! Do you not feel
it?”

My friend did not immediately answer my question,
and when he did, his reply was rather to the
mood of mind in which I had spoken, than to the
words which I had uttered. We were walking, towards
the close of day, in one of the deepest parts
of a German forest, through which the sunlight penetrated
only with imperfect and broken rays. The
vista, which was limited by the dusk, was covered
with flitting shadows, and wild aspects, that won us
farther at each succeeding moment in their pursuit.
The cathedral picturesqueness of the scene warmed

us both, and when my friend replied to me, I
felt that our fancies were the same.

“You have no faith, I believe, in popular superstitions—you
never yield yourself up to your
dreams?”

Something of a feeling of self-esteem kept me
from answering sincerely to this question. I felt,
at that instant, a guilty consciousness of a
growing respect for the legends of the wonder-loving
land in which I wandered. My answer
was evasive.

“What mean you — your question is a wide
one?”

“Elsewhere it might be, — but here — here in
Germany — it would seem specific enough. Briefly
— you have no faith in ghosts — you do not
believe in the thousand and one stories which
imagination hourly weaves for the ear and the apprehensions
of credulity.”

“To speak truly, I have not often thought of
this matter until now. The genius loci has somewhat
provoked my fancy, and triumphed over my
indifference—if indifference it be. Ghost stories,
though frequent enough, are, as frequently, subjects
of common ridicule; and the hearer, if he
does believe, finds it prudent to keep his faith secret,
if it be only to escape the laughter of his

companions. This may have been the case with
me, and from seeking to deceive my neighbors
on this head, it is not improbable that I have fully
succeeded in at last deceiving myself; and have
come to doubt sincerely. But of this I will not
be certain. I am not sure that I should not partake
of the sensibilities of any timid urchin, at the
sudden appearance of any suspicious object in any
suspicious place.”

“Ha! ha! I see you are no sceptic. You are
for the ghosts — you certainly believe in them.”

“Not so!” I replied, somewhat hastily; “I
cannot be said to believe or disbelieve. I have
no facts — no opinions — on the subject, and therefore
cannot be supposed to have arrived at any
conviction respecting it. I have scarcely given
it a thought, and my impressions are rather those
of the temperament and memory than the mind.
Warm blood makes me jump frequently to conclusions
upon which I never think; and the stories
of boyhood, in this respect, will, long after the boy
has become a man, stagger his strength with the
images produced on his imagination by a grand-dame's
narratives at that susceptible period. My
notions of the marvellous arise almost entirely
from my feelings — feelings kindled by such stories,
and, it may be, rendered vivid by a natural

tinct of superstition, which few of us seem to be
free from, and which may, perhaps, be considered
the best of arguments in defence of such a faith.”

My friend made no immediate answer — a pause
ensued in our speech, but not in our movement.
We walked on, and the shadows became more thick
around us. The scattered lights of evening grew
fainter and fewer, and I perceived that the mood
of my companion, like my own, had undergone a
corresponding change. Sad thoughts mingled
with strange thoughts in our minds, and when he
again spoke, it was evident that he felt the night.
He resumed the subject.

“I have not been willing to believe, but I feel,
and feeling brings the faith. I have reason to
suspect myself of a leaning to these superstitions,
and discover myself inclining to conviction the
more I indulge in solitude. Solitude is one of the
parents of superstition. The constant wakefulness
and warring strifes of selfish interests,
which prevail in the city and among the crowd,
drive away such thoughts, and, indeed, all
thoughts which incline to reverence; and it is
only when I get into the country — among these
solemn shades and deep recesses — that I find my
superstitions coming back to me with a thousand
other sensibilities. It is then that my memory

goes over the old grounds of my childhood; and
that the fancies of an early romance become invigorated
within me:—it is then that I give credence
to the unaccountable story that we sometimes hear
from the lips of more credulous or more experienced
companions. Their earnestness and faith
strengthen and awaken ours — the fancy grows
into form, and the form, at length, from frequent
contemplation, becomes almost sensible to the
touch. We continue to contemplate until we believe;
and there is not a faculty or sense that we
have, which does not at last become satisfied,
along with our fancies, of the rich reality which
the latter have but dreamed.”

“I am not so sure that they dream only,” was
my serious reply. “Why, if the doctrine of the
soul's immortality be true why should it not return
to the spot which kindred affections have
made holy — why may it not do a service to the
living? — prevent a wrong? — reveal a secret, or
by some ministry, which could not have been performed
so well by any but itself, do that which
may help the surviving to some withheld rights,
to some suppressed truth — or to some unlooked
for means of safety from tyranny and injustice?”

“True — that might have been an argument at
one period in the history of the world; but the

world has grown wiser, if not better, in later days!
— a thousand modes are now in our possession for
discovering the truth, to one at that time when
spirits were allowed to return to earth. The days
of miracle are gone by. The `spirits from the
vasty deep' do not come to us, however loudly we
may call for them.”

“Who shall say that?” was my reply. “Who
shall answer for the necessity. It may occur now
as it has occurred before, nor is it an argument
against the belief, that man has grown wise enough
to find out the truth for himself, after judicial forms,
without the need of any such revisitings of the
moon. If wisdom has grown mighty to find out the
truth, crime has also grown proportionably cunning
to conceal it; and virtue suffers the injustice, and
vice escapes, even now, from a just punishment,
quite too frequently, when it were to be desired that
some honest ghost could be evoked from the
grave, to set the erring judgment of man aright.
Coleridge considers it a conclusive argument
against the notion, that the ghost of a man's
breeches should appear with him. This may be
a good joke, but it is a poor argument. If it be
once admitted, that for wise and beneficial purposes
the just Providence shall permit the departed
spirit to return to the earth, where it once abode,

it will be necessary that it should put on that garb
and appearance which shall make it more readily
known by those whom it seeks; since its purpose,
in its return to earth, might only be effected by its
appearance in proper person. I can conceive of
no difficulty in this; since it must be obvious that
as the appearance of the spectre is the work of
God, himself, with Him the toil is equally easy
of giving the spirit its guise of flesh and fashion,
and of preparing the mind of the spectator so that
his eye shall behold the object, whether it appear
in reality or not.”

“The subject is one,” said my friend, “which
invariably forces itself upon me when I am in solitude.
We are now in a place singularly accommodated
to thoughts and things of this nature.
There is a venerable gloom and gravity about
these old trees. You see that none of them are
young, yet the grounds have neither been cleared
nor grubbed, to my recollection, for many years.
The aged branches have stretched out innumerable
arms, and bend, with their accumulated weight
of years upon them, even to the ground. They
have the air of a group of sainted Druids, such as
the Romans annihilated. Black and frowning,
yonder mountain overhangs the wood, protecting,
yet threatening. It has the look of a blasted

thing, and it must be a haunted one. The ruins
which you behold at a little distance to the left,
admirably consort with the rest of the picture. A
gray mist seems to hang over and to hallow them,
until even the beautiful knoll of green which rises
in front of them seems offensively garish from the
exceeding depth of its contrast. Those are the
ruins of an ancient monastery, which the superstitious
fancies of the neighborhood have long since
peopled with a fraternity of immaterials, sufficiently
numerous and wild to consecrate to their
peculiar purposes a situation of the kind. They
are not often intruded upon, except by myself;
and as I have a story to tell which properly belongs
to them, it will not be out of place if I tell it
to you there. Some of the old monuments will
give us a pleasant seat, and among the dead only,
as we then shall be, we shall be in no danger of
suffering interruption or disturbance from the idle
footstep of the obtrusive living.”