individuals be brought to understand how much of misery they might avoid by a moderate degree of habitual and generous self-restraint, the world would be spared a great deal of woe, and more, perhaps, of crime.

To this state of mind an accidental circumstance added a prodigious force. At a little distance from Bthere resided a family of the name of Danaher, hovering between the frontiers of gentility and of that rank to which the O'Bernes belonged. They lived in an equivocal looking house which they dignified with the title of Rath Danaher, held a pew at the chapel, and were looked upon as a kind of "half-quality". As they were near relations of Mrs. O'Berne, the latter and her husband were occasionally guests at the Rath, and contributed on festival days to make the evening pass merrily away. At this period the clouds of superstition still rested like a gloomy fog upon the minds of the poorer peasantry (as they do in all countries where education is retarded), nor were there wanting some in the rank immediately above them who participated in their credulity. In all such fancies, the Danahers were, from first to last, profoundly versed. They wore charms and spells; they never began a journey, or a new piece of work, on a Saturday; they kept no pigeons about the house; they would not hurt a weazel for the world; they always took off their hats when a cloud of dust went by them on the road; they read "dhrame-books" and consulted fortune-tellers, and practised numberless rites of the most absurd and unmeaning kind. Night after night, when the fire blazed cheerfully upon the hearth, it was their wont to gather round it in a circle, and interchange their gloomy tales of supernatural agency, while even the youngest members of the group were suffered to drink, undisturbed, at the foul and soulempoisoning stream, that flowed from the hag-ridden imaginations of the story-tellers. Ghosts, fairies, witches,

murderers, and demons, glided with a horrid and hairstiffening influence through all their narratives, and when the listeners retired for the night, it was to hurry to their beds with alarmed and shuddering nerves, and to supply the frightful fancies of their waking moments by still more frightful dreams.

One evening, while a conversation of this kind pro ceeded at the fireside of Rath Danaher, the O'Bernes were of the company. Godfrey, surprised at the extent to which they carried their superstitious credulity, undertook to disabuse them of their fears. He talked learnedly of the nature of spirit and of matter, of second causes, and of the absurdity of supposing that the Divine Being would suffer the ordinary laws of nature to be violated on occasions so fantastical and useless.

"I do not know how to make you understand", said he, "that such an event could not happen without a direct infraction of the present order of things, which is a miracle to be wrought by the hand of Omnipotence alone. That it may happen, as He who made the law can alter it, I do not offer to deny; but to believe that it does commonly happen, and without cause or meaning, is to turn the exception into the rule. Spirit, as it is an immaterial substance, has neither colour, nor sound, nor smell, nor any quality which can make it perceptible to our senses. Granting that they exist in myriads around us, it is still impossible, according to the ordinary laws of nature, that they can do us either physical injury or physical good. What communion they may hold with the mind, as that is likewise immaterial, has nothing to say to the purpose. It is possible they may suggest either good or evil to the soul (as religion even teaches us they do); but that, without supposing a miracle, they can pinch the body black and blue, transport it from place to place, affright the senses with extraordinary sights and sounds, is against the common order of nature.

The

Deity must clothe them with material faculties before they can produce material effects".

"Well, Mr. O'Berne", said Robert Danaher, a young man, who, having attended a course of surgical lectures in Dublin, conceived himself entitled to his share of authority on metaphysical questions, and who was, moreover, perhaps the only person present who understood half what the barber said "I do not know that any miracle at all is necessary to the purpose. It is an undisputed fact, that spirit does act on matter. The Deity, who is a pure spirit, sustains all things, both material and the contrary, in their daily courses-and we know that in the human being, the mind directs and regulates the movements of the body at its pleasure. Why may not the spirit, separated from its clay, possess the same influence over the matter that surrounds it, which it once held over that with which it was united in the human frame? For my part, as it is a mystery to me by what means my will directs my arm to extend or to contract itself, I would not presume to say that the same spiritual will, when separated by death from this frame of flesh and blood, may not possess a similar influence over the wind that moans by my window, the candle that is burning on my table, or the silent air that favours my midnight slumbers. I know not how the effect is produced in the one case any more than in the other; but when I know that the one effect does take place, I should be far from asserting that it would require an infraction of the natural harmony to produce the other".

"Ye may talk as ye will", said Kitty Danaher, “but fractions or no fractions, the spirits are abroad as regular as the sun goes down. Our John can tell you that, on a market night last year, after selling some cattle in New Auburn, he was mounting his horse at the door of the Harp and Shamrock, when three times, one after another, he fell over on the other side, without one near (that he

could see) to give him a shove, and the poor old mare standing as quiet as a lamb".

O'Berne, who supposed that there might be reasons for John's unsteadiness after leaving the Harp and Shamrock, apart from outward agents, either spiritual or material, was not so much struck by this example, as he was by the argument which it seemed intended to illustrate. He remained for a long time silent, while each of the family in turn poured out some fearful tale of supernatural agency in order to subdue his incredulity. They did not, however, succeed in convincing him. He continued to express his contempt for the ridiculous legends that they sought to thrust upon him, admitting only the possibility of such appearances as formed their leading subject.

"I can assure you of one circumstance, at all events", said Mrs. Danaher, "which took place beneath this very roof. Mr. Andrew Finucane the apothecary, to whom Robert served his time, was speaking one night, as you are, of the folly of believing in such stories, when we all warned him to be careful of what he said, as he did not know the moment he might have reason to change his mind. He laughed, but when he woke next morning he found himself lying with his head where his heels ought to be".

This tale brought on a fresh torrent of similar anecdotes. The evening passed away, and the barber and his wife returned home. It was in some weeks after, that the former, returning late from the neighbouring city, was obliged to take a bed for the night at an inn on the roadside. The stillness of the night and the loneliness of the place, for it was situate in one of those dreary flats which the road traversed on its way to the western coast, and tenanted only by an old woman and her son, brought to his recollection the discourse which had passed in his presence at Rath Danaher. The instinct of the supernatural is one, which perhaps nobody, except some

conscience-seared criminal, whose heart is hard to every natural feeling, can ever wholly lay aside. It is implanted in us for the best of purposes, and though we may abuse it, as we do the best emotions, to our ruin, it is not the less intended for our good. O'Berne, though he had his weakness, was by no means superstitious; yet he could not avoid bearing testimony in his own heart to the existence of the universal instinct as he gazed through his small window upon the wide and starlit heath that lay before it, and which was, in itself, a prospect sufficient to have awakened lonesome and melancholy thoughts. Still feeling a contempt for such terrors as those which preyed upon the household of Rath Danaher, he confessed, however, a sufficient degree of nervousness to lock the door of his sleeping room inside, and to make fast the window, to make" assurance doubly sure". He then knelt down, as usual, prayed with somewhat more than usual earnestness, and went to rest. His sleep was sound and dreamless as the sleep of a weary man is wont to be, but a surprise awaited him in the morning which made him almost doubt the evidence of his senses. On opening his eyes, he was astonished to perceive that the window which, when he went to rest, stood behind the head of his bed, and a little at the side, stood now directly opposite, as if it had made a circuit of the chamber in the night! He rose, and his perplexity increased. He found himself now lying with his feet towards the head of the bed, the pillow and all the bed furniture being reversed in the same way, and even his silver watch still lying as he had placed it under the bolster, but having participated in the general change of position. His astonishment was excessive. The bed had no appearance of the disturbance which such a change might be expected to make. It even seemed as if he had slept without motion through the night; and but that his recollection of the contrary was distinct, he would have been persuaded that the whole must be an error of his