In return for this tale, I gave from the best authority, that of Crofton Croker, the history of the Irish banshee, and particularly of that identical banshee, whose visitations as the hereditary attendant on my own family I had painful reason to remember. My banshee pleased universally; to most of the company the idea was something new, and I have even hopes that it may have inspired Sternberg with a pendant to his poem on King O'Donohue.

The conversation turned naturally upon heredtary apparitions and spectral penances, the fruit f ancestral crimes, on which superstition Grillparzer has founded his fine lyric drama of "The Ahnfrau." The castle of the W- family, in the neighborhood of Weimar, was mentioned as Bubject to this species of ghostly visitation. Two mdividuals present, who had been on a visit at this castle, spoke of the phantom avec connaissance de fait. The present Baroness W who had been brought up among enlightened and intelligent people, declared herself perfectly incredulous, and after her marriage went to inhabit the castle of her husband, in all the assurance that common sense and philosophy could give; but-so went the tale-it happened that, soon after the birth of her eldest child, she awoke at midnight, and beheld an anearthly being bending over the cradle of her infant-more, as it seemed, in love and benediction than with any unholy purpose; however, from this time they said that she had not willingly inhabited the castle of her husband's ancestors.

In the family of the Baron, whose castle is also in the neighborhood of Weimar, there is a gold ring of marvellous power, given by some supernat ural being to a former Baron, with the assurance that as long as it remained in the castle, good for tune would attend the family. Every experiment made of late by unbelieving barons to put this tradition to the test has been followed by some signal disaster, the last time by a destructive fire, which consumed nearly the whole castle. This story also was very well told.

It should seem that in these little German states there was always some ancestor, some prince with a kind of Blue-Beard renown, to serve as the hero for all tales of horror-the bug-a-boo to frighten the children. Duke Ernest August plays the rôle du tyran in the history of Saxe Weimar. He was not only a tyrant, but atheist, alchemist, magician, and heaven knows what besides. Now, there was a prof ligate adventurer, named Caumartin, who had insin❤ uated himself into the favor of the Duke, became his chamberlain, and assisted him in his magical and chemical researches. It is a tradition, that one of the ancestors of this princely family had discovered the philosopher's stone, and had caused the receipt to be buried with him, denouncing a terrible maledietion on whoever should violate, from avaricious motives, his last repose. Duke Ernest persuaded Caumartin to descend into the family vault, and pluck the mighty secret from the coffin of his ancestor. Caumartin undertook the task with gay

audacity, and remained two hours in the vault. On reascending, he looked pale and much changed, and took solemn leave of his friends, as a man condemned to death. They mocked at him of course; but on the third day afterwards he was found dead on the floor of his room, his rapier in his hand, his clothes torn, and his features distorted, as if by a fearful struggle.

This story, so oft repeated in different ages and countries, and in every variety and form, appeared to me curious in a philosophical and historical point of view. Duke Ernest August lived at the time when a wildly superstitious credulity, a belief in magic and alchemy, rose up simultaneously with the most daring skepticism in religious matters, both becoming fashionable in Germany, France, and England, at the same time. It was the reign of Cagliastro and his imitators and disciples. Do you not recollect, in the Baron de Grimm's memoirs, the story of a French adventurer, who was received into the first circles of Paris as a supernatural being? He was said to possess the elixir of life, and the wandering Jew was apparently a youth to him in point of longevity. In the house of the Maréchal de Mirepoix he once sat down to the harpsichord, and played a piece of music of sublime and surpassing beauty. All inquired whether it was his own composition, or where it was to be found? To 'which he replied, with a pensive air-"The last time I heard it was when Alexander the Great entered Babylon !"

Many more stories were told that night of various interest, but all tinged with something poeticas and characteristic. At last the party separated. 1 returned home, and, while still a little excited, we continued to converse for some time on the influence of fancy and its various illusions, and the superstitions of various times and countries. The thing was always there, forming, as it seemed, a part of our human nature, only modified and changed in its manifestations, sometimes by outward influences, sometimes by individual temperament; fashion, or in other words sympathy and imitation, having produced many ghosts, as well as many maniacs, and not a few suicides.

At last we bade good-night. I lighted my taper, fixed in a candlestick of rather antique form, the same which had been used when Goethe was christened, and which I always took in my hand with due reverence. In coming up to my bedroom, I had to pass by the door of the apartment in which Goethe had breathed his last. It has been from that moment considered as a sanctuary; the things remain untouched and undisturbed, and the key is deposited with the librarian. In the first or anteroom there stands-at least when I was at Weimar there stood a large house-clock, which had been presented to Goethe on the celebration of his jubilee; it is the same which stood in the room of his mother, and struck the hour he was born; after passing through various hands, it was purchased by the Grand Duke of Baden, and sent as a gift to the

poet on that memorable occasion. This clock, like the rest of the furniture of that sacred apartment, remains untouched, but on this very night, by some inexplicable accident, just as I arrived at the door, the clock within began to strike-one, two, three, four, and so on to twelve. At the first stroke I stopped, even my breath almost stopped, as I listened. I looked not to the left, where the door opened into that hallowed chamber of death and immortality;-I looked not to the right, where the dark hollow of the staircase seemed to yawn-nor yet before me; but, with my eyes fixed on the silver relic I held in my hand, I stood quite still. The emotion which bound up my powers in that moment was assuredly the farthest possibly from fear, or aught resembling it-it was only a sound, but it was the same sound and hour which had ushered into the world one of the greatest and most gifted spirits whom God, in his supreme goodness, had ever sent to enlighten the world, and to enlarge the bounds of human delight and improvement; it was the same sound and hour which sent it t mingle with the great soul of nature, to be

A voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird;
To be a presence to be felt and known

In darkness and in light.

And so in the silence and the loneliness of the night, as those sounds fell deliberately one by one, they seemed to fill the whole air around me, to enter in at my ears and thrill down to my finger