114 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



will spread them much more widely. There is a dash of 

 the supernatural in some of them, but I trust that will 

 break no squares with us unless they should lack in in- 

 terest ; besides, I hope there is philosophy enough in 

 them to save the writer's credit with even the most scep- 

 tical of your readers. Superstition, however, is not at all 

 the same sort of thing in these northern districts of the 

 kingdom that it is in those of the south. It is no mere 

 carcase with just enough of muscle and sinew about it 

 for an eccentric wit to experiment upon now and then 

 by a sort of galvanism of the imagination, but an ani- 

 mated body, instinct with the true life. I am old enough 

 to have seen people who conversed with the fairies, and 

 who have murmured that the law against witchcraft 

 should have been suffered to fall into desuetude ; and as 

 for ghosts, why, I am not very sure but what I have seen 

 ghosts myself. Superstition here is still living supersti- 

 tion, and, as a direct consequence, there is more of living 

 interest in our stories of the supernatural and more of 

 human nature. When man has a place in them, it is not 

 generic, but specific, man man with an individual cha- 

 racter. The man who figures in an English or South of 

 Scotland legend is quite as abstract a person as the man 

 in a fable of JEsop ; with us he has as defined a person- 

 ality as the Rip Fan Winkle of Washington Irving him- 

 self. By the way, much of the interest of this admirable 

 story is derived from the well-defined individuality of 

 poor Rip. 9 



One or two other letters or notes passed between 

 him and Mr Chambers, but they are of little importance. 

 Hugh once has this remark on the nature of content- 

 ment : ' The content which is merely an indolent ac- 

 quiescence in one's lot is so questionable a virtue, that it 

 seems better suited to the irrational animals than to man. 



