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
shut up half the rooms in the house, in which either her husband, a son,
or daughter had died. The Knight seeing his habitation reduced to so
small a compass, and himself in a manner shut out of his own house, upon
the death of his mother ordered all the apartments to be flung open, and
_exorcised_ by his chaplain, who lay in every room one after
another, and by that means dissipated the fears which had so long
reigned in the family.

I should not have been thus particular upon these ridiculous horrors,
did not I find them so very much prevail in all parts of the country. At
the same time I think a person who is thus terrified with the
imagination of ghosts and spectres, much more reasonable than one who,
contrary to the reports of all historians sacred and profane, ancient
and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance
of spirits fabulous and groundless: Could not I give myself up to this
general testimony of mankind, I should to the relations of particular
persons who are now living, and whom I cannot distrust in other matters
of fact. I might here add, that not only the historians, to whom we may
join the poets, but likewise the philosophers of antiquity have favoured
this opinion. _Lucretius_ himself, though by the course of his
philosophy he was obliged to maintain that the soul 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 was so pressed with the matter of fact which he could not
have the confidence to deny, that he was forced to account for it by one
of the most absurd unphilosophical notions that was ever started. He
tells us, That the surfaces of all bodies are perpetually flying off
from their respective bodies, one after another; and that these surfaces