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I APPLAUDED the justice of his observation; and said, it was not only my present opinion, but had been so for a number of years. Right, says he, and for

my own part I seldom love to publish my remarks upon a subject, till I have had them confirmed to me by a long course of experience.

The

THIS last maxim, somewhat beyond his usual depth, occasioned a silence of some few minutes. spring had been too much bent to recover immediately its wonted vigour. We had taken some few turns, up and down the left hand aisle, when he caught sight of a monument somewhat larger than the rest, and more calculated to make impression upon an ordinary imagination. As I remember, it was raised to an ancestor of the D. of Newcastle. Well, says he, with an air of cunning, this is indeed a fine piece of workmanship; but I cannot conceive this finery is of any signification to the person buried there. I told him, I thought not; and that, under a notion of respect to the deceased, people were frequently imposed upon by their own pride and affectation.

WE were now arrived at the monument of Sir George

George Chamberlain; where my friend had just perused enough to inform him that he was an eminent physician, when he broke out with precipitation, and as though some important discovery had struck his fancy on a sudden. I listened to him with attention, till I found him labouring to insinuate that physicians themselves could not save their lives when their time

was come.

HE had not proceeded many steps from it before he beckoned to our Cicerone. Friend, says he pointing with his cane, how long has that gentleman been dead? The man set him right in that particular; after which, putting on a woeful countenance, Well, says he, to behold how fast time flies away! 'Tis but a small time to look back upon, since he and I met at the Devil.* Alas, continued he, we shall never do so again: Indulging myself with a pun that escaped me on a sudden, I told him I hoped not; and immediately took my leave.

THIS old gentleman, as I have since heard, passed his life chiefly in the country; where it faintly participated

* A well-known tavern near Temple Bar.

pated either of pleasure or of pain. His chief delights indeed were sensual, but those of the less vigorous kind; an afternoon's pipe, an evening walk, or a nap after dinner. His death, which happened, it seems, quickly after, was occasioned by a uniform application to Bostock's cordial, whatever his case required. Indeed his discourse, when any complained of sickness, was a little exuberant in the praises of this noble cathartic. But his distemper proving of a nature to which this remedy was wholly foreign, as well as this precluding the use of a more effectual recipe, he expired, not without the character of a most considerate person. I find, by one part of his will, he obliged his heir to consume a certain quantity of ale among his neighbours, on the day he was born; and by another, left a ring of bells to the church adjoining to his garden. It looks as if the old gentleman had not only an aversion to much reflection in himself, but endeavoured to provide against it in succeeding generations.

I HAVE heard that he sometimes boasted that he was a distant relation of Sir Roger de Coverly.

ΑΝ

AN OPINION OF GHOSTS.

T is remarkable how much the belief of ghosts
and apparitions of persons departed, has lost
ground within these fifty years.
This may

perhaps be explained by the general growth of knowledge; and by the consequent decay of superstition, even in those kingdoms where it is most essentially interwoven with religion.

THE same credulity, which disposed the mind to believe the miracles of a popish saint, set aside at once the interposition of reason; and produced a fondness for the marvellous, which it was the priest's advantage to promote.

It may be natural enough to suppose that a belief of this kind might spread in the days of popish infatuation. A belief, as much supported by ignorance, as the ghosts themselves were indebted to the night.

BUT

BUT whence comes it, that narratives of this kind have at any time been given, by persons of veracity, of judgment, and of learning? Men neither liable to be deceived themselves, nor to be suspected of an inclination to deceive others, though it were their interest; nor who could be supposed to have any interest in it, even though it were their inclination ?

HERE seems a further explanation wanting than what can be drawn from superstition.

I GO upon a supposition, that the relations themselves were false. For as to the arguments sometimes used in this case, that had there been no true shilling there had been no counterfeit, it seems wholly a piece of sophistry. The true shilling here should mean the living person; and the counterfeit resemblance, the posthumous figure of him, that either strikes our senses or our imagination.

SUPPOSING no ghost then ever appeared, is it a consequence that no man could ever imagine that they saw the figure of a person deceased? Surely those,

who

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