and excitation, whispering by candlelight, with bated breath, of dungeons, and black-robed messengers of evil, and awful secrets forever on the tantalizing verge of revelation. Yet Mrs. Radcliffe never got beyond the bare machinery, the stage work and scaffolding of mystery. Her novels are as much akin to the terrible tales of Germany as are the frolicsome apes and witches of Mr. Irving's Faust to Goethe's ministers of sin. What is there in all the endless pages of Udolpho to compare with that single incident in the story of Pretty Annerl, when the child goes with her grandmother to the house of the headsman, and the great hidden sword, by which she is destined to die, is heard stirring uneasily in the cupboard? Annerl, believing it to be an animal, is frightened, and begins to cry; but the headsman knows for what drink the sword is thirsting, and begs the grandmother to allow him to cut the little one's neck very gently, so that a few drops of blood may be drawn, and the weapon be appeased. To this excellent advice the old woman refuses to listen; and the sword bides its time until the inevitable hour when Annerl, grown into unhappy womanhood, is brought upon the scaffold to die.

In this simple tale there is that element of horror which is the birthright of German fiction. Truly has Heine observed that his is the motherland of superstition, the favored home of all that is fanciful, and terrifying, and unreal. "You French," he writes, before the days of Maupassant, be it remembered, "must see for yourselves that the horrible is not your province, and that France is no fit home for ghosts of any kind. When you call upon them, we must needs smile. Yes, we Germans who remain serious at your most pleasant witticisms, we laugh all the more heartily at your ghost stories. For your ghosts are always Frenchmen, and French ghosts, what a contradiction

in terms! In the word 'ghost' there is such a suggestion of loneliness, surliness, and silence. In the word 'French' there is so much that is social, witty, and prattling. How could a Frenchman be a ghost, or how could ghosts exist in Paris?"

They have existed, however, in England, and even in London, for a good many centuries; and bid fair to exist for as many more, if they are not docoyed out of their seclusion by unwise notoriety and attentions. In China and Japan, Mr. Lang assures us, ghosts do not live a "hole-and-corner" life; but come boldly forward, and play their parts in the business and pleasures of society. This is the example which English apparitions are being urged daily to follow, and this is the behavior which their modesty and native conservatism have hitherto conspired to forbid. It is easy for Japanese ghosts to assume definite duties in the world. They know precisely what is expected of them. The "well-and-water" spectre, an inert shapeless thing, all slimy and limp and white, haunts the drinking fountains, and peers malignly from the cold unruffled depth. The "chink-and-crevice" logic takes upon itself the congenial task of dropping on you from some dark corner of the ceiling, and strangling you in its serpent-like embraces. The pale, shadowy larva that rises, uncoiling like a mist - wreath, from the grave, never deserts the burying - place which is its congenial home. The bestial vampire, glutting itself with blood, crawls forever amid the desecrated tombs. These unpleasant creatures, and many more as bad, have had their especial privileges and their especial lines of labor marked out for generations, and they adhere steadfastly to their posts. But the trouble with English phantoms seems to be that they have not yet learned what they are good for, and their miserable vagueness of purpose is the most disappointing and disheartening thing about them. "The

modern ghost," complains an irascible critic, "appears, nobody knows why. He has no message to deliver, no secret crime to reveal, no appointment to keep, no treasure to disclose, no commissions to be executed, and, as an almost invariable rule, he does not speak, even if you speak to him."

Nevertheless, in this utilitarian age, his popularity is ever on the increase, and there are plenty of enthusiasts who think they will yet overcome his silence, and persuade him to assume a more rational line of conduct. He has friends in every class of life who ardently desire his confidence, and who, in brief moments of self-deception, are prepared to think they have received it. Far back, in 1584, that devout writer, Reginald Scott, author of the Discovery of Witchcraft, ventured to ask with somewhat premature triumph, "Where are the soules that swarmed in times past? Where are the spirits? Who heareth their noises ? Who seeith their visions?" To which last questions Mr. Lang makes prompt answer for the nineteenth century: "Protestant clergymen, officers in the army, ladies, land-agents, solicitors, representatives of all classes except the Haunted House Committee of the Psychical Society." Fashions have changed since people sneered a little even at Dr. Johnson because he stoutly persisted in fearing ghosts, if not in believing in them all his life. We are beginning now to remember everything that has been said, and well said, in favor of such fear. We are beginning to acknowledge that what universal reason proudly denies, universal apprehension tremblingly admits. We read with pleasure Shelley's modest words, written it is true after an evening profitably spent in listening to some of the most ghostly tales that "Monk" Lewis and Lord Byron could relate. "I do not think," muses the poet in the solitude of his bed-chamber, "that all the persons who profess to discredit these visitations really dis

credit them; or, if they do in daylight, are not admonished by the approach of loneliness and midnight to think more respectfully of the world of shadows." This is candor itself, and Shelley was singularly fitted for such "melancholy, pleasurable fear," because he possessed in an unusual degree that extreme sensitiveness to surroundings which is a proper attribute both of the poet and the ghost-seer. "Certain dark gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck," says Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson; and Burns condenses the same thought into that incomparable line, "ghaist-alluring edifices." No one can read the fragment of Shelley's Speculations on Metaphysics, in which he describes the subtle horror which thrilled him at sight of an ordinary and well-remembered landscape, without recognizing the close connection which existed for him between the seen and the unseen, between the supernatural element and its supremely commonplace setting. It was while walking with a friend near Oxford that he suddenly came upon a bit of country familiar to him in dreams, and associated with half painful, half terrible emotions.

"The view consisted of a windmill, standing in one among many plashy meadows, inclosed with stone walls; the irregular and broken ground between the wall and the road on which we stood; a long low hill behind the windmill, and a gray covering of uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. It was that season when the last leaf has just fallen from the scant and stunted ash. The scene surely was a common scene; the season and the hour little calculated to kindle lawless thought. It was a tame, uninteresting assemblage of objects, such as would drive the imagination for refuge in serious and sober talk to the evening fireside, and the dessert of winter fruits and wine."

Yet this quiet English landscape, with

its dull monotony of tint and outline, awoke within the poet's breast such bewildering sensations of terror that he lacked the courage to describe them, and Mary Shelley affirms that the mere recollection of those fearful moments agitated him beyond control. The most curious circumstance in the case is the presence of the windmill, that homely and friendly little building, which, for some inexplicable cause, carries with it, in every land, an unwarranted flavor of ghostliness. Heine was quick to recognize its uncanny attributes, and shivered when he saw the slow arms turning softly in the twilight, or standing, stiff and spectral, under a starlit sky. Sir Walter Scott, who was less sensitive than most men to impressions of this order, confesses in his journal that from childhood he had secretly feared a mill, even those cheerful, noisy mills where the great wheels revolve briskly to the sound of rushing water; and that the sight of one at sunset filled him with uneasiness and gloom. In the north, mills are not only the chosen haunt of witches, but have familiars of their own, the millgoblins who hold the wheels still in the water with their strong bony hands; and Asbjörnsen, in Round the Yule - Log, tells us that he tried vainly to induce a peasant lad to remain with him in one over night. "My mother has often told me that there are evil spirits dwelling in these mills," said the prudent boy, and declined all risk of their companionship.

In truth, the terrible ghosts and demons of the north are not helpless, harmless, speechless, purposeless creatures, to be courted and coddled like English drawing-room apparitions. Their hands can strangle and slay; their strength is greater than the strength of men; their wills are evil always; their malignity can never be appeased. When overcome, they are to be dreaded still; for, long ago, Grettir the Strong slew the Ghost of Glam, slew it manfully by the seashore, and

hoped that peace had come into his troubled life. But when the moonlight shone upon the sands, and Grettir looked on the creature he had killed, he beheld for the first time the horror of its awful eyes. Then fear seized him who before had never feared, and from that hour he dared not be alone at night, but trembled like a woman in the darkness, beseeching companionship and comfort. Even the Scottish spectres are stronger and more malign than their English cousins; and Mr. Lang, in his Angling Sketches, tells us a ghastly tale of three Highland shepherds, who sat talking of their sweethearts in a lonely sheiling on Loch Awe, and wishing, each one, for the presence of the girl he loved. Suddenly the three young women entered, smiling, and two of the lads received them joyously, and went with them into dark corners of the hut. But the third, fearing he knew not what, sat quietly by the fire, and played on a little Jew's-harp. "Harping is good, if no ill follows it," said the semblance of his sweetheart angrily; to which the boy made no reply, but kept on playing steadfastly. In a few minutes he saw, trickling from one dim corner of the sheiling, a tiny stream of blood, and presently a second stream from the other corner joined it sluggishly in the firelight. light. Then he arose, still playing, and fled into the night, leaving his dead comrades in the embraces of the vampires who had worn so falsely the masks of familiarity and love.

These are not spirits to be tamed by psychical research, and invited to make themselves at home in good society. There is not even a great deal gained by calling them, in the scientific language of the day, "phantasmogenetic agencies," as if that elucidated the mystery or made them comfortable companions. It were better, perhaps, to remember Porphyry's warning that all ghosts and demons are by nature deceitful and fond of travesty. It were wiser to give heed to old Richard Burton, who knew

As you ascend the narrow valley of our New England Thames, and notice here and there a ship dropping down the placid little river, the sight of the infrequent craft may remind you of the fact that many vessels ploughed those waters at the opening of the present century. Trade with the West Indies was brisk at that time, and to the dwellers in the stately houses of Chelsea or “The Landing," as what is now the business portion of Norwich was called, Spanish Town must have been almost as familiar a name as New London. The thrifty community, however, was not wholly absorbed in material things,— the voyages of the Charming Sally or the Little Joe, for instance, and the incoming of sugar and old Jamaica, — and there was at least one concerted attempt at mental culture, an account of which is given to the public, for the first time, in this paper.

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In the year 1790 some thirty-eight ladies, members of the Congregational Church in Chelsea, agreed to meet weekly for the purpose of assisting each other in their Christian course. In subscribing to "a form of sisterly covenant," they promised to attend the exercises regularly at the time of lighting candles;' to spend the hour in reading the Bible and other good books, in conversation on religious topics, in singing, and, above all, in prayer for each other and for all their fellow-creatures. They promised not to divulge the infirmities of fellowmembers, nor anything the discovery of which might be a disadvantage to the circle, resolved to be charitable to each other, to advise, caution, and admonish, and in turn to accept reproof kindly and thankfully. Provision was made for the exclusion of members committing any of fense and refusing to heed admonitions until evidence was given of sorrow for past conduct. The covenant resembles

the "orders" used in religious societies of young men as described in Cotton Mather's Essays to do Good, and reads like a page from some chronicle of the early Church. Probably nowhere but in New England, at that date, could a sight have been witnessed such as these elect ladies presented from week to week, when, ignoring social distinctions, they assembled in each other's homes to converse in the language of Zion or to kneel side by side. One was the daughter of a judge of the supreme court, another a tailoress, another the granddaughter of Ursula Wolcott and Matthew Griswold, and a fourth has been described as "an aged dressmaker." To read the list of members is to lose one's self in a genealogical maze, and since, in any part of the world, the meeting of a Huntington and a Perkins necessarily produces good society, we have, with the addition of Lanmans, Howlands, McCurdys, Breeds, Coits, Rockwells, Williamses, and others, a company into which, even if saintliness were not a sufficient magnet, the Honorable Mrs. Jamieson, of Cranford, would have felt proud to enter.

The family papers from which these preliminary facts have been drawn give no further details, but a book of manuscript records is extant which states that, in 1800, a literary society was "founded" in Chelsea, and inasmuch as this did not differ greatly from the religious society already described, we must conclude that the latter had been discontinued before the new century came in. The admission of a member, it seems, was no longer left to the discretion of an individual selected to decide on her qualifications. Prayer is never mentioned as a part of the exercises, strangely enough, and the circle had become more catholic, including now the daughters of Rev. John Tyler, rector of Christ Church, for instance, and

probably some of other "persuasions; " but its constituency was largely the same as before, and it still embraced matrons advanced in years and young women scarcely out of their teens. The name of Miss Sally Smith, a lifelong schoolteacher, no longer appears on the roll, and the names of Fitch and De Witt are there for the first time. The De Witts may be regarded as new-comers in another sense, as their residence as a family in Chelsea did not date back of 1750, but the Fitches had rightful place by virtue of long settlement, if not because of their desire to be illumined by the lamp of knowledge.

The slurring old lines,

"Constantia took a serious fit,

Resolved to give up balls and plays, And only read what saints had writ," could not be applied to these ladies of Chelsea. Although dancing-masters found employment in the place, they must have piped in vain to the covenanted sisters, whose thoughts would seem to have been above the world from their youth upward. Why Mrs. Keziah Norris, the founder, encountered some gloomy prophets, as it seems she did, is unaccountable. The fact that Mrs. Lucy Trumbull edited the Norwich Packet for one year (1802–3) tends to prove that in the region drained by the Yantic and Shetucket the limits of woman's sphere had not at that time been fixed by public sentiment. The unobtrusive way in which the prayer-meetings had been held, even the children, it is said, being ignorant of the errand that called their mothers from home on certain afternoons, must have commended them. Was it because she considered gatherings with a literary bent but a waste of time that Miss Mary Harris "declined joining"? It is rather late to inquire, and it may be none of our affair, but it would be a great relief to know the reason.

The first convention of the Ladies' Literary Society of Chelsea was held January 29, 1800, at the house of Mrs.

Keziah Norris, "out of respect to her as founder," so runs the record. The meeting was opened with the reading of the articles, one of which states that the special object of the society is to enlighten the understanding and expand the ideas of its members, and to promote useful knowledge. Then, by request of Mrs. Lanman and concurrence of the Ladies present was read by the presiding member a part of the 2nd Chapt. Proverbs. Our thoughts were insensibly drawn to consider the importance of improving the Tallants given us; the beautiful lines of Miss Hannah More were quoted : 'If good we plant not vice will fill the mind And weeds despoil the place for flowers designed.'

The evening was closed with reading the Hist. of Columbus, the first discoverer of this vast Continent, with suitable comments on the Heroic act of Queen Isabella in being his patroness." At the second meeting, after the twelfth chapter of Proverbs and extracts from Watts's Treatise on the Mind had been read, "the evening was concluded by Mrs. Norris beginning Trumbull's History of Connecticut and continued with much elegance by Mrs. Jabez Huntington." The present of a blank-book for a re gister by Mrs. Norris was accompanied "with an animated address on the exquisite pleasure which a fund might procure by enabling us to assist merit." The reflection of Miss Sally Lanman, secretary pro tem., that "perhaps a mind well stored with history will have more energy than if filled with any other knowledge," deserves consideration by those educators of the present day who are striving to find some substitute for the dead languages.

On February 26, after some pages from Knox's Elegant Essays and Fordyce's Sermons to Women had been discussed, and the usual amount of history had been read "with much propriety by Misses Susan and Rebecca Breed," Mrs. Norris renewed her plea for a fund to