n 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 shades.

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 sitting in his tent, pensive, 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 any thing 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.