in a general sense, denotes simply the appearance of a thing. In a more limited sense, it is used for a spectre or ghost. Several instances of apparitions occur in the Bible; that of Samuel, raised by the witch of Endor, has occasioned great disputes. We find great controversies among authors, in relation to the reality, the existence or non-existence, the possibility or impossibility, of apparitions. The Chaldeans, the Jews, and other nations, have been the steady affronters of the belief of apparitions. The denial of spirits and apparitions is by some made one of the marks of infidelity, if not of atheism. Many of the apparitions we are told of in writers, are doubtless mere delusions of the senses; many others are fictitious, contrived merely to amuse, or answer some purpose. Apparitions, it is certain, are machines that on occasion have been of good service both to generals, to ministers of state, to priests, and others.

Partial darkness, or obscurity, are the most powerful means by which the sight is deceived: night is therefore the proper season for apparitions. Indeed the state of the mind, at that time, prepares it for the admission of these delusions of the imagination. The fear and caution which must be observed in the night; the opportunity it affords for ambuscades and assassinations; depriving us of society, and cutting off many pleasing trains of ideas, which objects in the light never fail to introduce, are all circumstances of terror: and perhaps, on the whole, so much of our happiness depends upon our senses, that the deprivation of any one may be attended with proportionable horror and uneasiness. The notions entertained by the ancients respecting the soul, may receive some illustration from these principles. In dark or twilight, the imagination frequently transforms an APPARITOR an inanimate body into a human figure; on approaching, the same appearance is not to be found; hence they sometimes fancied they saw their ancestors; but not finding the reality, distinguished these illusions by the name of phantasms.

Many of these fabulous narrations might originate from dreams. There are times of slumber when we are not sensible of being asleep. On this principle, Hobbes has ingeniously accounted for the spectre which is said to have appeared to Brutus. "We read," says he, "of M. Brutus, that at Philippi, the night before he gave battle to Augustus Caesar, he saw a fearful apparition, which is commonly related by historians as a vision; but, considering the circumstances, one may easily judge it to have been but a short dream. For fitting in his tent, penfive, and troubled with the horror of his rash act, it was not hard for him, slumbering in the cold, to dream of that which most affrighted him; which fear, as by degrees it made him wake, so it must needs make the apparition by degrees to vanish: and having no assurance that he slept, he could have no cause to think it a dream, or anything but a vision."—The well-known story told by Clarendon of the apparition of the duke of Buckingham's father, will admit of a similar solution. There was no man in the kingdom so much the subject of conversation as the duke; and from the corruptness of his character, he was very likely to fall a sacrifice to the enthusiasm of the times. Sir George Villiers is said to have appeared to the man at midnight: therefore there is the greatest probability that the man was asleep; and the dream affrighting him, made a strong impression, and was likely to be repeated.