On the contrary, religion bears a more tender regard to humane nature. It prefcribes to every miferable man the means of bettering his condition; nay, it fhews him, that the bearing of his afflictions as he ought to do, will naturally end in the removal of them: It makes him eafie here, because it can make him happy hereafter.

Upon the whole, a contented mind is the greatest bleffing a man can enjoy in this world; and if in the prefent life his happiness arises from the fubduing of his defires, it will arife in the next from the gra tification of them.

SPECTATOR, No 110.
Concerning Spirits and Apparitions.

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Ta little diftance from my friend's houfe (fays the Spectator) among the ruins of an old abby, there is a long walk of aged elms; which are fhot up fo very high, that when one paffes under them, the rooks and crows that reft upon the tops of them feem to be cawing in another region. I am very much delighted with this fort of noife, which I confider as a kind of natural prayer to that Being who fupplies the wants of his whole creation,

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and who, in the beautiful language of the, Pfalms, feedeth the young ravens that call upon him. I like this retirement the better, because of an ill report it lies under of being haunted; for which reafon (as I have been told in the family) no living creature ever walks in it befides the chaplain. My good friend the butler defired me with a very grave face not to venture myself in it after fun-fet, for that one of the footmen had been almoft frighted out of his wits by a fpirit that appeared to him in the fhape of a black horfe without an head; to which he added, that about a month ago one of the maids coming home late that way with a pail of milk upon her head, heard fuch a rustling among the bushes that fhe let it fall.

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I was taking a walk in this place laft night between the hours of nine and ten, and could not but fancy it one of the most proper fcenes in the world for a ghoft to appear in. The ruins of the abby are fcattered up and down on every fide, and half .covered with ivy and elder-bushes, the harbours of feveral folitary birds which feldom make their appearance till the dusk of the evening. The place was formerly a church-yard, and has ftill feveral marks in it of graves and burying-places. There

is fuch an echo among the old ruins and vaults that if you ftamp but a little louder than ordinary you hear the found repeated. At the fame time the walk of elms, with the croaking of the ravens which from time to time are heard from the tops of them, looks exceeding folemn and venerable. These objects naturally raise seriousness and attention. And when night heightens the awfulness of the place, and pours out her fupernumerary horrors upon every thing in it, I do not at all wonder that weak minds fills it with fpe&res and apparitions.

Mr. Locke, in his chapter of the affociation of ideas, has very curious remarks to fhew how by the prejudice of education one idea often introduces into the mind a whole fet that bear no refemblance to one another in the nature of things. Among feveral examples of this kind, he produces the following inftance. The ideas of gob lins and fprights have really no more to do with darkness than light: Tet let but a foolish maid inculcate thefe often on the mind of a child, and raise them there together, poffibly be fhould never be able to feparate them again fo long as he lives; but darkness fall ever afterwards bring with it thofe frightful ideas, and they fall be fo joined, that he Dd

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can no more bear the one than the other.

As I was walking in this folitude, where the dusk of the evening confpired with fo many other occafions of terror, I obferved a cow grazing not far from me, which an imagination that is apt to ftartle might eafily have conftrued into a black horfe without an head: And I dare fay the poor footman loft his wits upon fome fuch trivial occafion.

My friend has often told me with a great deal of mirth, that at his first coming to his eftate he found three parts of his house altogether useless; that the best room in it had the reputation of being haunted, and by that means was locked up; that noises had been heard in his long gallery, fo that he could not get a servant to enter it after eight a clock at night; that the door of one of his chambers was nailed up, because there went a story in the family that a butler had formerly hanged himself in it; and that his mother, who lived to a great age, had fhut up half the rooms in the house, in which either a husband, a fon, or daughter had died. My friend feeing his habitation reduced to fo fmall a compafs, and himself in a manner shut out of his own house, upon the death of his mother ordered all

the

the appartments to be flung open, and exorcifed by his chaplain, who lay in every room one after another, and by that means diffipated the fears which had fo long reigned in the family.

I fhould not have been thus particular upon these ridiculous horrors, did not I find them fo very much prevail in all parts of the country. At the fame time I think a person who is thus terrified with the immagination of ghosts and spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the reports of all hiftorians facred and prophane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance of fpirits fabulous and groundless: Could not I give my felf up to this general teftimony of mankind, I fhould to the relations of particular perfons who are now living, and whom I cannot distrust in other matters of fact. I might here add, that not only the hiftorians, to whom we may join the poets, but likewise the philofophers of antiquity have favoured this opinion. Lucretius himfelf, tho' by the course of his phlilofophy he was obliged to maintain that the foul did not exist separate from the body, makes no doubt of the reality of apparitions, and that men have often appeared after their death, This I think very remarkable; he Dd 2

was